I’ve had a very traumatic morning!
I am, as regular readers will know, unable to drive at the moment due to my knuckle replacement surgery, which leaves me at the mercy of the 193 bus. I board at the start of the line, so was really pleased to turn the corner of Gloucester Avenue and see two buses at the stop. However, they BOTH pulled off in the thirty seconds it took me to get to the bus stop. The next one came along twenty minutes later. On the return journey, the bus stop was covered in a yellow cloth stating: BUS STOP CLOSED. Now, I am a reasonable woman; if the bus stop has to close because the road’s being dug up, I understand. But can’t a temporary stop be set up where the digging finishes – some 50 yards from the regular bus stop? Apparently not. There is no alternative but to trudge the half mile to the next stop. As I did so, two buses overtook me, three minutes apart. I then waited twenty-three minutes for the next one. The 193 time-table boasts that buses run ‘about every 8-9 minutes’. I think ABOUT is the operative word! When I finally got home, there was a card from the postman saying he’d been unable to deliver a parcel four minutes before my actual arrival time. I’d have been home if the 193 had done what it’s supposed to. Now I have to take the offending bus back into Hornchurch at some point to pick up my parcel. Thank God I’ll be driving within the next ten days, hopefully!
But worse than the bus fiasco – I was mugged in the Post Office. I couldn’t believe it – it happened so quickly. I went up to the counter and asked for forty second-class stamps. “Twenty-one pounds twenty,’ the smiling cashier said. ‘No. Forty please,’ I said, thinking she had misheard forty as a hundred. ‘Yes, forty.’ she replied, still smiling. ‘Forty SECOND-CLASS,’ I said, emphasising the second as she was obviously trying to sell me first- class stamps. ‘Forty, second-class stamps, madam. Twenty-one pounds twenty pence,’ she said loudly and slowly. Well, they had to bring me a chair and a glass of water after they’d picked me up off the floor.
Fifty-three pence for a second-class stamp!!
The cashier smiled apologetically as I put in my PIN number and she pushed the offending stamps under the window to me. And as I shuffled out of the Post Office, clutching my bag under my arm, I was sure that all the town’s villains would be waiting outside the building ready to snatch shoppers’ bags and then sell on the stamps on the black market, whereby earning a fortune. Much more profitable than snatching a phone or iPad, surely! And as the door of the Post Office swung shut behind me I was certain I heard Adam and the Ants singing ‘Stand and Deliver’ on the radio.
last year two of my friends put notes in their cards saying that because of the price of postage they would not be sending cards this year but donating the money to charity and can you blame them, when sending cards abroad with each one having to be weighed you need to quick sniff of gas and air to get over the shock…or at the very least a Carlos 1 xx
I don’t honestly get the giving to charity thing… But I needed more than a Carlos 1 this morning I can tell you! X
received my first Christmas card this morning! who in their right mind would send a card in November…..Elaine Spires!!!!!!!!
Someone who wants to wish her dear friends compliments of the season, but is sooooooo busy if she doesn’t send them at the end of November they might not get sent at all! And someone who never dreamt that a card she posted second class at 4pm in Hornchurch would be delivered in Dunstable the following morning! X