First Class Lady Grey

The footage from yesterday’s interviews, transferred onto DVD, has to be sent to the client so that legal can approve which sound-bites are used in the final edit.

Post-production takes place in Work Buddy’s studio north of London. The only real downer is sending off the DVDs for the client to approve content. Instead of using a business-district post office where people are eager to get in and out as quickly as possible, I have to go to a high street post office.

Business-district post offices may have harried office assistants dragging in 2 cwt of packages to ship out or lining up to buy practically every first class stamp in existence but the counter staff do their job and everyone gets served lickety-split. But local post offices...

Somewhere above the door there must be an inscription that reads:

Enter here all idiots clueless of their parcels’ contents’ cost (for insurance purposes), or who are posting for a friend and baffled at what the contents may be,
The hopeless munters who haven’t properly filled in the forms for whatever the hell it is they need to fill forms in for,
The stroppy peasanty mothers with squawking baby or unruly brood running freely as if they are on a day at Alton Towers.
But best of all, doddery old pensioners who either haven’t a clue or think they are at a WI coffee morning.

I know we should be reverential to the blue-rinse brigade because the old dears gave birth in Anderson shelters during the Blitz, and had to eat their saucepans for victory. But buy your stamps, pay your bills, collect your pensions, do what you have to do, and then sod right off. That’s right. Sodding sod right off!

Instead the post office queue lurches violently to a swift and sudden halt as the old dears plant themselves in front of the available counters and start a long catch up with the staff, whose blank smiles seem to be taken as indications of eager encouragement. Or worse they reply with eager encouragement, happy to have a chat.

When did local post offices take over from the Lyon’s Corner Houses? What the goddam hell happened here? Talk about relatives, recent operations and the tingling feeling in their legs. Do they all work to the same checklist?

And finally, when all is said and done, they cap it all off by being too stupid to work out how to stick the card into the reader and too senile to remember their chip + pin number. For pity’s sake, please, please, bring cash with you next time!

All I want to do is get the package weighed, postage paid and then get the living hell out of there. I have things to get on with, honest.