CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

As is usual when I am waiting for a Royal Mail package, the carpet is being worn down to the rubber and my nerves to a frazzle. It's a 48-hour guaranteed delivery (of this month's vapes, the last of which is being smoked as I type) due to arrive yesterday. Obviously I wasn't actually expecting it yesterday but I've had plenty of leisure to get up to speed with Royal Mail's latest wheezes for trying patiences.

1. In order to get onto the Track My Parcel page you now have to pass stringent tests of the 'Which picture has got a train in it?' type. You could be anyone for all they know. These tests can be quite fun except a bit wearying when there are twelve pictures and eleven of them have got trains in them. Anyway I passed that with elan (I'm a train buff) and was onto the next one. This only had two pictures of trains so was quickly achieved. Except I was meant to be identifying motorbikes which I should have guessed, there being nine of them. Start over, Rover!

2. I got there in the end though and they had my package just as they did yesterday. So what are the prospects for today? Ah, here's another innovation they have introduced

[Mick Harper]

It is now 11.30 pm on the 8th of July. Though not yet in Royal Mail land

[Mick Harper]

Another day older and deeper in (nicotine) debt. My big problem now is that I let slip during one of the thirty-seven trillion other times I have 'interfaced' with Royal Mail I that I have to go out once a week to do my Saturday shop. That'll be on my docket. But they don't know exactly when.

Normally I would just do what most people do in this situation, dress up as someone else, slip out and slip back again. But it's so hot they'll know anyone in, say, an astrakhan fur coat will be me. Unless I can get one of the people upstairs to help me with a double bluff.

[Mick Harper]

It is Saturday morning and all's quiet. Royal Mail has special arrangements for Saturdays so I'd better check. Unfortunately it is not yet Saturday at the Notting Hill Delivery Office. It is not yet Friday.

[Mick Harper]

Developments. Some good, some bad. I rang the number provided and -- this is the good news -- someone answered. That has not happened before, not within minutes anyway. The bad news: "Well, Mr Harper, I can only see what you can see and there does seem to be an inexcusable hold-up at the Notting Hill end but I have no way of knowing what it is. You have been very poorly treated so what I'm going to do for you is send Notting Hill an official email enquiring what's going on. The regulations say they must reply within three working days... so that is ... er ... Wednesday. We have to let you know within seven working days."

I did not have the heart to ask whether the seven days start now or from Wednesday but I do have to make a strategic decision. Officially I am still due to receive the package by 3 pm today so I dare not leave home before then. But the vape man knocks off about that time. But in any case, do I buy his (ruinously expensive) wares assuming my cheapo ones will arrive today, tomorrow, Monday, never?

Because one thing you might not know is that whenever officialdom has got involved one of two things always happen
1. Everyone covers their back by hurling my package into the back of beyond and claiming total ignorance of it or
2. Everyone pulls out all the stops and I get a special delivery, just my package in its own Royal Mail van, brought to me at any time night or day, Sundays included.

I have another hour to make my move.

[Mick Harper]

I took a chance and put

[Mick Harper]

It is a new week for the world but still last week for Notting Hill Distribution Office. I learned this after doing The Monday Morning Bot Challenge. Turned out to be the Monday Morning Boat Challenge and I paused to decide whether to select on the basis that some of the pictures were of ships, not boats. A fact that would be known to most bots, I would imagine. I decided on the evidence so far that Royal Mail probably wouldn't know this and I was right! I feel it's an omen.

[Mick Harper]

1130 am It arrived!

Mick: How come it took a week?
Royal Mail Miss: We've been having holiday problems.

One does sympathise. July does kinda creep up on you.

[Mick Harper]

My new policy of moving into populist subjects on medium.com is having an alarming effect on my algorithm. He (or she, I don't know much about medium's hiring policies) selected the top five stories they thought would appeal to my known proclivities

[Mick Harper]

I got my first highlight on medium.com! They're so rare I didn't even know they existed. Anyway, since it's the first time I've had unsolicited praise since 2015 I thought I'd pass it on. Somebody had posted up about the Shroud of Turin being discovered to be real after all (don't ask, thermoluminescent something or other) and everyone was either going gooey-eyed or coming over all censorious. I was obliged to occupy the middle ground

[Mick Harper]

You know summer's arrived when someone rings up to see if you're all right for Christmas.

[Mick Harper]

I find I have neither potatoes nor onions. This is the first time I have been in this position for... certainly seven years (I keep all shopping receipts for this long, it being the statutory limit for bringing civil actions in England and Wales).

Thursday night is sausage and mash night so it is to be blue sky cooking for me. The weather suggests a salad but I have found (and I dutifully pass on) that if you make a sandwich with cheese, tomato, cucumber and lettuce you have essentially reproduced a salad -- and all the better for it -- but because it is a sandwich it is for an afternoon snackeral not for a formal, in front of Channel 4 News, sit down meal-for-one.

But there my imaginative powers have given out. Let us hope hunger is the best medicine.

[Mick Harper]

An alarm going off in the middle of the night reminds me that alarms no longer go off in the middle of the night. How was that minor curse of life solved? It wasn't. It just stopped. There's a lesson there but I'm damned if I can see what it is.

[Mick Harper]

It may have been something because a wah-wahing police car arrived a few minutes later. Which reminded me, police cars no longer wah-wah. And for that matter no emergency vehicles do. It used to be twice-nightly round here. It is very strange. I like it of course but I don't like it.

[Mick Harper]

Weekend Oneupmanship

Dude: Don't know if you're still on a forgeries jag, but I'm currently reading quite an interesting book on the Habsburgs ...specifically just read about their 13th/14th century forgeries made to big themselves up

Mick: I am always trying to get more on the early Habsburgs. They're not featured much in English works so send me the title. As it happens my entire (adult) interest in history stems from The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918 by AJP Taylor. I used it to telling effect when explaining to Caroline why Welsh-speaking social workers were demanding social workers in Wales must be fluent in Welsh. Highly recommended even though neither of us (I would think) has much time for AJP otherwise.

Dude: Met him a few times…the smallest non dwarf I’ve ever seen, radiating energy and enthusiasm.