Oh dear. I have two friends with early April birthdays (I hope they're still my friends after this...) and I did remember, I got cards in good time, but somehow my brain didn't take in the fact that if 6 April falls on a Sunday, then the card would only get there on time if I posted it on Friday, seeing as mail isn't delivered on Sundays. Ho hum. Never mind, I thought, one day late is still kind of okay, and the other birthday is on 7 April which falls on Monday, so at least that one will get there on time if I get my skates on and get to the post box this afternoon...
Well, no. After nearly two decades of living in this country, you'd have thought I'd have got it into my head that there's no mail collection on Saturday afternoons. And as they recently cancelled Sunday collections, that's it, my cards are going to sit in that box until Monday and won't get anywhere before Tuesday. Oh dear.
But I realise I'm moaning about these things as if I've always had the luxury of the post being delivered daily, I happily join in with the general moans about second post being cancelled (someone in a letter to one of the papers, I forget which and when, pointed out that it wasn't really the second post delivery that had been cancelled, it's really the first one - at least that's how it looks where I live, when often the post arrives around 1-2pm) - but the thing is, where I come from, getting the post delivered daily sounds like a fantasy. As far as I remember, it was twice a week! And this fantastic idea that first class post is delivered the next day - wow! In Israel we don't send cheques in the post because there's no knowing how long it will take. We don't do filling a form in and sending it in the post. We don't trust the post. (Yes, I know things do sometimes go wrong here, but we're talking about a very different scale. Most of the post here does actually get delivered correctly and in good time.) Long before the invention of the English expression "snail mail", we had a fond term for our own postal system, which would translate into English as "tortoise post". (This is based on a Hebrew play on words, but it's a bit complicated to try and explain in English.)
So, thank God for good old Royal Mail, which does actually provide a pretty decent service when I think about it in this light.
And thank God for this gorgeous sunshine, and also for the rain that came down earlier and watered the gardens. It's just that I'm still not really used to this - I saw the rain and thought, what's happened to spring, yesterday was so sunny and warm! Then I remembered: in England this is spring!
Well, no. After nearly two decades of living in this country, you'd have thought I'd have got it into my head that there's no mail collection on Saturday afternoons. And as they recently cancelled Sunday collections, that's it, my cards are going to sit in that box until Monday and won't get anywhere before Tuesday. Oh dear.
But I realise I'm moaning about these things as if I've always had the luxury of the post being delivered daily, I happily join in with the general moans about second post being cancelled (someone in a letter to one of the papers, I forget which and when, pointed out that it wasn't really the second post delivery that had been cancelled, it's really the first one - at least that's how it looks where I live, when often the post arrives around 1-2pm) - but the thing is, where I come from, getting the post delivered daily sounds like a fantasy. As far as I remember, it was twice a week! And this fantastic idea that first class post is delivered the next day - wow! In Israel we don't send cheques in the post because there's no knowing how long it will take. We don't do filling a form in and sending it in the post. We don't trust the post. (Yes, I know things do sometimes go wrong here, but we're talking about a very different scale. Most of the post here does actually get delivered correctly and in good time.) Long before the invention of the English expression "snail mail", we had a fond term for our own postal system, which would translate into English as "tortoise post". (This is based on a Hebrew play on words, but it's a bit complicated to try and explain in English.)
So, thank God for good old Royal Mail, which does actually provide a pretty decent service when I think about it in this light.
And thank God for this gorgeous sunshine, and also for the rain that came down earlier and watered the gardens. It's just that I'm still not really used to this - I saw the rain and thought, what's happened to spring, yesterday was so sunny and warm! Then I remembered: in England this is spring!
