Letter to Rebecca #24-09

Mail, improvements, security

This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit Rebecca Holden, in which we take turns every other Wednesday to delve into the things that British people talk about the most. So that you can explore these unashamed clichés for yourself we’re inviting you to read our letters over our shoulders.

My next ‘Experiment in Style’ post will of course be published on Sunday¹.

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your letter, which I found even more chortlesome than usual. We were discussing sending vegetables through the post, and you asked me if it wouldn’t have been less hassle for me to have not peeled the potato at all. I had to peel a bit of it so that I could write the name and address on. Fancy you not realising that: I assumed it was common knowledge. <Sigh>

Back then, it was easy to send such items, but now post depends not only on weight, but size. I don’t know about you, but I simply do not have the courage to walk into a Post Office and make the necessary enquiries:

Me: Good morning, postmaster. Can you tell me how much it will cost to send this gigantic potato please.

Postmaster: Certainly, Sir. Just put it on the scales there. Excellent. Now I shall measure it. Will that be going to an address in Britain, Sir?

Me: Yes, to a friend of mine in Sussex. She insists that all missives to her be carved on vegetables.

Postmaster: Right you are, Sir. Will that be first class, second class, parcel post, recorded delivery, registered delivery, guaranteed next day delivery, signed-for delivery, special delivery, or some combination of the above, apart from the first three, of which you can choose only one?

Me: Could you go through them again, please? I’ve just worked out that there are 720 possible combinations.

People reminiscing about how they could post a letter in the morning and discover that it had been delivered in the afternoon is all very well, but I remember when the service was so efficient that the letter would be delivered before you’d posted it². Ah, those were the days.

On the subject of improvement, have you noticed that whenever an upgraded version of a product or service appears, it’s almost invariably worse than the thing it replaced?

For example, here’s a conversation I had with my father-in-law once when he saw me taking photos with my digital camera.

Father-in-law: How do you get the photo you just took from the camera to a picture you can hold?

Me: Well, I take this card out of the camera, and when I get home I insert it into my computer, and then I open up a photo program and then I load the picture from the card to the program and then I print it out.

F-I-L: Ah yes, so much easier than a Polaroid³.

We had a good post-related example of inverse improvement⁴ recently. Elaine had ordered a product, which according to the tracking code was supposed to arrive in three days. It turned out that the delivery company couldn’t deliver it because for some reason there was no house number, only the name and postcode.

Do you know that each postcode comprises only eight addresses? One would have thought that the delivery person could have called at one of those and asked if they knew where we live. Failing that, they could have looked on the Electoral Register (which wouldn’t have worked actually because we opted for anonymisation). But no, they just kept on not delivering it, presumably because that was the easy option.

I’ve even experienced the situation whereby a delivery person shoves a card through the door saying nobody was in so please rearrange delivery — when I was on the other side of the door waiting for the doorbell to ring! I spoke to a delivery lady we know, and she said it’s because they have about five seconds to deliver each item, so sometimes they don’t bother.

That reminds me (I’m a fund of useful useless information) of a bus timetable in one of our towns that didn’t allow any time for the bus to actually stop. So the buses would just whiz round and round the city for the sole purpose of sticking to the timetable. The point of a bus service, namely to transport passengers, somehow got overlooked at the planning stage.

I’m impressed by Jim’s ability to convert a random piece of wood into a shelf. When I bought my first home, I decided to put up bookshelves. I went about it properly: I bought a theodololite or spirit level or something, and a metal ruler and a special wooden carpenter’s pencil that I stuck behind my ear in order to get into the role. And when, several hours later, I stood back to admire my craftsmanship, I saw that the whole edifice was at a jaunty 30 degree angle. That was my first and last attempt at DIY. As Dirty Harry was wont to say, a man’s gotta know his limitations.

The weather here in England is, as you know, insane. Yesterday I went for a long walk. Elaine told me the weather was going to be very cold, so I wore a thick shirt, a fleece and a heavy coat — and came back drenched in perspiration. I had forgotten that Elaine’s idea of cold is anything less than 70 degrees. She once convinced me to wear a huge amount of clothing when I was travelling to America. I found myself standing in the security line sweating like anything.

Security office: You look very nervous, Sir.

Me: No, I’m just very hot.

SO: Really, Sir?

Me: Yes, it’s my wife’s fault.

As I was walking along the corridor after this encounter, a different security officer leapt out of the shadows wielding a mobile trolley.

SO: May I check your papers, Sir?

Me: Yes. But why have you picked on me?

SO: Oh it’s just a random check, Sir.

But it wasn’t. I’m sure SO #1 alerted SO #2 that there was some bloke sweating like crazy, which looked to them like nerves. Fortunately, the old, relaxed, easy Freedman charm convinced them that I really was hot, not nervous. That’s the thing about being a lord, Rebecca. We peers of the realm have better breeding than other people⁵.

That’s all from me, Becks. Do take care, and I look forward to your reply, as always.

Readers looking over my shoulder can find links to these letters here or here. Subscribe to Rebecca’s newsletter so as to avoid missing her reply, and other good stuff.

Thanks for reading!

1. I nicked this blurb from Rebecca’s letters to me, with permission of course.

2. The idea for this piece of nonsense came from a book about life in the old Soviet Union, called The Compromise. Here’s an excerpt from a review I wrote.

The compromises are related in a very deadpan way, which serves to make the grim humour even funnier. There is a real sense that you have to go along with things because there is no choice, even though everyone knows it’s all nonsense.

A good example of this is where Dovlatov travels to interview a labourer whose milk production has increased significantly. Once he has finished talking to her he prepares to go back home in order to write his report. Before he has a chance to do so, the telephone rings. He answers it.

“We’ve received an answer”, Livac said.

“From whom?” I didn’t understand.

“From Comrade Brezhnev.”

“Uh, how is that? Your letter hasn’t been sent yet.”

“Well what of it? It just means that Brezhnev’s staff is a little more efficient than you — than us”, he corrected himself tactfully.

“So what does Comrade Brezhnev write?”

“He sends his congratulations, his thanks for the successes attained, his wishes for personal happiness…”

3. Polaroid cameras have made a comeback, but the new improved version is apparently not as good as the old one. Another example of what I’m talking about.

4. The term ‘inverse improvement’ is one I invented. Aka ‘deprovement’.

5. Yes, OK, so my lordship was bought for me for fifty quid, but let’s not argue please.