I've just had this phone conversation with Royal Mail

Me (after pressing eighteen different numbers): "I've got a problem with a letter I've just received. It was addressed correctly, but it has the remains of a redirection label on it, and someone has written on the envelope, '"Incorrectly re-directed; pleased send as originally addressed.' "

RM: "That'll be what's happened, then. It was incorrectly re-directed, and the recipient has written on the envelope and put it back in the post."

Me: "Yes, I know that." (Thinks: this would be obvious to a blind baboon, with the literacy skills of a celebrity who has just got someone to ghost-write their autobiography.) "I'd like to make sure it doesn't happen again."

RM: "I'm sure it won't." (Pause, while he realises I'm not going to be fobbed off.) "But I can ask the delivery office to flag up your address, and put a note on it."

Me: "Thank you".


On a different note, did anyone (else) see Have I Got News For You last night, with Bob Crowe?

"A Young Turkish Catastrophe", by Saki

[In two scenes]

The Minister for Fine Arts (to whose Department had been lately added the new sub-section of Electoral Engineering) paid a business visit to the Grand Vizier. According to Eastern etiquette they discoursed for a while on indifferent subjects. The minister only checked himself in time from making a passing reference to the Marathon Race, remembering that the Vizier had a Persian grandmother and might consider any allusion to Marathon as somewhat tactless. Presently the Minister broached the subject of his interview.

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