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T hank God someone's realised that someone paid off all the scientists to lie. That's why they all live in massive mansions with gold lifts.
Today I had a confrontation that possibly serves as a metaphor for being 50. It was much less violent (although there was some genuine anger in there) and it resolved in a much less embarrassing way, and maybe it sums up where I am in my life just as well. Not sure this will make it into Oh Frig I’m 50, but I am toying with the idea. Let’s see how this blog goes…
As you know I have been spending much of the last week signing 350 Emergency Questions books and writing extra questions in about 200 of them, then in the last couple of days I’ve been fulfilling the not insignificant task of putting those books (well about 300 of them, some of you still haven’t filled in the pertinent info about addresses etc) in envelopes, trying to make sure that everyone gets the right book (and giving about 70 or so non-question people the bonus of a surprise question). I finished this task last night and decided to start posting the books out as soon as possible. I got two bags for life and filled them with a tiny proportion of the packages and headed to my nearest post box.
Now I do not know how many packages a post box can hold and was conscious of not blocking up the box entirely. But I thought I was being smart - surely there would be a collection in the morning and relatively few people would be posting stuff late at night, so I could maybe attempt to half fill the box and not inconvenience people too much. I didn’t have all that much choice in the matter. After the closures of my local post office many years ago and Shepherd’s Bush main post office last month, my nearest post office is maybe half a mile away. I would have to make a lot of trips to get all these letters into the post office and I wasn’t sure I had the energy and definitely didn’t have the time. My plan of half filling this post box seemed like an OK one. And if the Post Office didn’t want post boxes stuffed with envelopes then it should probably stop shutting all its post offices.
Unfortunately I over estimated how many envelopes would fit into the post box. I realised it was pretty much full. But there are two post boxes within walking distance of this one. I went to one of them and put the rest of the envelopes in there. I didn’t exactly feel that I was doing anything wrong, though wondered what the guys emptying the boxes would make of it. I assumed they’d be emptied quite early and then I could return and put in a few more envelopes.
At lunchtime I went back to the first box expecting it to be empty. It was still full to the brim. I felt a bit awkward, but mainly annoyed that I couldn’t use the post box. I wanted to get all these letters on their way today, so as not to let my donors down. I went up the road to the third post box and put the letter in there. I didn’t fill it this time.
Later I took another two bags to the post office, as I had eBay items to post as well. The round trip was about a mile and took a good half an hour of my time. I had by now probably only got through about half of the envelopes, but I had work to do and a meeting to go to and I couldn’t keep going this far. I took two bags with me to my meeting in town - I didn’t want to take the piss, so I put some of them in a local post box and put the rest in a post box in town. I could probably get all the rest done in one final trip.
At about 5.30pm I headed out of the house with the last two bags, knowing that the boxes should be emptied now. I was surprised to see a post office van outside the post box I was heading to. It was about an hour after the final collection deadline, but if I could get there before the van pulled away then that would be perfect, right? I could just empty my bags into his sack and not inconvenience anyone by filling up the post boxes. I jogged up there, pretty sure he would pull away before I could dump my load.
But no, he was still there, grumpily fishing envelopes out of the box. It looked pretty full for some reason. “Hey mate, can I give you these?” I asked cheerily. He was not cheery in return. One of my new emergency questions is “Have you ever irked a postman?” I don’t think I really had until today. I hope that all of the questions don’t come true. He was, perhaps understandably, annoyed that I had filled all the boxes he had to empty with big cardboard sleeves, partly because of the work involved for him, but mainly because of the selfishness he felt it displayed. I tried to explain that I assumed the boxes would have been emptied in the morning and that I had misjudged the capacity of the first one, but he was having none of that. He had had people on the phone complaining that the first box I’d gone to was full and said he wouldn’t be surprised if some of these envelopes were going to get damaged in these restrictive boxes and that if one was inadvertently opened at the depot then he’d find out who I was and bill me for filling up all these boxes. I sort of assumed I had paid for this service already with the £500 worth of stamps we’d purchased, but he was not having it. I told him there was no need to open the parcels, now fearful that people wouldn’t be getting the rewards and that I’d happily tell him who I was. I explained that there was no post office near enough to me. He pointed up the road and said “It’s just up there,” ignoring the fact that that was a third of a mile from where we were standing, and even further from my house. “I can’t carry all this stuff all the way up there. I’m 50!” I lied.
“I’m 42,” he said,”You’re only eight years older than me.” I have to say he looked a lot younger. I had played that card thinking he was in his early 30s and would take pity on me. He picked up one of my bags to demonstrate how light they were. “My 75 year old nan could carry that to the post office.”
This slightly ignored the fact that with the number of letters I had had it would have taken 5 trips to the post office and about two and a half hours to post all the parcels. I would have to walk over 4 miles. I told him I had filled one sack up at the post office, but he didn’t believe me as he hadn’t seen it.
But as cross as he was, he was softening a little bit in the conversation now.
I acknowledged that it had been a bit selfish of me to do this and I felt sad that I had annoyed and inconvenienced this man, who seemed like a decent bloke, just trying to do his job. I apologised to him and said I’d pay him for his trouble, but like all postmen he was noble and not doing the job for financial reward and refused. “What if all businesses did this?” he asked. “I’m not a business,” I said, “I’m just a bloke.” And to be fair, you can’t really call this non-profit attempt to pay for the podcasts a business and as a regular person I have no idea how you’d go about posting 300 letters when you live half a mile from a post office. He had seemed insistent on not taking my last two bags, as a punishment for my rudeness, which seemed to be inviting me to just fill the box again. Though I suspected if I did that that those parcels would find their way to a skip.
I told him I wouldn’t do this again and I appreciated the lesson. It wasn’t his fault that the Post Office has closed all its branches and cut back its services to one collection a day. I felt bad for having giving him this hassle and respected him for his getting on with it and his anger. He didn’t respect me in return, but I was glad I had got to meet him and let him know that I wasn’t a lazy businessman, just a clueless and unfit 50 year old who had unrealistically high expectations of his postal service. I offered to shake his hand by way of apology, accepting that he was in the right. I didn’t know if he’d shake my hand when I proferred it, but he did. And he couldn’t stay mad at me for long. He took my two bags for life and chucked them in the back of his van.
It was a passionate confrontation, but it didn’t end in punches, but though dialogue we reached an understanding and it felt good to have had the conversation. I wasn’t quite as big a dick as he imagined.
When I had that fight a decade ago I was filled with adrenaline for days. As much as it had been embarrassing it felt good to have punched a man in the head and I felt alive. The effect of this more reasonable but equally ridiculous exchange was less extreme, but I still felt invigorated. But also (aside from the fact that I had just posted out 300 books full of cock gags without a thought for the regular letter posting people of Shepherd’s Bush) more mature. I am both 50 and 15 at the same time as always.
It had been another relentless day of work and I had a late night (for me) stand up slot up in Finchley where I tried out a few new ideas, though not the postman bit (although I tried it on the other comics who seemed to enjoy the story, so you never know). I think the idea of my car searching for Ryan’s phone is the stand out idea at the moment, though it’s in very early stages. Somehow amongst all the other stuff that is going on I have the foetus of a show. I think it’s going to be OK. I am already relishing trying to get it all together into a coherent whole. Just the comparison of me now and the 40 year old me as exemplified by these two confrontations should easily fill an hour.
All the money from these sales will go towards making more podcasts. If everyone who listened to the podcasts bought a book we’d have enough money to film the series for 30 years. And you’d get 30 years of free podcasts and a brilliant book. For just £10. That seems fair right?
