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I took the last few signed programmes for the kind people who donated to SCOPE to get their name in them down to the Post Office today. Thanks to all those kind people - if you don’t have your programme yet then you should get it pretty soon. I have had an odd relationship with the Shepherd’s Bush Green post office, having blogged about it and written about it in the Metro and of course my frustrated tweeting of how long the queue was taking.
A new manager who took over a couple of years back and some brilliant work from a friendly and extremely busy staff (who have to put up with the craziest people that Shepherd’s Bush can throw at it and sarcastic comedians being rude them) has turned the place around. Where once the queue would easily take 30 minutes to get to the front of, nowadays you rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes and often get seen to more or less straight away. Despite my cheekiness the staff have enjoyed my Metro columns and now always greet me with a laugh, thankfully seeing that I was usually lauding them for their patience and diligence in the face of a difficult job. They are very good and kind people and I don’t know how they cope with their job without punching everyone who comes in. But they do it without even punching anyone. That’s amazing.
So I was sad to be informed today that the Post Office is planning to shut down this important main branch and move the store to inside WH Smiths in the Westfield. After all that this team has done for them they are going to shift them (and at least, for now,there are no job losses, though I wonder if that will come too) and they are understandable nervous about it. And it does seem a big shame to move this centrally located main post office to the back of a shop, which is much less conveniently located. Especially given how many of the smaller post offices have also gone. If you’d like to complain about this move then do what I’ve done and email comments@postoffice.co.uk and let them know your thoughts. I’d like to pay back the staff for whom I occasionally made life troublesome by at least letting their superiors know how brilliantly they have done. As for WH Smiths I don’t know if they know what they’ve let themselves in for. They will become a magnet for every crackpot and buffoon in the area, though with a bit of luck they will have all tired themselves out with the extra walk.
I meandered on with work, managing to shoot out a rapid fourth draft of my TV sitcom pilot just the day after I had received the notes about it. Dare I start to dream that this might be the one that gets made? I daren’t. But I think it’s a solid script and a good idea, so you never know. Tomorrow I will attempt to make a start on Relativity.
I didn’t really get into this final ever series of the Great British Bake Off, never even got close to being offered a spot on “An Extra Slice”, but my wife has been enjoying it and I half-watched the final. My favourite bit was when the winner seemed to have little regard for the cake stand trophy, waving it around in a perilous fashion that seemed certain to end in disaster and towards the end possibly using the glass to wipe her nose on. A fitting epitaph perhaps. The production company have possibly wiped their arse with the show.
RHLSTP with Dane Baptiste is now up on video
itunes
and should be with you on audio on Thursday.
