slivers of joy

  "Did you post this through my door just now?"
The woman is standing before me in her slippers brandishing a grey Royal Mail 'insufficient postage' card.  I'm taking a much needed piss behind a tree in what I thought to be a deserted patch of muddy park/woodland.  Should I shake hands?  It's a rhetorical question.  Who else in this shaded glade posts mail through doors?  I'm mid flow so resist and fess up to posting the offending item.  It's my job.  I'm a bit pissed off (literally)  to say the least. 
  "Have you read it?" I enquire.

The storm after the other storm

There are a surprisingly large number of Christmas cards in today's mail.  People post earlier and earlier these days.  Its almost 360 days off...oh wait, it's postmarked the 11th of December 2010.  First class.  Hmmm. It doesn't matter anyway, they're not going far.  I'm spending today delivering yesterday's mail that was left and a smidgen of the day before.  My panda-eyed line manager has just asked me to stack today's eight trays of mail, four bundles of Sky Mags and three(!) packet bags neatly under my bench.  He emphasised the 'neatly' as if we'd otherwise get a bad name.  TNT's vast mountains of backlogged mail are a right mess I can tell you.  So I stack it all out of sight.
We're in the third phase of the 'revision' now.  Back in September Royal Mail introduced the second phase which entailed a major reworking of all walks so we walk more, carry more and in the same length of time.  Drivers we're given less time and more work.  It all related to the Royal Mail mantra of 'mail volumes are falling' so fuck you.  Reality disputes this of course.  So this unprecedented chaos is the result.  A humongous ever growing fucking backlog of mail and no one to sort and/or deliver it.  Every day and there's a new 'plan'.  Leave this, sort this, clear this.  Just make sure it's neat.