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I had to go into town on a couple of errands this morning, and I thought that I would make the most of having the car during business hours to facilitate my sojourn. I had to deal with two different sets of officialdom, in two separate officialdom offices - luckily not far distant from one another, for today was not a day for walking in the fine horizontal Scottish drizzle that seems to come directly from Siberia. Anyway, task one was painless and quick. I knew my luck wouldn't last, and I wasn't to be disappointed at my second port of call: the Post Office collection office. This is the second time in as many days that I've had to call in at this office. It seems that anytime anyone sends me a parcel, the postman would prefer not to attempt to deliver it. Here in the UK we used to pride ourselves on the fact that the mail was delivered through the letterbox and into the house - and that they used to deliver the post twice a day, six days a week. The first post used to arrive before 8am, then there was a second delivery around noon. The second delivery stopped a couple of years ago - although I'm not so sure that it's not the first delivery that they stopped - because I never get my mail before 11am now - and sometimes it can be as late as 2pm. Lately, however, the postman seems to have decided that he will not deliver parcels, because I seem to be getting an awful lot of the "We tried to deliver this package, but you were out" cards - even although I was almost certainly in. I mentioned this to the man at the Collection Office, and he told me that it is happening more and more. He explained how the system works: the postman leaves the sorting office with his bag of mail. He goes to a quiet postbox somewhere on his route, and posts the heavier items back to the sorting office, making sure that he has a completed 'you were out' card to put in the letterbox. This saves him having to carry the packages, and means that the recipient has to go down to the collection office to get it. When I was there yesterday, the package I was to pick up had been sent on to the Belfast office - despite the fact that three weeks had not passed since they 'attempted' to deliver it to my home. They could tell me that it was books, and that there was no return address - so I'll probably never get them now. As for today, well the package that they 'attempted' to deliver yesterday while I was in, is still in the system, and won't be ready for collection until tomorrow. On top of that, where I parked the car - in a council run parking bay - cost £1.30 for one hour, while round the corner, on the other side of an advertising hoarding, there is a council run car park which charges £1 for two hours. Go figure!

Liam and I got clean bills of health from the dentist last year