Does the Post Office really hate stamp collectors?

I have just spent all day yesterday trying to get eight British stamps off three envelopes. Five British stamps of no particular consequence, but special commemorative issues, none the less. Three Olympic stamps and two Christmas stamps.

In the same postal delivery, there were two other letters from England, with the usual everyday definitive stamps. It always amazes me that the British Post Office manages to produce such drab stamps. The outline of the Queen is recognisable after a fashion, but for sheer lack of imagination these stamps are hard to beat. I guess it saves on design fees.

As if that were not enough, the Post Office has used the money that it has saved on design costs, and invested in purple crayons, like the ones that my grandson Bradley, uses to draw over his mum’s kitchen table. These purple crayons are then used to scrawl over the stamps to indicate that they have been used. “X marks the spot” is the training mantra here. Sometimes franking machines are used, but these are not favoured, as they are too neat. Much better to make the stamp totally unusable by anyone, including stamp collectors.

So it’s back to my failed attempt to soak these stamps off their envelopes. Normally stamps from any other country come off in about 30 minutes. These particular eight items of philatelic delight refused to budge one-tenth of a millimetre. My attempts included the use of cold water, then warm water and then hot water, all to no avail after twelve hours.

The Post Office has obviously used the remains of its savings on design costs (after the costs of purple crayons) to purchase special super glue, normally used to hold aircraft wings on to the body of a plane. Well, judging from my experience yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me.

My efforts having been defeated, I have come to the conclusion that the Post Office hates stamp collectors. Well wouldn’t you? If you had to trudge around the streets all day, in all weathers, with your only outlet for frustration being to throw elastic bands on the ground (of which I was a major beneficiary during my time in Norwich), wouldn’t you hate stamp collectors, together with dog owners?

So today, I was off to the local Post Office in Thalwil to buy a set of commemorative stamps and what did I find? No – they didn’t have any. Perhaps commemorative stamps aren’t meant to be used. They are just meant to be bought and placed in the stamp collection.

By the way, if you are unaware of the significance of the Post Office and elastic bands, you might be amused by the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail_rubber_band.

The English speak English

I promised in the email accompanying my last blog that I would write something nice about England.

I have spent over 10 years in Switzerland now. When it comes to the tests to see how far you’ve gone native, I score pretty well. On returning to Norwich (which is a part of England, for those of you who did not know) for a few months, I did better than expected in adapting to my “new culture”.

Just before coming back to England for five months, I was asked by a friend what I particularly liked about Switzerland. My answer was pretty poor (railways, mountains, etc – I did not even mention low taxes), so I was motivated to keep some notes, while in Norwich, of what I liked, disliked or just observed about England or Switzerland.

The list was fairly long on all three counts, with some surprising entries (e.g. I like the suggested recipes on the sides of sauces in English supermarkets. You might not think is important, but as an amateur chef, I came to like this).

But I know that you have all read the title, so you know what is coming next.

I was in a car park with Hazel by a store like B & Q – it wasn’t B & Q, but that is not the point. The point was that a man, who had parked next to us, came up and I made a complementary observation about his car. Within 5 minutes of banter back and forth, he had told me how old the car was, how old he was, how many grandchildren he had and so on and he probably heard similar information about me. (As we were both male, we will both have forgotten everything within 90 seconds, except that I remember that his car was red – I think).

Yes – English is my native language and this was England. I consider myself something of an expert of the English language, having used it from a very early age. However, as I was forcibly reminded with some disdain by a German lady in Zurich, “Colin, you have been in Switzerland for 10 years and you still don’t speak German fluently”. You have to admire the motivational words.

And yes – in Tesco Express on the Unthank Road “Hier spricht man Englisch” – Hurrah. Time for some banter about the weather, the Olympics, BBQs in the rain, Princess Katie or whatever else was on everyone’s mind at the time or having a minor rant (in English) about the automatic pay machines.

I have become convinced that banter (and probably humour and swearing) is only done well in one’s mother tongue. Here in Switzerland, because I can say “Grüezi” (normal greeting) with a reasonably good accent, I receive in return some sentiments in the local dialect. This is both flattering and totally reasonable. However, my response has to be (in my best German) “Sorry, but I am English, however, I speak some high (formal) German.”

This leads either to the conversation coming to an end or just as likely to a perfectly formed sentence in English from the other person, who having been to university in England, speaks fluent English. This is not the same as banter.

Best places for banter are: car parks, supermarket check-outs, fish and chip shops, (but not in Indian takeaways), bus stops when it is pouring with rain and buying theatre tickets. You may have other suggestions.

When we first arrived in Norwich (England), we had to force ourselves not ask whether they spoke English. (There was one occasion when I spoke to a cashier in the local Tesco Express in German by accident). Imagine being in a street in England and someone asking you if you speak English. I know that England has become multicultural, but that would be too much.

So it is probably true. The English are just not good at languages. We don’t get enough practice. And why should we – everyone else speaks English. Are we spoiled or just lazy? Perhaps a bit of both.

In the meantime, to answer my friend’s question, one of the things I like about England is that everyone speaks English.

 

The Need to Queue

Regular readers of this blog (thanks, Dad) will know how much I hate queuing. Whether I hate queuing more than having Google constantly redirect me to the German website or translating everything into German is a close run thing.

Of course, your view on queuing might be completely different, and probably is. “How do you use your queuing time?” This could be a useful social study, and should rank alongside such important questions as “Do you love Marmite or do you hate it?” http://www.marmite.co.uk/

For some, queuing might be an opportunity to consider and reflect on the meaning of life, or to think over some particular crossword clue. Others might just reflect or think of nothing in particular. I like to engage others in conversation, especially on the subject of why this queue is not moving fast enough / not at all / why the other queue is moving faster / debating whether the person at the front of the queue is trying to buy the entire train etc. and asking myself whether it would be cost effective to actually just pay the bill of the person three in front of me.

It is conceivable that one should just relax, but that it not a core Grumpy skill.

Whichever it is, Starbucks have found a new way of separating us from our free time and in providing us with an opportunity to practice whatever it is that we practice, while we are queuing.

The idea here is to have one person taking the orders and the money and another making the coffee. The trick, though, in the “Let’s help people to practice queuing” training department is to have the person making the coffee not turn up / be on his coffee break /visiting the bathroom. This way queuing practice time can be maximised until the crucial coffee maker returns or just turns up.

I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but the Swiss think that the English like queuing. I explain that we do not like queuing. We are just good at it.

I have visited Poland and have concluded that they are good at queuing, at least in the city that I visited. My observations have led me further to think that a significant percentage enjoy it. The feeble evidence for this rash thought is from the local supermarket which has two exits, one at either end of the building. Each exit has its own checkouts. One exit always has longer queues with shoppers with more shopping. This is for the experienced queuers (is there such a word?), or for those who are practicing. The other is for people like me, who are lost causes in the queuing department.

Perhaps queues are a test, although exactly what sort of test, I have no idea. And who would set the test anyway? More to the point, who would mark the results? The EU should seriously consider having a “Queuing Directive”, to enforce this character enhancing habit.

I will continue with this rather unlikely theme. If we are bad in this world, are we destined to come back as someone whose only activity is to wait in an everlasting queue, which never moves?

 I remember a Russian friend of ours, who volunteered, some years ago, to queue for some tickets for an open-air cinema in Zurich. She arrived there at 5.00 am and collected the tickets at 8.00 am. “Wow”, we said. “That was some queuing”. “That’s not queuing”, she replied. “When you stand for twelve hours, you reach the front and the shop then tells you they are closing and you should come back tomorrow, that’s queuing.”

Well, I guess that puts Grumpy in his correct place.

(By the way, there is a “I hate Marmite” facebook page – I shall be lobbying for an “I hate queuing” page on Facebook – perhaps someone can help me to set one up.)