I was woken this morning by my over-loud doorbell and so went to my entry-phone to see who was so rude as to expect me to be awake at the unGodly hour of 9.15am.
The little screen showed a wild-eyed man, standing much too close to the camera. It flitted through my mind that it might be leg-breaking time.
"Hello?" I said.
The man rambled something unintelligible, that seemed to include the word "letter". I was still befuddled and half-asleep.
"Sorry?" I replied, managing to turn two single words in a row into questions in their own right. He slowed down.
"This letter has been delivered to my house by mistake." His house was actually ten numbers further down the street than mine, another triumph for my local post office who seem at the moment to be delivering only when they feel like it, which means I am getting my Time Out magazine on a Saturday rather than a Wednesday (very convenient for a listings magazine), although they didn't bother to deliver it at all last week and I'm still waiting for this week's copy. Of course I have tried to complain - you know me, any excuse to send off a strange or sarcastic email - but they haven't responded to that either.
Anyway, I assumed that the letter must be too big to fit through my letter-box, otherwise why would the man have woken me up. He'd just have posted it in for me. But then he held it up to the camera and it was just a regular letter.
"Shall I just post it through?" he asked, maybe having realised this possibility a bit too late.
"Well, yes," I said. So he did.
I suppose he just wanted me to know what a great neighbour he was. He hadn't kept the wrongly delivered mail or thrown it in the bin, he'd come round, walking by three other houses, to deliver it personally.
From his tone I wondered if he was partially blaming me for this inconvenience. Like I'd asked the Post Office to deliver my letters to someone else's house, just so they'd have to do the final leg-work of bringing it to me myself. Because my post isn't arriving quite late enough for my liking already.
I wondered if my missing Time Outs were arriving at the wrong house as well, but the strange man thought that he might quite like to keep those for himself.
I went downstairs to see what important item of post had almost been lost to me for alway. It was for the director of "Shit Films" anyway. Doubtless some summons or unpaid bill or death threat.
So I'd been woken up for double nothing.
At least it meant more time for poker.
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