Royal Mail

As part of the whole move, I need to forward my mail to my new address. We've sold the house (early, just to be on the safe side) and secured temporary accommodation in the same town. We move in the next few weeks.

I looked on the Royal Mail website and saw that I could: a) download the forms, complete them and mail them in; b) call them to receive a booklet of the forms; or c) go to a Post Office. As I had other errands to do today before work, I thought I'd just visit the Post Office. This turned out to be a bad idea.

When I got to the Post Office I was reminded that this is the Tuesday after a long Bank Holiday weekend. The lineup was out the door - but I thought, well, I'm here now...might as well just get on with it.

Have you ever seen a comedy program called Little Britain? I don't like much of it, but there's one sketch - 'computa says No' - that I quite like. After spending time working in a financial institution I find it very funny indeed. 20 minutes later, when I got to the front of the queue at the Post Office, the lady behind the counter informed me that they had run out of forms to register a change of address.

I mentioned that I'd been waiting in the lineup for 20 minutes, and surely there was something she could do? Nope. Nothin'. (No apology, no 'I'm so sorry - I wish I'd known.) She told me that I could go home and download the forms from the internet. She was sitting in front of a computer, so I asked, 'Can't YOU download the forms from the internet for me to sign?' (after all, they're the folks that ran out of them!)

No - she couldn't possibly do that. 'Computa says No!' Thanks for nothing.