There are only two reasons for having full-time employment. One is to get a pay cheque and the other is to have a delivery address for online shopping.
I stopped working in the summer and deliveries are a problem – well, yes, a first world problem. The regular Royal Mail postman is topnotch. He leaves stuff with neighbours or, if it’s Recorded Delivery, signs for me and shoves it through the letter box.The Wine Society are super too. A delivery from The Wine Society, I like to think, confers a certain social status when their liveried van draws up. The neighbours aren’t to know that another couple of cases of high-strength cooking sherry are being delivered.
Bottom of the class is TNT. They give no indication as to when during the day they will make the drop. If you’d like them to leave the parcel on the doorstep they need a signed affidavit to that effect. That doesn’t work for me as I don’t have a printer. (The office scanner and printer is another good reason to have a job.) If you opt to collect, the local TNT depot is somewhere near the North Circular which would feature, in an updated version, as Dante’s tenth circle of Hell.
Do you have a Smythson diary? Founded in 1887 and with a swanky Bond Street HQ they sell high-end stationery and leather and stuff. Their “entry level” Panama diary costs £42. The ultra-thin, they call it featherweight, pale blue paper makes it desirable as it doesn’t add much to the existing bulges made by specs, wallet, ‘phone and tummy. At the back of the diary are transit/subway/underground maps for Hong Kong, New York and London. I imagine I am their only customer who uses the tube.
My new diary informs me that Monday 7th December is the First Day of Chanukah. It is I think better known as Hanukkah – a Jewish holiday to commemorate the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. It starts on the 25th day of the month of Kislev and lasts eight days so it jumps around a bit in our calendar, like Ramadan, which starts on 7th June next year. If you fancy some modern Jerusalem cooking, pop along to The Palomar in Rupert Street. My diary recommends it and I do too. The small room at the back with tables is always booked solid and it’s more fun to sit at the counter in the front where you cannot book.
Smythson is sound on Christian festivals too and especially informative on the dates when birds and mammals may be legitimately killed. You can imagine the disappointment for a foreign visitor arriving in the UK on 31st March and seeing in their diary that they cannot bag a hind or a doe. But, oh happy day, on the morrow a roe buck can hand in its dinner pail without breaking the law.