Rant

First I went to the Post Office in Glossa to check for mail. The Post Office is open for only an hour or so on three days a week except for when it is unaccountably closed. For that reason we have switched to online everything possible and therefore I rarely visit the Post Office unless I am expecting something specific. Even online mail order tends to come via courier and is left for us to collect at the supermarket, not the Post Office. So in fact, I went there today solely to collect mail for the neighbours. I had done exactly that on Friday, but that was one of those days when the Post Office had been unaccountably closed. So since Friday, I have made two journeys into the village for no reason other than to pick up mail for the neighbours and take it to their house. They pay the French 'Poste' to forward all their mail to their Greek residence while they are here and I have been collecting it for them for perhaps seven or more years. All of it is irrelevant. I fetch it, I take it to them, they look at the envelope and rip it to shreds before my eyes, yet still they have it forwarded to Greece and still they ask if there was anything for them at the Post Office. Yes, there is a 15% discount at your favourite perfumery in Toulouse as long as you present yourselves there between 06:00 and 06:05 on Sunday 13th August wearing pink cravats , or somesuch.

As I walked back from the Post Office I spotted this; three tiny tiles set into a wall to the right of a front door I must have passed more than a thousand times. I have never noticed it before, it is tiny! I can only assume that it is a souvenir from Barcelona and I have no idea why a house in Glossa might display something like that. Its positioning made me think of a mezuzah, but it is on the wall and not the doorpost so it isn't quite right for that. I can quite see people entering the house touching this and kissing their fingers. Equally, I would like one of my own and that is just where I would put it. There must be something very natural about that particular sweet-spot to the right of an entrance doorway. It interests me that the top and bottom portions of the middle tile are a reflection of one another and not a rotation, as the ends are.

But instead of taking the mail, the borrowed camp-beds and pillows back to the big house, we put little Mo the tabby cat into the hateful cat box and drove him into town to see the vet again. Seven weeks after his last visit and one week after completing his course of medicine he is suddenly coughing like a consumptive again. The future does not bode well, but there again it hasn't been looking particularly rosy for a long time.

This evening, gazing out of the window as I washed the dishes, I spotted an unfamiliar vessel. A moment online revealed to me that it was a charter-yacht called NOMAD flying a Maltese flag. It can accommodate 12 passengers and 15 crew and originally belonged to Australian golfer Greg Norman. Apparently it can be chartered at this time of year for between 350 and 380 thousand Euros per week. How can the ability to hit a small ball into a small hole over a great distance possibly make you more valuable than, ummm a lifeguard? A nurse? A baker? A police officer? A schoolchild? What a very sick world it is in which we live.