Knox Box of Miscellany

Dawn Knox – A rearranger of words into something hopefully meaningful…

A Postman’s Ingenuity

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The ubiquitous and iconic red post box

The ubiquitous and iconic red post box. This one is in Canary Wharf, London but you don’t need to know that, as they all look similar.

You have to take your hat off to our posties and delivery men/women.

Whether or not, you like the idea of them leaving a parcel when you’re out and can’t take delivery,  they usually try to find a method of not only hiding it from view but also keeping it dry and safe – although not necessarily clean!

My heart always sinks when I open the  front door and see a ‘You were out when I called to deliver…’ card because usually, it means a special trip to pick the parcel up myself and their depots are usually in the most out-of-the-way places  – and often, quite far-away, out-of-the-way places. But sometimes, a postie or delivery man/woman takes pity on me and decides to leave the parcel somewhere safe and dry and pops a card through the letterbox to tell me where it is. It’s like being invited on a treasure hunt. Yesterday, for example, a delivery man/woman left a card telling me a parcel was ‘down the side on the chair’, which confused me because we don’t have any chairs in the side alley. He/she had however, gone down the side of the house and reached over the wall to place it on the chair that was closest, on the patio. And that puzzled me as with the height difference between the alley and the patio, he/she must have been twelve feet tall. Other posties have kindly come right into the garden and placed parcels under the garden table and even in the shed.

So, for their ingenuity in the face of me being out, I would like to mention, (although obviously not by name, as I was out when they called):

The Postie Who Found the Dirtiest Hiding Place (For the Recipient): This postie, put the parcel under the car. Not just at the edge, so I could crouch down to retrieve it but right in the middle, so I had to lay on my stomach and slither under slightly, until I could touch it.

The Postie Who Found the Dirtiest Hiding Place (For the Parcel): This postie put the parcel inside the green waste recycling bin, on top of the grass clippings and other garden detritus. But it was very neatly placed.

The Postie Who Found the Most Cunning Hiding Place: This postie put the slim parcel under the door mat. Yes, the very door mat that I stood on in order to open the door and find the ‘You were out when I called to deliver…’ card, which told me the parcel was under the mat – that I had just stepped on. Luckily, the DVD and its case weren’t broken.

The Postie Whose Motto Is  ‘I Will Deliver This Parcel, Come What May’ : This must go to the postie who rang at the door, when my son was the only one home.  Not being dressed (my son, not the postie), he hastily threw some clothes on but by the time he was half way down the stairs, the postie had obviously decided no one was in. That, however, wasn’t going to stop him/her from delivering the parcel. My son was very surprised to see the book he’d ordered appear through the letter box, followed by the cardboard packaging. Presumably so that he could reassemble the parcel if we wanted to.

Thank you posties and delivery men/women all! You do a great job! And thank you for your ingenuity!

A book that won’t need unwrapping to fit it through the letterbox is ‘Daffodil and the Thin Place’, which comes in handy ebook formats. To order yours and take delivery immediately, click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

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