The Village Post

So, the big news from the village this week is that the Post Office is now Not the Post Office: the General Store is now the Post Office. This is good news for the villagers because, as some of you might recall, the previous post office was run by People Who Hate People, and who also hate sending mail, and that’s quite a bad combination for postal workers, isn’t it?

Anyway, this week I had yet more pairs of jeans to return to the stores I’d optimistically ordered them from, so I headed to the new post office to see what it was like.

(Actually, that’s not true: I didn’t know it had moved, so I headed to the OLD post office first. And it was closed. Because it was lunchtime, and village life is more or less the same as 1950s-life, as far as I can gather. So I headed home again, and endured some … I want to say “gentle ribbing” here, but it was more like outright taunting, from Terry, who could not BELIEVE that I had YET AGAIN gone to the post office when it was closed for lunch. I swear to God, I’m not exaggerating when I say this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME. I just CANNOT seem to grasp the fact that places round here close for lunch: and don’t even get me started on the ‘Half-Day-on-a-Wednesday’ thing. SERIOUSLY. So, anyway, I came home, waited 20 minutes, then went back, and only THEN did I find out it wasn’t even the post office any more, and that the new post office DOESN’T close for lunch. Hallelujah, and why could I not have found that out sooner?)

So, anyway, I go into the new post office (NPO), which, as you know, is also a general store, and it turns out that although it doesn’t close for lunch, it apparently does still work by 1950s rules in all other respects, because there was a customer at the counter who was doing this thing where she asked for each item individually, and then either the man behind the counter went and fetched it for her, or he told her where it was, and she went and got it herself. So she’d be all, “Do you have any beans?” and he’d say, “Yeah, in the corner next to the milk,” then she’d go and get them, come back and go, “Do you have milk?”, and so it would go on.

I waited patiently for something like 5 hours, then finally the woman got to the last item on her list, which was coleslaw.

“Do you have any coleslaw?” she asked.

“No,” said the shopkeeper. “I have some salad cream, though.”

(I’ve learned to my cost that Americans think the words “salad cream” are totes hilaire, by the way, so if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, THIS is salad cream. It’s really quite tasty.)

At this, the woman reeled backwards in horror. Like, she LITERALLY reeled backwards in horror.

“SALAD CREAM?” she said, horrified. “I don’t want $%^£%&*% SALAD CREAM! I make my own dressings from scratch, I’ll have you know! Because I’m not THAT %^%$^&* lazy!”

Then she looked at me, nodded in the direction of the shopkeeper, and said, “Can you believe this? The cheek of it!” And then I had to stand there and laugh, while pretending that I, too, make all of my salad dressings from scratch, using ingredients gathered by hand, during a full moon. I buy my coleslaw ready-made in a tub, though, because that’s NOT lazy.

I was so confused: and I mean, the swearing was done laughingly, so she wasn’t actually annoyed or anything, but I could tell she was totally serious about the rest of it, and now I’m wondering if my lazy-ass ways are the reason I’ve never really fitted in around here? Also, I really want some coleslaw now, so I’ll leave you with that thought for now.

Have a good weekend!