1: Routines around post

I suppose, wherever you live, life is full of routine. Depending on your luck those routines might be simple and safe or be hard and even life threatening. Mine are the soft routines of a relatively well off Western European. It's stretching a point to say that these routines are conditioned by living in Spain but that's the premise I'm starting from. I'm sure I'd never have noticed if I hadn't been racking my brains for something to blog about. So, this is the first, with more to come, about the most mundane of some of my weekly tasks.

Usually, when I make my weekly trip to the post office there is nothing in our PO box. When we first got here, things we knew had been posted to us used to go astray. The delivery to our rural address was haphazard at best and non existent in reality. That's why we rented a post office box, un apartado de correos. Renting the box for a year in 2005 cost less than 50€; the last time I renewed it the price was 85€.

We get almost no mail. If junk mail is a thing in Spain, it's the stuff that gets delivered in armfuls directly to the blocks of flats by repartidores, hand delivery. I've heard lots of explanations about why postal services never became as important here as they were in the UK, from high illiteracy rates and rural isolation through to the way that families tended to stay in the same place from birth to death. Also, and this is my theory, the post offices never got that extra push that the British ones have because they are a sort of outpost of government -  a place to renew car tax, pick up your pension or apply for a passport. That sort of role, to a much lesser degree, was taken here by the estancos, the tobacconists. 

To most Briton's minds the fact that Spanish post offices do not have a posting box verges on the bizarre. In our local office they removed the posting box from the wall and now there is a cardboard box on the floor if you want to post a letter when the office is open. The post office people seem to want you to go in. Getting to the counter in our local post office requires plenty of time and a lot of patience. For reasons too labyrinthine to go in to they are loathe to sell you multiple stamps or even stamps. In order to avoid the queue I go to an estanco, a tobacconist, and buy stamps there. I always try to overstamp the letters and cards I do send, just to be sure, and, if the post office is closed I post them in one of the two (I think) remaining pillar boxes in the town. There are others in the outlying villages but, the last time I used one, the letter took eight weeks to arrive.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

I know there's a rearguard action. I know that people talk about the character of the surface noise on vinyl discs and the value of the smell of books. I know that paper book sales increased and e-book sales fell last year and that there's a new version of the Nokia 3310 but, in the long term, it just has to be digital that wins.

One of the many losers to date has been traditional mail. When someone asked me to write a reference for them a couple of years ago I thought about a document in an envelope with a stamp. I could feel the smirk as they gave me the email address. Be that as it may the Post Office in Pinoso is a good place to meet fellow Britons. We seem to be heavy postal users in comparison to the locals. My guess is that there is a lot of toing and froing with grandparent/grandchild presents and Callard and Bowser butterscotch. Moreover because so many of us are of a certain age, there is still a lot of traffic in greetings cards. It's fine, we say, sending a greeting via Facebook or one of those nice GIF things on Instagram but you can't put it on the mantelpiece.

I still send a handful of cards each year, not many but a few. I had one to post today. Now getting stamps isn't as easy as it used to be. The Rowland Hill concept of a universal, one price, postal service has long gone. Here, and I think in the UK, the size and colour of the envelope as well as the weight and destination are factors which affect the final price. A letter or card weighing less than 20g sent in a standard size white envelope to a Spanish address is currently 55 cents. If it's a bit heavier (up to 50g) or the envelope is pink or square or something add an extra 10 cents. Within Europe that becomes 1.35€ or 1.65€.

Now Correos, The Post Office, is aware that people don't like to pay for stamps. I know lots of people, Britons, who work on the assumption that the Post Office will give the benefit of the doubt. They bung a stamp on the envelope, throw it in the post box and expect that the mail will get through. As a consequence Correos is not keen on selling stamps. Go into the office with a pile of Christmas cards and ask for so many national and so many international stamps and they will take the cards from you, sort them into neat weighed and colour coded piles, count up the cards, do the sums, take your money and then print a bundle of stickers that get stuck on the envelopes. If you try to buy generic stamps they will suggest that you come back with the envelopes.

Tobacconists or estancos sell stamps too. In the olden days it used to be one of their main forms of income. They sell all sorts of stamps but if you simply ask for national and international stamps they give you stamps that show either the letter A or a B. The idea is that those two stamps cover the most common transactions. You can see the thinking clear as day. When the price goes up each year there is no need to print a whole new bundle of stamps.

When I got to the Post Office there was a big queue. Counter service in Correos is not quick. My birthday card was in a square, blue envelope so it would cost 1.65€. I had some stamps in my wallet. I presumed that the stamps have a monetary value so an A would be worth 55 cents. I only had three of the A stamps left but my arithmetic was strong enough. That would do nicely. I slid the card into the post box and walked away.

As I passed the tobacconist my Baden Powell inspired Cub Scout training kicked in. Be prepared I thought. Replace your stamp stash. As the woman handed me the stamps she explained that the international stamps had gone up in price by 10c this year and she gave me some stamps, with a face value of 10 cents, to go alongside the B stamps. "You'll need one of each on the envelope," she said. "But I thought the whole idea of the lettered stamps was to avoid this" I replied. "So did I," was her response, "it's absurd but that's how it is."

So, if the birthday card doesn't arrive by the 3rd then you know I tried.