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.

These things are sent to try us: two

If you need to go to a bank in Spain think about it taking a good part of your morning. You may be lucky. Correct desk. Person not at breakfast. No wait. No complications. I'm sure it will happen one day but even when it's been a relatively problem free run it has seldom taken me less than twenty to thirty minutes. It doesn't matter where it is, as soon as there's a physical or virtual queue it's going to take time.

Obviously the Post Office falls into this category. Yesterday I had a package to post. I went to the Post Office. Because the number of people who can be inside the office is limited the queue was in the street. I stayed for a while but after 20 minutes nobody had gone in and nobody had come out. My mask was getting tacky; I gave up. I popped back twice more in the next two hours. The queue was going nowhere. The main man in our post office isn't the sort of person to get flustered. He doesn't hurry. I thought I may be able to sidestep the queue and went to get the price from a private carrier but 20€ to send a 1 kilo packet seemed a bit steep. 

I went back to the Post office before 9am this morning when I reckoned there wouldn't be much of a queue. I was right; there was just one person in front of me. I was in and out in about 25 minutes.

Actually whilst I was there I got one of the DGT (Transport Directorate) stickers for Maggie's car. There are four stickers related to emissions - one for things like electric cars, another for the hybrids and then a couple more for modern and modernish diesels and petrol engined cars. The stickers come with new cars but Maggie's Ford Fiesta didn't have one. They are used in some cities as a way of identifying cars that are welcome or not welcome under certain conditions and in certain areas. You can get the stickers online but you can also get them at the Post Office and as I'd anticipated there would be no queue I'd taken the vehicle paperwork. I handed over the 5€ fee and came out with one of the C stickers as well as having left the parcel to their tender care.

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.

Of no known address

Some fathead at the HSBC bank seems to think that I may have been lying about my address for the past thirteen years and about my identity for the past forty five years. They want me to prove who I am and where I live. So they sent me some sort of half baked questionnaire. Good job I wasn't lying about my address or I'd never have received it!!

Nowadays we rich folk live in an interconnected world. Instead of completing the form IN BLACK INK AND IN CAPITALS I can use a webcam application which begins with the letter J and is amusingly named to stop it from being too daunting. So I can use the software called Jumbo, Jumio or Juliet (I forget which) to prove that I'm me and that I live where I say I live. The explanatory leaflet tells me that I can supply the information they need in just six minutes. In reality It took me longer than that to read the instructions never mind the time I wasted in finding and scanning paperwork. One possible form of documentation, to prove where I live, is to send a utility bill. Given the unreasonableness of their basic request that seemed reasonable. The application Jumanji or Jamiroquai told me though that the bill needed to be in English. Ah, of course. Spanish utility companies produce all their bills in English in deference to the domination of English as THE World language. Actually though, with the wonders of the Internet, I can get the bill in a version of English. That may have saved me the translation fee which appears to be the alternative if the bill happens to be in some funny foreign language. Though tell me - what exactly is the translation of an address? What is the English for Alicante. Do they really want Culebrón translated as big snake?

There is, though, another stumbling block. My home address isn't exactly the same on the electricity bill as it is on, well almost any other proof of address, that I can muster. I've explained this before. Basically the problem boils down to terrible Spanish database design. Instead of using a free field for the box on the form where you would be expected to put street, avenue or close, some idiot, who presumably worked for the HSBC before moving to Spain, made a long list of all of the street synonyms they could think of. So if I live in Pedanía Culebrón or Partida Culebrón or Caserío Culebrón and pedania, partida and caserío are not on the database someone has to choose whatever they consider to be the nearest equivalent - drove might become drive and gate might become close or street or avenue.

Add in a bit of post code confusion. Postcodes in Spain cover areas, a whole town will share a postcode. Technically our postcode is 03658 but the town we belong to has the post code 03650 so, like everyone else who lives near Pinoso, and acting on the advice of people in the Post Office, we use 03650. But Mr Database designer (it could only be a man) never spoke to the people in our Post Office and his database links the village to the wrong postcode. So I may think my address is Culebrón Hamlet, 03650 Pinoso Alicante but the closest we can get on database A is Culebrón Street, 03650 Pinoso, Alicante whilst on database B we might find Culebrón Village, 03658 Culebrón, Alicante. The number of variations on the same basic information is really remarkable.

Now who can say. Application Jiminy Cricket may be backed up by a person who sees the photo of me holding up my passport, who sees the uploaded copies of my driving licence or electricity bill and realises that they are all basically similar and in the same name (It won't help that my name is actually misspelled on at least one of the documents) and nods the information through as true. Somehow though I suspect that won't happen. What will actually happen is that some piece of visual recognition software will check my  passport photo against the webcam picture and there will be a cursory check of my driving licence number against some European database. I'll get bounced by both and we'll be back to square one.

Carriers

Internet shopping is great. I want a new book, Kindle. Fifty seconds later I can start reading. Present for someone in the UK? Piece of cake. The problem comes when I want something that exists, something that has form and bulk, for myself.

Sometimes Amazon, or any of the other people I shop with, choose to send the thing to our PO box. Easier than easy. Often the Post Office even sends me a text message to say the package has arrived.

Sometimes, too often, the Internet seller uses a carrier - DHL, MRW, FedEx, UPS, SEUR, Tourline Express or any number of firms which claim to be the modern embodiment ot Herodutus "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds". They are all the same. Most of them can't find the house, I suspect that most of them don't even try.

Sometimes the carrier can't find the village. They take it back to San Juan or Alicante or wherever they have their local depot. They telephone me from their offices to suggest that I should move to a larger town with streets. I wonder why the driver didn't phone me when they were closer? I get to wait a couple of days more and still I have to meet them in the village.

I've got a new one though this time. They don't believe my address. I've talked about this before. No street, just numbers in our village. Obviously the people at DHL, MRW, FedEx, UPS, SEUR and Tourline Express don't believe this is possible. Some idiotic robotic voice calls to ask me to confirm my address. I confirm my address. Ten minutes later I get an email asking if I can confirm my address. The last package required about five minutes to order and pay. The "next day" delivery took nine days and required two robot voice questionings, one email, one phone call and one customer contact form.

When I was a boy I often holidayed in the Lake District. In Keswick there was a climbing shop. In the window they had a display of envelopes that were addressed to the shop in the most outlandish ways - the shop up from the pub, the shop with red boots in the window and the like. Someone, in the Post Office, a person who knew Keswick would read the envelope, use a bit of gumption and deliver the letters. I suspect that nobody actually reads  my address; some machine turns it into an unintelligible barcode and the fun begins.

It's a country

I'd been surprised when the door of office number two had opened as I leaned on it. I half stumbled and half leapt into the room on the other side. Two women gawped at me. I gawped back. I stammered out a greeting. 

"Hello, I want to send this to Qatar," I said, holding out a small padded envelope, weight about 20g and similar in size to an iPhone. 

"Qatar in Cantabria?" she asked. 

I pointed to the address printed on the envelope. 

"No, Qatar the country in the Middle East - next door to Saudi Arabia."

"Is that close to Lebanon?"

"Closeish," I said. 

"Is it part of Saudi Arabia?" she asked. 

"No, it's a country."

"Ah, I see; it's an island," she said, staring at the Google entry. 

"More a peninsula," I countered

She rang someone. "It'll be 97€," she said - "same as Lebanon." Back there again. I blanched but handed her my credit card. "We've got no machine," she said. I'm sure it was Gilbert O' Sullivan on the radio. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I asked if this were indeed a business. When I was outside again I couldn't help it. One very long, very crude outpouring at high volume. I went and got the money, I went back to the office, I paid and I left the little envelope with them to lose.

It was a strange office even by Spanish standards. When I'd first arrived I was sure the building was abandoned. Blinds down, litter strewn yard, no vehicles, no opening hours, no sign of life. I don't think they get many personal callers. Hence the gawping. 

Maggie has lost a contact lens. The sort of lens she needs is not available in Qatar. Fortunately she bought her last lenses in Cartagena so I was able to go to a local optician and order up a replacement.

Today was my first opportunity to ship the lens. I got up early to go to a carrier before work.  It was so early I hadn't been able to buy an envelope to put the lens in. I suspected, rightly, that the carriers would sell packaging. The lens was in liquid in a little bottle. The receptionist woman peered at it over her headset.

"You can't send liquids to Qatar," said the woman. 

"Fine, I'll put it in this case without liquid," I said. 

"You can't send contact lenses to Qatar," said the woman. 

I asked "Why not?"

"No idea." 

"Could I put it in something else; disguise it?"

"Not possible, they check everything."

"What can you send to Qatar?" I asked. 

"I can't tell you," said the woman.

"Can you send clothes?" I asked.

"Only with a receipt and a customs declaration," said the bearded man sitting next to her.

I felt we had maybe failed to build the human bridge so necessary for a fulfilling business relationship. Later I bought an envelope. I took the lens out of the liquid and put it into a dry case. That's why it was the second on my list, office number two.