Wednesday, November 21, 2007

God Bless An Phoist

On a lighter note; I can see a white padded envelope to the left of the console, its colorful contents spilling out untidily over my desk. Finally my long awaited prize arrived, in the midst of yesterdays angst!

Mr Postie gingerly passed it to me; through the narrow crack between the door and its frame; hurriedly exchanging "Good Mornings" while I struggled to keep hold of Tilley Two's head between my knees. My poor aching arm wouldn't have held her for more than a moment. Excited as I would have been; to receive my prize from Craft Journal; TT was also eager to GO for poor Mr Postie! She had not been taunted by the ringing of the door bell; it doesn't appear to be working today, the silent delay had alerted me to MP's appearance at the front door.

I was excited about winning my prize. I had been enjoying the anticipation of its arrival,I had just about managed to control myself regarding my urge to bug MP about my parcels impending arrival.Unfortunately yesterdays excitement had been dulled somewhat by the ingestion of the pain killing cocktail!

I had even worried that it mightn't be delivered to my pseudonym. Luckily; MP is a genius. He has the patience of Job; which is essential considering that there are no post or zip codes where we live. There are, however, townland's.

The townland is a postal address which signifies the area in which one lives & it can cover a sizable distance. Often the neighbours opposite will live in another townland, while the neighbours half a mile down the road do not. Occasionally, the next door neighbours can be in another village altogether!

Believe it or not, there is only one house in the village of Geashill. While there are many houses surrounding this one house, not one of them has the same postal address! There appears to be neither rhyme or reason to the allocation of townland names and boundaries and yet MP always delivers on time.

To further complicate matters; MP has to deal with the usual problems of incomplete addresses, over embellished addresses, illegible script, incorrect titles, maiden names, double-barrelled names and in my case the occasional alias. Regardless of the many impediments, MP delivers the mail each and every day with a grin on his face and the occasional salutation.

My rescue dog, Tilley Two does not like men. Indeed, she really does not like men; she hates them. The two exceptions to this rule are my soul mate and partner DG; the second being the postie. It is probably understandable that she sensed the relationship with DG immediately; but could anyone possibly explain why the postie? And another thing, I don't mean MP; our regular miracle worker; it's Oighan, his stand-in.

The relief postie who learnt our crazy round in a week has made friends with my equally crazy dog! Now that does take some doing! Whoa! It does rather illustrate why I have great respect for the An Phoist; the Irish mail company. doesn't it?

So; three cheers for MP, Oighan & all their overworked and underpaid colleagues. Please God, don't replace the human factor with digital sorting machines; there is NO competition for the kindness of man.

2 comments:

Neasa said...

Hope you are feeling better now. It must be so frustrating for you. Sending Get Better Soon vibes your way {{{hugs}}}
Now, what did you get in your prize?!!!

Polly Pierce said...

Hey Neasa! It's good to hear from you, thanks for your that. Regarding my Stash Prize; I'm going to take a couple of photo's and insert them so that everyone can see for themselves and I'll edit & insert the links for anyone interested. Px