Letter to a bureaucrat
ULTIMATUM STRIX
Dear Head Postmaster,
You say (and I do not doubt your word) that you wrote to me a short while ago 'to explain the importance of the Postcode in our schemes for mechanising the mails'; and now you have sent me my Postcode. It is RG9 5DN. You ask me to make sure that everyone on the premises knows it, and you tell me that it should always appear as the last line of the address in block capitals. You add that if I move house I have only to let you know and you will give me another Post- code.
I do not want to be difficult, but I have several criticisms to make of your communi- cation. I suggest, in the first place, that its timing is unfortunate. You appear to assume that your 'schemes for mechanising the mails' are sound schemes. Perhaps they are. But after the fourpenny-fivepenny fiasco you can hardly expect me to share that assumption, and you have lost your chance of being given the benefit of the doubt by misspelling the name of our village.
According to your own telephone directory, to the electoral register and to various stan- dard works of reference I reside at Stinkwort House. I am not disposed to accept your asser- tion that my domicile is known as Stinkwort, tout court; nor, since there is another heredita- ment called Stinkwort Cottage in the vicinity, do I see how this truncation of my address is going to facilitate the task of your postmen. Incidentally, has Her Majesty the Queen been allotted a Postcode, and if we write to her do we address her at Buckingham, London SWI?
You enclose twelve adhesive labels which, you suggest, I 'may like' to stick on the top of my notepaper to draw my correspondents' attention to my Postcode. Printed in psyche- delic mauve, the labels say. 'This is my Post- code. Please add it as the last line of my address when replying.' I do not object as strongly as Miss Nancy Mitford does to the use of 'notepaper' for 'writing paper' (though, like her, I deplore your shortening of Loam- shire to Loms). and I realise, since you are uncertain whether I am a sir or a madam, that you can know next to nothing of my private life. I do suggest, however, that the use of the first person singular on these labels renders them unsuitable for dissemination by what is known in show-business as a husband-and-wife team. The recipient of a letter from either partner with 'This is my Postcode' stuck on to it will---especially perhaps if the recipient is female--be given food for conjecture. Why 'my,' and not 'our'? Has the marriage broken up? The wording of the announcement, I think you will admit, hardly suggests that it comes from the marital home of a united couple.
I have regretfully to inform you that I am not going to use my Postcode. I have thrown your little mauve labels away. I do not see why, at the whim of an incompetent govern- ment department, I should cover my corre- spondence with cryptograms; nor, if you are driven to take reprisals, do I think that you and your colleagues in other parts of the king- dom will find it easy to make the delivery of my mail any more erratic than it has latterly become.
Yours etc, Sirix
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