It’s a long story, but……

When I first moved to this flat, about 7 years ago I think, I was always bemused at the fact that my mail seemed to land on the floor behind the large letterbox flap in the front door in a crumpled heap.  Careless postman, I thought and vowed to keep an eye out for the fella to tear a strip or two off him.

However, something made me lift the flap on the inside to inspect  – and it was then that the light came on!  The cut-out opening in the door was half the width of the flaps both inside and outside!  Ah well, no point in tearing strips off the postman then, so I just unscrewed the whole letterbox cover with the intention of getting out the tool kit, widening the opening in the door and replacing the cover.    I DID make a start, but didn’t have a large enough drill bit to make the holes in the corners that would enable me to saw round the newly drawn aperture shape., so the letterbox stayed like that for another few years – no flap cover attached – just a narrow hole in the door, but at least my mail now arrived in a decent state.

Having been laughed at by friends in those intervening years – I’d get pneumonia from the draughts coming through or what about all the heat that’s escaping, etc, and me retaliating by saying it was my air conditioning system, and well, I don’t feel the cold anyway -  just last year I got a new front door along with the new windows I have mentioned before.

So you’d think everyone would be happy! 

Not me! 

My mail started arriving folded, squashed and crumpled again!  Trouble is, everyone’s so energy conscious that today’s doors and windows are expected not to let a single puff of air through, so a letterbox is fitted with strong springs to stop the wind rattling the flap, and behind that there’s a double row of brushes, like an overlapping set of false teeth, to stop the draught getting through the opening when the postman delivers the mail.  Added to that there’s another strongly sprung flap on the inside!  Crumbs!  A draught wouldn’t dare!  And the postman finds it hard to post mail through.

Anyway that is just a preamble to my story!  Today I heard the postman plodding up the front steps, followed by the prolonged sound of something large or long being pushed – nay, forced  - through the letter box.  It seemed to take a bit of doing, but at last there was the plop of the object as it fell to the floor in the hall.  Intrigued, I went to retrieve it, quite a thick package,  inscribed with Fragile, Handle with care, Do not bend, Open with care……  Huh, and the postman had force fed this through the letter box?

Well you know what it’s like!  You’re not expecting a parcel, so you look to see who it might be from.  No clues there, so you feel it carefully to determine the shape in a bid to guess what it might be!  This was soft and squashy!  In fact two lumps of soft and squashy!  Still no idea!  The fragile bit must be well wrapped in whatever was soft and squashy.

So the only thing to do now was open it – gingerly.  I peeled open the edge of the sticky backed plastic, and peered inside.  Balls of knitting wool?   The thought briefly crossed my mind that maybe I had ordered some wool for crocheting, as I had recently bought a book on the subject, so I peeled back more of the fastening.

Well!  See for yourself!  Fragile? Hardly! 

The size of tennis balls, what are they?  What do they do?  They’re just soft toys.  They do nothing!  They can be cuddled!   They are my REWARD from the power company I changed to recently for allowing them to supply my gas and electricity from now on!  Amn’t I lucky!!!!!

Talk again soon.