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Being a new parent comes with lots of benefits. Tonight I sat with my sleeping daughter on my lap or on my shoulder for 3 hours and given how little was going on it was the most unbelievably blissful activity imaginable. You idiots going out there taking drugs and getting drunk for kicks. Just have a new born baby sleep on you and it’s better than your arm-heroins, nose-cocaines and mind-LSDs put together. Of course you will have to get a new newborn baby every week to really get the top hit and a baby is much more expensive than a cocaine and I expect that the more babies you have then the more you will need to keep the high at the previous level. And having hundreds of babies might be stressful. Maybe just go out and get pissed.
But there’s lots of new stuff to get used to, including dozens of new devices, which, of course, I did not get familiar with before the birth. Which means trying to construct breast pumps and connect up baby monitors and work out how to sterilise bottles and dry bottoms. As you know I don’t get on very well with instruction booklets at the best of times, so having to do this over and over again is frustrating and upsetting. Thank goodness I sometimes have a sleeping baby that I can hold and smell to calm me down. And if she’s not sleeping then maybe I can pop down the hospital and steal another one. Just on a temporary basis.
I was pretty tired today, but the cuddling of a sleeping baby made the sleep deprivation acceptable. I am not getting out to exercise, but am going up and down stairs enough to get a work out.
We had a friend coming round this afternoon, but before she got there we made the decision to work out how to put together the baby carrier (where you can strap the baby to your chest). I was still in my chunky dressing gown and was hoping to fit in a shower in the half hour that we had (and then get dressed, obviously. Things are falling apart a bit, but I can still pull on some pants and a shirt). The baby carrier instruction were pictorial only, which is my least favourite kind of instruction. I couldn’t work out what way up anything was meant to go, or what clipped into what. My wife was no help, thinking that caring for our baby was more important. I realised that there was no point in trying to do this whilst wearing my dressing gown as it would make me a few inches wider, so I stripped naked. And with a bit of lateral thinking and hard work I managed to clip the first section of the harness into place. I was very pleased with myself. I was standing in my bedroom, wearing a harness, looking like someone who had watched 50 Shades of Grey with his kinkier partner and then reluctantly been coerced into trying out some light BDSM, but all the time feeling like a pillock who doesn’t understand why getting hurt and humiliated is part of the sexual experience (or at least why you’d want to be any more hurt and humiliated than you get with regular sex). The straps, fittingly were rather too tight, but now the harness was on I wasn’t able to loosen them. And I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. With time ticking away and our friend on the way we decided to abort the mission and try again later. But now I had finally worked out how to clip the first piece on I couldn’t find the way to get it off. I pushed and pulled at the clips, but they weren’t shifting. I tried to lift it all over my head but it was on too tight. I couldn’t shower with this thing on and had visions of myself greeting our friend in this sad and pathetic state. But as much as I tried nothing was shifting and I pretty much accepted that this was how I was going to live my life from now on. But luckily a final push and pull at the clips made them spring open and I was free from my self-imposed bondage. It felt so good to be out that I wondered if that’s what people got from the whole experience. Like being in those horrible skiing boots last year, once you’re out of them you feel glad to be alive, much more glad than you would have been if you’d never been trapped.
There was another post office live tweet today (and believe me I would be happy to be tweeting about good service). They did manage their first sub-20 minute wait today and once again brought on an extra staff member (to add to the 2 on duty) just as I approached the front of the queue. It really sped things up. Imagine if they put three people on the counters all the time. Or what if it was four? I reckon with five people working there that no one would have to wait more than a minute to get served. The Post Office would serve more people, make more money, others would hear that the post office wasn’t Hades on earth and give it their custom. There must be some flaw to my plan. I can’t imagine it’s the ten pounds an hour that they might have to pay those extra people. Surely that would be made up in the increased and more efficient custom. Also there’d be more time to try and convince your customers to use some of your other services. You may call me a dreamer.
I enjoy the people-watching and the drama though. A woman had tried to use the photo booth with her daughter, having spotted that it advertised fun photos for only £2 (though I suspect that that might actually have been an extra £2 on top of the regular £5 charge). Whatever, the £2 did not entitle her to get her photo taken and there was no coin rejection or refunds available. She tried to find a staff member to help her - ha! - and when she did she learned that the Post Office did not own the machine. Then a man came in to get his photo taken. People in the queue suggested that he might reimburse the woman, but he either didn’t understand English, or was pretending not to, or didn’t care. Because he got his photos done, took them and left without handing over a penny. He was two pound up on the deal, so why should he care about the young mother.
If the Post Office was efficient then we wouldn’t get human drama like this. Maybe that’s why they do it.
I was genuinely pleased to be at the counter in just 18 minutes. I am getting Stockholm Syndrome.
I wonder how many people were queuing to send off snooker balls signed by various different aspects of their personalities? In a usual post office, probably none, but there were so many people in the queue today that statistically it had to be at least a couple more.
