As I start writing this post it has just turned a quarter to ten. I’m sitting in a departure area at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, waiting for my flight to Amsterdam where my team will be meeting next week.
My flight was supposed to start boarding in a few minutes, except, there’s no plane to board. The incoming flight from Amsterdam hasn’t arrived yet, so my eleven-fifteen flight is now scheduled to depart at half past one tomorrow morning.
It’s a blessing in a way–arriving a couple hours later means less time I’ll have to kill before I can check into my hotel tomorrow. If only the chairs in airport departure areas were made with some consideration for human comfort.
But alas, the torture that is air travel will be extended this time around. I have no choice but to wait…
I went to fetch our mail from the post office this morning. When I opened our post office box (as usual for a moment feeling like Alice sticking that very small key into that very small door) I found something terrible inside:
A POST OFFICE BOX RENEWAL FORM!
It’s terrible. Don’t they know that I’m having a hard enough time of it as it is? Now the stupid post office is adding to the pressure, asking me questions to which I simply do not have the answer. Don’t they understand? I just don’t know if I need to renew my PO Box for next year or if I need to cancel it.
I’m still waiting to hear about that job, you see. And yesterday I was a bit of an idiot and, on a whim, checked on their Facebook page where I saw a post stating that the meeting where they will decide who to appoint would be last night. Needless to say, I’ve been staring at the phone the whole day, willing it to ring. Going to the post office was an excuse to get out of the house and clear my head a bit. Yeah, that helped.
Actually, I blame my sister-in-law. If she didn’t message me on WhatsApp to ask whether I’ve heard anything yet I would never have visited their Facebook page, which means I wouldn’t have needed to clear my head, which means I wouldn’t have gone to the post office, which means I would have been blissfully unaware of that evil form lying safely locked away behind a miniature lock in my post office box.
For when you have really long letters to post…
Speaking of post boxes, did you know the world’s biggest post box is in South Africa? It’s in a town called Calvinia and is almost seven metres tall. The first post box in South Africa was an old boot buried under a milk wood tree in what’s today Mossel Bay. Now there’s a real post box under the tree…shaped like a shoe.
if all else fails...use a hammer 