There are few sights so dispiriting as the back end of a queue poking out of a post office. Nobody pays a leisurely visit to a post office: there is always somewhere else you need to be and something else you should be doing. And there is always a queue. Still, on a Saturday morning, finding myself in a small town in Sussex with something boring but urgent to post, I was just relieved to find the place open. For the entertainment of oblivious shoppers in the square outside, a bloke crooned carols accompanied by a fuzzy backing tape. And someone joined the queue behind me, so I was no longer last in line. Things could have been worse.
With glacial slowness, we edged forward. Why, in the crooning of another couple of carols, I had made real progress, crossing the threshold into the building. My mood continued to lighten. But then I saw them: two great big red self-service machines that presumably, thanks to the march of what we call progress, could, after a lot of stabbing at a touchscreen, weigh, stamp and dispatch whatever goods we had come bearing this winter’s morning.
