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Despite my last posting, there is a little story I could tell.

I drove over to Westdene this morning to post off a packet for Pam and Graham. The queue was so long that I waited twenty minutes to be served, but despite the pressure, the lady behind the counter kept smiling and chatting to the customers. What a difference from our local post office. This is just round the corner and I can walk there and back in less than five minutes, but instead I get the car out and drive for five minutes to Westdene. The reason is that I have been banned from the local post office. No, that's not quite right: I have banned myself. I am an usually even-tempered person, but the last time I was in the shop I came within an ace of punching the obnoxious little twit who owns it.

For nearly forty years we had our newspapers delivered from that shop. It was OK for nearly all those forty years, but about two years ago, the then owners sold up. We thought little of it, but after a while our paper delivery became less and less reliable, reaching the stage where at least once a week the paper was not delivered and I would have to go round to collect it. No great deal, perhaps, but (a) I like to look at the paper while I eat my breakfast and (b) we were paying for delivery and weren't being credited for the days when I collected the paper. The last time this happened the newsagent more or less blamed me, in very rude terms, for the fact that the paper hadn't been delivered and told me he was losing money by supplying me. Backed up by his wife, he went on to say that he would be happy if I got my newspapers elsewhere.

I quickly made alternative arrangements and have never been in the shop since.

And if, as has happened on rare occasions, the new shop fails to deliver, we ring them up and they bring a paper round.