A Mouthful of Chocolate!

It was the second time that I’d been there in a week.

I handed over the card and the same chap went off to see if he could find the parcel.

There was no queue this time.

The last time I was here there were nearly forty people in a serpentine queue that snaked back on itself.

It had moved pitifully slowly.

There was a sausage dog that was looking around warily at the feet and bodies in the crowd: but especially the feet. I too was afraid that it would be stepped on as its owner leaned over the counter and signed something.

In front of me people were waiting by the counters and wonderfully shaped parcels of all sizes were being passed to them.

Eventually, it was my turn. I handed over the card and showed my passport photo that looked nothing like me and the chap went off to look.

Others around me were getting their parcels with no trouble at all. I had time to study the cold warehouse. Eventually my chap returned to say that my parcel wasn’t on the shelves and to call in again on Christmas Eve.

Today there was no queue.

The same chap took my card and went off with the same optimism that he’d had the last time. There was a phone ringing incessantly and there was the same chill air. Someone had painted pictures in this warehouse where parcels wait to be collected. These pictures are somewhat dubious and far from cheerful. There is a silhouette of a long skirted woman who seems to be about to stab the man next to her with scissors. There is a coin that has been painted upside down, a treasonable offence no doubt. I think it might be illegal to stick a stamp on a letter upside down: something to do with the queen not being happy if her head is upside down, perhaps she feels the same about upside down coins.

I began to fret.

I caught glimpses of my chap walking backwards and forwards. He was avoiding my eyes. He was scurrying between shelves and ducking out of view.

Eventually, he moved my way and I steeled myself for disappointment once more.

‘Here you are,’ he said.

He passed a small package over that had been hidden in his hands.

‘That was problem you see.’

He pointed out the name that had been written on the side of the package by whoever had tried to deliver it. All the vowels in my surname had been replaced by a different vowel. My new surname looked Russian or something from an Eastern block country. Just a few more consonants and it would have said Rudolph.

I read my new surname aloud and laughed.

Then the chap said something that made me really admire him.

‘I saw that parcel the last time you came,’ he said. ‘It was on the shelf when you last came in.’

‘The queue was out of the door wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You had a long wait,’ he said.

I nodded, admiring his honesty.

Behind him the silhouette of the woman was stabbing him with scissors.

As I left I looked again at the new name someone had given me. Then I checked the package.

It was my friend’s handwriting that had caused the problem. Her ‘e’s were just like ‘o’s.

Or more likely perhaps when she first asked me my surname I probably had a mouthful of chocolate.