The New Golden Age

 

The Teenager needs a passport application form.

“I’ll get it for you,” I say.

I already know that my local post office doesn’t stock such forms for some strange mysterious reason and that I will need to go to the town centre. Still the weather is fine. I can walk there. The exercise will do me good.

The town centre post office has been renovated. The last time I was here I had to queue outside, but today I’m able to walk straight in. Most of what was once the post office is now a shop with aisles of food and drink. I join the post office queue which is long and snakes around.

I’m impressed that the glass screens have gone. It makes me feel that the world has become a safer place; that a perceived threat of danger no longer exists and that we can all breathe a little easier and once more relax.

Even the voice telling us which counter to go to is kinder almost soporific.

There are mostly African faces at the counters. All women, and I wonder if they’ve been chosen for their warm open faces and friendly smiles. The people in the queue don’t look anything like them. There are pinched faces and tired expressions and weary faces, but I guess once they’ve been served by such assistants that they too will thaw a little.

I wonder if this is a government plan, part of the ‘Big Society’ to make us all happier, more relaxed and content by removing the screens. I wonder if such barriers that once deemed all customers to be potential criminals and thugs will be similarly removed in train stations and banks. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new golden age, I muse.

When it’s my turn I go as directed to counter 3. The woman there has a moon shaped face which is lit with the broadest smile. I smile back and ask for a passport form.

“We don’t have any.”

It seems the main post office for the town has run out.

I don’t make any fuss, but the smiling counter woman must have secretly pressed an alarm button for suddenly another woman is with her.

I ask them if they know if any other local post offices have them.

The smiling woman rattles off a list, spraying me with her machinegun words.

I ask if she can write some down for me as otherwise I will forget. I am already imagining that others will have already have depleted such stocks, and I’m now on a mission to find the last passport application form left in the county.

Reluctantly, after a quick look back at the other woman as if I’ve just asked for classified information, she writes down three and gives me the list.

I leave.

After a three mile walk for no purpose, I know without glancing in any mirror that my face is pinched and that my expression is anything but sunny.