When we first arrived we couldn’t figure out why our mail was being delivered to the address of another property owned in this village by our proprietors. We’d gone to the post office to make ourselves known. We’d put our names on the mailbox and in a style that would get us high marks for penmanship. For weeks, though, our mail was being delivered elsewhere.
The clerk in the post office couldn’t do anything about it. We were told we’d need to talk to the post- woman to straighten things out. It wasn’t as if we could call her, either, or leave a message for her with the clerk. No, we’d have to happen upon her as she was making her rounds. Fine.
So, we waited and waited and waited and waited and waited to happen upon Madame De La Poste. Days stretched on and no sightings. Meanwhile, our mail was dropped into someone else’s mailbox. (Luckily, they were kind enough to walk it down to us.)
But then one day we struck gold. On his way back from the bakery one morning Tim saw the post-woman and pounced. She very nicely explained that she couldn’t deliver our mail into our box because she would have to walk up steps that were private property. If she hurt herself on those steps, her insurance wouldn’t cover the medical expenses. If we moved our box so that it was on the street and thus public property, she could deliver our mail as it ought to be delivered.
Jesus God, I thought to myself, she’s not joking. She’s utterly serious. And she was. So, we moved the mailbox. That day.
