You never understand what you have lost until it has gone.
Most of us have forgotten how, when the world was younger and more carefree, the daily post was the main conduit of information, good or bad, and many people and businesses really couldn’t start their day’s work until the first post had been received and distributed.
I remember intercepting the postman at the other end of the village when I was about 12, and expecting a particularly dire set of reports; I duly steamed them open, confirmed my worst fears (“keeping Roger at this school is a waste of my time, your money and his potential’’) and then hid them in the drawer below my winter pullovers, never thinking for a moment that my father just might notice their absence, and question the school. I also recall vividly waiting outside the drive when the A Level results were due, and nearly passing out in front of old Mrs. Wilson when I read that I had surpassed everyone’s expectations, most of all my own, and done really quite well. Best of all, as a young soldier, I remember how my delightful and patriotic bank manager used to write to me and tell me, after due concern for my welfare that he ‘could not help but notice that, at the close of business on Monday last, your account was in excess of its overdraft facility to the tune of £38.12; and that, whilst in no way personally concerned, this could represent an excellent opportunity to establish a new and mutually agreeable level.’ Oh, Mr. Villars! They made you lot differently back then.
Nowadays, you get the odd postcard, but otherwise it is just confirmatory bills from BT, Trailfinder brochures, parish magazines and endless circulars from Check-a-trade. The rest comes in electronically, starts with the word ‘Hi’, and finishes with kisses or invitations to unsubscribe, depending on who they are from. The quiet anticipatory joy of the postman’s knock has been consigned to history just as surely as Virgin Train’s west coast franchise.
Until today.
Because, in its own fashion, today’s post was a flashback to the glory years of the late seventies.
OK, it had a Check-a-trade brochure, and it may well have had a communication from First Direct informing me that their terms on my current account had changed, and on their charges for overdrafts. But it also contained some retro nuggets.
First of all, it contained a luxurious manila envelope that contained within it what we used to call a ‘stiffy’ (an invitation to someone’s wedding), but I suspect that has a new name now. And the invitation was thermo-printed in great italic letters that were so embossed it seemed almost wrong not to eat them on the spot. For the price of a modest outlay on a wedding gift, it promised eight hours of upmarket catering, beautiful marquees and appalling dancing later on in the summer.
Secondly, it received notification from Transport for London that the driver of vehicle registration AV56LHO had been filmed ‘entering and stopping in a box junction when prohibited’. Now, in forty years behind the wheel, this is the only indirect notification from Plod that I have ever received that hasn’t directly implicated me. The car may be in my name, but I don’t drive it. That, I am happy to say, is the privilege of someone who as at this moment, owes Sadiq Khan £65.00, or £130 if not paid by 10thJuly. Someone called Tom or Alex. I am a mere interested spectator in this one, and can be self-righteous for a while.
But it was the third that made my decade. A very long and anonymous hand-written letter with a Peterborough postmark that alerted me to a ghastly conspiracy on our doorsteps that the writer had tried and failed on numerous occasions to bring to the attention of MI5 or MI6; that implored me to burn the letter once I had read it, having used my contacts to let them know; that warned me of the Illuminati, New Age Humanists, Satanists, Nanny State and the Chinese owners of Cambridge Water; that railed against the sexualisation of Britain, of raves, wife-swapping parties, clubbing in Ibiza, nude bathing; that told me that ‘shady men’ were already in the pay of the Civil Service, and ‘delivering our country to the enemy within’. Apparently, this is all the work of the Bilderberg Group, a shadowy organisation of financial, political and media leaders, who meet regularly to see how they can fuck us over. I’m not sure that was the word they used, but it was what they meant.
Back in the 1970s, my Granny used to send me stuff on the Bilderberg Group who, even then, were apparently only one step away from removing our freedoms for their private interests. Chaired by people like Henry Kissinger and the Gnomes of Zurich, they plotted the rise and fall of nations in the privacy of their luxury conference hotels once or twice a year. It all made me think that they must have had a quiet old four decades since then, as they appear to be no closer to world domination in 2019 than they were in 1975. Or should I say WORLD DOMINATION, as unrestricted use of urgent capital letters is a big part of the game. Even British Rail (sorry, BRITISH RAIL) have achieved more than that in the same timescale. However, it has all made me pine for all those old-fashioned conspiracy theories; people forget that they enabled us to blame shadowy figures for all the shit that happened. Hitler and Stalin were quite strong on it for a time, I seem to remember.
However, where it all differs from my Granny’s version is in the raves, nudity and Ibiza beach parties. Clearly the Bilderberg guys move with the times like the rest of us.
I’ll join.
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