I still call Australia post home.

So in keeping in line with our one bag philosophy we thought we'd send home the couple of things we'd picked up here in London- mostly royal tennis tshirts for rohan and my brother, and a couple of cast off pieces of clothing from my sister (not you prada jacket - you stay with me at all times). Who knew posting something could be so hard? In the post office in Notting Hill I felt like a moron rather than a person with a phd. At first I couldn't work out why the post office clerks were so heavily guarded, hidden behind glass with tiny slide through slots and an annoying lift like contraption down the end where they slide through packages or give you the box that you've had to purchase without knowing if it will suit your purposes, by the end of my visit I realised they needed to be behind glass because I wanted to leap across and throttle them.

After first showing what we wanted to post, the man said a box would be in order. So we bought the box, left the queue, put our stuff in, wrapped it up with tape that rohan had got at the art supply store, joined the line again and got a different person. She told us that the box was too big to be sent normal post and we would have to pay either 100 pound or take it out of the box and put it into 2 smaller boxes and then we could send it normally. GRRRRRRRR. It was at this point I thought about murder.

Rohan being a much more temperate soul than myself decided to take over because I was about to have a stroke. He bought the bags, split up the stuff, addressed it, taped it up and went back up to the counter. The man wondered why we were sending it all seperately - why didn't we just put it in one box? Are you freaking kidding me?

Australia Post - I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the times that I've said terrible things about you or complained about the ramshackle line at Bakery Hill. I'd give my right teeth for a ramshackle line and the chirpy man who makes jokes whenever we go in there. So thanks to Rohan and no thanks to the british postal services our parcels have gone off into the abyss. I wonder if we will ever see them again?