There are some things about the administration of a country which turn the ordinary brain into fried turnip and reduce the human faculty of speech to that of a sardine in need of counselling. For example, we all know that many houses in the countryside have been constructed solely for the purpose of being entered into an ugliness competition organised by the Scottish Tourism Board as a means of destroying our own tourist industry. Fair enough - but what happened to the planning process? How is it possible that bungalows that look like a mutant cross between Castletown, South Fork and an air traffic control headquarters could be permitted to spread like a plague of mushrooms?
And why, when such houses are built together, do they get names like Glen Napoli, Lough Casablanca or Capri Fens? Why have builders chosen to give different names to different roads but to number every house in the one estate consecutively, with the house you're looking for the next in number to the last house in a cul de sac?
Hooting of the lost
There are estates in Dublin suburbs (usually called Cyprus Wold, Sussex Palms or Westminster Dale) where nights are filled with the hooting of the lost, the deranged, the bewildered, who went there for a dinner party, got lost, and never found either their hosts or their way out. They can escape only with help from crippled postmen who have gone feral and who will guide you to freedom if you carry them - as you must, for they cannot walk.
They are crippled by the same pathological process which has caused such estates in Ireland to be called Solihull Dunes, Amsterdam Downs, Lombardy Heights or Dartmoor Forest: the perverse inversion of common sense which is required before one can become a member of the National Association of Gerrybuilders, Estate-misnamers, Bungalow-bunglers and Lowlyletterbox Inserters.
I understand the motives of NAGEBLI members - they are as determined to increase the local sum of human misery as knightly brotherhoods once were to regain Jerusalem. This is their aim in life: what is more difficult to understand is why our political processes seem to connive in their schemes, not merely to increase the unhappinesses of their direct victims - the marooned visitors howling through the night, the postmen hobbling like goblins - but to increase the misery of the very people who elect them.
We read that those in government had the chance to change the regulations about postbox height but actually refused to do so. This is passing strange. Why did they not? Do we not elect politicians to do small, sensible and easy things, such as ensuring letterboxes are on doors, not merely to thwart the organised wickedness of NAGEBLI, but also for the sake of the postmen of Ireland?
Post Delivery Person
I say postmen not merely because I detest beyond description the absurd linguistic engineering which has been undertaken to placate feminists but because I notice everyone else has used the term. Postman. Nice. No matter what the sex involved. Enjoy it while it lasts before it becomes Post Delivery Person.
Bending down low every minute or so and having to ram letters through a letterbox is not easy, but that is not the worst part. The worst part is that the shoulder-bag containing your load invariably shifts on your shoulder and twists the spine. How do I know? Because I have been that postman; and I have every sympathy with the postmen who have had to put up with such a criminally stupid design, except for one aspect. They continued to put letters in letterboxes.
This they should not have done. Why should An Post not have told its postmen not to stoop down to deliver mail? Why did the unions tolerate such nonsense? Why did the postmen themselves simply not decline to use the letterboxes, and instead leave the mail on the doorstep?
Choice of ringing
The general principle in most of our lives is that if we are doing somebody a service, and they make it difficult for us, we move on to more congenial neighbours instead. If I have the choice of ringing either a doorbell placed inside a chimney-pot on the roof, or one five feet high on the outside door-frame, few people outside the ranks of NAGEBLI, or the planners who permit NAGEBLI to prosper, would think it perverse to opt for the door-frame bell.
How is it possible that for years postmen have been doing the equivalent of scrambling up the roof and ringing the doorbell inside the chimney pot? Why has nobody at any level, most especially as litigation-culture has spread through Ireland like scabies in a prison, done nothing to prevent the madness of letter boxes designed for delivery by toes?
Just as it seemed we might be coming through the long dark night of army deafness claims, we are about to embark upon an eternity of postmen's backs, a lumbar limbo which will unquestionably cost the State millions. Why? Because those charged with protecting the interests of the state and its citizens failed to do so, and now it is too late. There are only three questions remaining: How many millions will this cost us? Who will chair the low-letterbox tribunal? What is the next area where failure of the State to do its duty is going to cost the taxpayer millions?