Engines of Empire

When we thought about horses potentially still being used for what we now use cars, trucks, tractors and motorbikes for (ignoring bicycles and shoes for the time being, since they are not "auto"), did we also think about what horses, suffering and toiling for us, meant for the spread and the distribution of mankind across the surface of our beloved home planet?

(Microsoft Media)

Suffer and toil they certainly did, those horses, for millennia, though sweat they never could as opposed to perseveringly running and hunting homo sapiens driving their more or less distant cousins to systemic collapse so that these could more easily be caught, killed and eaten.

And love we should our home planet since for now, it's the only one we have. All future endeavours and plans are still in their infancy at, say, NASA, and infantile to such an extent in fact that we'll have to wait for them to become a lot more economically viable and practicable. Many theoretic spin-offs will have to wait even longer. And even then we had better not continue to treat our home world as if we had a spare one in the warehouse.

And grateful we should be for what horses have been doing for us - mind you: "have been", not just "had been" since we still use them in parts of our world in manufacturing processes where other resources aren't available, or for entertainment, as at the Melbourne Cup and all those equine events that regularly precede it, and all those other equine events elsewhere.

It was on horseback that the Mongols raided Asian and European cities (think again about being grateful here, though), perhaps for want of anything better to do with themselves and to the obvious detriment of the conquered, though their empire had remained relatively short-lived, existed in a largely fragmented condition mainly in the thirteenth century, only parts of it somewhat longer.

Think about it whichever way you like, which for many probably means in the form of relief that it hadn't lasted any longer. Turning Genghis Khan into a heroic figure is most likely hardly any better than doing so with Napoleon who these days, along with the Khan, might very well end up at the International Court of The Hague for crimes against humanity; never mind the holy look in some historians' faces when the utter the words "Code Napoleon".

Napoleon crossing the Alps
a glorification by
Jacques-Louis David

To remind you of what this means, here's an excerpt taken from Compton's Infopedia about the Code Napoleon: " The premise for the code was the idea that, for the first time in history, a law based purely on common sense should be created, free of all past prejudices and inequities. Under the code all citizens were recognized as equal, and all class privileges were done away with."

This doesn't sound too bad on the surface, except that Napoleon, as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, must have seen himself as more equal than his fellow citizens of post-revolution France, at the very latest from when he began calling himself Napoleon I instead of General Bonaparte, and that this very fact alone was still, or yet again, all too indicative of a class difference.

Nevertheless, both the Khan and Napoleon and their henchmen, without whose support they wouldn't have come very far, had triggered events and developments in Europe that without them - and without horses - wouldn't have taken place.

By the way "henchmen": perhaps not coincidentally, the word goes back to the Old English "henxtman" which is more than likely to have its origin in "hengest" (stallion) and "mann" (man). In German, the linguistic territory that English stems from, the word "hengst" still means "stallion", whereas the latter goes back to Old French "estalon", itself again of Germanic origin. There's a lot of flexibility in language.

Genghis Khan may rightfully be seen by some as a bucolic good-for-nothing with too much criminal energy under his belt and too much time on his hands, and too much support by his equally ne'er-do-well clansmen, and probably too many horses at his disposal. Today he might be the leader of a bikie gang. There are interesting parallels, too, in the comparison of bikie gangs and early monarchies.

Likewise, Napoleon may just as rightfully be seen as a ruthless megalomaniac. They both used horses to build empires at the expense of other people and peoples, while horses were in both cases the underlying engines that made these vast empires possible, bringing every corner of it within reach, since they served and never questioned their masters, simply following their herd instinct.

It was on horseback that Europeans invaded the Americas. Try to imagine the world today without horses, or at least without the ones that unintentionally made exploration and occupation, colonisation and exploitation, so much easier if not causally possible for humans, though the beasts themselves never willingly exerted themselves so vigorously for the ends their masters had in mind; they were ultimately instrumental if without any particular aspiration.

We tend to forget the importance of horses for humanity now, regardless for a moment of whether we were at the receiving end or the victims of conquerors aided by horses, as much as the necessity for our distant ancestors to be hunter-gatherers to begin with well before we could begin to embrace a different lifestyle.

(Microsoft Media)

From looking back to what brought us here, then looking ahead: even when the time has finally arrived for humanity to start the first settlements on the moon and on Mars, it will still take a while until a sizeable number of earthlings can settle there and begin to thrive and prosper the way they used to in their earthbound colonies. On Mars, as opposed to the moon and many colonies of the past, they might be forced to immediately use local resources.

The parallels are certainly there, whether you think about Europeans spreading into the Americas or elsewhere, or the Polynesians populating the scattered islands of the Pacific, or our African ancestors venturing into Europe and Asia. It would appear that the Polynesian advance into the great watery unknown of the Pacific comes closest to mankind's future exploration of space.

Is the fear to run out of resources, the space our sheer number needs to live in, and the fear that too many of us are already taxing our home planet far too much, the ultimate motor for space exploration - as the first landing on the moon was powered by the Cold War? Apart from utter curiosity, there surely is some urgency driving us beyond the confines of our planet.

If you don't believe this author, you may want to think again taken that it was Steven Hawking who mentioned the urgent need to keep exploring space for these very reasons, much more so than for mere curiosity's sake.

One might be left to wonder, though, what the earthlings' approach would be if there were stone-age humanoids or pre-industrial reptilids on Mars....

Motor of Change

This morning at the service station, the image of all those cars - including our own - being horses instead imposed itself on me. And I remembered - from reading about it, I should add - how people once said about horses that they were sullying the roads.

This was reported to have been in the days of cars still being in their infancy and also at their experimental stage, and at the same time utterly progressive; only the automotive tinkerers themselves, and some of the very-well-to-do with enough money at their disposal to have others do the tinkering for them, could expect to be seen riding one.

Riding they still were, even though it wasn't on horseback, but the perception remained. The car was called an automobile because it was also seen (another perception) as a thing driving on its own (auto), mainly without a horse attached to it at the front. A horse, mind you, from its own perspective or from the rider's when he or she is sitting on its back, can walk, trot and run on its own, too.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

Surely, a horse needs to eat, as much as a car needs to drink. Movement in all cases relies on a sufficient amount of energy that gets transformed one way or another to trigger and maintain the respective movement. Nobody yet thought about the consequences as much as we do today. When people complained about horse dung dirtying and clogging the streets, they saw the automobile as a cleaner solution.

These days, we talk a great deal about carbon dioxide coming from cars' exhaust pipes and being amongst the prime reasons - apart from industrial waste gas - fuelling the current climate change. Though a changing climate is nothing new, this one is generally seen (and supported by data) as being man-made. But apart from carbon dioxide, there is also much talk about methane.

And this unpleasant component in our sea of nitrogen that we wade through as much as fish swim through what's predominantly, but not exclusively, hydrogen dioxide, this unpleasant component which in itself is nothing new either, is mainly unpleasant due to its increased presence in our atmosphere.

And on top of that, methane is suspected, or even proven to a certain extent, to be an even stronger agent driving climate change than carbon dioxide. Its main emitter? Cattle. Primarily so, because there are so many of them these days to feed a population expecting huge if not excessive amounts of beef.

With all that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen and their roles in more complex molecular compounds stand for being in the public domain, all that's left to ask is, what would it be like if all those cars (counting them or asking the Bureau of Statistics) were in fact still horses? Would it be a better atmosphere in all its senses?

We shouldn't forget, honestly, that horses - being vegetarians and ruminants like cattle - also produce a lot of carbon dioxide the normal and well-known way, and methane of top of that, much like cattle. Well, of course, one might add, we also exhale water and carbon dioxide, but there's the power of the numbers - and the figures of the Bureau.

(Microsoft Media)

If all those cars were horses there would be millions and millions of them. Apart from the extra space they'd need at people's homes - you can't simply put a horse in the garage or on a parking spot and then forget about it until, of necessity, you have to go to the bowser (make that a service station with a huge haystack and oats by the container load) again or have it serviced.

There'd be roads and freeways absolutely packed with horses, riders and carts. We'd still get similar traffic-congestion updates on the radio. And people wouldn't be so private on them and inside most of the carts drawn by them; people would be much more out in the open, unless they were inside a closed vehicle with a chauffeur up front and the reins in his hands; then he'd be the one out in the open or at least under a wee canopy.

Who knows, people might be swearing more at each other, or they might be more polite. That's open for discussion. But there'd be enormous quantities of horse dung cluttering the roads, apart from the methane leaving the beasties at their rear ends. It's things like methane and carbon dioxide (and monoxide) that we rarely worry about because we can't see them, can't hear them and we only smell them or suffer directly from them when they occur in a high enough concentration around us making breathing difficult.

So much for the good old days, though we might be able to use all that dung on our roads as a source of energy.

The Difficulty of Not Wanting

In this age of supersize-me portions, it is almost inconceivable that someone really might not want something - and I don't mean the hermit's "not anything at all, thank you", but just some things yes, and some others not, or even most not. Keep life simple. Yes, not everyone wants to pig out whenever there's an opportunity for it, and there increasingly are.

With the deplorable effects of binge drinking and you name it. - I don't want to put my foot in it, and therefore leave the extrapolations to you. There's plenty to choose from in the press. I gather I'm safe when I carefully name binge drinking that is loathed by a sound majority.

(Microsoft Media)

This not-wanting is already evident in "No Junk Mail" signs on letterboxes, with or without a "thank you" underneath. We now come to the necessity to define "junk". According to most real-estate agents, their flyers are not junk because the "No Junk Mail" sign on the letterbox doesn't apply to them, or so they think, until they get a nasty letter - equally unsolicited - from an annoyed letterbox owner who explicitly didn't want a flyer or fridge magnet or business card or you name it.

After that they become speechless, at least for a while, until they forget all about the letter from the letterbox owner and the whole business starts all over again, and again. So what is junk anyway? And I don't mean "a Chinese flatbottom ship with a high poop and battened sails", which is a definition taken from Yahoo! Dictionary and refers to a word with a completely different etymology, eventually going back to "Old Javanese jong, a sea-going ship", they say.

No, this would allow the real-estate agent to safely pronounce, see, mate, that really doesn't have anything to do with us. We deliver our material on foot or by bike. Well, they couldn't use "jongs", "djungs" or "djongs" on the roads anyway, could they. Tough luck, Mr. Agent, there's another "junk" and the Dictionary has this, too.

Apart from all the other definitions such as discarded material, worn-out articles and shoddy material, and some meanings we don't need in this context anyway, there's "something meaningless" and that's just the point. Those real-estate agents would vehemently protest if someone called their flyers meaningless stuff. And, admittedly, in a way, they do carry meaning, don't they. But it has become generally accepted by now, and some other dictionaries might list this, too, that things you didn't ask for, you didn't order, that aren't explicitly addressed to you, are defined as junk.

And at least as far as the postie is concerned, whether he drives across the lawn or not, he sticks with the "no junk" sign, since posties, too, these days, carry with them a certain amount of advertising material. But since this isn't explicitly addressed to letterbox owners, they are not allowed to put it in along with regular, i.e. addressed mail, or on their own.

And then there's the local paper. Oh, the local paper; and we've even got two of them in our area, one distributed on Tuesdays and the other one on Fridays. And since they are also available at both the local library and the local shopping centre, that themselves are not too far away from each other and that people around here can comfortably reach on foot or, if they prefer to do their shopping on the way home from work, they drop by on wheels, dropping their cars on the centre's carpark. One may be forgiven for wondering why deliver the local papers at all to letterboxes so close to shopping centres.

(as seen by the author)

But deliver they do, either on foot or by motorbike and whether you want it or not. And I should say up front, the paper deliveryman's motorbike is a lot more annoying than the postie's. Whereas the postie's bike sounds like a wasp - hence the name for the Italian Vespa - the paperman's sounds like an irate hornet. But irrespective of the sound, bikes roaring one way or another, or shuffling shoes - that I can't hear these ones, what did you expect me to do on a daily basis, wait for them behind the bushes and then go "Ahaaaaaa, it's you again!"? - they don't respond to the "No Junk Mail" sign.

For one, a paper isn't mail. Is a flyer? I'm beginning to wonder if it is. And it most certainly isn't junk. Well, here I do emphatically agree, even though I don't find the time to read each and every weekly copy, and some subject matters may clearly lie outside my sphere of interest, I do appreciate local information, otherwise I'd be knowledgeable when it comes to the latest developments in the Euro zone but left with no clue about what's going on around where I live.

The localisation of the local radio station is a different matter - there's a lot of "local" amongst these lines, but they are all different. The local radio station provides you with feedback on the larger metropolitan area. The localisation of the local papers is much closer to your letterbox.

But I still prefer the local paper's copy taken from a rack at the library or the shopping centre. At least in that case, it doesn't have wrinkles all over and opens more easily and neatly, and it also doesn't clog the letterbox, at times crunching the letters the box is meant to be there for.

I've tried a "No Local Newspaper Thank You" sticker provided by the local paper distribution centre which means they understand the problem and I'm not the only one opposed to clutter in and around the letterbox. That's good to know.

But some delivery people are blissfully oblivious to the sign.

The Continental Roll

The rectangular label didn't identify any particular continent, but it definitely had "continental roll" written all over it when I spotted it under the top shelf of the transparent cupboard full of bakery products.

The label advertised a roll behind a see-through hatch that had a rather elongated shape, too long in fact for a roll, but in the end, you can always roll dough sideways and shape it into a sausage if you feel like it, just to make sure you understand why rolls are called rolls to begin with. (Makes you wonder, though, if a square roll can still be called a roll. Which is probably why they are more likely to be called buns.)

(Microsoft Media)

Naturally, I used the grippers provided to take the roll out. Nobody wants other people's finger prints, let alone pads of skin fat, on bread of pastries, just in case someone changes their mind and puts it back because they've spotted a bigger or differently shaped one, a pastry that's stuffed with cream or one that's rather not because one doesn't necessarily want anything that comes squirting out with each and every bite.

You can wash vegies prior to using them because that's what you ought to do anyway, even if eventually you might not be eating them raw (I chose "might" because some people actually insist on eating vegies raw, any and all), yet you cannot or at least shouldn't wash a roll before you eat it unless you don't mind them being soggy.

The young man at the check-out point smiled when I said I didn't know which continent the roll referred to, but that I assumed it was in reference to mainland Europe. This tells us one more thing, I pondered - without saying so aloud, however, because, in the end, I didn't want the other customers to have to wait for too much longer, and I didn't really know if the young man was going to find the remark funny, apart from keeping him from getting the people in the queue behind me to pay and leave - namely that Australia still has this UK feeling about it. And, mind you, I like that.

If the roll cannot be associated with the UK, or England in particular, but something not too much unlike it has been spotted or can be assumed to be spotted on a trip on the mainland, then it's got to be a continental one. Perhaps just by not being English a roll can already qualify for the title "continental". Much like continental parsley referring to the flat-leaved sort assumed to be grown predominantly in Italy, as opposed to the scratchy one with the pointy leaves that prick your gums.
   
It's difficult to say almost anything, it would appear, that is completely neutral or unbiased, though information scientists might love words like that, and a few linguists are still dreaming of an entirely objective means of communication.

French fries are in fact rumoured to have originated in Belgium. The rumour is a fact; the origin is still arguable.

An Even Earlier Bird

Every morning at around half past five - make that 5.30 a.m. and depending on the time of the year that's before the crack of dawn - a truck, or more precisely a towing vehicle, in search of a semi-trailer - rumbles along our otherwise quiet suburban road, and hadn't I said I lived in a quiet suburb?

Quiet unless it's five thirty in the morning, or a dog barks at any given time of the day or night, or the occasional twerp drives past with his car stereo at full blast, or that dimwit with his constantly barking canine automaton on the loading platform of his ute. Which is why it's only a relatively quiet one, and these are the relativities.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

For the uninitiated, a ute is a utility truck. After all, ever since I've been lucky enough to have become a member of the category of the enlightened by living not too far away from a port city and an increasing number of building sites in the midrange vicinity - so much for quiet suburb - I have been aware of various sorts of articulated and unarticulated vehicles and occasionally also of the articulation of more or less tainted language their drivers are capable of voicing.

They can happily do this while they talk on their mobile phones which is another thing they might want to think about discontinuing, in particular since this - as opposed to the articulation of sorts - had been declared illegal not too long ago for the lack of a driver's attention a mobile phone held to the ear while driving leaves for the road, and the alcohol content in the blood this would equate, and for how easily that kind of thing can lead to an accident.

The ute driver - though mostly silent - with the dog - mostly barking - at the back may never know just how many people he annoys on a regular basis letting his dog virtually off the leash, though in more concrete terms tying him to the driver's cab, so that he cannot fall off the platform while barking at each and every house they pass. The ute driver ought to turn that around so that the neighbourhoods he passes through can live in the hope of one day finding the platform devoid of that dog.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

The tractor at 5.30 doesn't feature a dog, but due to its weight, surely more than a couple of metric tons, it causes a lot of air and ground movement. The latter not bad enough to make you fall off the bed, but the former to leave no doubt about when it's time to wake up.

If he didn't come at varying times between 5 and 6 a.m. I could actually save on power for that rechargeable battery in my own mobile phone - that I don't use while I'm driving, mind you, and through which I won't ever swear, but that I do set to wake me up at ten to six if I'm not already awake, that is.

Though I don't like the rumble, I do appreciate it that the truckie doesn't have a barking dog, doesn't turn up his stereo set and swear through his mobile, all at the same time. That way, he would really overstep the mark. So what do I do? Have a heart for him - as for the postie - getting up even earlier than me instead of looking for some Council rule or regulation that might prevent him from parking his tractor at his home in a residential area which would make it necessary for him to get up earlier still in order to drive with a smaller car to where he then would have to put his tractive unit?

Or be happy that he doesn't have a constantly barking dog and doesn't operate his cab radio at full blast and also that he doesn't swear. He has to use his truck to earn a living, something that doesn't apply to swearing and force-feeding other people with roaring noise from stereo sets of any kind. Dogs also don't have to bark for no particular reason other then to dog out, bothering scores of people.

The non-swearing, dogless and quietly rumbling truckie has to earn a living as much as the postie. I think I'll simply keep waiting for my mobile to tell me it's five fifty in all those cases when the truckie, the even earlier bird, drives past before my phone comes on.

The Discount Chemist

On the way back from work (mid-afternoon, I'm an early bird) it is always a good time for some shopping at a place that I normally just drive past; for me at least, or for anyone for that matter, I'm sure, who lives in a relatively quiet suburb.

Now, you can define the quiet suburbs as the ones for the well-to-do and frown at them, as I do at times, shamefully though, knowing I shouldn't do this, it could come across as mean; while I'm always on the lookout for the disadvantages of being all too well-to-do, and doing all those things that are certain to trigger a heart attack by age 55.

Or it's simply a suburb where nothing much happens. And that's pretty much the kind of suburb I like.

Yet it turned out it wasn't my day. I may not want much, but the things I do want or need, I'd like to buy at a reasonable price or even at a discount. But already in the supermarket I failed to see when my things went through the checkout that the soymilk (take that as a lifestyle hint, if you like) was actually advertised at 40 cents off per litre.

Unfortunately, the branch's database hadn't been adapted and the cartons were scanned in at the regular price, which I spotted only when I casually looked at the docket when I was already back home. Too late to complain, too wasteful to go back for eighty cents taken that driving there and back would cost more in fuel, and tomorrow was another day, and I wouldn't want to appear niggling.

(Microsoft Media)

Still blissfully unaware of the 80 cents and the distant possibility of the supermarket's still having its policy of giving customers things for free that were billed incorrectly, I wandered nonchalantly into the nearest Discount Chemist store to buy two things that I would normally have bought at the chemist's much closer to where I live. But the big word "Discount" in large vivid letters was so convincing.

For my eye drops - they are not a luxury item for someone whose eyes are affected by a pollen allergy, and I don't consider myself to be a mere pen-pusher, make that keyboard-puncher in this day and age, for all the things I have to do but cannot convincingly do with a keyboard - I had brought with me the flap cut off the previous carton housing a mere 5-millilitre bottle.

Oh yes, the chemist chirped, this is always the easiest way to get exactly what you want. And I was thinking a simple flap can also spare you a lengthy explanation and having to grope for the proper pronunciation of an artificial word such as the ones frequently used for eye drops and most other drops, pills and tablets.

Happy about the quick service and the friendly smile I then asked for, well, what term other than "energy tablets" might there be? Please don't get this wrong. This is merely about counter-acting a low blood-sugar level that can make you feel dizzy, something that can easily turn out to be rather inconvenient, in particular when you are driving. What other than a "tablet containing glucose, which is a readily absorbed source of carbohydrate, providing instant energy" might you possibly have expected?

Anyway, could anything be simpler than buying two simple items at a chemist's? Yes, you might say, buying just one item, or trying to find it in the supermarket in the health-food aisle. In the end, I thought I might actually have tried this, or simply gone to the chemist near where I live since the vividly coloured discount chemist actually turned out to be anything but discount when I looked at the docket... back home. Four dollars more than my regular chemist would have charged for the droplets.

I decided to be less trusting in future, and instead study the docket right away; and furthermore that I'd be the one who was going to discount that chemist henceforth, and that they in return could jolly well count me out.

The Nice Postie

As a short-term solution before putting any plants in the gaps allowing for the shortcut, I had put bamboo sticks up around the sprinklers so that they could be spotted easily and collisions with them avoided, which also meant they were more likely not to be damaged again.

(Microsoft Media)

And as expected, the postie was back the following day during late morning. Hearing him come by the unmistakable roar of his motorbike - oh, I have learnt to tell the sounds of roaring bikes apart as much as the bark of various dogs, and I've come to dislike them all by now, in particular the ones that bark for no particular reason and at night - I peeped out between two blinds feeling a little foolish but reminding myself that early-bird wildlife spotters would have to do similar things if they wanted to watch rare and skittish wild beasts in the woods.

I don't wish to make any allusions here, saying that posties are rare beasts, while the rarity would only apply to their presence in well-defined territories, but maybe mine might be a little skittish by now and even get scared at my unconcealed presence in the window frame, but then again, much like the wildlife spotters, I needed to find out what the postie was going to do without knowing he was being watched.

He even had a delivery for me, which was going to make my watch even more interesting. I saw him approach the letterbox and in heightened suspense I watched him put something in and then, to my utter surprise, turn his bike around and on along the driveway he whizzed and back up towards the kerb, and then further down the street.

He hadn't crossed the lawn and instead I was beginning to feel a strange pang of guilt. Had I made his day any harder? But then again, he had made me fix a sprinkler, which had taken a lot longer than turning around a motorbike and driving alongside the kerb.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

But then again, I was feeling guilty enough to spare a minute and think about the postie and see the situation from his perspective. Maybe, he wasn't all that ruthless after all. On our side of the street there is no sidewalk, make that "pavement" depending on where you are, though some sidewalks might not even be paved but tarmacked, and delivering mail on this side meant a lot of driving up and down driveways.

Just imagine being a postie and driving down a driveway, putting a letter or two in a box, turn around your bike, or, depending, make a three- or five-point turn, drive up again, turn left (as in this country where people drive on the left side of the street), dash over to the next driveway, squeeze the bike's brakes, turn left, drive down to the next letterbox, make one of several kinds of turn, drive up again, all while on the other side of the same street you only needed to go and stop from one box to the next, all on the same pavement, tarmacked, paved or otherwise.

This will consume more fuel, it will ruin the brake pads much earlier, and it takes more time before you're done with streets like that. I was beginning to sympathize with the postie. I was contemplating putting a "Welcome" sign up next to the driveway. This also made me think about putting letterboxes right up there next to the kerb. Wouldn't that make the postie's life so much easier?

But shifting the letterbox, tightly anchored in the ground where it stood, up the three odd metres to the kerb was a bit of an exercise, it could even be costly, and would Council allow this? It would be beyond the property line after all, and for good reasons, too, for instance, if there were road works to be done and people might have to use a bit of the sidewalk on the other side or the lawns on this side to get around, the letterbox might be in the way or get damaged or knocked over.
It was all becoming too complicated and far too confusing. I was beginning to feel dizzy and was longing for a cup of coffee.

No, I decided, I'd leave it like that for the time being. If the postie wanted to use the lawn, I thought, please go ahead, as long as you stay clear of the sprinklers, which I'd leave clearly marked by bamboo sticks, which didn't look that bad after all.

Let this be the Land of careful Smiles.

The Self-Serving Postie

Yesterday I dashed outside with a passion because I'd spotted the postie driving across our front lawn again. And not only that, as before I spotted and watched him driving right over the sprinklers again. I felt myself beginning to foam at the mouth.

Only a day earlier had I been to the distribution centre complaining about the postie's having knocked over one of my sprinklers, a brand new one on top of that, just to save three seconds on his tour, yet by producing half an hour's worth of work for me since the sprinkler he'd knocked over had to be fixed again - and paid for. No need to say that I had to fix it interrupting the work I had been doing, calculating the time this would push my targeted deadline forward.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

The lady at the distribution centre had been very friendly and had promised to pass this on to the manager and added that, should it happen again, I might have to come in and see them a little earlier during the day, say, by 2 pm since the managers for the posties' territories left at that time since they always had to start early in the morning. No need to say that there was a bit of a conflict of interests here, too.

Yet, that sounded promising enough, which made it easy for me to show the best of my understanding for the managers' position. And somehow I must have allowed the thought to sink in that just by talking with someone at the distribution centre, the problem had been solved once and for all along with the feel-good exercise of making my complaint not sound too much like a complaint and expressing my insight into the staff member's position that she personally, after all, hadn't done anything wrong nor broken a single sprinkler.

Fat chance. Once outside, therefore, I grabbed the postie by his shoulders and dragged him off his motorbike. Watching the bike drive on and into the nearest power pole I wriggled the postie in such a way that I ended up getting him into a tight headlock.

Dragging him over to the letterbox like that, I then banged his head, well-protected by his helmet which made it all the easier for me to go ahead with my temper, against the front of the letterbox several times shouting "Will you friggin' do that again or won't you!?!?!" After which I let him flop onto the lawn.

Which is when I came back to my senses. And so much for my daydream that had been crossing my mind inside the micro-space of twenty mega-seconds. It wouldn't have gone down well with the police or the postal management. And the local paper would have had a nice story to tell on the front page at my expense. Luckily, I still had a solid barrier of decent education and a relatively reliable ability to reason.

I decided instead to drive down to the nearest gardening centre as soon as possible and buy some shrubs to fill the gaps the postie had been using for his shortcut.