DON'T LEAVE YOUR PAZIENZA AT HOME!

Our new post office opened, to much fanfare, yesterday. Now the question is, will it function more efficiently than the old one? I hope so but fear not. There seem to be seven counters in there but yesterday and today only two were open, as ever. The same six hard, wooden chairs have been placed by the window for those who cannot stand for long [you tell the person behind you that you need to sit down and rejoin the queue when it's nearly your turn], the queues are still snaking almost out of the door and the customers look as resigned to the situation as before. In short, there may be more room in which to fling your arms outwards and upwards but you will need your pazienza just the same!

In Cardiff I often used to find myself waiting at the bus stop beside a permanently tired -looking woman whose spirit had been ground down, over the years, by the unreliability of Cardiff Bus. "It's them buses - they makes you bad", she would proclaim to all who would listen. [Cardiffians use the third person form of the verb for the entire present tense.] Were she beside me today, I would be able to inform her that whilst that may, indeed, be the case , the Italian Post Office "makes you badder"!