Please Mr Postman

My Postman has a groupie.

ME.

It's not him I’m after exactly. It's really more to do with what he can give me.

Not that I don’t love my postman. I do. He is awfully friendly. If he sees me outside when he comes by he always has a conversation and even drives his motorbike up the driveway to personally deliver the mail.

Actually my current fascination with mail is nothing new. I had the same fixation with the post when I was four and living in a country town. It was my job to collect the mail every day and I used to stand guard at the mail box waiting for his bicycle to come by. I took this task very seriously. Of course in those days I wasn’t so interested in the mail just the small packet of sweets the postman would give me every now and then. Spearmint leaves in a small white packet. And it became all the more sweeter because my older sisters were at school and I never had to share.

How times have changed. These days the postman would get locked up for doing the same thing and my mother would be denounced for allowing her child so much sugar.

So, as you can see, there are reasons why I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for mailmen (curiously I've never had a mailwoman). Although, I have to say that when I lived in the UK for some years my interest in postmen waned somewhat. Homes in the UK don't seem to have mailboxes as we do here. The postman puts your mail through your front door (and you don't need alarm clocks because the thud of mail wakes you up every morning). I assume it has something to do with the weather but it can't be too easy for the postal service delivering mail this way.

The mailman in the village I lived in Scotland walked the mail everywhere which I guess is the only way to do it if you have to go into people’s yards to their front door bypassing scary residents and pets along the way.

I love getting mail now. And just for the record, my current mailman doesn’t bring me packets of sweets or anything in unmarked paper bags either.

He brings me something way better.

Competition wins.

While googling a couple of months ago I happened to come across a competition site (yes Lisleman that is just one of the reasons why I'm a slack blogger). You register on the site. It gives you links to all the competitions available online and you enter. Easy.

I just entered a few of them and left it at that.

About six weeks later the mailman delivered a box set of Sex and the City. My first competition win.

So I entered some more.

Then the mailman delivered jewellery, makeup, a huge amount of perfume, movie tickets, books and so on.

I now take about ten minutes a week and enter some competitions. You don’t even have to buy a postage stamp because the competitions are all entered online and take moments.

I love the 25 words or less competitions. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Even I was amazed that I could write so few words. Someone has to win it, right?

Anyway, it’s seriously worth checking out. I use an Australian site which wouldn’t suit most of you but I am sure if you Google competitions sites you might get to fancy your postman as much as I do.

For me, there's still something about the postman delivering an unexpected package that gives me goosebumps.....now can you see why I hang around my mailbox waiting for the postman?

So how does the Postman deliver your mail? Mailbox, front door, post office...

Dear Readers Digest

You singled me out and tracked me down

And you’ve been harassing me ever since

With all your fancy, schmancy "LOOK AT ME" mail

Today you wrote to tell me that $10 million is on its way

Oh yeah, S-U-R-E it is RD, I can hardly wait

Except you're so, sooooooooo transparent

Telling me I'm special, a WINNER in your eyes

Taunting me to peel back the layers

Of your latest marketing must-have gem

Promising me this and that and so much more

BUT, and there's always a but where you're concerned

We both know where this is heading, right?

I've met your type plenty of times

While you’re whispering sweet nothings to me

You're promising countless others the exact same thing

So many promises, surrounded by so much small print

Resulting in so many bitter disappointments

So how about we call it for what it really is

You're a manipulative, deceitful stalker

Made worse because you hide behind that thin cloak of respectability.

So RD, now that you know

that I know what you are

and what kind of game you're playing

Why won’t you take NO for an answer and get the hell out of my mail box and leave me alone?

I'm begging you

Lilly

"I'm going to close my eyes and....

count to ten and if you're not out of here by then I'm going to rip you to shreds".

That's what he was thinking right?

Personally, I wasn't taking any chances.

I backed away quietly.

I'm crossing the South African Safari off this years' possible holiday destinations.

BLACK IS OVERDONE...CLEARLY

I love black, in anything. Well nearly everything.

There is one exception. I gave up owning black luggage the night I stood in front of the baggage carousel at JFK airport for what seemed like an eternity trying to work out which of the 345 pieces of black luggage swirling round and round was mine.

So, given this overabundance of black in our world, and my problems distinguishing between it, you might have assumed that I would have thought twice about buying a black car.

Apparently not.

Yesterday I stood outside my car in a busy shopping centre trying to unlock it. Much to my surprise it wouldn’t open. The reason for this was soon cleared up when a guy walked up behind me and said, “Excuse me but that’s not your car. I think yours might be a couple of cars that way”. He sighed audibly as he pointed to my black car in the same row.

Oh, ah..thanks...and yes it was doubly embarrassing when I realised the cars were not even the same make or model.

So it looks like black cars might be like black luggage where I am concerned. Impossible for me to distinguish between them. I might have to stick a coloured ribbon on my car or paint a stripe down its side for ease of reference in future. But not likely. Did I tell you I love my black car?

AUSSIE WHO HAS EVERYONE'S ATTENTION

It seems like the only "Aussie" being talked about everywhere is custody-battled Mel Gibson, currently being bagged by even Arnold Schwarzenegger. As an Aussie, I just want to point out that Mel was born in the US to American parents and came here when he was 11 and went back to live some 10 years later. He has always been a little unusual has Mad Max err... Mel. Accusations, from physical abuse to death threats, come from Gibson's former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. Meanwhile Gibson claims, between vile rants, that he's being extorted. If so, he has clearly been misled by his heart or some other organ. But, rather than mock, let's learn from his mistakes by remembering my grandmother's advice which dammit I never followed either: "Never have a child with someone till you've had gastro together," and "You'll never really know someone till you're leaving them."

FOOLS GOLD

Botox shmotox. In further evidence Sydney's rich folk have truly lost their marbles, a beauty salon in Paddington is offering ''gold facials''. Quoi? According to the beauty therapist, sheets of pure 24-carat gold leaf are applied to the face, which results in ''glowing, radiant skin'' after a series of high-tech procedures worthy of a Stealth bomber are applied, including something called the ''ultrasonic nano mist spray'', which produces ''negative irons'' to make the gold ''dissolve'' into the skin. The treatment takes 60 minutes and costs $550.

WHOSE ASS?

I took a drive this morning to a nearby country town called Yass. For some reason I’ve never noticed this sign before but are you seeing what I saw? Dear me..



Have a great week everyone. I will be spending it learning by new number plate by rote amongst other things!