I was talking to a friend of mine about post office. It's a small cosmic dimension (in central London, anyway) in its own right.
People behind the counter and in the queue are a mix of sex, race, religion, personalities, and all sorts of background. He saw someone, after being told how much her parcel costs, trying repeatedly to find out if there's any cheaper 'deal'. There was apparently a long queue at the time, and he said he offered this person to pay £5 (the quoted amount) himself and asked her to just go.
He also said he once encountered an old lady with Tourette Syndrome. Again, there was a long queue then and he saw that this lady was somehow seated on a chair beside the queue for a long time. He kindly asked this lady if she would like to go to the counter before him. She then apparently said, "I am 95 * years old and I have one * leg in the * grave. If you have * time to * help someone, you should * take my * parcel and go to the * counter!" Impressive! (I used to know someone who used swear words instead of 'a' or 'the'.)
There are always people who would start fumbling around their purse when it gets to the point where they have to pay, as if they didn't know they had to pay. Then there are endless people whose business in the post office isn't to post something but to pay TV licence, to change money into a different currency, to fill in forms for driving licence and passports, and to claim all sort of benefits. Most of them haven't filled in their forms correctly and the rest of the people in the queue have to wait even longer.
Post office should just limit their jobs to handle posts. Then we can be a lot calmer there....
This is a delicious and easy adaptation of Nigel Slater's recipe. Any leftovers can be reheated the next day.
Ingredients (for 2 people):
(for chicken)
4 large chicken thighs, with bones in and skins on
1 lemon
1 tablespoon of honey
1 tablespoon of grainy mustard
2 garlic cloves, grated
(garnish to top it all up)
3 preserved lemons, the flesh discarded and the zest shredded
handful of green olives, chopped small
handful of parsley, chopped small
Preheat oven to 200C.
Mix everything in the chicken section and marinate for one hour (if you can, and 30 minutes if you can't). Lay them all out on a roasting tray, sprinkle with salt and good grind of black pepper, and bake for about 40 minutes.
Mix everything in the garnish section and sprinkle them on top of the chicken pieces before you eat.
That's it!!