Well now. That was something of a palaver. As you are probably aware, Freyja is in the sunny United States at the moment, apparently watching bears through the motel window. She has with her a Post Office travel money card which works in US dollars. She decided that she wanted to top the card up and electronically transferred some money into my account so I could put it onto her travel account.

You might think that it would have been just as easy to transfer it directly to her travel card. But no. You can’t do it electronically, for some reason.

So, wishing to support our local branch Post Office, I went in there one morning during the week when I was starting work later than my usual 08:00. Nope. Can’t do it there. The branch is too small to sell the cards so doesn’t have the set up for topping them up and they can’t do it electronically either.

Ok. No worries. I’ll do it over the phone when I get to the office. No. Can’t do that either because not only am I not Freyja, but I also don’t have the card, which is on its holidays in America. It can only be done by phone if it is the card holder speaking, or if the card is present.

The only option is to go to a large Post Office. Try the one on Norfolk Row, suggested the helpful man on the phone. They can do it for you. Except that they can’t, because that Post Office was closed about 6 months ago. The only choice I had was to go to the one in that huge, cavernous, empty wasteland in a disused part of the Co-op on Angel Street where someone decided to plonk a Post Office service some while ago. It still doesn’t seem to sell any of the things that normal post offices sell like brown paper and envelopes. But at least it was possible to top up Freyja’s account.

I can fully understand the wish to avoid fraud. But for goodness sake – who is going to put money fraudulently ONTO a card?!?!?!?!?! And *why* can’t the card be topped up electronically? Surely they realise that people are going to take travel cards TRAVELLING and will want to top their accounts up. Sigh.

We drove through Nether Green while Lindsey and Ian were here. I hadn’t had any reason to go to Nether Green for ages before that. I was unsurprised that some of the shops had changed. But I was really quite shocked to find that the Post Office had gone. I can’t tell you why. I am fully aware that there has been an ongoing process of closing Post Offices for some time. But that had always been a busy little Post Office. And I can’t think of another one round about. Unless, of course, one has opened up in Ranmoor. We didn’t go to the Ranmoor shops to investigate.

It looks very much as though The Builder will only have another week or two of work in Handsworth. The project is pretty much finished and they haven’t got anything else to do up there. They have been having redundancy interviews and all the agency staff have been laid off already. The Builder tells me that they are running out of things to do. He is beginning to think about bringing some of his tools home.

I don’t know what he’ll do when the job actually finishes. He hadn’t been intending to retire quite yet. I am hopeful that he might spend a few weeks digging and sorting out the allotment and the wilder parts of the garden. And then, I suspect, he’ll probably trundle out to look for something more remunerative to do, if only because the Handsworth money was our boozing and cruising dosh. But mainly because I think he’ll get terminally bored sat at home alone all day. And I emphatically can’t afford to retire just yet!

The Japanese class did go ahead. In fact, the class is pretty much full. Freyja will be coming too, when she gets back from chasing bears. It’s an interesting bunch of people. There are 3 lads from a computing company who are into computer games and know the Japanese words that turn up on Play stations and Nintendos. There is another group of people in their late 20s or early 30s who clearly know each other. There’s a teenage boy and his dad. And the usual mixture of middle aged and amiable oldies who are there just to learn a bit of conversational Japanese. It was quite fun. I am looking forward to being able to have (very limited!) conversations with Rupert in the office. (Rupert has been learning Japanese through the University language school. I could have done that too, but I can’t be fussed with the assignments and learning outcomes and things)