The other day I sent an umbrella to Hong Kong.. There is an umbrella repair man there who can fix it.. I wrapped it with a brown paperbag they had put my bread in at the cafe where I buy bread, but it wasn’t quite big enough so I had to use some shiny brown sellotape at the ends. My package looked like a stubby cardboard baguette. I was worried they might not accept it at the post office because it wasn’t properly wrapped, but they happily took my £12. That evening on the News I heard that packages abroad were being greatly delayed because of what they called a cyber-issue. To illustrate the news story they had some footage of a package in a tub. It was my umbrella pakage sitting there on the BBC Ten o’clock News, sitting forlornly though unmistakably in the square bucket in a post office which must have been my local post office. It was clearly my package with its brown paper and shiny brown tips. I should be pleased that it has undergone the transformation from inadequate package to archetypal package, but it still won’t be getting to its destination any time soon.

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