S.P.A.R.

Yesterday I ventured into Yate on what should have been a quick, civilised errand: buy a few stamps, then return home feeling faintly smug about being ahead of the Christmas curve. Instead, I found myself in a car park so rammed it might as well have been hosting a Taylor Swift concert. On a Monday. Two weeks before Christmas. One begins to suspect that either every pensioner within a ten mile radius has synchronised their watches, or an impressive number of supposedly employed people have taken a very elastic view of Monday’s obligations.

We are forever told that Britain is a nation of grafters, straining every sinew to keep the economy afloat. If so, they certainly were not at work yesterday. They were circling Yate in hatchbacks, seeking parking bays last occupied during the reign of Harold Wilson. Someone at the ONS really should add a productivity metric: hours lost to orbiting car parks like confused starlings. National output would suddenly make far more sense.

After three laps of purgatory I finally spotted a space and waited politely, indicator blinking, only for a woman to dart into it from the other side with all the finesse of a Viking raider. A brief altercation followed, delivered with tight smiles and clipped vowels, the classic British method of conveying that violence is improbable but remains conceptually available. I did eventually secure another space, though the experience had aged me noticeably.

Then came the Post Office. The queue stretched out of the door like the fall of Saigon, minus the helicopters but with a comparable amount of personal baggage. Dozens clutching parcels, padded envelopes, mystery tubes, and one chap carrying something that might have been a gazebo or possibly an ultralight aircraft. I took one look, performed the swiftest strategic reassessment since Trafalgar, and withdrew.

Chipping Sodbury beckoned. There, blessedly, I acquired my stamps from the S P A R which, when written in spaced capitals, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Roman SPQR. Entirely appropriate, given that on the A46 we have Roman Camp itself, a reminder that legionaries once trod these parts with rather more discipline than the average Yate shopper. One imagines them popping into S P A R for provisions, nodding solemnly at its newly minted Latin motto: Stipendia Poste Anglorum Ridicula. The price of English postage is ridiculous. Quite.

The pricing indeed provided the day’s final shock. I am not saying I needed a mortgage, but I did mentally review my credit rating before approaching the counter. For the cost of a modest handful of second class stamps, I could apparently begin a small alpaca breeding programme.

And it does make one wonder whether this brief couple of centuries of sending Christmas cards is approaching its twilight. The Victorians embraced the custom with gusto, but even they might have balked at stamp prices that require the fiscal stamina of a Roman treasury.

Still, this year is not about abandoning the ritual. It is about embellishing it with a touch of seasonal absurdity. Cards announcing the non sending of cards. A Christmas paradox for those who enjoy such things. Entirely in keeping with a modern British Christmas, where chaos is tradition and logic takes a short sabbatical.

So I returned home yesterday with my stamps, my solvency slightly dented, and a renewed respect for medieval monks who managed entire correspondence systems without once having to queue behind someone returning a wrongly flavoured vape.

If that is not the true spirit of British Christmas, then nothing is.