In Which Parcels are given their Due

Today, in the mail, I got a parcel. Not even just a mailed package of some uninspiring kind (honestly, I can’t even think of anything to put after the “like, for instance, a...” which I’d just typed. Is there anything boring to get in the mail?) but a full-on gift, mailed with a card. How awesome is that?*

There’s something fantastic about being mailed things. Letters are interesting and exciting (when they’re actual letters, rather than confirmation of enrolment forms, or bills, or Thai menus) but parcels are the both the brilliant excitements of gifts and mail combined into some kind of ultraexciting superobject. (Usually. There are exceptions to all rules in life, and friends deciding to mail me, say, half a mouse, in hilarious response to this post will be dealt with with unwonted sternness).

I don’t know what it is about the parcel process which makes things so fantastic. It could be the surprise (and certainly expected parcels are less exciting, but they’re still pretty damn fantastic), or the extra effort (thus, when I was mailed the brass plaque of my degree, I was not as excited by it as I would’ve been by something sent by a friend), or it could be that someone-was-thinking-of-me-when-I-wasn’t-there flatteringness (and this is a concept which I find unduly intriguing). I think in all probability that it’s a combination of this last point and the all-encompassing mystery of it. You don’t have any idea what will be in it (or if you do, you’ve been waiting for whatever it was in suspense), you often have no idea who it’s from (although a return address is always a good idea, nay a necessity, in a parcel, an expert in receiving parcels knows not to look straight away), and you have no idea what prompted whomever it was to post whatever it is to you.

Man, the more I think about it, the more I wish I got more of these things. Seriously, the more you think about them, the better they are.

Today’s parcel was a delayed birthday present from Hellena, a beautiful little wallet thing which she bought for me in Hong Kong (I think?). The previous one (a few months ago) had an “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” (which is so great, you guys) DVD and some parfait spoons, from Sylvia as a moving out present. (This gift was sort of meta-brilliant, combining as it did a replacement for the DVD she’s taken with her on moving moved out, - of the first and best season of a show so brilliant that it has entered the lexicon of my entire friend-core - and spoons of a variety which is also unarticulatably awesome. Parfait spoons are like tea spoons but with very long handles, for eating icecream and milkshakes and such (and getting the last St Dalfour’s marmalade out of the jar). It’s hard to quantify what it is that’s so great about them, but I do find them awfully appealing.) Before that, Georgia mailed me a surprise Christmas gift of a soap which looked and smelled like a giant licorice allsort, which was really really nice.

Once, long ago, when my Charming Cousin Alexander was far away on his navy ship (not boat), and had mentioned that he missed chocolate, I mailed him a parcel of every available type of Cadbury chocolate and extra plain Dairy Milk, about 40cm x 20cmx 10cm, which was thrillingly successful. Apparently this sort of gift rapidly makes you the most popular Midshipman aboard, and apart from that, it was heaps of fun to mail, knowing that the receiver would have no idea what was in it until he opened it.

Now I think about it, I don;t know why it should surprise and please me so much to think that the people I’m friends with think about me with fondness when I’m not there. I think fondly about friends all the time, often in their absence, and often see things and think “Ooh, Catie would love that, I should get this!” (usually just before checking my account balance and going “oh” in a small, sad sort of voice). So why should it be surprising when others do so? The more I think about it, the more I realise that I find it hard to really believe that people are thinking of me in my absence. This doesn’t bother me, it just means that I’m always startled when people say “we were talking about you the other day, and...” which is weird given how much time I spend talking about people. For someone who writes such a consistently self-absorbed and introspective blog, I sure do seem to have been standing behind the door when they were handing out the insight.

Ooh, I was about to go off on a tangent here about this point, but I note that this post is now 2 pages long, so I guess I’d better sign out before I fill everyone’s Google Reader up (or however it is that that thing works) but rest assured, dear Reader; you haven’t heard the last from me.

*NB: when I write "How awesome is that?" I want you to read it, not as a sincere question ("What is the exact degree of awesomeness pertaining to this object or event?") but in the excitable tone in which one would say "..and he's got a pilot's license, imagine that!" if one were Vince in the Mighty Boosh.