Palm Sunday: Matters Temporal

Well, I can only scratch my chin and grimace at last night's display of bad temper and language, ditto.

Teaching this morning, and prepping. I've got an interestingly difficult but mercifully small class. During the course of the morning I was able to mull over what one of the other teachers told me about getting a post office box: he'd been to the rather grand post office in Algeria Square and learned that a medium sized box cost 70 LD for two years. What you need is your passport and a letter from your employer. I was going to go to management and suggest that they pay for a large box for all of us, and then I thought, one person will have the key and responsibility and the whole thing might get fractious. And management will take weeks to sort it and make up their minds about it.

So I went to the Temporary Admin Block at the college and the charming woman there divined straightaway what I was after, typed a letter, put some kind of stamp on it, went away and got the big cheese to sign it. Bingo. She also told me that what I'd called Algeria Square is better described in Arabic as Meydan Aljeezair. One of my students gave some more help by advising that I go instead to the Post Office HQ. He wrote out the address for me and then telelphoned his cousin, who works there, to smooth my path.

This means I can get cards and letters from home. And parcels. Seeds, for example. Books! CDs. I will go straight from work with the letter and what have you tomorrow and get it sorted. I've never had a post office box before and I'm absurdly happy about the idea. It's a bit like taking a short lease on my own wee bit of Libya.

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