Basil and Sybil are alive ...

(Above: the old Fitzroy post office. The pond doesn't dare show you the building inhabited by the new post office, but you can find it on the full to overflowing intertubes).


The pond is always alert to the heartbeat of the nation, and a kindly correspondent recently advised it that Basil and Sybil were alive and well, and now running the North Fitzroy post office.

The pond once lived around the corner from Scotchmer street in North Fitzroy, and came away with a wondrous sense of the madness of eccentric inner city Melburnians.

Unfortunately the man responsible for the Hoddle Street massacre decided to run down the lane next to the pond's rat-infested dwelling, but that's another, much sicker story.

Back to the sitcom, and there are reviews aplenty to confirm the eccentric spirit lives on.

Here they are on Google.

And here's another set of moans ...

Basil and Sybil is so close. One day (I must have been in the queue at least 40 minutes) the ‘husband’ was so devastated, after a very loud and withering verbal attack by Sybil, that he grabbed hold of the counter and couldn’t move for about 5 minutes. I thought: ‘he will either cry or die’. She then realised he had been right (about EFTPOST ) all along and asked him to help her fix it. Basil’s glee was then so OTT I though he might pass out $50 notes to his patient and long-suffering customers.

The pond, like the inspirational Bjorn Lomborg, always looks for the glass half full.

What future vision do we have for Australia? Why surely it must continue to be a land of laughs:

I love this place. 
I never come home without a cracking story to tell. Last time, they wouldn't give me my parcel because I didn't have the wet piece of cardboard they threw over my front fence informing me that I had a parcel! My ten pieces of photo ID just didn't cut it! Anyway, eventually they relented but do you think they could find my parcel in that homeless shelter they call a Post Office? She was literally kicking down the small city of crap they've built there behind the counter. Eventually they found it, all screwed up and damaged. Just last week she screamed at my missus for getting too many parcels. Comedy gold, I'm telling you. 
Get in there before Australia Post wakes up and kicks them out. It really is too good to miss!

Yes, each day offers a fresh opportunity for comedy gold:

Every visit to North Fitzroy Post Office offers golden opportunity to the would-be writer of a short film or comedy sketch. The Chinese couple that run it have been described as the Basil and Sybil Fawlty of Post Offices, and I think this is accurate! Mountains of poor customer feedback has done nothing to change the way this couple run their business, which is so outrageously unprofessional and uncompassionate to the customer that you can pretty much be assured that at least one person in the line in front of you will storm out in frustration, every time you visit! 
I wish I had the guts to take a video camera in there...!

That's the spirit. By golly, the pond might just take in the North Fitzroy post office this Xmas, instead of just cruising up and down Smith and Brunswick streets and remembering the weird old days ...

Now the only question remaining is why the ABC has missed out on this opportunity.

The very best community spirit arises from trials of this kind. 

Why the pond remembers as if it was only yesterday arguing with a postal contractor that he should actually leave the case of wine with the pond, since it was right there in the van, right outside the home, all but delivered, sitting in a tantalising way just out of reach, visible but as untouchable as a member of an Indian caste system ...

It was impossible, you see, because the contractor had entered into the system that no one was home, the pond had wasted disgraceful, inefficient seconds reaching the front door, and it simply couldn't be delivered, the system and the hand gadget said so, and these were gods that must be obeyed, and their minds couldn't be changed, not now, not ever, and so the parcel had to be picked up at a post office miles from the pond's usual post office, and actual home, because that's the way the contractor did his deliveries and his 'not at homes' ...

It was an immensely satisfying encounter, and the anecdote has routinely been trotted out at the drop of a hat to bore unsuspecting listeners in the vicinity.

It also makes a great change from watching politicians fuck over the country, and Bjorn Lomborg blathering on about the vision thing ...