A New Home in the Sky - Saucy Goings-On

The sky, as viewed from our 7th Floor eyrie, is what hack novelists might describe as ‘slate-grey’ or ‘leaden’ – an almost uniform shade of dullness with no break in the cloud-cover anywhere. It could be November. The rain is coming down in stair-rods. Spare Change Guy, who normally sits at the bottom of the steps to the underpass has had to move to higher ground or be drowned (one solution to the problem of begging, I suppose)

IL4-hitman Terry has been very quiet today, engrossed as he is in the proposed new International Linear Collider (Large Hadron Colliders are so yesterday, it seems).

JH, a female colleague from another team, wanders in with an envelope.

“Look at this,” she says, proffering the white rectangle. “I got this in the post this morning. It’s dead weird.”  I see nothing particularly weird about receiving an envelope - a device whose very purpose it is to convey mail messages - through one's letterbox, but wisely refrain from commenting.

I look at it. It’s an unremarkable white envelope which is neatly addressed and has what appears to be the correct postage on it. I turn it over, see nothing amiss, and look inquiringly at her.

“No,” she says, “Open it.”

I hadn’t wanted to do this uninvited as it was personally addressed to her and the gummy bit on the flap had resealed it, making it appear unopened. Anyway…

Inside are two items:

• An individual sachet of tomato sauce
• A blank compliment slip from a caravan site in Wales.

No other note, no writing on the slip, no explanation.

Apparently JH did visit this campsite many years ago, but is that any reason for them to be sending random condiments through the post?

Is it some kind of promotional? (remember how lovely our sauce sachets were?)

It is some kind of very oblique threat? (remember how awful our sauce sachets were?)

Why on earth would somebody spend money posting sauce sachets to people?

The world is a most mystifying place at times.

And still the rain continues.