impotance and frustration

i ring up 'special mail services' to see what's happened to the passport i sent off for renewal last month. i give them my name, my adress, and my reference number. "right," says the bright young lady handling my call, "how can i help you?" i thought it should be pretty obvious, given she's now got my account right in front of her face, but apparently i have to tell her that i've not received my passport. so it turns out they tried to deliver it twice last month. did they ring the door bell? no. they claim the address was insufficient, an attempt to make it sound like i fucked up, not them. given the volume of mail that comes through the usual route, i guess the 'special' in their name must refer to the mail they handle and not their bungling service itself.

they then returned it to the passport office without telling anyone - not me, not the passport office, who tried to fob me off with 'well, once it's left our office their's nothing we can do'. i told them it was in their office. they called me back a couple of hours later when they'd found it and asked if i could give a clearer address; "where in manchester is liverpool road?" she says. just fucking google it dot com. what is this, 2005? so hopefully i'll have it by the end of the week, three weeks late.

and for some reason, as you can probably tell, this ordeal realy irked me. i couldn't sleep, i was furious. normally i can deal with this kind of beaurucratic shit. i don't know what it was. maybe because i'm waiting to book flights upon receipt of the passport, which are becoming more expensive every day. maybe it's my general situation; i feel so 'trapped in my flat', like i've just realised 'what i thought were friendly pats on the back, were really the hands that drove me deeper down'. and then, remembering my mind hacks book, i realised it could be something completely inconsequential and irrelevant that sparked off the whole episode. or maybe i'd had too much caffeine that day. it was very reassuring to think how rediculous feeling anything at all is. but i still couln't sleep.

and then, despite waking up with the alarm, i was later for work today than i was yesterday when i slept through it.