THE Post Office is living up to its reputation for making life as difficult as possible for customers visiting its main sorting office in Darlington.

After preventing the public from using the car park, it generously provided four spaces (including one disabled space) outside its fortifications.

When Spectator called to collect a parcel on Saturday, chaos reigned as customers queued to get parked while others abandoned their vehicles on the yellow hatched area and double yellow lines which act as a further deterrent in the surrounding area.

Spectator seems to recall the Post Office banned the public from its own car park partly on safety grounds.

Witnessing the chaos on Saturday – with post office vehicles weaving their way through the waiting or abandoned vehicles – that excuse is laughable.

Callers could, of course, use the council’s neighbouring long stay car park ... if they don’t mind paying the £4 charge.

In glass houses

At Richmond Station last week, Ffion Hague had an interesting theory why the notorious philandering Prime Minister David Lloyd George was never exposed by the Press.

Mrs Hague was guest speaker at the first D&S/Castle Hill Bookshop/Station literary event, talking most entertainingly about her biography chronicling Lloyd George’s complicated relationships with the women in his life – particularly his wife, his mistress and eldest daughter.

The book – The Pain and the Privilege – the women in Lloyd George’s life – was published last year and is now available in paperback While acknowledging that the Press was generally more respectful of authority in those days, she thought a major factor in the Fourth Estate’s coyness about the matter was the habit of nearly all the Press barons of the time to have mistresses too. Basically, they were as bad if not worse than the fabled “Welsh goat”.

A case of those living in glass houses not throwing stones.

Last week’s event was a great success and it is hoped will be the blueprint for future literary events raising money for the Station.