Bidston Observatory - A Call to Arms

The plot thickens.

Bidston Observatory - Heritage For Sale

Bidston Observatory is for sale, again.

Migrating

I have set up a new website for Bidston Lighthouse. In future, I'll be mostly posting to the news section there, instead of here.

Thanks for following!

- Lightkeep

Creating New Horizons

4 Lighthouse Cottages, Bidston Hill is to be demolished.

Not many people know that 4 Lighthouse Cottages, Bidston Hill, CH43 7RA, is actually the postal address of the Joseph Proudman Building.

The Joseph Proudman Building was built during the 1970s on land which used to be the kitchen gardens of the Lighthouse Cottages. It was officially opened on 18 April 1979, and named after Joseph Proudman (30 Dec 1888 – 26 Jun 1975), CBE, FRS, Honorary Director of the University of Liverpool Tidal Institute. Joseph Proudman also gave his name to the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), the research institute which occupied Bidston Observatory, the Joseph Proudman Building and part of the Lighthouse until its relocation to the University of Liverpool in 2004. POL is now part of the National Oceanography Centre.

Few will be disappointed to see the Joseph Proudman Building disappear from the Wirral skyline. Amongst those few are fans of cold-war architecture and the vocal Bidston Preservation Trust, who mounted a campaign to save the building and use it as a Taiko drumming school. They bought a few months for their campaign by applying to English Heritage to have the building Grade II listed. Wirral Borough Council, who own the freehold of the Proudman site, were forced to postpone their decision on whether to consent to the demolition until after English Heritage had considered the matter. To cut a long story short, English Heritage rejected the application at the initial assessment stage, the Council finally gave its consent, and the live-in guardians who have kept the Proudman Building secure for the last seven years have been given notice to quit.

The demolition works are scheduled to start on Monday 26th November 2012, and are expected to take 10-12 weeks.The contractor undertaking the demolition is Hunter Demolition. Their tag line is "creating new horizons".

If all goes to plan, you will be able to follow the action on the web at wirralcam.org. A webcam mounted on the east face of the lighthouse will give a panoramic view of the proceedings. At the beginning, you will see the Joseph Proudman Building. At the end, you will see the iconic Liver Buildings in the distance. Creating new horizons indeed!

Halloween, Ghosts and Mulled Wine

Last night, there was a Halloween Ghost Walk on Bidston Hill. About 60 people assembled at Tam O'Shanter Urban Farm and proceeded along the hill, lit by a waxing gibbous moon two nights off full. Ghost stories were told along the way.  The evening was cold and dry.

Meanwhile back at the Lighthouse, Mandy had baked two carrot cakes, a Dorset apple cake, and a batch of Anzac biscuits, and was preparing hot chocolate. I'd lit a fire and had a big pot of mulled wine simmering. When the party arrived, Mandy served hot chocolate, I served mulled wine, and the walkers helped themselves to cake and warmed themselves by the fire.

Thanks to ranger Nic Harding for organising the event and acting as guide, to the Friends of Bidston Hill for providing story tellers and marshalls, and to Tom Slemen for letting the tellers adapt his stories. The proceeds from the event will go to the Friends of Bidston Hill.

Stephen's Mulled Wine Recipe

Several people asked for the mulled wine recipe. I made it up as I went, but it was something like this:

Ingredients: 

• 5 bottles of red wine. I used Tesco's French red wine at £3.59 a bottle. Any decent, cheap claret will do.
• About a pint of orange juice, no bits (they spoil the texture).
• 2-3 sachets of mulled wine spices. I used a couple of different brands, but Schwarz's are fine.
• 1 apple, sliced.
• 1 orange, peeled and studded with cloves.
• 1 large cinnamon stick.
• 1 handful of green cardamom pods.
• Ground cinnamon, maybe a teaspoon or two.
• Ground ginger (optional), a teaspoon or two.
• A little brandy.
• About a pint of tap water.
• 1 small tin of golden syrup.
• A tablespoon or two of soft brown sugar.

Serves about thirty.

Method:

Put the spice sachets, cinnamon stick, slices of apple, and the clove-studded orange into the pan. Pour in 3-4 bottles of wine, most of the orange juice, and a little water. Heat the pan until the mixture begins to steam, then keep the temperature steady. Its OK to let it simmer a little, but don't let it boil. While the mixture is heating, add the golden syrup and a tablespoon of brown sugar, sprinkle a little ground cinnamon and maybe ginger on top (not too much), and throw in the cardamom pods. Stirr gently. Splash some brandy into the pan about 10 minutes before serving.

The longer the spices and fruits have to blend, the better. I started about an hour before serving.

I had to serve outside, so I transferred the pan to a gas barbeque to keep it on heat while serving. My pan wasn't big enough to hold all the wine, so I had to add more wine, orange juice, and maybe a little brown sugar after every ten servings or so.  Do this little by little, so that the temperature doesn't drop too fast. You rarely need to add more spices. I served using a ladel into plastic cups (Tesco value cups, doubled up for insulation, are quite economical). If you have more time, you could strain and decant before serving.

The recipe is very tolerant of variations of quantity. Let your own taste be the judge. Other spices such as nutmeg and ginger work well too. Probably the most unusual aspects of my recipe are the cardamom pods, and the use of golden syrup instead of sugar, but I do think these work well. If you can arrange that your guests are cold, they'll appreciate it all the more!

Where's Fred?

Fred came to Bidston recently. I met him during the filming of this!

The view from the top

Back in March, we let Merseyside Police shoot a promotional video from the top of Bidston Lighthouse. Here it is.

Behind Roy McGregor is the Wirral coastline. In the distance, you can just make out the Great Orme, in North Wales.

She said "yes"!

Yesterday, Paul Shawcross proposed to Britta in the lamp room of Bidston Lighthouse. And Britta said "yes".

Britta is a lighthouse fanatic and Paul is a true romantic. He's been planning this for months!

Our warmest congratulations to Paul and Britta on their engagement.

What's in a name?

As I mentioned back in "The Case of the Missing Letterbox", we live on an unnamed road. It's a narrow lane that runs up the hill from Boundary Road to the Lighthouse and Observatory on Bidston Hill.

But we can change that! As long as all the residents and owners agree on the new name, and we pay for the road signs, we can give our road a name. So, what should we call it?

We could name the road after one of the historic buildings to which it leads.

There's been a lighthouse on the site since the 1771, when the first Bidston Lighthouse was built, further from the sea than any other lighthouse in Britain. This was after the Lower Sea Light at Mockbeggar Wharf had been destroyed by storms. The Upper Sea Light (the present Leasowe Lighthouse) became the Lower  Sea Light, and Bidston Lighthouse became the Upper Sea Light. It featured a massive parabolic reflector, 13'6" in diameter, developed on-site by William Hutchinson, which enabled the light to be seen at a distance of 21 miles. The present Bidston Lighthouse was built by Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in 1873, after the original lighthouse was damaged by fire and demolished. Lighthouse Lane might be a good name for our road.

The Observatory was built in 1866, when the Liverpool Observatory relocated to Bidston Hill from what is now Waterloo Dock. It's had many uses over the years, including chronometer calibration, tide prediction, meterological observations, signalling the firing of the One O'Clock Gun at Morpeth Dock, and offices for oceanographic research. The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory was based here until 2004, when it relocated to the University of Liverpool. But it would be confusing to name the road after the Observatory, because there's already an Observatory Road nearby.

Braehead Cottage used to sell teas. It was located outside the boundary wall that surrounds the Observatory and Lighthouse, near to the old coach house. It fell into disrepair after the war, and was demolished.

The Bidston Signals were once a prominent feature along the skyline of Bidston Hill. More than 100 flagpoles along the ridge of Bidston Hill signalled the approach of ships into Liverpool, allowing the merchants time to ready their crews for unloading. The signals service was augmented by a semaphore based telegraph system that connected Anglesey to Liverpool. The original Signals Station predated the first lighthouse. In 1873, the signals function was incorporated into the new lighthouse. Signals Road? Semaphore Lane? Too obscure, perhaps?

Or we could name the road after a historical person.

Richard Wilding was the first lighthouse keeper of Bidston Lighthouse, having served previously at Leasowe. When he died in 1797, his wife, Elizabeth took over as keeper, and served until 1800. Elizabeth Wilding was Liverpool's first female lighthouse keeper. She got the job on the strict condition that "she shall continue to behave properly ... and shall not attempt to employ or use the said Building called the Bidston Lighthouse or any of its Appendages as a Publick House". Wilding Way has a certain ring to it.

Dr. Arthur Thomas Doodson (31 Mar 1890 - 10 Jan 1968) was a British oceanographer. He was Associate Director of the Liverpool Observatory and Tidal Institute when it formed in 1929. He is perhaps best known for the Doodson-Légé Tide Predicting Machine, the mechanical computer that was used to predict the tides for the D-Day landings. He lived and worked for a time at Bidston Observatory, and is buried in Flaybrick Cemetery. Mary Connell remembers him fondly. At Christmas he gave presents to the two Connell girls who lived in the Lighthouse Cottages, saying "here's two-and-six for you and half-a-crown for you". Mary was convinced that she was somehow missing out.  Doodson Drive or Doodson Lane might be good names for our road.

Joseph Proudman (30 Dec 1888 – 26 Jun 1975), CBE, FRS, was Honorary Director of the University of Liverpool Tidal Institute. The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory and the Joseph Proudman Building were named after him. At the moment, there is some controversy about the future of the Joseph Proudman Building. A vocal few want it turned into a drumming school and Grade-II listed. We think it is an eyesore and should be demolished.  But while this is going on, there's no way we'll name our road after Joseph Proudman.

What do you think we should call our road?

Make your suggestion by commenting on this post.

Or click here to take the survey!

Jubilee

Thanks to the efforts of the fearless Dave Parsons, one of only two Flagpole Engineers in the country, the flagpole atop Bidston Lighthouse is back in service.

Yesterday, I hoisted the Union Flag to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

No beacons were lit on Bidston Hill this Jubilee. But a few of us did gather on top of the Lighthouse to watch the lighting of beacons across the region. We saw beacons as far afield as Mount Snowdon and Scafell!

If you go down to the woods today...

On Saturday afternoon, the body of a teenage girl was found in the woods on Bidston Hill. Police have cordoned off a large area of the hill, including parts of the woods between Penny-a-day Dyke and Eleanor Road, the Witches' Steps, and the nearby Observatory, Lighthouse, and Joseph Proudman Building. Here's a bird's eye view of the police presence by the Observatory and Lighthouse.

The news is still breaking in the press. You can find a little information, some dis-information and much speculation there.

Contrary to press reports, the Observatory is not abandoned. The Observatory and the Joseph Proudman Building are occupied by live-in guardians, an arrangement which is working well. The Lighthouse and Cottages are occupied by their owners.

As the investigation is still on-going, I shall refrain from saying any more for the moment.

Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased.

Beacons on Bidston Hill

I recently acquired an old wages bill from 1805, which begins:

“Account of wages of three Men employed in the charge of taking care of the Alarm Beacon at Bidston Lighthouse in the County of Chester from the 1^st to the 31^st of May 1805, boath days Inclusive.”

The three men were William Urmson, Richard Urmson & William Corfe. They were paid 2 shillings per day each, and shared a fuel allowance of 9 pence per day. The bill was signed by John Oky Lt. at the Signal Station, and approved by William Frederick Lt. Gen.

I assumed at first that this was just the normal wages of the lighthouse keepers on Bidston Hill. But why did the bill talk about the Alarm Beacon? The lamp in Bidston Lighthouse might well be called a beacon, but its purpose, when lined up with Leasowe Lighthouse, was to light a safe passage through the channels of Liverpool Bay, not to warn off approaching shipping. And why were the men being paid through the army? Was this another kind of beacon altogether?

I already knew that William Urmson was the keeper of Bidston Lighthouse from 1797 until 1835. The Corfe family have long been associated with farming on Bidston Hill. It turns out that William Frederick, who then had the rank of Lieutenant General in the Army, was none other than the great-grandson of King George II, soon to inherit the duchies of Gloucester and Edinburgh, and later to be known as “Silly Billy”.

In May 1805, Britain was at war with Napoleon, George III was on the throne, and Nelson was an Admiral in the Royal Navy. The French fleet had just broken the British blockade at Toulon in April, and were at large in the Atlantic. The Battle of Trafalgar (21 Oct 1805) was yet to be fought. There were real fears of a French invasion, and preparations had been made throughout the land, including an extensive network of alarm beacons.

This wasn’t the first time that beacons had been erected on Bidston Hill. In 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, beacons were readied all along the coast of Britain, including one on the summit of Bidston Hill, and another at the top of Everton Ridge, overlooking the then small but important port of Liverpool.

Beacons have often been lit across Britain to celebrate historical events, including Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897), the 400^th anniversary of the Spanish Armada (1988), the Millennium, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee (2002), and the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (2005).

As I write this, preparations are being made for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Already, more than 2600 sites have signed up to light a beacon between 22:00 and 22:30 on the evening of 4^th June 2012.

Will Bidston Hill join in? The possibility is still being discussed.  At first it sounds like a lot of fun, but what if the fire gets out of control? Fire has always been a problem on Bidston Hill. In the summer, the gorse dries out, catches fire easily and spreads rapidly when fanned by the stronger-than-average winds that Bidston Hill is exposed to. A fire, apparently extinguished, can smoulder in the peat deposits, travel underground and break out somewhere else. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, to bring fire engines close to the blaze, and the water pressure at the few hydrants on the hill is low. So as much as I’d like to see a beacon lit on Bidston Hill this jubilee, I’ll understand if caution prevails.

Wages Bill, Alarm Beacon at Bidston Lighthouse, 1805

Fire on Bidston Hill, 1904

Where am I?

I live at Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SJ 2866 8990, at an elevation of 58.9727 metres (or thereabouts) relative to mean sea level at Newlyn, Cornwall.

I know this because there is an Ordnance Survey benchmark cut into the stone at the front door of the Lighthouse, and I managed to look it up using the Ordnance Survey Bench marks locator.

Doing this was surprisingly difficult. Or perhaps I should say unsurprisingly difficult, given my earlier adventures with Royal Mail.

To use the Ordnance Survey bench marks locator, you need to type an Ordnance Survey grid reference (the 2-letter, 4-digit version) into the box labelled "Km square" and press the Go button. It should come back with a table of information about known bench marks at that grid reference.

One way of finding out the grid reference for the location you're interested in is to use the  Ordnance Survey's Get-A-Map thing. You'll probably need to register, and you may need to install Microsoft Silverlight as well. You might need to use a different browser (it didn't work for me using Firefox 9.0.1 on my Mac, but Safari was OK). You should be able to get a map for your postcode, pan and zoom if necessary, and see the grid reference for the point the map is centred on. This will be the 2-letter, 6-digit version, of which the first three digits are the Easting, and the last three are the Northing. Translate to the Km-square reference by truncating the Easting and Northing to two digits each. Example: the postcode CH43 7RA gives a map; centre this on the lighthouse and note down the grid reference SJ 288 899, and feed SJ2889 into the Km-square box on the bench marks locator.

Here is the full entry for the benchmark on Bidston Lighthouse:

Square: SJ
Easting: 2866
Northing: 8990
Mark type: CUT MARK
Description: BIDSTON L HO W FACE S SIDE ENT
Height: 58.9727
Order: 3
Datum: N
Verified year: 1966
Levelling year:
Metres above ground: 0.3

Maybe I'll post a photograph of the bench mark soon.

Happy Christmas from Bidston Lighthouse

Illustration (c) Vilja Gatrell, 2011

Episode 2 of the letterbox trilogy

Much has happened since my last post.

Our application to change the use of the cottage to residential was finally approved. This was after a disconcertingly long wait, while the planning committee deliberated on the difficult question of whether allowing us to live in our one-hundred-and-twenty-eight-year-old, continuously occupied cottage would count as approving a new residence, which would have breached the council's self-inflicted Interim Planning Policy.

With a lot of help from our friends, we've made good progress with re-decoration and minor repairs, and the cottage is feeling much more homely. We've replaced several window sashes, re-pointed the lamp-room platform with lime mortar (curing all but one of the leaks), had two ceilings re-skimmed, and some carpet laid. We've stripped the ugly cheap cladding off our doors, which turn out to be rather beautiful four-paneled hardwood affairs, and planed and re-hung them all. We removed countless telephone, printer and token-ring cables and thousands of cable clips from the walls and skirting boards (some of which are made of plaster instead of wood). We've painted one bedroom with buttermilk, defiled another with willow-green, and splashed our hall with dragon's blood and terracotta. The lighthouse oil-room now has fifteen white Billy bookcases of the narrowest sort that Ikea make (wide book-cases just don't work when your walls are round). Anyway, the effect is surprisingly good, and we're very pleased with our library.

In the process, we learned some interesting things about the lighthouse cottages. The building was designed to accommodate three keepers, two with families. The three cottages each had their own front door, and were connected to each other and to the lighthouse via a common hallway, which was lined with Ruabon tiles (sadly concreted over during the NERC interregnum). The hallway was illuminated by natural light which was admitted through skylights along the ridge of the roof, as was the bedroom of Number 2, which had no external walls. You can still see the panes of the glass from the roof void, and you can make out the skylights on the original architects' drawings from 1872, which are held in the archives of the Merseyside Maritime Museum. It would appear that at some point in the building's history, a new roof was built on top of the old one. When electricity and water came to the building in the 1950's, a dividing wall was erected bisecting Number 2 Lighthouse Cottages, to create bathrooms and utility rooms for Numbers 1 and 3. Sad, really.

We have engaged an architect and filed an application for listed buildings consent. We're applying for permission to fit a letter box and cat flap in the front door, re-purpose one of the rooms as a kitchen, remove barbed wire from the building, replace perspex window panes with glass, and re-open access between the cottage and the lighthouse (which was bricked up many years ago). Yes, all these things do require listed buildings consent.

Worse, as we were informed yesterday, they also require building regulations approval and a bat survey!

You see, there are bats in the area. Some roost in the Windmill over winter.

So, today we had an initial bat inspection done. Fortunately, there are no signs of any bats occupying the cottage, not even in the roof void or the disused porch of Number 2 (which would make an ideal bat roost). Nor are there any signs of bats occupying the lighthouse. However, we didn't inspect the void inside the copper roof of the lighthouse, just in case. This is because if bats were using the space as a hibernaculum, the body heat from the inspector could be enough to rouse the little beasties from their torpor, which can so easily prove fatal. So we'll have an "emergence inspection" in the spring.

Nonetheless, the likelihood of there being any bats in the lighthouse roof is minimal. It's too windy for one thing. For another, we know that pigeons use it from time to time (we've heard their cooings and found their droppings), and bats don't usually cohabit with pigeons.

Anyway, we've finally found the letterbox of our desire.

All's Well

On Sunday, my iPhone and Michael's Nokia went for a joy ride on the bonnet of our car.

Mandy was driving, Sarah beside her, and Michael in the back seat. The two phones hitched a ride on the bonnet, unnoticed by the humans. I stayed behind to grease telescope mounts.

Starting at Bidston Lighthouse, they drove down the hill, along Boundary Road, and parked in the public car park by Tam O'Shanter Urban Farm. The humans went off to explore Flaybrick Cemetery, while the phones waited patiently, still on the bonnet. Around about now, I made several calls to the iPhone, trying to establish its whereabouts.

Some time later, the humans returned to the car, and drove back to the lighthouse, to be met by me, asking after my phone. Only then did Michael remember that he'd left the phones on the bonnet. They were there still, none the worse for their adventure.

My iPhone is very lucky. It had previously escaped injury when a camel fell on me. The camel in this picture is Bashar, who is stronger than the one that collapsed as we tried to mount it.

The case of the missing letterbox

Or  "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace".

Our new cottage has no letterbox, and our mail is going astray.

One postman, trained by the previous occupant, delivers our letters to Mary, who lives in the cottage next door. He can do this because Mary's front door is equipped with a functioning letterbox, fashioned from aluminium and faded, like Mary, from many seasons on the hill. This could be a satisfactory arrangement, were it not for Mary's habit of filing her post, un-inspected, in a random drawer in whichever room she happens to be living in at the time.

Another postman, recently recruited and lacking the benefit of training from our predecessor, appears to have taken it upon himself to deliver our letters to the Observatory nearby. This is not a satisfactory arrangement, because we have no access to the Observatory, and no relationship to its denizens, nor they to each other.  There our letters will lie, on a table in the hallway, or the floor beneath the table, until such time as one denizen is taken by the urge to clear the common area, and our letters find their way to the re-cycling bin, the rubbish bin, or perhaps back to the Delivery Office marked "Not Known At This Address".

On one occasion, an employee of Scottish Power hit upon the novel idea of sliding a we-came-to-read-the-meter-but-you-were-out card underneath our door. It is entirely possible that a future generation of postman might re-discover this ingenious solution.

We devised a cunning strategy to address the problem of missing mail. Let us call this Plan A. Plan A proceeds as follows:

1. install a letterbox in the front door of the cottage
2. lay in wait until a postman appears on his rounds
3. greet the postman warmly, introduce him to the new letterbox, and instruct him in its operation
4. repeat 2-3 until the estimated fraction of undelivered mail becomes acceptably small.

One technique for estimating the fraction of undelivered mail is to address a large number of letters to oneself, and to count those that arrive within say two weeks of despatch. Although the algorithm (2-4) is not guaranteed to converge monotonically or even in a finite number of iterations, it should be good enough for our purposes.

The real problem is step (1). You see, our cottage is a Grade II Listed Building.

It is a criminal offence to do works affecting the significance of a Listed Building without Listed Building Consent. Presumably, it is OK to do works on a Listed Building that don't affect its significance. It is also legal to do works on a listed building and subsequently apply for Listed Building Consent. A PhD in Quantum Field Theory does not prepare the mind sufficiently to comprehend the implications of this convoluted logic. It seems to me that if you get the Consent everything's fine and has been fine all along, but if you don't, then not only have you committed a Criminal Act, you've also dobbed yourself in. Is this the legislative equivalent of quantum superposition?

Everything seems to turn on the interpretation of significance. The System is designed on the principle that the owner or developer of the listed building is not to be trusted. It vests the authority to determine the question of significance in public servants known as Local Planning Officers. These are busy people (our Borough has 1900 listed buildings managed by one Senior Conservation Officer and an assistant). Consequently the System places a heavy burden of preparing evidence on the owner or developer.

So, although our front door bears little resemblance to the original door, being clad in a metal (presumed steel) sheet, fitted recently and certainly some 100 years after the cottage was built, and although a front door to a Victorian cottage clearly deserves a letterbox, it is not for us to presume to install one without Listed Buildings Consent. Obtaining Listed Buildings Consent is not a trivial matter; the lengthy checklist involves a freshly-prepared Ordnance Survey Map of the site. a 1:200 scale plan of the building, 1:20 scale drawing(s) of the feature(s) affected, statements of impact and significance, and much more. At least it's free, that is, if you don't count the architect's fees, map license fees, and your time. Once you've got your plans prepared, and your application lodged, you have only a minimum of 8 weeks to wait while the whole sad business is weighed and considered by the council, your neighbours, local pressure groups and the general public. You have to be on your best behaviour.

In the meantime, you still don't have a letterbox, so any correspondence concerning the progress of the application is likely to go astray. But there's a solution for this! You simply appoint an agent to act on your behalf, and all the correspondence goes to him or her.

But three months or more is a long time to be without mail. Perhaps that venerable institution Royal Mail can help? I decided to investigate.

It's easy enough to find their web site - a level one wizard can do this. Level two skills are required to find descriptions of relevant services.

One could take a Post Office Box. These are not cheap, and there might be a waiting list, but the real problem is that you don't have a letterbox, not that you don't have an address. And sometimes a Post Office Box just won't do.

What about mail redirection? As we won't complete the move to the cottage until we sell our current house, we can consider redirecting mail from the new dwelling to the old one. Although the service is really designed to redirect mail from the old house to the new,  we might just be able to produce the documentation necessary to set it up. On the downside, the service is not free, and more importantly, the solution would only work until the old house is sold.

We could then redirect mail from the old house to the new, and let the mail circulate between the two addresses for a while. When the Listed Building Consent finally comes through, and the letterbox is installed, we simply cancel one of the redirections, and all our mail will suddenly appear at the cottage. Like that scene in Harry Potter.

Maybe Mail Redirection isn't the perfect solution, after all.

What about Mail Collect (TM)? This service is has the virtue of being free. The idea is that your mail, instead of being delivered to your address, is held at the local Delivery Office, and you collect it from there at your leisure (but at least once a month). You need to be a Level 3 wizard to navigate the Royal Mail website to find the application form and guidance notes. But it can be done, with perseverance.

Level 4 expertise is required to locate your nearest delivery office. Here's how I did it. Do not set out to locate the delivery office, Instead, prepare a list of completely different questions to which you want answers. This list should include:

1. Does the Royal Mail have a recommended way of getting mail delivered when you don't have a letter box?
2. Does this work if you're moving into the place instead of out of it?
3. How should a person with two surnames, such as a married woman who gets mail addressed to both her married name and maiden name, complete the application form for Mail Collect (TM)?  Should she commit the minor fraud of submitting two applications as different people, each authorizing her alter ego to collect mail on her behalf?
4. Why does an application for Mail Collect (TM) not require proof of residence at the address in question? Isn't that opening a loophole for mail theft?
5. Or is proof of identification really meant to include proof of residence at the address in question?
6. If so, how should I obtain such proof? After all, my utilities bills are going astray, because I haven't got a letter box..
7. The guidance notes say that on receipt of my application, I should expect an acknowledgment, the return of the original documents evidencing my identification, and eventually a little white card that I should take with me when I go to collect my mail from my local Delivery Office. These items will be sent -- you guessed it -- by post to the address on the application. Yes, to the cottage with no letterbox. How is this supposed to work?

With these goals in mind, you set off on your quest. First you see a clue suggesting that there's a way of contacting Royal Mail by email. Following this clue as far as it leads, you encounter a Sphinx who asks you a riddle about the nature of your question. It doesn't matter how you reply, because all answers lead to the Labyrinth of Frequently Asked Questions, which you are required to search exhaustively. Only then will the angel Sarah, Your On-Line Digital Assistant, manifest herself to you. You may ask Sarah any question you like. Sarah will recognise any of the Frequently Asked Questions, and NO others.

At this point, you may like to add:

• How do I ask a question that is not Frequently Asked?

to your list. Needless to say, this Question is not a Frequently Asked one.

Now it is necessary to re-trace your steps to the FAQ. This is not difficult, as all roads lead back there eventually. From here you can see a sign pointing towards Customer Service. Follow it. You should discover a Telephone Number beginning with the prefix 0845. Calls to 0845 numbers cost 10.22 New Pence per minute for Virgin customers. Dial this number. Again, you are challenged with a series of questions which you are expended to answer by typing numbers on the numeric keypad of your telephone. There are many possible sequences of questions and answers. If you chance upon a certain sequence, you will unlock a secret door which leads to the Find-Your-Local-Delivery-Office demon.

The demon FYLDO has the Power of Speech Recognition. She will ask you for your postcode, which you should recite aloud into the mouthpiece of your telephone. If you speak clearly, in a controlled accent, she may repeat it back to you correctly. This is good! You should say "Yes" when she asks you. I don't know what happens if you can't say "Yes" honestly. Perhaps she eats you.

Now, the demon asks "Road name"? My heart leaped into my mouth at this point, but your experience may be different to mine from here on.

You see, our cottage is on an un-named road. There is no road name in our address.

Trusting to a greater power, I replied, in a firm and steady voice. "None", I said.

"I don't understand that", quoth the demon.

"None", I replied, with false conviction.

The demon paused for a disconcertingly long time, then announced "You local Delivery Office is at ..." ,  supplying address and opening hours.

Our next adventure will be to make a pilgrimage to our Local Delivery Office, in search of a Wise Man or Woman who can answer our questions.

I never did discover the mythical email address for Royal Mail.