A surprise package

Over the weekend I ordered a few things online, as present season has well and truly started with three family and one friend’s birthdays and a baby on the way in November, then Christmas, more birthdays in January and so on. I’d been getting tracking emails from Australia Post for the last couple of days and so knew I had two parcels to collect from the local post office (which is quite the nuisance when you work business hours elsewhere, and I was wondering why one of them had gone there when I had given my work address). So, I bolted out of work early yesterday, pedalled home with some urgency and jumped in the car in an attempt to make the post office by 5pm.

I thought I knew what I was expecting. But instead the post office lady brought out the biggest tough bag I have ever seen. I put my arms out to receive this in some confusion, together with my other little predictably-sized box for little boys toys. So then when I got to the car I had to open it, and then tear open the tape on the cardboard that surrounded whatever was inside.

What I saw was a large flattish black something with the words “The beast was a creature I did not know” printed on it. It was wrapped in plastic, and at first I thought it was a canvas style something, and that someone had sent me some kind of wall hanging that said “The beast was a creature I did not know” (which I would find just a little bit obscure). Then I realised that perhaps it was a box. I decided to deal with this further at home, so I’m driving along thinking ‘what IS that?’, and why have I got it and who sent it and what are they trying to tell me? …

This is a strange thing to pull out of a package when you are not expecting it, is it not?

When I got home I realised that this was indeed a box and that what I had was an LP, with a couple of CDs, a weird and somewhat macabre little story about said beast, a steel guitar slide, and that it all appeared to be part of a Laura Marling package. And I began to remember that she has a new album out, though I had not been paying all that much attention yet and hadn’t registered the name of it. Here’s the contents of my box.

At this point I was excited for a few seconds about the possibility that someone had sent me this (most interesting) parcel. Then I started to have vague recollections of there being a possibility of winning some such thing recently, so I searched ‘Laura’ in my emails – nothing. Then I thought well, it must have been the Frankie newsletter if it was anything (and I had just been looking at the most recent one showing a colleague some shoes yesterday) and so I went looking through a few, till I found said possibility, and I think that must be where it came from.

But how curious that they don’t notify of you of these things, with a big email fanfare that says “you are the winner!”. It’s all rather nicely mysterious. So, I like Laura Marling (though you might be guessing that I am not one of those fans that knows all there is to know), a young British folk musician, and I am very pleased to have this (though how/whether to keep and store such a thing is a point). Here is a youtube video off this album.