LEAFLETS

As people who know me will testify, I’m no mathematician, but I would estimate that if I lay end to end, all the leaflets with which I come into contact every week, they would reach from where I live in Wiltshire, all the way to Coventry. With this in mind, I’m sure you’ll agree this is a disagreeable situation!

This morning I received no actual post, but the postman still deposited five pieces of paper through my letterbox. Did you know I live in a hard water area? No, neither did I. I also received “Important information about energy in your home” , as well as offers by the local estate agent to rent out my house for me, a menu for a takeaway I am never likely to use and an appeal from “Save the Long-eared Ant” or some such charity for me to set up a direct debit so it is ‘easier’ for me to donate to them. This final one immediately gets handed to my daughter, who is delighted that her mysterious benefactor has sent her yet another free pen.

A trip to the shops now yields another handful of leaflets, offering me one fingernail manicured free if I pay to get the other nine done, asking me if I want to object to the proposed new grey pavements when the council promised cream, and telling me I’m paying too much for my electricity. I go into the bank to pay in a cheque and the clerk tries to sell me a mortgage. She persists by telling me they can beat my current mortgage rate by 1.2% (even though I haven’t told her my current mortgage rate) AND give me 10% cash back. 10% of what? I ask. The mortgage? The house value, or the 1.2%? She looks confused and gives me a leaflet to take with me.

I go into the post office to send a parcel and am told I am paying too much for my phone calls, I really should switch over to the Post Office who it seems are only offering the service out of the goodness of their hearts. I tell them I really don’t have the time to think about it today. “Well if I just give you this leaflet, you can read it when you get home. It tells you everything you need to know.”

On leaving the post office I am handed a leaflet which in large letters asks: “Did you know you only use 10% of your brains’ potential?” Well no, I didn’t actually...but that’s probably because I’m only using 10% of my brains potential! Within that 10% though is the ability to recognise I only have one brain, unlike the writer of the leaflet, who clearly thinks I have at least two.

Speaking of brains though, the language and tone of these leaflets is the only thing which irritates me more than their abundance. They seem to assume my thought processes are less complex than those of a pond-based creature. Nowhere is this more the case than the leaflets with which I have come into contact since I became a parent. The authors of these leaflets find it difficult to tell the difference between motherhood and a lobotomy. On hearing I was pregnant, the local health visitor couldn’t wait to run round to our house to foist approximately ten leaflets on me, with titles such as “Why you shouldn’t smoke when you are pregnant”, “Our breast feeding policy” and “How aromatherapy can help with pain relief during labour” These managed to be both patronising and alarming. Surely, if there is going to be any legislation concerning MY breasts, I should be the one to write it! At the very least I feel it only polite to ask my opinion, rather than handing me what is effectively the minutes of a meeting I didn’t even know had taken place. And as for the aromatherapy: oh PLEASE, I’m about to push another human being out of my body, and as much as I love the heady scent of lavender, let’s be honest, it can’t help me with this.

This only intensified once I had actually given birth; some days I found it hard to locate my daughter through the piles of leaflets stacking up informing me how dangerous the world is for her, especially with a mother so stupid she apparently needs a leaflet entitled “Don’t suffocate your baby with a pillow.” Goodness knows how I would have managed without that leaflet. There should be a leaflet about the dangers of having too many leaflets, containing bullet points about the possibility of paper cuts or slipping on a leaflet, a la banana skin.

I never thought I would long for the days when an anxious little man quietly walked around city centres wearing a sandwich board and trying not to get in the way. Whatever happened to that man? I would definitely advocate a return to the sandwich board approach, because every time I get handed a leaflet I feel like the end of the world is nigh.

Anything more irritating than this proliferation of leaflets? Yes, actually, the proliferation of people knocking on my front door claiming to want to help me save money. At least the Jehovah's Witness - who just wants to save me, rather than save me money - I can immediately silence by lying and saying I’m Jewish, for which no doubt I will go to Hell. He still calls once a month though - “Yep, still Jewish” I say - and he walks off, writing something on a clipboard. No, what really irritates me is the man who wants to know how much my gas bills are. He stands on my doorstep, wittering on as though I have all the time in the world to discuss how much I am paying for my gas per unit or whatever it is. I tell him I have no idea how much I pay per unit and he looks astounded. He tells me he can save me money. “Do you want to save money on your gas bills?” he asks, so I tell him no, not really. “You don’t want to save money on your gas bills?” he says, incredulous. No, right at this moment, I don’t. I want to go to the toilet, behind me I can hear my three year old attempting to put us into negative equity and despite it being three o clock in the afternoon, I haven’t had time for lunch yet. He is still talking - something about how all the money I save by the end of the year could be enough to buy myself a lipstick - so in the end I say the only thing I can think of that might just make him go away. “Have you got a leaflet?”