With etiquette experts among you in mind, I begin with a delicate question.
When is it acceptable, if ever, deliberately to open someone else’s mail?
Etiquette apart, I suspect this is a criminal offence. Had I as many as seven seconds to lavish on research, a Google enquiry would confirm this.
Sadly, owing to the cocktail of lethargy and arrogance that has for so long propelled this writer’s work towards, if not over, the borderline with unreadability, I do not.
But even if it is a crime knowingly to open another’s post without permission, is there any circumstance in which even the hangiest and floggiest of penal enthusiasts would shrug, and mutter, ‘Mm, well, he probably doesn’t deserve a stretch in Belmarsh for that’?
Ladies, gentlemen and non-binaries of the jury, I submit to you that there is. When the letter is addressed to someone who, while technically still the missus, hasn’t dwelt at the marital home for more than a decade, it can surely offend against neither the law nor decency to open it on her behalf.
In that possibly misguided belief, I opened such a letter a few days ago.
As mentioned here only last month, I love Becca greatly, and hope she at least partially reciprocates. But the Beatles weren’t always right about love, and this relationship has been exponentially improved by the 106-mile buffer zone between my west-London slum and the picturesque Dorset cottage in which she and her four dogs reside.
This letter lacked the warmth that envelopes our long-distance wedlock. 'FORMAL DEBT RECOVERY NOTIFICATION' it began, the capitals in red, in lieu of any such intimacy as ‘Dear Mrs Norman’.
‘We have been appointed by Nivi SpA, Special Attorney of Autostrada Per L’Italia Spa,’ continued the communiqué from CLI International Debt Collectors, ‘to act on their behalf in the recovery of the unpaid Italian Motorway tolls detailed above.’
Detailed above were not only the amount outstanding (£61.09: £31.09 in toll fees; £25 collection costs, and the VAT thereon), the location (Rapallo), and the genesis of the problem (‘card payment failed’).
For all the intrigue inherent in that, it was this line that commandeered my attention: ‘Date: 07/07/13 @ 12:17’.
Now, we all adore Italy for so many things. The scenic beauty, the cuisine, Rome’s rich imperial history, the Sicilian culture that brought us the Godfather trilogy and The Sopranos, and the blessed memory of Marco Tardelli’s insanely wild-eyed goal celebration after putting his nation 3-0 up against the Hun in the World Cup final of 1982.
It now appears that we must also worship her debt-related politesse. To anyone miseducated by the above-mentioned screen dramas, that comes as a surprise. The soldiers of the Corleone and Soprano families not merely levied extortionate, compounded weekly interest (the ‘vig’). The genteel likes of Luca Brasi and ‘Paulie Walnuts’ Gualtieri broke limbs, at the absolute least, if a debt went unsettled for a matter of months.
Yet the capi di tutti capi of Italian motorway toll booths adhere to the notably unSicilian axiom that minuscule debt is a dish best collected old. God spare their bones, they don’t even ask for their money for almost an entire decade.
Yet why, in the name of all the saints, would they come for it now?
‘We remind you,’ explains the CLI missive, ‘that unpaid tolls are enforceable up to 10 years after the date of the offence…’
Although grateful for the reminder, I was alarmed to need it. You could put it down to the familiar ravages of middle age, but it might be something more sinister.
Perhaps hospitals should bolster their traditional psych assessment questions: ‘Now then, dear, can you tell me who the Prime Minister is? OK, not to worry – they do come and go all the time. But do you remember for how long unpaid Italian toll-road fees are enforceable? No? Nothing? Nurse, call the dementia ward and see if they have a free bed.’
Anyway, this time with Becca’s permission, I rang CLI International Debt Collectors in Faversham to inform them that the debtor had left the address to which they sent the demand even before she accrued the debt.
‘And, before you ask,’ I said, ‘owing to data-protection legislation, I cannot give you any information about her current whereabouts.’
An incongruously charming and good-humoured guy, who bolstered the firm’s international credentials by revealing that he comes from Côte D’Ivoire, said he quite understood.
I asked if he thought Becca should go on the run until 7th July, when the enforceability period elapses.
His chuckle implied that he did not.
Apparently answering the questions about both etiquette and criminal law posed at the start, Becca sounded less delighted than I’d hoped when apprised of this.
‘If they come for me, I’m taking you down with me,’ she said with a hint of that cotton-wool-in-the-cheeks Brando murmur. ‘You didn’t show no respect for the name on the post. You always gotta respect the name on the post.’
The Oldie April 2023
