Assumptions

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I've still got some cheese in the fridge for shipping but most of it has now safely reached its destination.

I was asked to use a very famous international carrier. When the shipment is ready I give them a call and they send a man and a van. The first time the van driver took a while filling out the packing note - the to and from details. When I got my copy I noticed that on the line titled Street he'd put the city whilst the street was on the line called Name. I thought at the time that it showed how little ordinary Spaniards know about the World - that neither a word like strasse nor the name of a big German city was recognisable to this man who deals with parcels all the time.

By the time he came to collect the last lot of cheese we'd seen each other four times so he was a bit more chatty. "Pah!" he said, "bloody international forms, they're in English, I have no idea what any of these lines are for, do you know what Country means - is it país?" It is. Next time we agreed we'd fill in the form together.

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