An amusing aside to brighten your day!

So here is the situation, Andrew having broken our favourite wooden paddle (or was it my backside that broke it and perhaps 'favourite' is not quite the right word as it was a rather "efficient" tool),a month ago I ordered a couple of substitutes from LeatherThorn Paddles in the USA. I had rather given up hope of receiving them as the expected 6-10 days for delivery had long been exceeded. I assumed perhaps some other spanko or DD'er had intercepted and pinched my parcel!

However, finally yesterday I received a letter from the German Custom's Office summoning me to their office to collect my parcel. I was ordered to bring my payment details and my order receipt. Naturally I had my PayPal payment details but the only order receipt I had was an e-mail from John at LeatherThorn complete with a photograph of the box, the post receipt and also the goods themselves, this I did not want to have to show.

I approached the office with some trepidation, having seen the scary and officious Custom's Officers at the airport in their police type uniforms with lots of shiny silver pips and not looking forward to entering such an austere environment to collect a parcel containing such "dubious" items.

Although there was actually no one in such a uniform the Custom's Office was open plan containing seven people, all men, gulp. I presented my slip and the chap toddled off to get the parcel, so far so good. He brought it back and then asked me for the documentation of which I provided the "safe" versions without the photos. He then asked for details of the payment and how much the actual goods cost as he could not understand the English in all my documents. I explained different figures which represented the cost of the actual items and the cost to post them from the US to Germany.

He seemed happy with this info but then asked me to explain what items the package actually contained, oh help, I took a couple of deep breaths and said that it was, roughly translated (as I did not know the correct words in German), "play things", more deep breaths from me as he calmly said, "Oh, toys", "Yes" said I. He went back to his desk and I prayed that this was going to be all he wanted to know. Unfortunately all he did was to retrieve a large knife from his desk and indicate to me that I should open the parcel so he could view these items, aahhh, now what was I to do. My face was now turning as red as my backside from my maintenance session the night before and totally embarrassed I, of course, fumbled cutting through the large quantities of tape that surrounded the parcel and the plastic within it and with a well faked casual attitude pulled my spanking new implements (pun intended!) out of the box, furtively looking left and right to see if anyone had actually noticed . "Ah, fine", he said, "just some leather things.", "yes", said I starting to breath again, "just some leather things", gulp!

He returned once more to his desk and I was expecting him to call all his colleagues over to look at the amusing devices the sad Englishwoman had bought but instead he just entered a few figures into his computer, printed out a couple of documents, stamped a few of them (stamps are VERY, VERY important in Germany for everything), handed me a bill for the German tax I had to pay and pointed me to the cash desk.

I grabbed the parcel and receipts, ran to the cash desk, paid the bill and then legged it out of there as fast as I could.

I do hope that these implements last a long time, I do not want to repeat that exercise for a while!

Hil