There"s one thing above all wrong with the new British postal codes: not everyone has that sort of memory. Some of us, of course, forget even h6use numbers and the present postal districts, but that matters less when there is a human being at every stage to spot the mistake. When all the sorting is done in one operation by a man sitting at a machine, typing special marks onto an envelope, one slip on your part could send your letter way outside the area where the local postman or a friendly neighbor knows your name. Otherwise the new codes are all the Post Offices claims. They are the most carefully designed in the world, ideal for computers. A confusion of letters and numbers, they have two parts separated by the gap in the middle. Together they classify a letter not only the city where it is going but right down to the round of the particular postman who is to carry it, and even to a group of houses or a single big building. In the long run this will speed the mail and cut costs. The long run is 10 years away, though. In fact there are only 12 Post Offices in the country which have the right machines fully working, and the system cannot work at full efficiency until it is nationwide. Yet the Post Office wants us to start using the codes now, so that we shall be trained when the machines are ready. But will we? A businessman I met, praising the virtues of the new system, explained that large companies like his could have codes of their own. What was his code? "Oh, dear me. Now you"ve got me. Awfully sorry. Hold on a minute while I find a sheet of my headed notepaper." Then he read painfully, as if spelling out a word in a foreign language, "W-I-X-6A-B".