YOU may recall that a few weeks ago I told you how, after my wife and I moved into an apartment on a new development, we became non-persons as the postcode of our new address hadn't been logged on to the innumerable data banks which rule our lives.

The fact that the property was finished and ready for occupation at the end of last October still hasn't entered the equation.

Officially, we are not there.

There is a perplexed silence at the other end of the phone each time we dutifully answer the question: can I have your postcode?

We have no idea how long this situation will continue and are gradually coming to terms with it.

After all, this is Great Britain and we all know that if it can go wrong, it will. The honourable exception, of course, are letters you would rather not receive; for example from the Inland Revenue and the Council Tax.

They seem to find us, notwithstanding the fact that they have been wrongly post coded.

Amazing, really, particularly in the case of Council Tax as the local council is apparently responsible for allocating postcodes to new properties.

Things have been going steadily downhill in recent weeks.

Tradespeople who made appointments rarely, if ever, kept them.

Promised return phone calls never materialised.

We have discovered to our cost that the service industry is staffed in the main by people, either young or incredibly old, who resent being where they are and doing what they are doing.

They don't make much of an effort to treat customers with anything other than fleeting interest at best, indifference bordering on rudeness at worst.

And this is when dealing with people anxious to spend hard cash with the company which employs them. Strange.

People who spend time in America return to the UK still marvelling at the way customers are treated with civility and respect, even in the most modest roadside hash joint or store. The "Hi, I'm Katie" and "Have A Nice Day" are often dismissed as patronising, tiresome Yankee jargon, but it is infinitely more acceptable than being greeted by a scowl which would make Liam Gallagher's countenance look benign.

I don't know what our new neighbours are making of this typical Britishness. They arrived a couple of weeks ago in a mini-coach; the men in military uniforms and the ladies immaculately coiffured and dressed in hugely expensive frocks.

They are all heavily suntanned, obviously from the Middle East, and we learned from Mr bin Laden, who lives in the flat below us, and Lord Lucan, who has been here for ages, that Mr Hussein and his family had rented some apartments while resting on their way to Damascus. They must be on a religious pilgrimage.

I did tell them that because of the postcode difficulties, they probably wouldn't be found, which didn't seem to bother them at all.

In fact, for being such friendly neighbours, Mr Hussein presented me with a solid gold Kalashnikov and his son gave my wife a pearl-handled revolver. So it's not ALL bad news.