Bureaucracy is often irritating, and petty bureaucracy can drive you crazy. Even the calmest of temperaments bridles in face of someone 'Dress'd in a little brief authority/Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd'. And the trouble is, brief authority often concerns itself pompously with the most trivial of causes.
Our neighbour's mother is 94. For the past five or so of her widowed years she has lived happily in a retirement home not far from her daughters and some of the grandchildren. She is a keen walker, does yoga, meditates, reads voluminously, gardens, and is a spirited, witty and intelligent conversationalist.
Recently, along with all the other residents, she moved into a smart, brand new 'facility' — as the administrators called it. Her new premises were bright and colourful, the garden area a bit spare and bland and the general atmosphere less free and easy than the 'old place'. This was because, along with the new paint and characterless exteriors had come a new manager and some additional senior staff.
One day, our neighbour's mother — we'll call her Pam — returned from a pre-lunch walk and, entering her still unfamiliar, paint-smelling hallway, felt that something was different. She looked across to the flowers in her vase and then to the books and papers on the table. All were as she had left them as far as she could tell.
She sat down in her armchair and then, from that different angle, she realised what had happened. Three photographs that had been on the living room wall — her five grandchildren, her daughters, and a picture of a family gathering at Christmas — were missing. Where they had been, the wall was blank and white.
Galvanised with the beginnings of indignation, Pam rang her eldest daughter, Alice our neighbour, and told her the story. A feisty youngster of 70, Alice rang the retirement village and asked to speak to the manager. 'I decided I'd start at the top,' she explained when she recounted the story.
Easier said than done, however. Alice could not get past the manager's secretary who was not sure when or even if her boss would be back that day and couldn't guarantee he would be available again during the week. As this was all happening on a Wednesday Alice suspected she was being massively fobbed off in the hope that everything would be forgotten by the following week or that she would just give up.
Alice was not the giving up type. She drove the couple of kilometres to the village, stormed into the front office and, when told the manager was away, sat down at the secretary's desk and told her about the photographs in detail and with some force.
The problem, it turned out, was that Pam had stuck the photos to the wall with Blu-Tack. This was forbidden.
'But people have to see their family photos,' Alice argued. 'They need their mementoes and somewhere and some means to display them.' The secretary said she would pass on Alice's and Pam's objections to the manager.
On the following Monday, the manager left a message on Alice's home phone — she was out on the bay in her kayak for most of the morning — explaining that Blu-Tack was absolutely forbidden because it lifted the paint on the walls and promoted a general sense of untidiness. But he would see what alternatives were available. Pam and Alice conferred later that day and decided to wait a while to see what he would come up with.
A few days later the manager 'came up with' something. Pam rang Alice to say that a notice board in a cream painted frame had been added to the living room wall in each unit. Personal photographs and other favourite items could be 'affixed using the pins provided'.
Alice was unable to inspect this remarkable innovation that day, but Pam reported that she had retrieved her photos and would be affixing them along with several other bits and pieces and a calendar. Only hours later, however, she told Alice the board was so hard she couldn't get the pins into it and hammering was forbidden.
Next morning, Alice rang Pam and was relieved to hear a lightness in her voice as she described her photograph-covered notice board and the Leunig 2012 calendar which she'd put away in a drawer at the old place but had rediscovered and displayed on the new board even though there was only a month left in the year.
'That's wonderful, Mum,' Alice said, with genuine pleasure. 'So you got the pins in after all?'
'No,' Pam said. 'It was much too hard.'
'So what's keeping the photos up on the board?'
'Blu-Tack. But you'd never know.'
Brian Matthews is the award winning author of A Fine and Private Place, The Temple Down the Road and Manning Clark — A Life.