I HAVE BEEN in London for several weeks, but more of that at a later time. I was delighted on my return to Christchurch to have reaffirmed for me the obvious fact that Abroad is not the only place where strange and fantastical incidents happen.
I may say I also felt as though I had never been away when I opened the Press to learn that Koro Wetere was still in trouble over the Maori loan and that Des Tucker was getting the brush-off from yet another heart transplant unit. There should be more determined effort made to change the news from time to time, and the bounds of what is possible in this regard have been made plain to us all recently by the staff of the Beckenham Post Office and the lady who ordered a vibrator.
I presume this story circulated around a wider perimeter than that of the Christchurch media, but in case any reader didn’t pick up the details, what happened, in brief, was this. On the fateful morning of February 12, 1987, a day that will live long in the annals of sexual appliances a sorter at the Beckenham Post Office came across a parcel which was whirring and pulsating. He telephoned its addressee, a woman, who said she was not expecting a parcel. This naturally caused him to form grave suspicions about the behaviour and possible contents of the package before him, seemingly possessing a life of its own. The police were called, and then bomb disposal experts were summoned. Buildings were emptied, streets were cleared and the parcel was subjected to the fierce and unyielding scrutiny of x-rays. It was found to contain a vibrator.

Now comes the important part. The vibrator was delivered to its woman recipient by the police.

We must spare a thought for the feelings of this lady, whose perfectly lawful request for a harmless instrument of pleasure had resulted in something resembling a state of civil emergency. But it must have been a pleasant experience for the police concerned.

Visits from the police are not welcomed by most people. When you see the police coming up the drive it usually means that the kids are in some sort of trouble, or you are in some sort of trouble, or some ghastly accident has befallen a member of your immediate family. So for police staff to be able to go to someone’s house bearing with them not bad news but an ecstasy-inducing device must have been an agreeable change. And this is the aspect of the incident which should be capitalised upon by those responsible for police recruitment.

Most police recruiting advertisements stress the dificulties, dangers and responsibilities of the job, and this is as it should be. Intending policemen and policewomen need to know what they are in for. But there is no harm mentioning the bright side as well, and it is quite possible that a young lad, wavering over the possibility of joining the police, might find the balance tipped for him by an advertisement holding out the prospect of occasional deliveries of vibrators to young women. It should not be suggested that the vibrator run is all that police work consists of. But it should be held out as an agreeable interlude between more ferocious and frightening tasks.

And if my next suggestion is accepted then there will soon be a lot more vibrator deliveries for police to undertake. As the fear and the risk of Aids increases, vibrators are going to become more and more popular. They can’t give you Aids, nor do you need to use them with a condom. So as time passes the mails of this country will include an increasingly high proportion of parcels containing vibrators. But we can’t afford to have Beckenham-type emergencies every time one of these useful instruments activates itself. So my suggestion is that they should all be ordered through the police and delivered by the police. The police would pass the orders for vibrators to the suppliers, the suppliers would hand-deliver the fulfilled orders to the police, and the police would deliver the aphrodisiac appliances to their new owners.

Thus: no bomb scares and the police performing a task which will help to cement their popularity with the public. Civil libertarians may object that my scheme would mean that the police would know who owns vibrators. To which I reply: so what? There is nothing to be ashamed of in owning or using a vibrator, and nobody objects, for instance, to the police knowing who owns firearms.
There is, I will concede, some difference between a firearm and a vibrator in the sense that there is not much point in attempting to rob a bank by menacing a teller with a vibrator. But the principle is the same.
 

A.K. Grant
NZ Listener
14th of March 1987