Addressing the company

As part of becoming self-employed, you fill in a lot of forms. Insurance, banking, website registration: a lot of white DL envelopes have sat on the mantlepiece over the last few weeks.

Most are addressed like this:
X company
1 Big Street
Anytown
AA1 1AA

or:
X company
PO Box 000
Anytown
AA1 1AA

They say something, these addresses. We're a big company: everyone knows where we are. We have sophisticated mechanisms to make sure that your envelope ends up in the right pigeon hole. We know what we're doing.

Until I got to my National Insurance contributions form, which has to go to my old friends HM Revenue & Customs. Here's the address (and here's how I read it):
Customer Accounts Section (We're very busy and important you know: we have an awful lot of sections)
Inland Revenue (Although we're not yet too sure what we're called...)
National Insurance Contributions Office (NICO: big, terribly important; we think we're a bit like the Home Office)
Self Employment Services (We're not too good at redirecting post internally though, and we certainly don't believe in PO Boxes)
Processing Centre (Because you will be processed)
Benton Park View (I may be taking a liberty here, but I'm guessing that the 'View' of 'Benton Park' may not be quite as pastoral as this sounds...)
Newcastle upon Tyne (So presumably where the call centre is)
NE98 1ZZ

I've worked with plenty of bignormous companies that boil complex directions like this down to a set of post codes or PO boxes.

At 8 lines, I can barely squeeze it on the envelope (don't be silly - of course they didn't send me one). I feel thoroughly processed. Mind you, I guess I should be grateful that it reached me at all, given it's addressed to the wrong name, and the rather abrupt person at the 'helpline' obviously entered my town as 'Hounslow' in Milton Keynes, rather than 'Hanslope'...