Somewhere in the house are the two volumes necessary to contain all the information of a children’s encyclopaedia. You’d need a bigger set now because this one is over a hundred years old. It has a page or two on the postal service and a trick question about the fourth delivery on Christmas day. Everybody knows the postman only delivers twice on Christmas day and to prove it there is a detailed line drawing, looking like one of those new fangled photographs of a postman doffing his cap as he prepares to ride off on his bicycle, having delivered the letter with the stamp of King Edward looking regally tubby.
Heart warming. It would do. Every step on the road to hell has little gold and pink edges round it.
How did we get from there to here?
This morning, just before seven, I was deep in the middle of an interesting dream about something, when I was woken by a battering on the door and a ringing of the bell. I swung out of bed, put my slippers on, (because I don’t want another broken toe for Christmas, thanks) and dashed downstairs, cautiously, shouting ‘Hang on!’, as you do. I opened the door to find a large man with a small package.
‘Give me your pin number!’ he demanded.
Well now, I wouldn’t do that. Would I? Every communication from the bank indicates that you should never do that. I’d have to think of a new one and then learn it, and anyway, which pin number? Elucidation was at hand from the delivery agent who, scanning my face, provided: ‘On your phone! The pin on your phone!’
Had it been later in the day I’d have been more alert.
Be alert. Your country needs lerts.
I was thinking of the phone and wondering whether to fetch it. I could you know. I have a modern phone. It doesn’t have the curly wire attaching it to the wall. You can take it off the stand and walk around with it. Deckt? Is it? Decked maybe? Anyway that.
The delivery agent was using his powers of power again.
‘Laberick?’ he shouted, ‘You are Laberick? Right?’
‘Well yes but,’
‘Then you have a four digit pin on your phone, get your phone.’
‘Ah! I don’t have a smartphone I’m afraid.’
‘Then you can’t have this. You give me the four digits and I’ll give you the package. I cannot give you the package Laberick, without the digits. I need your digits.’
So saying he took a photo of my doorstep and stalked off up the drive into his enormous van and slammed the door.
I stumbled back upstairs. The OH was in his bathroom. ‘That,’ I told him, ‘was a delivery agent wanting a four digit pin off my phone to deliver a parcel.’
‘My phone!’ (Careful where you’re aiming that stream, please.)
‘My phone!’
Remember the anguished cry ‘Daddy! My Daddy!’ from the Railway Children?
Similar but with urination, and ‘Phone, my phone! Stop him Jane!’
I ran with the wind (another consequence of early rising for the elderly) down the stairs and out on to the drive, followed by the OH barefoot in his pyjamas. I ran to the huge van, which was still parked on the pavement, waving my arms like a trainee penguin, but it took off up the road.
‘Catch it!’ cried the OH unrealistically.
As the van did a turn in the next road and headed back and up another road, he chased it. Back upstairs I watched him disappear up the hill. There was quite a lot of traffic but he knows how to cross the road so I headed for bed.
Didn’t get there. The OH was back in the house and up the stairs spoiling for an argument.
‘Why didn’t you wave your hands more? Why didn’t you fetch me? You should have known that was for me. It was my new phone. If you didn’t understand, why didn’t you tell him you would fetch your husband?’
I had no idea we had retreated to the 1950s. Silly me.
I wouldn’t say all delivery agents are the same. We have a local lady delivery agent, called Melanie, who delivers in her car, knows her customers, smiles as she hands things over, waits until you get to the door and is, in every way doing her job in an old fashioned way as if it were her job that she cares about doing well.
However.
On Sunday morning in the middle of a red warning storm my neighbour from my right hand side turned up at the door with two very soggy packages. One was a plastic bag, the other a large carboard package delaminating as he stood there. He had discovered the packages by chance deposited next to his bins, on his drive at a house which did not have a number the same as the number on either of the packages. My neighbour apologised, I thanked him and reassured him that it wasn’t his fault. He has a porch door which is always open and has the house number contiguous, I have a porch door which is always open with the number of the house next to the door. Yet some delivery agent (very definitely not Melanie) decided that best thing they could do was leave two packages in a storm outside by some bins.
The large card package contained my Christmas present from Lynne. Her friend had been with her when she bought it for me way back in the summer and had so kindly saved it to post to me for Christmas. It was beautifully packed. It is a framed cross stitch picture of a doll’s house. Sadly the storm and being outside by the dustbins for goodness knows how long, had smashed the glass to smithereens. The OH took photographs with his phone (the old one with the pin numbers on it) as I unpacked and the cardboard fell to bits. Fortunately the glass proved to be removable with care without damaging the picture which is stitched on to Aida fabric and the rain had not got to the fabric. I will reglaze with UV resistant acrylic and hang the picture in the room where Lynne stayed and she will always be there.
A day later I had an email asking me to rate my delivery.
Oh yes, you know I did, in no uncertain terms.
There is a video on local social media from a doorbell camera of a passer-by noticing a delivery agent had left most of a parcel sticking out of a letterbox and stealing it.
I have had to retrieve packages left by the back door. Someone had to ignore the front door, visible from the road, looking like a porch door with a number beside it and instead turn to the side of the house, open a gate and walk through, then, even, ignore the catnip that is the dustbins and walk further down the side path to find the back door. I have even had deliveries all the way down the side path and round the corner to the sun room doorstep.
I have in the past done quite a lot of remote Christmas shopping. Apart from two items that I could not source locally, this year I actually went to the actual shops and actually bought things with actual money.
Quaint or what? I did it fully dressed in the middle of the day, which beats chasing a van through traffic, in your pyjamas.
Progress, you see, a downward trajectory.
I understand the Big River retailer has a similar opinion of most of its delivery agents to me and is already delivering packages by drones.
That’s going to be interesting before seven in the dark, dropping packages on the traffic. Do you think someone trained on computer games, delivering by handset from a gaming chair is going to care whether an unspecified package gets anywhere near the front door, or not?
Next spring I shall endeavour to source package resistant plants for the front garden.
And the back, and, come to think of it, package resistant weeds for the roof gutters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This post was hand delivered to your device, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee.