After the now-preferred start to the week, Monday's men's breakfast at St Paul's Church, I returned home to wait for the day's activity to unfold. Whilst doing so, I began to draw to a close (i.e. print out) my most recent family history exercise, that of presenting my researches in a more visual form using a program called GenoPro. I've now got almost 2,800 individuals linked together on 118 separate pages. This program has been on my computer for a number of years now, but I've only recently got to grips with it. The more I use it, the less relevant it seems to my needs. It provides a good way of preparing a family tree, but a large proportion of its capabilities and also of its capacity to record personal data seem geared to a wide modern-day community rather than to a family history stretching back several centuries. <climbs off soapbox>
On the work front, I made enquiries about getting my van serviced and, in view of the mileage, the dreaded expense of having the timing belt replaced. Just after lunch, I was asked to collect from a local customer, and called at the garage en route. After a quick visual examination of the engine, the proprietor announced that this particular van has a chain rather than a belt, and therefore the much-feared expense of replacing it will not apply.
Cheered by that news, the paucity of my day's work, to Chesham and to Colnbrook seemed less daunting. This was just as well, because by the time I'd returned and collected my invoice from the office I'd broken out with a cold that seemed to have been 'brewing' over the weekend. Predictably, it got worse rather than better, and by Tuesday morning, the only sensible option was to dose myself with cold relief capsules and stay put in the warm.
Wednesday brought a welcome duo to greet my return to activity, taking me to Redditch and Chester, and a nourishing, if filling, meal at Nightowl on the way home again. Thursday found me sent (as has so often been the case of late, it seems) to King's Lynn, and while something else afterwards would have been economically welcome, the coldness of the air once I'd returned made it less attractive, and I was content to have been asked to make an 8.0 collection the next morning.
And so to a Friday that was filled up, it seems, by three unconnected jobs that afforded little rest between them. I began with a delivery made in pouring rain in the middle of Canterbury, to a restaurant in a pedestrian street that seemed to be filled with them. The rain eased as I came nearer home, but there was still a definite unpleasant drizzle as I loaded my next assignment - to deliver a fuel card and a sequence of afternoon deliveries to a wholesale chemist's delivery driver, who had been in danger of becoming stranded with an empty fuel tank in north Essex. As I told my controller, yet another case of "give Brian the novelty item"! (That's one reason I like the work.)
I came home to find both doormat and inbox filled with post, and had just made a welcome cup of tea to accompany my dealing with this, when a final call came asking me to take a computer part to a supermarket in Ipswich. This enabled me to move seamlessly from business to domestic, as I followed the delivery with a meal in their cafe before doing some shopping instead of fighting with a crowded car park at home this morning.
But what, - I hear my reader's gasp of frustration - of the two 'Dickensian' parcels? These were simply(!) a couple of items I had ordered recently online. Receiving goods by mail order is difficult. I have found it convenient to arrange for goods to be delivered where possible by Royal Mail, because if there is no one at home they leave a card and I can collect from the sorting office the following morning. A satisfactory alternative is for goods to be left by the door, inside the inner lobby shared by my myself and my next-door-neighbour, with whom I have a happy reciprocal parcel-receiving understanding. This does require an intelligent delivery agent, however; the other week I arrived home to find a parcel standing in the hallway, by the foot of the staircase and in full view of the front door!
Because their systems require a signature, drivers for many of the larger delivery chains will not leave goods unattended, or simply posted through the letterbox. Instead, they hunt around for someone else to sign for the goods, and then pop a note through the letterbox, saying where they have left the goods. If they find no one, they take the goods back to their depot for another try next day, again leaving a card to say what they've done. I have learned from bitter experience that they don't allow personal collections from their premises; nor do they entertain the substitution of an alternative delivery address, such as a workplace.
In the course of my own work I deliver all kinds of consignments to both business and domestic premises; the conditions under which I operate include that same general requirement for a signature on delivery. However - if it's a stated necessity of a job, or a relaxation of the normal rules that is requested by the sender - we will happily leave goods unattended or posted through a letterbox. On the other hand, we do not leave them - even if signed for - with anyone else, unless we get the express permission of the sender upon finding that the designated consignee is unavailable or unobtainable.
The other week, following up something I'd heard on the radio, I ordered a book from an online source. When it hadn't arrived ten days after it was allegedly despatched, I e-mailed the provider, only to be told to wait a further week, and then contact them again. The further week expired on Thursday and, as I thawed out from a chilling day, I repeated my e-mail, expecting that they would take matters up with their carrier. Yesterday afternoon I found it on my doormat, the carton open, and the book damaged. Without further ado, I sent a new e-mail to the provider, asking for that of the previous day to be ignored, and attaching a picture of the damage. Since this was only superficial and didn't detract from my being able to read and enjoy the contents, and it was only a secondhand paperback in the first place, I was content. I thought only that they might wish to report this to the carrier.
Later in the evening, when I returned to my desk, I discovered a prompt reply to my first e-mail, undertaking a full refund, since they weren't in a position to send a replacement for one that they thought - quite reasonably - had been lost. I have today had a reply to the second e-mail, saying that, now I've received the book after all, they'll make another charge to recover the refund - watch out for news of the credit card company becoming confused!
In my idleness on Thursday, I also ordered some ink for my computer printer from a previously reliable source offering free next-day delivery. I expected this to be lodged on one side or other of my front door when I came home yesterday. Instead, I found a little slip saying it had been left at the flat upstairs. A little annoyed, I marched upstairs ... and found that the occupier of the said flat had gone out! This morning, at what I thought to be a reasonable hour, I recovered my parcel of ink from the gentleman upstairs, disturbing his dogs in the process by my knock on the door, and through the obvious delay of getting him out of bed to answer the door, causing him a second inconvenience (the first being when UPS disturbed him yesterday to leave the parcel with him.) As I have since told the supplier, in an e-mailed report of the whole saga, it seems a totally disproportionate amount of fuss and cuffuffle for something that could have been popped through the letterbox in the first place!
Oh, for a restful Christmas! .......?!?
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