Chatterbox Tuesday

I survived, but, at what cost?

At what.... cost?

99p. Special offer.

My first experience of FedEx is they are utterly shite...

They estimated my parcel would be here last Fri by 6pm.
It arrived in Paisley from Germany via Stansted Sat morning and has been sitting there ever since. How long does it take.

I see the Guardian have employed Shenguin.

www.theguardian.com/food/2021/aug/10/elegantly-wasted-has-lockdown-made-booze-dangerously-aspirational

Vanilla milkshake for lunch.

That's because I need to wait for Jeff Fresh to deliver my groceries. Before I made my journey to the Deep South I tried to arrange an Ocado delivery to the new address, only to find that the region is entirely ocadoagnostic. So I registered with Tesco, but they claimed that there was no delivery slot. Ever. Finally I put in an experimental order of some basics* with Amazon Fresh for last Friday.

I had timed the delivery on Friday in such a way that the grandkids and their parents would be already on their way when it arrived. As soon as they had left I got a notification that Jonathan (his real name) would be swinging by with my groceries soon. The address that I'm at is part of a new development in a cul-de-sac that's gated off, but during the day it just takes a button press at the gate to enter.

I could see on Jeff's tracking information map that Jonathan was close but wasn't moving for a while, so I got worried that he might be stuck at the gate. Because I don't know the area at all I didn't notice that the tracking information showed a completely different part of the town. The grandkids' father had told me that he would leave me with all the necessary keys, including the key fob that opens the gate, on the same keyring. I thought he'd put it into a kitchen drawer.

When I opened the drawer to look for it I realised that it was full of stuff and that I couldn't find it. I still have no idea what happened to it, but luckily there were some other loose keys and a key fob that turned out to be the correct ones for the front door and the gate. So I went to meet him at the gate. But he wasn't there. He wasn't on the main road, either.

So I was standing in the road when eventually he phoned me on my mobile (another feature of this delightfully remote location is that there's no mobile phone signal in the house) to ask questions about the address and mentioning that he was at a block of flats near a major road. To add to the confusion, one of Jeff's vans had turned up whose driver was delivering parcels to the neighbours and studiously ignoring me waving at him. Turns out he wasn't Jonathan. I realised that I had no idea what the name of the road was that I was standing on but couldn't use Google Maps while I was talking on the phone. So I walked towards a bus stop in the hope that it would give me a street name.

Luckily a bloke came out of a house to put something into his parked car. Unfortunately he didn't know the name of the road, either, which I thought was unusual since presumably he drove the car to the address he was staying at. But maybe someone else was driving the car and he had been unconscious. Fortunately he looked up the road on Google Maps and I was able to tell Jonathan, who realised that he was about 10 minutes away.

So I was standing there in the road without a coat, waiting for Jonathan to drive across town. During the time it took him to get there there was a short torrential downpour and I flagged down two confused blokes in a demolition van because I realised too late that this wasn't the van I was waiting for.

Eventually I had my groceries delivered and Jonathan got the "above and beyond" award because he bloody well deserved it.

tl;dr: I'm missing the fleshpots of Birmingham

* beer**

**and wine

Classic Jonathan.

French Onion Soup with Marmite Flatbreads, I could have had some cheesy crackers (rather like some of the puns here)...

Had a big meeting earlier. One of the little people was putting forward a pet project. Eventually I got bored and said yes, even though I don't like sour wine gums.

Stanley Unwin's* American cousin



*For those that haven't heard Oz's third cousin, here he is interviewing another of his cousins...

With a Terry Dakyl fireside chat you get three guaranteed rib ticklers and some inspo video clips (that’s short for innovation inspiration, like thinspo but with innovation but the in stands for the innovation part and only the spo is inspiration, or inspo (not that inspo, inspo as in inspiration as it is in thinspo))

That's an amazing thing you've got going there. After reading I'm totally innovated and inspired. Life changing.

First it has to be cleared to enter which also means covid checks and ID checks then they have to make sure it's allowed in the country then it has to be scheduled for pick up then they have to put it in the van after more covid checks then it goes out for delivery - and if you're very lucky you the last on the list at 10pm.
I only managed as far as my item arriving at the airport, they then told me after 3 weeks of waiting fir it to arrive at the airport that it wasn't cleared to enter Britain. The Item - a pair of earrings for the PM!
good luck.