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The curse of the world’s oldest person strikes again. Only one person left if you haven’t yet been kissed by someone from the 19th Century. Emma Murano is your woman and she’s not bad looking for 116, so enjoy. Somewhere out there is the last surviving person from the 20th Century. It’s a bit hard to pin them down just yet, but I think my chances of claiming that crown are slim. Still they said the same about Leicester City so I am going to put a grand on it.
On Wednesday I had a frustrating day in waiting for a courier to come and collect a faulty item. Of course they didn’t give me a time for collection so I was in all day and then pretty annoyed when no one had been at 7pm. I emailed the company and on Thursday they got back to me to tell me the collection had been attempted at 15.03 on Wednesday. I knew that it hadn’t been attempted in any meaningful way as I had been home all the time and my doorbell was working as it had been rung several times and I was within earshot at that time had the collection driver been blind and unable to locate the bell. I emailed back to say that no collection attempt had been made, but I was told it definitely had. It made me angrier than any other injustice in the history of humanity. My only recourse was to write a Metro article about my frustration I felt and the unjustifiable nature of it and how impotent you feel when someone lies in such a specific way and you are clearly not believed. Which was quite cathartic. I told the company I was doing that, which I thought might make them a bit keener to help out. But they didn’t seem to really care.
They said they’d attempt to collect the item again today. I asked them to give the driver my telephone number so he or she could ring me if they were having trouble working out how to use the doorbell.
When midday had passed I somehow knew that the collection was not going to happen. I felt certain that it was going to be another day, waiting in when I would quite liked to have had the opportunity to do stuff outside of the house. This is easier for me to do than someone who isn’t self-employed - I mean if everyone in the house works how do you ever deal with these kind of events?- but it was still annoying.
I kept sending mildly sarcastic emails to the company who were refusing to send me a replacement item until the faulty one had been picked up. I argued that given this was not my fault that they should at least send out the new item straight away. It seemed odd that they had been very trusting that the damage to the item was not our fault (it wasn’t, but it might easily have been - it was a sand and water table for my daughter which we’d left in the back yard and which had collapsed, perhaps under the weight of wet sand), but seemingly refused to believe me when I said that no collection had been made.
In the afternoon we got a phone call from the company to tell us that collection had again been attempted but no one was in. I nearly hit the roof with annoyance, but this time they did seem to accept that the fault lay with the collection company and not me and agreed to send us out a new item, said they wouldn’t bother collecting the broken one and gave us a voucher to make up for the inconvenience. But I was still keen for revenge, no longer against them, as they had acted pretty honourably throughout, but against the collection driver who had either just lied about their attempt to come to my house or had possibly got the wrong address. I wanted to know what the truth was. But I probably never will. I at least felt vindicated that the original air of suspicion around my honesty had been lifted. Even if the customer complaints department for the toy store no doubt felt I was an enormous prick. Probably correctly.
But we’ve all experienced that frustration at being made to wait in, only to find out that something has gone wrong. For it to happen twice makes you think that someone is taking the piss. But at least it has ended amicably. For now. Except I plan to track down the collection person like I am a low-rent Liam Neeson in Taken and take my vengeance on them for mildly inconveniencing my life and preventing me from doing some of the things I imagine I might have done had I got those two days of my life back.
I’ve started booking in guests for RHLSTP. Monthly badge subscribers should have had an email naming the first 3 confirmed guests. If not then check your junk folder and if there’s nothing there contact me or Chris Evans (not that one) to be added to the list. Non-badge scum will get a couple of the names revealed on Monday. But I will say now that if the 27th June guest is confirmed (and it’s 80% sure) that that one will sell out straight away (and it’s already sold half out just from the rumours), so might be worth taking a punt and booking now. To be fair there are loads of amazing possibilities and all the line-ups will be great. And as we have no way of funding the filming of these at the moment it would be great if we could sell some tickets - Book here.
And to join the monthly subscribers who get advance warning of guests, a secret channel of extras and the chance to win monthly prizes and more (plus to help us pay for RHLSTP and AIOTM - all the money goes to making podcasts and not to us) donate a pound or more a month here.
