4916/17836
My quest to discovery why Yodel failed to make a collection from my house on two occasions continues, but seems to be becoming more murky and unclear. The driver has been interviewed and “confirmed” that he did visit my house at 15.03 on the 11th May (though no explanation as to why he didn’t ring the bell or knock on the door or why I didn’t hear him coming up the path) and apparently he also put a card through my door. Which means my letterbox must have temporarily turned into some kind of incinerator or worm hole in space, because there was no card here.
On the return visit on 13th May, the same driver came back, but this time he only had the street name and post code on his manifest so was unable to deliver. He didn’t think to ring the depot to check what the address was, or look at his manifest from Wednesday to get the house number. And even though he’d been here just two days before he didn’t recognise the street or the house that remember, he had already visited, or the letterbox through which he’d put the card. Perhaps understandable. He had a lot of deliveries that day. He might even have done some of them.
At least Yodel admit the second failed collection was down to their incompetence. Is it too much to expect a company that collects and delivers parcels to make sure that they have the addresses of the place they’re visiting? But they continue to refuse to admit the obvious truth (because what reason would I have to lie) that no attempt was made to collect the package on the Wednesday and little if any effort made to do so on Friday. I don’t want to get the driver into any trouble because I am convinced that he would only have had to lie about this because the company he works for was either putting undue pressure on him to hit certain targets on the route or not paying him enough to justify a diversion to my house. If you run a parcel delivery company that ends up not delivering or collecting parcels because of the impositions you put on your employees (and from the number of similar stories I have heard it’s hard not to conclude that these are many and binding - one or two delivery personnel might be lazy chancers, but not such a huge percentage) then you’re not really fit for purpose.
And as much as a lot of this is down to my love of persistent mischief and not wanting to let the bone go, it is very insulting that this company have so little regard for my time (if I wasn’t self-employed then two days stuck in the house could have cost me a lot of money, and as it was it did distract me from my work and other stuff I needed to get done) and also are prepared to stick to a clearly bogus story in a way that insults me, my intelligence and implies that I am lying or insane.
Again the evidence is there. The precise time. The fact that a card was put through the door. The audacity of the invention is almost impressive.
But this is my Watergate. I want to get to the bottom of what has happened here. Even though I clearly never will. I have the persistence of a herring. That’s why that phrase exists. It’s named after me. Because of my persistence. Admittedly no one else uses the phrase yet. But I am not going to stop using it until it’s in every day use. Which proves how good a saying it is.
Tonight I was back to the tour, performing in Chelmsford for the first time. I kept calling it a town and the audience kept telling me it was a city, so I was forced to tell them that from what I’d seen their cathedral just looked like a slightly big church so they had better back down. Having not performed the show for 11 days I was surprisingly shaky on the lines. They were coming out, but in my head I was often not sure about what came next. Indeed at one point I completely dried and had no idea of what the next section was. It seemed to be minutes, though was probably seconds and I gave a running commentary of my confusion. For a while I didn’t know how I would proceed. But then my brain unfroze and I was back on track. Weird how this can happen after so many performances. Though I suspect with my old brain it might start happening more.
And I am starting work on the programme for my next tour show- Richard Herring: The Best. It’s a best of show which I will be touring round the UK between September 2016 and May 2017. Details will be up on line soon and tickets should be available from 6th June. But in the mean time I am giving you the chance to get your name in the programme, get a signed limited edition programme and give some money to SCOPE. Donate £15 or more (the more you donate the bigger your name will appear) here, making the name you donate under the name you wish to appear in the programme, then email me your address to herring1967@gmail.com
If you’re interested in advertising in the programme then please email me and I will give you rates. Once again, your money goes to SCOPE. You have a little while to donate as I haven’t even started writing the programme yet.
