Pass the Parcel

Couriers are excellent at taking every possible step to ensure that a parcel arrives safely with the recipient and of course this does sometimes include dropping it safely off with a neighbour, rather than going off with it and leaving you to chase a re-delivery. As well as saving you that time and effort, an additional fun part of this customary practice is the insight that it gives you into the people who live around you!

Since I’ve moved to my new locality, the ‘pass the parcel game’ appears to be quite different to my previous neighbourhood. Although there is less than ten minutes’ distance between the two areas, the folk are very different!

At my previous address, finding a card declaring that our parcel had been delivered elsewhere instigated the following course of events:

*   Very close scrutiny of the card to identify the door number of the neighbourly recipient.

*   Whole-family conference and negotiation to delegate some hapless or hardy soul to go to retrieve said parcel (hapless or hardy being decided by the actual number on the card, thus the neighbour).

*   In the case of a hardy soul being needed, re-negotiation to identify ‘back-up’ in case hardy soul should not be successfully hardy enough to complete the quest.

*   A reconnaissance mission, of equivalent precision and vigilance as that show on military manoeuvres, to check out the required journey between our home and the parcel, particularly looking out for the possibility of the trip co-inciding with any one (or on one occasion, it appeared all) of the following:

1. running a gauntlet of fierce dogs in the address’s front garden;
2. the presence of Chloe, the neighbourhood’s demon child, repeated winner of her    Class’s Most Likely To Achieve An ASBO Award (serious achievement at the age of eight).
3. the presence of the local street drinker sitting (very loose term) on a wall at the bus stop (as this was at the bottom of our front path, it was our wall) and, whilst I am not cold-hearted, eye contact was not for the faint-hearted.
4. a selection of local laydees at the bus stop (think Viz characters and you will know what I mean).
5. police presence (in the manner of raiding the crack house on the corner, opposite the end of the road). If blue lights were flashing, all would be well and collecting the parcel would be part of a street party!

All of this of course also had to be considered when negotiating who was going to go a-calling for the parcel!

At times, even the next door neighbours were sometimes (although kind enough to take in the parcel), less than neighbourly about being called upon for collection. On one occasion, the elder male of the family answered the door, scowling in readiness at me. He spotted me meekly clutching the courier’s cheery card (on account of my being hapless rather than hardy) and I didn’t have the chance to utter a word before he snapped: “well come and get it then” before turning heel into the hallway and shuffling back into the front room. Obviously I had to follow the instruction and, by the time I entered the front room, he was back in his arm chair, resuming his ‘comfort’ position, presumably the one he was in before I rang the bell and, using the remote to un-pause his porn video with one hand, he soundlessly indicated the parcel on the table with the other. Not waiting to ponder any double-entendre from the only words he had uttered, I grabbed the parcel, uttered my thanks and legged it to the sanctuary of home!

Things are very different now. We are in a neighbourhood where the black recycling boxes also serve for the safe deposit of smaller parcels, so there is less need for the passing of parcels to the neighbours (recycling containers were not part of the old neighbourhood lest they be used for anti-social purposes – the mind boggles)! Nowadays, the courier’s card is scrawled with what looks like a drawing of a snake and two letter ‘b’s which broadly transcribes as ‘black box’, so all the family can venture to retrieve the treasures, no conference required, both the hapless and the hardy remain unchallenged! Where a neighbour has taken in a parcel, they invariably stop you as you come home, to chat about your day and to hand the package over with a funny story about how the courier just caught them on their way out to the Women’s Institute / doctor’s surgery / station or just as they were sitting down for a “nice cup of tea” – an entirely different kind of retrieving parcel conversation!

So, such are my tales of passing the parcel among the neighbours! I just know that couriers will have much more to say about their experiences of the dropping off process …any one want to go first?

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