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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A queue for a ticket for the ‘must see’ gig / match / performance (delete as appropriate to your own interest) can be fun, as indeed can be the subsequent queue, with ticket safely in hand, for such an event itself. These queues have a vibe of their own, you can’t help but be caught up in the anticipation, purpose and optimism of the snaking masses, a life force of its own exuberant intent. What then, makes the queue at the Post Office, the complete antithesis? Is it ….

that, with its snail-like stealth, it is reminiscent of queues in the old days, where food and employment were carefully rationed, slowly apportioned and not always available – this feeling added to by the invariable presence of purposeful pensioners, with their “done this before” glazed expressions?

that the post office queues take in such a cross-section of society in all its glory and with all its purpose – from the exchange of the holiday savings for the currency of choice of the wealthier, to the handing over of the benefit of necessity, of the more impoverished, disabled or elderly members of society, that the queue seems interminable?

to do with timing – you know that you are caught in a race for a window, for at any given time, the Law of Murphy (or other such well known phrase) predicts that as you near the front of the queue, at least one of the windows will close, reducing your options and increasing your wait time. You know that the Law of Murphy (or more particularly the other such well known phrase) is fully responsible for this when this happens and it is in fact also your lunch time and you have spent the whole of it in the queue, sandwich in one hand, urgent parcel / letter / bill in the other.

to do with what amounts to a sensory overload, the experience of waiting, surrounded by the white noise of the grumbling queue, advertising, tannoy summoning the lucky person at the front to the window of choice, upset / tired / hungry / grumpy wailing of some poor child or worse, some poor adult (hopefully not the cashier). Of course, that’s just the sensory overload on the ears, do you really want me to explore and explain the sensory overload on the nose that comes from a prolonged queue at a local Post Office not of my own, but of desperation’s choosing?

a direct result of the fact that so many of our community Post Offices have been closed down, that the remaining branches are so over-run and over-worked, that queues form whatever the time or day, so whilst you cleverly anticpate having missed the pension queue, you actually find yourself nearer to being one in the time it takes you to pop a parcel into the post because the fact is that since the closures, main Post Offices experience little in the way of lulls nowadays, they are all busy all of the time.

Who knows, ultimately, why the experience of queuing at the post office feels like an insight into the queue of poor, misguided souls at Hell’s gate? All I do know is that if you can avoid it, if a courier can do it for you, without the queueing, stress and major time commitment, it might well be wise to pursue some of those courier options.

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So, last week, I was working away at the computer in the dining room (front of the house), faithful hound drooling at my side, when we both heard the flapping of something exciting fall through the letter box. The hound made it to the front door first (you know by now of her love of delivering men of all natures), closely followed by myself – a little unsteady on my feet following recent illness. We found ourselves staring at one of Royal Mail’s ‘sorry you were out ….’ cards, then at each other. Out? Called? Sorry? Clearly not, it would appear. I opened the door to see Mr. Royal Mail driving away as if from pole-position. Hmmm.

Now, I can honestly say this is not the first time this has happened to me. Previously I was actually standing behind the closed front door when the card came through the flap. Quick as a flash I opened the door to the retreating postie, immediately questioning his calling tactics. “Your bell’s not working” he pointed out, very reasonably. I felt I was equally reasonable when I pointed out that I had no bell, but a knocker and he had obviously been carrying just the card and not my parcel as he was, now, empty handed. He sheepishly conceded that during general working hours, it’s anticipated that the majority of people are not in to accept deliveries, so he had not worried about bringing out my parcel as I’d be at work. Good plan, just not in the school holidays though.

My question is, is this common practice among delivery men, be they courier chains, private or independent couriers or part of a national delivery service? Is there a kind of professional knock-down Ginger that anticipates no-one will answer the door anyway, so at times of convenience, it is the card and not the parcel that comes to the front door? Only you guys can settle this question, so it’s over to you …. !

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