The Problem of the Time-travelling Parcel

In which The Author has fun with a courier

In the absence of my usual working environment in Aberdare Library and/or various cafes and pubs, I've decided to make my back bedroom into an office. It's small enough to accommodate everything I need and heat quite economically during the cold weather. (Having said that, it's quite chilly here today, a week or so short of Midsummer Day.) With this in mind, on Wednesday morning I ordered an item from a UK seller on eBay. They're based in London, with a warehouse in Northampton. A few minutes later the order confirmation pinged into my inbox. With a two-day delivery service, I could expect my item to be delivered on Friday (in other words, today).

So far, so good …

At 10.15 p.m., I had an email from DPD telling me my item would be delivered 'tomorrow' (in other words, 11 June).

Ordinarily, that would be very short notice. If I'd still been working in Cardiff, it would open up a whole can of worms involving 'Sorry we missed you' cards and/or redelivery to more or less reliable neighbours. It's a good thing nobody has any great plans to do anything in the current situation, isn't it? As things stand, a Thursday delivery would have been much better than I'd expected.

But, of course, this is 'Great' Britain in the year 2020 – and nothing ever goes according to fucking plan.

To monitor the consignment's progress, I decided to install the DPD app on my phone. I did have it on my old handset, and I think I actually used it once. It's supposed to send you a notification when the delivery leaves the depot, and again when the driver is in the vicinity, so you (in theory) don't miss the knock on the door. I decided it would be handy, because there's nothing more frustrating than waiting in all day with no sign of the driver, popping around the corner for a pint of milk at 5.30 – because who on earth delivers parcels at that time of day? ‐ and getting back to find the inevitable card on the doormat. At least I could plan my visit to Lidl around the driver's ETA.

I logged into the app once it was installed. At 2018 on Wednesday evening, my parcel apparently still hadn't arrived at the depot. An hour later, I knew (via email) that it had arrived at the DPD 'hub' at Hinckley in Leicestershire – not the geographical centre of England, but close enough for jazz. It's not too far from South Wales either. We were on course for delivery on Thursday.

Allegedly …

You can probably imagine my surprise when I logged on to the app on Thursday morning to check the delivery window, and found this:

The next part of the notification was even more worrying:

I logged on to the DPD website to see if I could find any contact details for them. As I'd half expected, there was no phone number, and no link to social media feeds; just an email form to complete and send to Customer Service for a response 'within 90 minutes'. I filled it in and sent it off. It wasn't a complaint. It was a light-hearted dig at the time-travel device which was currently conveying my delivery. No response.

I logged on again before going to bed on Thursday, to check the state of play. Nothing had changed since 0915. I figured that things would move overnight, and I might get my delivery on Friday.

No such luck. I logged in to the app just after 7.30, and this is what I found:

There's an absurd tradition in Aberdare that the town's war memorial wasn't meant to be here at all. If you listen to assorted Pub Bores and Myth-makers, they'll tell you that the impressive slab of granite, some three metres high and weighing several tons, was originally intended for Aberdeen. The driver misread the delivery note and it ended up here …

Here's a good crossword clue: Any pub story you hear about Aberdare's past (8).

I've filled in some of the letters for you …

B _ L L _ _ _ _

(Actually, there are two possible answers, both of which are correct.)

Anyway, that load of cobblers came to mind at 7.45 on Friday morning, when I found out that my parcel was at the wrong end of the neighbouring country, and (presumably) was destined to head even further north as the day wore on. Where would it end up? Aberdeen? Aberdour? More to the point, when would it actually get to Aberdare?

After fiddling with the app for a minute, I found the 'contact' options – a live text chat or a phone call. I opted for the phone call, but their customer service line wasn't open until 8.00. No problem; I waited until just after 8.00 and hit the button. After a few minutes of listening to recorded messages, I spoke to a cheerful lad in the West Midlands and explained the problem. He laughed and told me this sort of thing happens all the time. A parcel gets put in the wrong cage in the depot, and ends up being loaded into the wrong lorry.

I said I completely understood.

When I worked in the book trade, we were always getting parcels for other branches, or other shops in Cardiff, or even shops miles away that were completely unrelated to ours. The sheer volume of stuff moving through the system means that you don't have time to check every individual parcel coming off a lorry. You just count the total number of boxes you're unloading into Goods In, make sure it agrees with the driver's manifest, sign the sheet and away goes the lorry. It's only later – quite often, after you open the box and you're wondering why the order numbers don't look familiar – that you realise it was intended for WH Smith in Cheltenham, instead of Waterstones in Cardiff.

I told the guy about a funny incident that occurred shortly before I finished in Waterstones. Borders, a short walk down the road, were hosting a signing to tie in with the launch of the Gavin and Stacey TV tie-in. On the morning of the signing, one of the couriers (who shall remain nameless) delivered about six hundred copies of the book to us. Now, had we had decent relations with our bookselling cousins two hundred yards away, the situation could have been sorted out easily. We'd have slung their parcels onto a couple of trolleys and wheeled them round the corner ourselves. We'd have had to go past the very long queue of people waiting to meet the stars of the show, of course, but at least the books would have been in Borders when the event started.

But we didn't have a good relationship with them. Quite the opposite, in fact, following a nasty incident after a publisher event in Bristol, which almost ended up in a full-on brawl outside the Hayes Island Cafe. We took the opportunity to get our revenge by ringing the courier to report the misdelivered consignment. They duly collected the parcels the following day and delivered them … well, who cares when? It was after the signing. That's all we were worried about.

However, my rogue item isn't a small parcel containing a few books.

It's a fucking flatpack desk!

It must have taken some effort to put that in the wrong cage, and then in the wrong van.

The guy and I had a good laugh, and he told me he'd arrange a 'priority delivery' for Saturday morning, by way of apology for the fuck-up. And he was as good as his word.

I think …

Shortly after we wished each other a good weekend and I hung up, I had another notification from the DPD app:

So, will my parcel arrive tomorrow, or will I have to wait until 2026 for it?

The suppliers themselves don't seem to be any the wiser. Here's what eBay have told me this afternoon:

As usual, boys and girls, watch this space …

I Hate it When a Plan Falls Apart

In which The Author is at home

This afternoon, I should have been on the way to Victoria Coach Station in London, in time for the 1830 departure to Cardiff. Instead, I'm in Aberdare. It's a long story, so let's start at the beginning.

In November 2012, I had the great pleasure and privilege of recording a heat of Brain of Britain, the long-running general knowledge quiz, for BBC Radio 4. (I told you the whole story of my trip to Manchester – and its disappointing epilogue – in It's Grand Oop North.) I didn't progress any further in the 2012–3 series, and there's a five-year embargo before one can enter again. Thus it was that I logged on to the BBC website in the summer of 2018 and requested an application form once the new series went into pre-production.

As before, the audition took the form of a phone call, on the afternoon of 29 November 2018. I'll admit that I wasn't exactly prepared for it. In fact, I was in the Glosters after an old friend's funeral, nursing a pint and enjoying some memories of our time together. But I took the phone into the lounge, chatted to the production assistant for a while, and managed to pull out some answers and make a few guesses. I must have done all right, because a few weeks later I had an email confirming my place in the next series. The recording was scheduled for the end of January 2019. They booked my hotel for me, and I'd sorted out my coach ticket as soon as the dates were pinned down. The game, it seemed, was afoot.

A few days before I was due to travel, I was struck by the flu virus that had taken most of Aberdare out during the preceding couple of weeks. I emailed the BBC from my bed, apologising that I probably wouldn't be well enough to make the journey. Even if I had made a miraculous recovery over the weekend, I wouldn't have given my best performance on the evening. It seemed I wasn't alone, because a number of contestants and a few of the production team had also been off sick. Unfortunately, my heat was one of the last to be scheduled, so I couldn't even swap with someone else and go up later. Instead, they offered to keep my place open for the following season.

By the time Xmas 2019 rolled around, I was starting to wonder if they'd forgotten about me. A good few of my friends had asked whether I'd heard anything from the BBC. It crossed my mind to drop them a line, to be on the safe side. But I didn't need to bother. As soon as everyone went back to work in January, I had an email asking if I was still interested in taking part. I told Lizzie, the production assistant, that I definitely was interested, and a few days later she confirmed my recording date: 2 March, in London. Soon after that she confirmed my hotel booking. It was right around the corner from the British Museum – perfect, because I wanted to check out the exhibition on the Trojan War on the Tuesday. I booked the coach the same morning and started making plans for the rest of the Tuesday. Today, in other words …

On 15–16 February, Storm Dennis came along and wrecked much of South Wales, including Pontypridd town centre and a fair section of the Valleys. Needless to say, public transport was particularly badly affected, with railway lines flooded and bus services cancelled. In fact, it took until last Wednesday (26 February) for the trains to start running from Aberdare to Pontypridd again. A half-hearted and chaotic Replacement Bus Service had tried to plug the gap in the meantime. My friends didn't have anything positive to report about the emergency provision, so I was already dubious about the idea of travelling any great distance. Can you imagine getting off the bus in Pontypridd and running up the steps just in time to see the Cardiff train pulling away from the platform? It happened to a few people I know. Then you'd have to get off the train at Cathays and force a path through the crowd on the footbridge to Park Place, undoubtedly in time to see the London coach pulling away from the stop about 50 m away. I wasn't optimistic.

Last Thursday lunchtime, the weather forecast gave a yellow warning in advance of Storm Jorge, which was – apparently – due to hit Wales on Saturday morning. Call me pessimistic if you like, but I emailed Lizzie and said I might not be able to travel up on Monday after all. I explained about the fuck-ups with the Replacement Bus Service over the previous fortnight and outlined the possible situation in Cardiff. Lizzie replied shortly afterwards; she'd seen the forecast herself and thought I might be right. She said she'd try and contact the other contestants to see if anyone could swap with me, and offered me an alternative date in April as a Plan B.

In the end, Storm Jorge arrived early. By Friday afternoon the roads around Aberdare were in chaos and the newly reintroduced train service was at a standstill. Again.

A gang of us from the National Tap were meant to be travelling to Chepstow on the Friday evening, for a 'tap takeover' at the Queen's Head. I phoned the bus company and we agreed that we were doing the right thing by pulling the plug on the trip. (Incidentally, our trip to the Brecon Tap in January fell apart as well. Everyone thought someone else was organising the bus. In the event, no one did. That's 0 from 2.)

Then Transport for Wales announced that there'd been a landslide on the railway line between Mountain Ash and Abercynon. Apparently it took ages to sort out a Replacement Bus Service – to the extent that my pal Martyn E. bit the bullet and slept in the pub where he works as a chef.

I emailed Lizzie just before close of play on Friday to update her. She got back to me straight away. Unfortunately, they hadn't found anyone who was able to swap recording dates with me. Instead, they're holding my place open for next year. Sound familiar?

Who knows what fun the Goddess of Chaos will have in the run-up to the next recording date? Watch this space …

A Found Poem

In which The Author digs out an old magazine

Back in September, I signed up for a Creative Writing course. Again …

It was a random sort of Monday, really. Chazz and I had been for lunch, and she'd commented that she needed a new dictionary. So we strolled over to The Works, because I knew they'd have the 'Back to school' offers in place. While we were in there, I bumped into David and Andrea from New Horizons. I'd met them shortly before, when I sat in on a taster session for Psychology and Criminology. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for the full course because it took place at an inconvenient time (and venue). But they asked us if we'd be interested in the Creative Writing course, which was starting that very afternoon. I twisted Chazz's arm by telling her that she might get a song out of it (at least), and the two of us strolled around the block in time for the kick-off.

It turned out that I already knew Steve, the tutor. He used to teach a group in Aberdare Library, and also takes the guitar classes that happen there in the evenings. We'd chatted a couple of times, so it was nice to know I wasn't going in cold.

Anyway, I've put in a few pieces of work already, some of which I'm quite pleased with, and one is taking shape into a longer piece which might become an Actual Completed Project. (Don't stake your life on it, though.)

However, I don't like poetry.

I didn't enjoy studying poetry at school; I don't enjoy reading it, listening to it (with a very few contemporary exceptions such as Ian McMillan and Roger McGough), or writing it. My heart sinks whenever Steve says the word 'poetry'. So when he asked us a week last Monday to write a 'found poem', I realised I could do it without too much need for heavy lifting.

A 'found poem', in essence, relies on taking pieces of existing text and rearranging them into a new form. Now, I knew that with over two thousand books and many old magazines at home, I could probably find something interesting to work with. On Sunday, having finished a copy-edit and with Storm Ciara raging in the background, I pulled out an old copy of the London listings magazine Time Out and got to work.

This particular edition was dated 1–8 March 1995, so it's a whisker short of 25 years old. (If only we'd waited a couple of weeks, I could have taken it to class and we could have had some birthday cake.) I wasn't in London at the time, needless to say. I bought it purely because the cover photo was a head shot of the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh wearing a stunning studded collar.

If only I had been in London that week: Kevin Ayers was playing a rare gig that week; so were his fellow Soft Machine alumnus John Etheridge (a free Sunday lunchtime affair), Kevin's former musical collaborator Lol Coxhill, and a young sax player named Theo Travis, who (along with Mr Etheridge) is in the current Soft Machine line-up, when he's not moonlighting with Andy Tillison's band the Tangent.
I was in Aberdare when all this musical activity was going on. Go figure …

Anyway, I'd already decided to adopt the cut-up approach pioneered by William S. Burroungs and Brion Gysin – not literally, because I hate defacing books or magazines. Instead, I flicked through the pages and typed out the odd string of text that caught my eye. There was no structure to begin with; all I wanted were some interesting phrases or lines of text that could be stitched together in a new sequence. The more I read, the more I found. And, after a few hours messing around with the word processor, I came up with twenty stanzas.

In the spirit of 'found poetry', I need to acknowledge my sources, of course. All the text can be found in that particular edition of Time Out, so I won't credit all the people involved. (When I say 'all the text', some of it is so well hidden I couldn't find it again when I came to scan the sections in question on Sunday evening. But I swear to Goddess it was all there on Sunday afternoon.) There's a sidebar on page 3 of the print copy which lists all the contributors.

I've preserved much of the capitalisation and most of the punctuation from the original texts. I've added one or two line breaks and removed a few others. Some of the stanzas are more ridiculous than others; none of them make any real sense. But I think it's an amusing exercise, and it got a few chuckles when I read it out in class on Monday afternoon. Here goes …

'Plastic and TV are our natural world'

or

The next eight days in full

Until 5 March a spectacular full-scale replica of
Oscar Wilde's London
Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas' church.

So, the Brits finally hit
Men with animal skulls
'I mean, has she got a face?'
Ever been a perpetrator …?

Never mind politics
in this portrait of life in a north Wales village at the
Grace Theatre at the Latchmere pub
Roy Smiles' shoestring musical spoof,
rather than being political statements,
tempts you with a promise to make it all better.

Those who received a copy of
the first season of Danger Man
Wish I hadn't …

A famous de Kooning aphorism:
Why have so many people had a charisma bypass?

London't acute shortage of
A chic Italian restaurant
Serious without being earnest
Defies easy definition.

The thing about the best road movies
If in doubt, add a serial killer.
Preview tapes were unavailable.

Controversial, we know, but
Philosopher, wit, fearless experimentalist and oddball
Pierre Boulez has marked this century both with
This bawdy, modern-day version of 'Cinderella'
and with a taut, swinging delivery.

PARACHUTING, SKYDIVING, BUNGEE
JUMPING, FLYING, GLIDING, HELICOPTERS
Denotes activity or entertainment particularly
suitable for under-fives.

Are you violent? Do you want to stop
Entering the gallery, you'd be forgiven for
Photographing naked people in city streets;
'Flesh is the reason oil painting was invented.'

The Courtauld has a splendid permanant
collection of old masters such as Rubens and
Beveridge, Watson & Crick, and Hancock.

Pentangle founder-member Jansch, one of the finest
exponents of the ornate finger-picking style he
helped popularise in the 60s
When Starr Faithfull's body was
Pronounced a delight by our
Young Gay and Lesbian Writing Workshop

Excellent and always playful,
Two physically identical girls, living in Poland
In this rich, evocative feast of puppetry and
board-game action hosted by Steve, Figs and Mike
on the main floor. Or you can revive the black leather
girl traumatised by childhood rape.

The songs themselves proffer a mildly
affectionate and very funny odyssey through
Getting Away with Murder.

The German audience and critics were
absolutely clear about it: the only film
that deserved to win Berlin's top prize
– the Golden Bear – was Wayne Wang's
Starsky and Hutch

Waxworks of the famous and infamous, now with
Ming Ming, also Nile crocodiles, rare Asiatic lions
and cubs and a large aquarium with sharks and
former Italian leader with a
child's toy arrow attached by its sucker
to his nose

For dirty, fuck-faces and elemental punk,
Exceptionally adventurous female
Jennifer Jason Leigh's filmography reads like
The best of American modernist art.

Lovely, lithe female graduate, 40
years experience as a clairvoyant, proven
slighly scatty, into real ale and good living,
bit scruffy, veggie, lefty, daunted by new capital
surroundings, looking for woman with or without
ANY NATIONALITY for long-term friendship.

Following last night's orgy of marijuana.
In the best surrealist tradition, Buñuel
involves shifting disembodied brains from
a compendium of favourite elements
and the same two old stalwarts as before.

Beirut bombshell
Abbot still a Virgin
Game for a group blind date?
Bad sex
Love and Bullets
Wee-wee in the wind
Reefer Madness
All slap and no tickle
AIDS memoirs
Next Time I'll Kill You