My eldest daughter, Sharon, has gone overseas.
She packed many of her wordly goods into 17 parcels and sent them via a ‘backload’ transport company to the ancestral home for safe-keeping.
They didn’t turn up, and the more I waited, the more they didn’t arrive.
Through the miracle of e-mail and internet cafes, she managed to send the name of the transport company. I used the internet Yellow Pages to track down their contact details. The helpful guy there tracked down the order and said the load was now in a warehouse in one of the industrial suburbs of our fair city. I could pick it up for free or pay $80 to have it delivered. I got a trailer and went out there – no problems, all stored safely in a giant dry shed.
As I signed for it, I said that I’d been expecting it to be delivered a couple of weeks ago. The guy said they’d tried to, but there was no one home.
We’d had a couple of tradesmen working at the front of the house on the day the delivery was due. I had asked them to tell the delivery driver to leave the load on the front verandah if it arrived while I was out.
He did, saying that I’d be back in an hour. But the driver wouldn’t leave it because it was in full view of the street, and company policy …etc.
The warehouse guy said they’d tried to contact me, but couldn’t, because they didn’t have any contact details for me. True, there was no indication on the paperwork. However, in the two weeks that the pallet had been in storage, they hadn’t noticed the 17 large labels, one on each package, each of which had my name, address and telephone number in HUGE LETTERS that you could read from the other side of the warehouse!