The Parcels & The Porno

This story, if the villains of the tale had their way, would actually have been painstakingly written out with pen and paper, delivered personally to each of my readers (cue some joke about the paltry McCannecdotes fanbase, but the joke’s on you – my fanbase has increased by 25% in the last year alone, after a new person was told about my blog and has said that she might check it out in the future, if she remembers). Even without Leanne, the geographical spread of my readership means this would be a time-consuming delivery task involving at least one trip to Scotland and potentially a drop-off in Australia.

But why wouldn’t you just post them, you ask? Well that’s because this story is all about ineptitude on the part of so-called postal services. And the first bit about the pen and paper is because one of the items being so-called delivered was the computer I use to write McCannecdotes. But why wouldn’t you have used your phone, you continue to interrupt, surely whilst time-consuming and not as fast as a full-size QWERTY keyboard it’s much faster than hand-writing and you’d be able to still post it online negating the trip to Scotland (and Australia)? Well, that’s because the other item being so-called delivered … was my phone.

This was all back in 2019 – before “COVID” became a perfect excuse for companies to underperform even long after the pandemic had passed. If I am alive in 2050 (still a chance, even though I’m Scottish), I have no doubt any call to a customer service line is still going to be met with “Due to COVID-19 we are experiencing delays and general rubbishness which you are not allowed to judge us on, if you do the call will be recorded for training purposes, or just for our customer service team leader Troy to laugh at.” (Troy will be a popular boys’ name in 2050, I’m putting the prediction in now. Also Alan will have made a long-awaited comeback, with the single L spelling becoming the overwhelming norm, expediting my journey through the call centre security checks).

Anyway, so 2019 and I was newly installed in my new house. You might have spotted some writings on this topic elsewhere on the site (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). I was in the New House Fiscal Zone, not a penny to my name but spamming my credit cards with relentless purchases of “house things” – kettles, drying frames, those little horseshoe-shaped carpets for under the toilet, and an absolute fuck-tonne of light bulbs. When I was growing up there was a single light in each room. It was also, somewhat redundantly, know as the “big light”. My new house replaced this easy-to-service “big light” with 6 or 8 smaller lights burrowed into the ceiling and impossible to access without a cherry-picker.

Much of the financial journey towards home ownership was incentives based – “reach your annual savings target and you can buy a LEGO”, “spend nothing in October, and in November you can buy those pizzas you like which are so good but just way more than you’d ever consider spending on a pizza you have to cook yourself”. One of these involved my telephone. Gone were the days of expensive contracts, I was now buying my own phones outright, with a Sony staff discount, and paying a mere £10 a month to the telephone company. On these calculations, versus contract, I could save money and treat myself to a new phone every two years.

I was about a year overdue on my shiny new phone, what with all the house stuff, but bearing the above rule in mind, and also that despite being penniless I could hide the debt under a mountain of Argos purchases, I decided to get a new phone. It was, in a way, for the house – I’d be using it to take pictures of the house and its contents, and I would be in the house most of the time I’d be using it. And since I don’t have a landline (although of course still pay for one) this was technically my “house phone”. Although I did realise that the interest charged from putting this purchase on my credit card along with thousands of pounds of furniture would negate any money made from my contract saving, it was decided, it was for the house, it was allowed.

It was to be delivered by a company I won’t name but whose initials might well spell out Delayed Haphazard Logistics*.

(*in some notes I’d jotted down at the time, thinking this may one day be a McCannecdote, I originally wrote “who I won’t name, but it rhymes with Cunts-H-L”. I’ve calmed down a bit since then).

Days passed; having taken about 45 minutes to get from the warehouse in the Czech Republic to DHL’s depot in Kent, it seemed to have been languishing there. The tracking mentioned delivery had been attempted (it fucking hadn’t), and I now needed to go to the depot to pick it up.

I remember feeling foolish at the time that all these years I had clearly misunderstood the concept of home delivery. I thought (and don’t laugh) that the idea was they would get paid money to bring it to my house, using one of their many vans. I of course realised now that in fact I had to go and get it myself and take it to my house, and they were being paid cash money simply to store it for a few days in a big room.

After much research and extensive use of a journey planner, I set off to get my goodies. According to Google Maps this is a half hour train journey and a 20 minute walk. I remember it being about 8 times that distance. It’s not that it was six miles away, it was that like most such things, it was very deliberately out of the way, as if no-one under any circumstances should ever need to get there unless they were in a DHL van – and certainly no-one using public transport.

Cursing myself for not having a car – and then reasoning that taking driving lessons, buying a car, getting it insured and finding somewhere to park it was mildly more time-consuming than this one journey – I sat on the train. On the walk, back to cursing DHL rather than myself I muttered expletives under my breath as I navigated main roads with no pavement to my destination. It was basically IKEA all over again but without the smell of meatballs. I arrived, picked up my phone, swore some more, and set off on the return journey, noticing the volume of DHL vans idling in the car park – I mean, of course they were, why would they be anywhere else, you can’t expect them to be off-site taking packages to their owners can you.

I got home and was relaxing from what was frankly the most exhausting day since I spent hours watching my sister build one of my beds. There was a knock at the door. Who on earth could this be, no-one knows I live here yet and it can’t be a delivery because I’VE JUST FUCKING PICKED UP MY OWN DELIVERIES.

A friendly Chinese man introduced himself. “Hi,” he said, “I’m your Chinese neighbour,” or something like that. He was holding a card in his hand, and I recognised that cowardly-yellow/rageful-red branding. Fucking DHL. “I got this card through the post yesterday, it didn’t have a name or anything on it, but is it yours?”

“Oh, so long story – maybe you can read about it one day – but yeah it was my phone, don’t worry though I went to the depot today to collect it.”

“Yeah,” he said, “So did I…”

Turns out he got the nameless, addressless card, thought he had a delivery waiting, and travelled all the way to the depot to pick it up, only to be told there was nothing for him. On the plus side, he did have a car, so I was still the primary victim of DHL’s depot duggery.

We got chatting, I hadn’t met any of my neighbours yet. I’d meant to do that thing where I go round with home-baked treats and introduce myself, but I can’t bake for toffee so I opted to keep a low profile instead. Also I think a part of me was worried other residents had seen the assortment of random stuff the removals men had taken into the house and might already have me pegged as an oddball. In today’s world not being able to bake would only fuel that perception.

I invited him in to have a look around – this is exactly what I’d want in such a situation and he seemed very curious too. He had moved in only 6 months or so before me, and was the owner or the cool silver convertible that often parked outside my house, and which I was enjoying as an occasional status symbol.

The fun of showing someone round the house, and meeting a new friend, was overshadowed later by the fact that while showing him my bedroom, I hadn’t realised there was a French porno DVD sitting quite prominently in the middle of the floor, which couldn’t have gone unnoticed due to the distinct cover art. I had been unpacking a box from the spare room and this was sat atop a small pile of miscellany I had yet to find a home for.

I wish to add a few notes of explanation to this; the DVD belonged – yes, belonged – to my ex-flatmate. He was French, which explains the French bit. He was also homosexual which probably raises additional questions. You see, he was simply a big fan of the actor whose penis featured prominently in this DVD (and indeed the cover art), which judging from the number after the name was part of an ongoing franchise. Neither the actor, nor his penis, did any of the gay stuff, so my flatmate’s only choice was to go to the shop and pretend to be straight (I’m not sure what questions they ask in this situation) and purloin this heterosexual DVD for his collection. When he left London to return to Paris, in exchange for my help in accompanying him on the move in a big van through the Eurotunnel to his new home, he gifted me this prized DVD – knowing that I liked the actress who also featured. The reason he knew I liked her is due to an incident where I should have knocked, definitely wished I’d knocked, but didn’t. And the reason I liked her is because she has a pretty face. You can google her, her name is Clara Morgane – and you really can google her safely, which I feel speaks to the classy nature of my taste in adult actresses. Like I said, pretty face.

(Whilst researching the film in question for this piece, I discovered it has a 6.4 IMDb rating. I did not realise adult films got IMDb ratings or were even listed there. This puts it bang on the same score as the Bond film The World Is Not Enough, which is about fair. It’s also the same score received by Single White Female, a film I recently rewatched due to a fondness for Bridget Fonda (pretty face) and which contains almost the same amount of nudity. Alongside its critical reviews the porno has one extremely negative user review, in which the author seriously lays into Clara Morgane – and not in that way).

So I had my new phone, the timing of which haunts me to this day. I was waiting over a month for internet to be sorted at my new house, meaning I got a new phone whilst being wifi-less. DO NOT EVER DO THIS. It left me with a black hole of a few weeks in all my backed-up photos and messages and the phone was an absolute fucking pain to set up.

Around six months later, as Christmas approached, I was in the market for a new PC. I know a lot about using computers but far less about buying them. I know people build them, and that such a thing is definitely the best way, but process of doing this baffled me. The one I wanted had a sliding screen and a little dial on the side for creative types. I wouldn’t use these, but I wanted both of them.

(Number of times in 3 years of ownership that I’ve tilted the screen = 4. Favourite thing about this PC and feature I would most look for in a replacement = tilting screen).

I placed my order and tried to calm my nerves when I saw it was consigned to none other than DHL…

Days passed; having taken about 45 minutes to get from the warehouse in China to DHL’s depot in Kent, it seemed to have been languishing there. The tracking mentioned delivery had been attempted (it fucking hadn’t), and this time that they would try again tomorrow.

I checked with my neighbour if he’d received anything. Nope. This went on for about a week – every day the tracking said it would come “tomorrow”. That old saying of “tomorrow never comes” never felt more appropriate. This time I tried calling them. Forget my earlier complaints about call centres, these pricks didn’t even have humans. An automated voice, which was the only option I had when calling, literally said “You’re parcel will be delivered … tomorrow … goodbye”, and hung up on me. I was in a state of all out rage, all the more so because this was the second time in six months that the same delivery company had shafted me.

Perhaps I was being unfair. In a previous job many years ago I stopped using DHL as a courier because they had been getting it wrong much earlier in the process; they hadn’t even been coming to pick up the things I was sending. They were taking the booking and then a week later my parcel would still be in the post room. To have gone from this to a scenario where not only are they collecting items but taking them within just a few miles of the recipient, is progress that is to be lauded.

I had no way of contacting these goons, and no confidence my package was ever going to arrive. I took the drastic step of deciding to go to the depot – to collect my new PC if it was even there, and if not to smash up the sorry excuse of a waiting room (i.e. pick up some old magazines and dog-ear them).

No need to journey plan, I knew the way like the back of my hand. If the PC was there I would need to call a cab to take me and it home. I pre-angered myself to try to expend some of the unbearable rage I was going to feel if I ended up paying cash money to someone to ferry my package to my house while DHL staff idled in their ivory tower (concrete warehouse).

Upon arrival in my new home-away-from-home, the DHL depot waiting room, I immediately saw a sign that chilled me to my bones. “PHOTOGRAPHIC ID REQUIRED”. I hadn’t even considered this. All I had was a nearly-maxed-out credit card I was using to pay for furniture, phones, PCs and taxi journeys. The sign was extremely strict. No photo ID, no stuff.

The man took my info and spent an age “in the back”, occasionally coming back to check details. With every question I shoe-horned some grievance in before answering.

“What was the tracking number again?” he’d ask.

“You know you were supposed to deliver this last week. 30979270800089.”

“And what was the name?”

“I don’t have a car, I spent an hour mostly walking here and will have to pay for a taxi home. Alan McCann.”

It was a good technique. Eventually he came back with a large box. Is that a sliding screen I see on the front? Is that a knob poking out the side which I can use for ‘creative’ stuff (like drawing with one hand, while rapidly zooming in and out with the other)?

It was indeed.

“Do you have ID?”

“Yes of course,” I said, feigning ignorance that my credit card did not match the very specific requirements of the waiting room sign.

As he checked my card he explained, “You’re lucky it was still here, it was actually in the process of being sent back to the vendor because we couldn’t deliver it.”

Sent back! “You absolute fucking…”

“You know we’re only supposed to take photographic ID but I’ll make an exception.”

I seized my chance, buried my grievance, and grabbed the box, “THANKS MATE, BYE, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

I dashed out in a hurry, and then remembered I’d have to wait in the car park for 20 minutes for my taxi.

Miraculously I had my new PC, and it was to come into its own just a few months later when COVID led to an extended period of working from home.

I should say, in DHL’s defence (there is smoke coming out of my PC in reaction to me typing those three words) they are by no means the only such company I’ve had issues with. I do not have time to write the six-part expose on Royal Mail so I … wait I must at least tell you this one. Yesterday I received a parcel from them, a mere three weeks after it was posted next day delivery. That’s not all, the item was a poster (Superman (1978) my favourite film), it had been posted in a poster tube which the Amazon seller had even stapled closed at the ends for security. It arrived with the tube literally torn in half with the tube and the mangled poster in a bag that said sorry on it.

Or there’s the time another courier, who I don’t remember, was tasked with delivering a new TV and sound system to my old flat. They delivered it even earlier than they said they would, what a service huh? Except that I was expecting it on the Thursday and they delivered it Wednesday when I was at work. And what did they do when they found I wasn’t home?

They left it on the doorstep.