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Let me tell you a story.
When I order something from Amazon, like a lot of people I normally set the delivery point to my workplace. But for a delivery last week, I had failed to do so, and Amazon dispatched it to my home address instead.
Amazon decided, for once, to use City Link. It will surprise few people that, when the courier arrived at our front door gone 11:00 last Thursday, I was not there to take delivery.
Now, if it had been Royal Mail leaving the card, I wouldn't have minded too much. The sorting office is about 2 minutes walk from the desk at which I sit, and I'd have dropped in there the following morning once I'd parked behind it. But that isn't the case with City Link. With City Link, it's a 60 mile round trip to visit their depot.
Drive 60 miles? Or take the morning off work? Or forget the consignment, which I could have replaced for £9.45 at Tesco. (Yes, it was the latest Pratchett book.)
The last option would be the most sensible of those three, to be honest. But on Friday morning, at 9:15, I called up City Link to inform them that the redelivery attempt wouldn't work and to ask them to change it. The lass on the other end of the phone took my details, and offered a change of address, but warned me the new delivery wouldn't be till Monday. She then took my work address, said "Oh, one moment, I want to try something", and asked me to hold.
About 5 minutes later, she got back to me.
At 9:45, I had the book in my hands. The driver had had it on his van, he'd not come round to our area of town yet, and he was able to deliver it.
So distinct plaudits to City Link for this - this was good service.
And now, tale told and on a topical note, I would like to plead to Amazon not to take their small package delivery business away from the Royal Mail. There must be many people like me who have either a sorting office or a Post Office much closer to them than the nearest courier depot.
(Yes, City Link's Cambridge depot is appreciably closer, about half the distance. But unlike us, it's not in Hertfordshire, and City Link's routing takes deliveries to us to their Hertfordshire depot, which is only just outside the M25, right down the far end of the county.)
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For the next three years, you won't be able to visit the Mary Rose in Portsmouth, because she's having a brand new museum built round her. Once that is complete, she should be quite a sight. The Mary Rose can be considered England's Vasa, since like that ship, she is a wonderfully preserved mediaeval warship raised from the mud. There are some differences: - There's only one side of the Mary Rose available: the other got eaten by ship worm, something that wasn't a problem for the Vasa in the brackish waters in Stockholm.
- She's considerably older, having sunk over 80 years earlier
- She was considerably more successful - after launch, the Vasa sailed across the harbour, and made it part of the way back before sinking{*}. The Mary Rose, however, served for 35 years, taking part in battles and even getting upgraded twice.
But having seen the Vasa, I do intend to go see the Mary Rose once the museum's finished. {*} IIRC, if you count the total distance the Vasa ever covered, including the post-raising movements, she went something like 2 km in total.
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It looks as though I do have a sourdough starter now working. (Actually, I may well have two of them, but the one following ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) desperance's instructions, though smelling plausible, won't be ready for a while yet.) Last night, we had pizza, made with a dough I'd started before leaving for work, and topped with chopped tomatoes that had been liquidised and then reduced (and including basil, oregano and dried onion granules), mozzarella, sliced mushrooms and sliced ham. Very nice it came out, too.
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If there's a slight downside to our trip to Canada, it was the Montréal Dorval (YUL) airport luggage handling. On arrival on our inbound flight, the luggage conveyor stopped working and had to be restarted, causing somewhat of a delay. This may be a symptom of other problems. A number of the cases on the conveyor had handles that were either missing or merely partly torn off. I've never seen such a battered set of luggage, and this was on a flight inbound from London, so I don't think we were looking at third-world bags. On our case, the address tag on our main case was broken by the time we retrieved it. On our return to Montréal, landing from Vancouver, the extensible handle on our main case refused to extend. Closer examination shows that the tube inside the case, down which the handle shaft slides, had taken such a severe impact that it had buckled, trapping the shaft in place. Now, it's possible that none of this damage occurred at Dorval. But I'd lay odds that the one common factor was in fact the problem, and that the inbound luggage system there is uncommonly brutal to luggage. In future, we might want to invest in some tougher cases before returning there. Current Mood:  annoyed
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While on the Canadian, there was a certain amount of mixing: we'd get seated with random other people for the meals, so we ended up talking to people from Linkoping, Andros Island in the Bahamas, an assistant to a Toronto politician and her family, a couple of Floridians, a pair of sisters from Cambridge ... oh yes, Sal and Moya. It turns out that Sal used to live on Ross Street at the same time I did, and I almost certainly passed her more than once, what with her house then being #115, whereas I owned #96. And they have a cousin who lives on Pitshanger Lane in Ealing. Pitshanger Lane was where our nearest bus stop was when we lived in Ealing. We waved goodbye to them (among others) at Vancouver Station, and went on our way, taking a taxi to our hotel where we checked in remarkably early (cheers, Plaza 500 - allowing incoming guests to be using rooms before 10:00 is highly appreciated) and crashed out for a few hours. We then wandered into the centre of the city, eventually wandering into the tourist info place at Canada Place. Where we bumped into Sal and Moya. The following day, wandering the streets, we bumped into them again. And a few hours after that, we bumped into them for a third time, at the Waterfront Station. The odd thing was, we didn't bump into anybody else from the train: just the same pair. (Granted, some were catching ships, and others were meeting family of whatever, but some at least were intending to tour the city.) Tags: canada, vancouver
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Previous 
amused
mischievous
confused
