Flindt on Friday: A man, a van, no plan… pandemonium!
© Kathy Horniblow OK, I admit it: it was probably a bit unnecessary (and a tad unkind) to give the chemical delivery man a bit of an earful.
While I’d been sitting in the shade of the trees on the immaculate west lawn, sipping a cool drink and generally being all Adlestrop, he’d been fighting his way through the more-jammed-than-ever roads of Hampshire in 30-something-degree heat in his hire van. And then got lost.
See also: Flindt on Friday: Nul points in game of ‘where’s my parcel’
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We’re in a golden age of navigation. Never has it been easier to find somewhere. With smartphones, satnavs, what3words, Google Earth and Street View, there is surely no excuse for not finding your destination.
But I had only just messaged Hazel from my bucolic haven, asking for another Pimm’s and more Hobnobs, when my phone rang. It was the delivery man, and he was in a right stew.
He had followed the postcode – a reasonable start – but when that left him stranded and baffled at the top of Hinton Hill, he’d asked a passer-by for help.
The thing about a National Trust-owned village on a fine June day is that 99% of the “passers-by” will not be locals.
They could be anything from a gaggle of Japanese tourists to some holidaying farmers down from Cambridgeshire who’ve overdone lunch in the Jolly Flowerpots. Either way, asking for directions would be useless. (“Fssssm illy shhmggle burp.”)
To the manor gone
Our van driver was somehow directed back down to the main road, out of the village, and into the grounds of Hinton Ampner House, where a consignment of agrochemicals would be as welcome as someone selling shares in a sugar plantation.
Then, and only then, and probably prompted by the advancing angry mob waving organic pitchforks, did he reach for his phone and ring me.
I talked him in from my elegant rattan garden sofa, and then went out to meet him when he finally crashed his way into the farmyard in a cloud of dust.
My asking how on earth he had failed to find the big green door marked “chemical store” with all the technology at his disposal did not go down well.
I was treated to a bit of a rant about his 22 years in the Army, and how he needed no lessons in navigation.
3ChoiceWords
It was tempting to counter that with my nights in the CCF 40 years ago, leading my surly schoolmates through woodland near Aldershot using only my freakishly good night vision and something called a map, and getting them successfully to the next campsite, where they could at last get stuck into the vodka and Marlboros that our “officers” kindly pretended not to be aware of. But I thought better of it.
As we finished unloading, I checked his paperwork. There it had the correct address, the phone number (of course), but no sign of the what3words we’d methodically sent out to all our suppliers.
Again, I thought it wisest to keep quiet about that, but suggested, in my politest manner, that the routine to ensure speedy and efficient delivery would be “postcode then telephone”.
Even that went down as well as JR Ewing at a National Trust AGM, and we parted on less-than-positive terms. I was grateful that the lanes were empty as he sped off.
It’s the heat, and the lockdown, and the general grumpiness that’s enveloping the world. Nothing to be done, as they say – certainly no spraying in that heat. I locked up, and headed back to my lawn.
I shooed the flatcoats off my sofa, rang Hazel for another Pimm’s and contemplated events. Had I been too harsh? Probably – but fair.