Royal Mail's Finest

This morning Royal Mail was supposed to deliver an important registered letter addressed to my wife. For the second time in three months we were waiting in the house, but there was no ring of the bell, no knock on the door, just a little card stuffed through the letter box amongst a load of advertising bumf.
Ringing to find out what had happened resulted in a 30 minute wait on an 0345 number, costing heaven knows how much. Finally, a man answered, asked all the security questions, took my details and then passed me on to the complaints department, to whom I had to repeat everything I had told him.
This was going to end in a speedy resolution to my problem, wasn't it? No. She gives me a complaint reference number that I can use if I need to phone them back. She has, by this time, looked up the delivery on her computer.
'Let me see, it says on my screen that delivery was attempted at 9.48am.'
'Yes, the last man I spoke to told me that. And I told him that the card pushed through the door said 10am.'
'Oh.'
'Can you contact the postman concerned and ask him to stop by on his way back to the depot? We only live 500 yards from there and it's not yet midday.'
'No, all we can do is re-deliver.'
'Today?'
'No.'
'Tomorrow?'
'Oh, no, only on Saturday [two days hence], but you might be able to go to the collection office tomorrow.'
'You don't sound very sure. Are you going to give me a call back to let me know what is happening,' I ask, more in hope than expectation.'
'No,' is the reply, 'we don't do that.'
'So what will be done to prevent this happening again?'
'I expect someone will speak to the postman concerned.'

Meanwhile... my wife has gone to the collection office to try to resolve the matter and get the parcel back. She is surrounded by other irate customers, some holding little red and white failed delivery cards, all nodding and saying things like, 'Yes, that's what happened to me, too.' The visit resolved nothing. The delivery man could not be contacted and the outcome was the same as that from the phone call. Indifference and unhelpfulness. And then we hear the head of the Post Office saying that the company can't compete with other delivery operators because of the home delivery requirements placed on them by government requirements.

Is it me?

Royal Mail do not have a Facebook site, though others have set one up to register complaints. I wonder if they read that to get customer feedback? Hmmm.

Absence makes the ....

Yow! Over two years since those initial postings. Lots of very unconvincing reasons for not posting, but now I'm back with some thoughts.
Since 2010 I have spent a load of time writing and publishing a local history book about my parish. It was finally published in June of this year under the title of Sacred Heart Parish, Henley-on-Thames: A Pugin Legacy. It runs to 150 pages and includes over 70 photos and is getting some good feedback. Well, either that or people are being terribly polite.
Other than that my fiction and poetry writing has been slow. Now I've got to get going again... and put some time into this blog. Fortunately, nobody's been reading it for the last two years.

Hard day

All morning painting a ceiling and surround. All afternoon digging out a bush... unsucessfully.  I'll beat it tomorrow though. Knackered now. Must do some hairdressing practice tomorrow as well. Who says blokes don't multi-task? What do you mean, one thing at a time doesn't count?

Reading Writers - Writers' Day 2010

An interesting day. How to write a novel, in 45 mins ( that's the talk time), reminiscences of National Service (like a  UK version of Catch 22) and how to use social networking and other sites, like this one, to further your writing. Thanks to Josh, Claire, Julie, Winnie etc. for organising it all.
This morning before I left there was a report on the news about the effect of Sex and the City 2 on current fashion trends. Apparently we're all going to go floaty this year. Well, I'm not, but apparently a lot of people will. Anyway my mind went off onto overhearing an elderly lady on a bus talking about SatC. It went something like this
In a bit of a rush on a forty three bus
A couple got on and I heard her say
"It seems such a pity that Sex and the City
Is only on telly on Thursday."

Not brilliant I know, but it's a start and it kept bugging me all day. Any suggestions on where it might go from here would be welcome, keeping to the rhythm and rhyme scheme, of course.

Creative Writing

Well, that's it then. I've sent off my last assignment on A363 and, subject to a high level of generosity on the part of my tutor, I'll get a diploma in creative writing from the Open University in a few months' time. The scary thing is what to do next. My first thing is to start this blog... watch this space.