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... which I initially ordered two months ago, with one round of "getting the wrong parts shipped to the wrong address because my supplier didn't notice they'd been sent the wrong parts by the manufacturer".
Instead, it brought a "you weren't in" text message from DPD, while I was sat on my sofa, accompanied by a photograph of my old front door.
After a certain amount of faff and back-and-forth and a somewhat hysterical meltdown, I pulled myself together (with lots of help from A) and, informed that I could pick my parcel up from 6:30pm, ran a couple of errands in town and then got the bus over to the middle of bloody nowhere, pushed over a bridge across the railway and a major A-road via the bicycle ramp, and via doing a lot of on-road self-propelling through a business estate in the dark (because business estates don't have dropped kerbs, and when they do they're only at one end of a stretch of pavement, and anyway the pavement's probably got too narrow to be usable at least once in between) made it to the DPD depot. (I did not manage to get on the first bus I attempted to board! Because the ramp extended, then retracted, and then the driver told me No Can Do.)
DPD looked suspicious, disappeared off into the back, faffed, eyed my passport very doubtfully (and the parcel similarly doubtfully), and then handed it over.
It was larger than I was expecting.
I was very tired, and very stressed, and very unhappy, and so I took it and Left and eventually made my way back to a bus stop, and ordered a curry, and picked up curry in town while I was changing buses.
And I got home, and I turned on the lights, and I got together the requisite cutlery and crockery, and I put on A Knight's Tale, and I flomped onto the floor and ate dinner while Baby Heath Ledger smiled at me, and after a minute or two I decided I was sufficiently fortified that I'd better open this parcel, then.
... it became rapidly apparent that, rather than wheelchair parts, it contained a Nintendo Switch.
I was absolutely certain that all the DPD notifications had prominently featured the name of my wheelchair dealership. I was absolutely certain that they were, in fact, intending to send me wheelchair parts instead of a Nintendo Switch, because they sent me photos of them to make sure they were the right ones this time.
I looked at the exterior of the box in some trepidation and found, to my perplexity, that in spite of the Lengthy Ordeal of The DPD Depot On A Business Estate At The End Of A Long Dark Lane and the Dubious Examination of my two (two!) pieces of ID... I had been handed a parcel addressed to someone else.
(It was not until A got home ten minutes ago and gently pointed it out to me that I realised that there is, in fact, a second -- contradictory -- address label, which does list me at the old flat. It's upside down relative to the first one. It's obviously new and flimsy. What, I ask you, the fuck. Can we just use Royal Mail.)
Now the really interesting bit, right, is that I need these parts before tomorrow lunchtime, so I can fit them to the chair of the person they belong to, so she can come over at lunchtime and swap back my chair (that she's got on loan) and take away hers in time for Adam to drive my big chair to Belfast on Sunday.
... he is now, additionally, going to be taking me back to the DPD depot first thing tomorrow morning (because it's a half-hour round trip by car, and a two-hour round trip by bus if they work) to Read Them The Riot Act, and desperately hope that they are somehow able to disgorge the wheelchair parts I ordered two months ago from their murky depths.
The final insult is, of course, that the Nintendo Switch actually cost less than the parts I ordered -- and it's not even a Pokemon: Let's Go bundle.
Instead, it brought a "you weren't in" text message from DPD, while I was sat on my sofa, accompanied by a photograph of my old front door.
After a certain amount of faff and back-and-forth and a somewhat hysterical meltdown, I pulled myself together (with lots of help from A) and, informed that I could pick my parcel up from 6:30pm, ran a couple of errands in town and then got the bus over to the middle of bloody nowhere, pushed over a bridge across the railway and a major A-road via the bicycle ramp, and via doing a lot of on-road self-propelling through a business estate in the dark (because business estates don't have dropped kerbs, and when they do they're only at one end of a stretch of pavement, and anyway the pavement's probably got too narrow to be usable at least once in between) made it to the DPD depot. (I did not manage to get on the first bus I attempted to board! Because the ramp extended, then retracted, and then the driver told me No Can Do.)
DPD looked suspicious, disappeared off into the back, faffed, eyed my passport very doubtfully (and the parcel similarly doubtfully), and then handed it over.
It was larger than I was expecting.
I was very tired, and very stressed, and very unhappy, and so I took it and Left and eventually made my way back to a bus stop, and ordered a curry, and picked up curry in town while I was changing buses.
And I got home, and I turned on the lights, and I got together the requisite cutlery and crockery, and I put on A Knight's Tale, and I flomped onto the floor and ate dinner while Baby Heath Ledger smiled at me, and after a minute or two I decided I was sufficiently fortified that I'd better open this parcel, then.
... it became rapidly apparent that, rather than wheelchair parts, it contained a Nintendo Switch.
I was absolutely certain that all the DPD notifications had prominently featured the name of my wheelchair dealership. I was absolutely certain that they were, in fact, intending to send me wheelchair parts instead of a Nintendo Switch, because they sent me photos of them to make sure they were the right ones this time.
I looked at the exterior of the box in some trepidation and found, to my perplexity, that in spite of the Lengthy Ordeal of The DPD Depot On A Business Estate At The End Of A Long Dark Lane and the Dubious Examination of my two (two!) pieces of ID... I had been handed a parcel addressed to someone else.
(It was not until A got home ten minutes ago and gently pointed it out to me that I realised that there is, in fact, a second -- contradictory -- address label, which does list me at the old flat. It's upside down relative to the first one. It's obviously new and flimsy. What, I ask you, the fuck. Can we just use Royal Mail.)
Now the really interesting bit, right, is that I need these parts before tomorrow lunchtime, so I can fit them to the chair of the person they belong to, so she can come over at lunchtime and swap back my chair (that she's got on loan) and take away hers in time for Adam to drive my big chair to Belfast on Sunday.
... he is now, additionally, going to be taking me back to the DPD depot first thing tomorrow morning (because it's a half-hour round trip by car, and a two-hour round trip by bus if they work) to Read Them The Riot Act, and desperately hope that they are somehow able to disgorge the wheelchair parts I ordered two months ago from their murky depths.
The final insult is, of course, that the Nintendo Switch actually cost less than the parts I ordered -- and it's not even a Pokemon: Let's Go bundle.
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