Post Haste Indeed!

 

 

 

Half a dozen bottles of more than decent Cava seemed the best way to start the preparations for my forthcoming birthday. 

     No matter that the Cava was going to be used in a Cava Sangria, I was determined to have something palatable to celebrate.  I therefore hunted around and found a website that offered half a dozen well-designed, ‘limited-edition’ bottles at a bargain price. 

     I still have the financial scars from other past ‘bargains’ online, so I took the lazy man’s safety precautions of asking Chat to evaluate not only the quality of the offer, but also the quality of the online website offering it.  Both were deemed ‘good’ and so I took the plunge and ordered it on the 8^th of October, and the supplier, OUTLET PC got to work immediately.

     I got a swift emailed receipt from the supplier and was pleasantly surprised to get an email from the delivery organization telling me that my packet would arrive the next day, on the 9^th of October between the hours of 16:00 to 18:00!  I did not, at the time that delight was warming the cockles of my heart, notice the emboldened “approximately” before the times stated.

     On the 9^th of October 4pm came and went, with no delivery.  6pm came and went, with no delivery.  And I waited.

     Eventually I consulted the delivery details and checked where my goods were.  Their website informed me that they had tried to deliver the package at 20:09.  We were in the house and we heard nothing.  The doorbell was working perfectly.  I wrote to the deliverers at 20:24 informing them that I had waited for the package and that I was in the house expecting it to arrive.  And nothing.

     The next day I checked the website again and found that they had tried to make a second delivery at 21:02.  Again, there was no evidence in the form of a receipt left in the post box, nor a ring at the doorbell.

     At this point I should add some extra information.  I know that the parcel was in Barcelona (19 km down the road) at about 8 in the morning of the 9^th.  The 9^th of October was a Friday, and the following Monday was The Day of Spanish-ness and therefore a bank holiday, thus creating a little Puente or mini holiday over the weekend.

     Now, I am not suggesting that the delivery people deliberately made no attempt to deliver the package and that the attempts to do so were listed with precision, but total unreality and that they had every intention of sloping off early to enjoy the mini break, leaving my parcel to be delivered on the Tuesday.  No, indeed I am not suggesting that.  I merely put it forward as a plausible scenario that fits the facts.

     I have now been given a new delivery date for today.  No times, but the package is on its way.  Allegedly.

     You may ask if I made any attempt to contact the delivery people to ask for an explanation, or to rearrange a delivery time.  Yes, I did.  But the communication I sent would have arrived on a Sunday and been ignored on Monday.  Also, the advice just to click the “rearrange the delivery” button on screen, did not actually exist.

    It was a case of computer-generated delivery information, neatly tabulated and timed, but existing independently from the human agents who have to make the numbers work.

     I might also add that the delivery company is Correos Express, a branch of the post office.  And Correos has form as far as fantastic deliveries are concerned.  We once found a receipt in the letter box informing us that a delivery had been attempted and failed with a time written in which was AFTER the time that we picked up the receipt.  Time travel is not a difficulty for these characters.  That was years ago, and it is depressing to see the same sort of service levels years later.

     It is now 11:10 and Correos Express (sic!) has had my parcel since the 9^th of October.

     The graphic which shows the locality of the package on their web page, the black dot of my Cava is next to, nay, touching, the clear dot of my house.

    

     So near, and yet so very far.

 

 

Wave

 

Another crummy day during which I had the delightful experience of conducting my daily swim to the accompaniment of the extended drum roll of rain on the retractable roof of the pool together with the vision of water cascading down the glass walls.

Making the most of the weather I paused on the sea front on my return, parked the car and took photos of the larger than usual waves.  And just as usual my final pictures failed to show the majesty of a breaking wall of water.  Part of that failure, I have to admit, is that the waves (even during turbulent weather conditions) are well short of anything approaching majestic and I hesitated before I took off my sandals and paddled in a way to make the most of the proximity!  (Just in case there was any ambiguity in that last sentence, I did not take my sandals off, it was cold wet and miserable and I had no intention of intensifying any of those adjectives!)  I was also trying to bring a large umbrella under control at the same time during a struggle of wills between a brisk wind and the hand that was not holding the camera, well, the phone.  One day, I will take a picture of the waves of which I will be proud.  In the same way that on another ‘one day’ I will take a decent photo of the firework displays that we have on the beach.  One day.  But not one day today.

This week is going to be a short week for Toni as he has Thursday and Friday ‘off’.  These two days link to the weekend to make a four-day holiday Puente (bridge) to be enjoyed.  What this means in effect is that for four days all the menus in all the restaurants in Castelldefels will be at Fiesta & Fin de Semana prices, that are substantially higher than for an ordinary weekday.

Today is All Souls Eve and there is, I am glad to say, a selection of traditional food that should be eaten on All Souls or All Saints Day, or on any period of time near enough to qualify.  We have been invited to Terrassa to eat our fill of chestnuts, sweet potato and small marzipan cakes or panellets.  Over the past week or so there has been a chestnut seller in the centre of town doing a brisk trade.  Although we haven’t bought any of them, the rich smell as you pass the brazier is available for free! 

For kids of my age (!) roast chestnuts bring back memories of Johnny Morris (born in Newport in Wales!) in black and white on the BBC!

I have also, apropos of nothing that I have written above, been listening to part of my birthday present: a nine-disc set of the operas of Janacek in preparation for a performance of Katya Kabanova next month – which starts, of course, tomorrow!  Time is, as always, speeding up.

I did not listen to Katya first as my favourite opera by Janacek is The Makropulos Case.  This is the opera, as I never tire telling people, I have seen the most in live performance.  Given the number of years that I have been going to the opera you would have thought that by now one of the biggies in the opera world like Tosca, or Madame Butterfly would have overtaken my viewings of what is, still, a fairly obscure opera.  But no, it remains paramount in my experience thanks mostly to WNO’s trailblazing 1978 performances with Elizabeth Soderstrom singing Emilia Marty, conducted by Richard Armstrong, directed by David Pountney, with designs by Maria Björnson – a production I saw wherever WNO played it.  And, over the years I have augmented these initial viewings with others when I could get to them!  I am still waiting for a production of Makropulos by the Liceu, but Katya will do in the meantime!

And talking of that performance, it is astonishing what you do not see if you either don’t want to see it or have assumed something other than the reality that is printed in black and white in front of you.

I have a season ticket for the opera in the Liceu and, with the addition of an odd ballet and recital, I get to see all the major opera productions of the season.  Or, at least that was what I thought, and my request for the CDs (ah, I am a traditionalist at heart and I like to have ‘hard’ copy as it were) was to bring myself up to speed with the music so that I could fully relish the performance.  And then I realized that a ticket for this performance was not included in my package!  How could I have missed this?  I am sent an individualised calendar giving me the dates for all of the performances during the season.  And Katya was not among them!  There was a moment of panic before reality reasserted itself and I reasoned that Janacek is still not given the credit that he deserves in pushing the limits of opera and that selling the seats would always be a problem.  And sure enough, when I phoned the box office, I was able to get ‘my’ usual seat (row 10 on the aisle) for a performance on the 20^th of next month.

So, apart from a single nasty moment, the situation has now been rectified (by the injection of cash) and I will be able to see the opera.  But the ‘oversight’ did make me think.  This was one of the operas that I was looking forward to seeing and still I managed not to pick up on the fact that it was not part of the package.  Admittedly my season ticket is automatically renewed unless I stop it, so I do not have to search through the Byzantine complexity of what package is right for me, but still, I saw the list of operas and Katya was not on it.  How? 

And it really does make one think about what else one has assumed to be that is simply not.  The good thing about that thought however is that obliviousness dampens fear.  I will not know what it is that I have not know about until I find that I do not know.  So to speak.  Perhaps I am just one of those people who assume that something or other will happen to make me question something in just enough time to ensure that disaster does not strike.  Well, that is my ‘saving lie’ and I am sticking to it!

And, by the way, the sun has just come out!