The parcel crawled like a sloth

Piling on the miles

This morning at 10:02 AM, I took delivery of a parcel that was despatched at 09:34 AM on Thursday the 7^th of May from Swansea. It had first been mooted that I should make the journey myself, it would have been a 12-hour round trip by rail, give or take an hour for unexpected events and probably a good thing too.

Meanwhile, I was sat at home tracking my parcel as it crawled the between 185.2 miles (298 km) and 231.2 miles (372 km) depending on the route taken to my stoep, stopovers at various depots could have added to the mileage.

Picked up for the rounds

As the tracking indicates, 67 minutes later, the courier picked up the parcel and registered it as collected 26 minutes later. It was probably in the courier van for another 6:05 hours whilst the courier picked up other parcels around Swansea. It eventually left Swansea 10:26 hours after it was despatched.

Tamworth is probably a major distribution and processing centre and if I recall, a recent international delivery was processed through Tamworth, some 173 miles (278.4 km) from Swansea being a 3-hour drive or by the tracking activity 3:23 hours. Then, 1:36 hours later, it left Tamworth for Manchester, a mere 86.9 miles (139.8 km) taking 28:04 hours to arrive, going by the science.

Lost a day to rest

Now, Friday was an unusual Bank Holiday, it would have been the preceding Monday, but the May Bank Holiday was combined with the 75^th anniversary of the Victory in Europe Day. I must say, these Coronavirus pandemic times softened the tone on the possible celebration of two Bank Holidays in a week apart of the Good Friday/Easter Monday and Christmas/Boxing Day holidays.

God forfend the UK Government gives up a day of toil, before big business wails about the loss of billions in profits because the people were allowed a day off. We would not have heard the last of it.

Cooling off in a depot

It was a given my parcel would not arrive on Friday, but Saturday presented a whole day of opportunities. The parcel finally left the Manchester depot at 06:03 AM this morning and arrived here at a minute short of 4 hours.

The courier rang my bell and though I was to sign for the parcel, he placed it on the stoep, signing on my behalf, he left before I was within 3 metres of him. At least my parcel had arrived, though it made me wonder if it would not have been better for me to pick it up rather than have it spend 3 days 23 hours and 21 minutes wending its way through a courier service.

Then again, you get what you pay for and it arrived just a day before the maximum estimated delivery time. I wrote this blog because monitoring the tracking process was much longer than watching paint dry and I still believe it would have been a mental health boost for me to visit Swansea than being caught in the suspense and expectations of a parcel in transit.