The laptops saga continued.....

Can't believe some of you are actually interested in this, but I've started, so I'll finish......

N has Thursday off, leaving me and MA in the office, working, and expecting delivery of laptops and software. DC rings about 12.30pm, on his way back from Northampton, to enquire if they have arrived. No. Would I like lunch? Yes. He arrives in the office and I ask MA if she is happy to wait in if we go out. Only polite, since this is a personal delivery and therefore she is doing us a favour. Normally she eats a sandwich in the office (unless I take her out!) but today she says her son is coming to have lunch with her. I agree to be half an hour only, and she can go out on our return.

This arrangement works, except that at 2pm I am due at the Council offices for a meeting about my next year's funding. Groan. I tell MA not to rush her lunch, and tell DC he must babysit the office and wait for laptops. Only fair...so he sits at N's desk working at his own laptop, happily, while I go out. I tell him, as you would small child, not to touch anything, not to answer the phone or the door (unless laptops of course!) til MA gets back. He agrees.

At 4pm I come out of the meeting losing the will to live - small office, hot and humid day and two hours with no air conditioning....and text DC for an update. Not here yet, he replies, shall we put the kettle on?

Good God, I think, he is still in the office, poor MA had a lot of work to do...I race back to find DC happily making three cups of tea, I apologise to MA for having company all afternoon, and say I hope he hasn't been a nuisance, misbehaved or anything (yes, I sound like his mother!!!) and she says, no, it's been nice to have the company and anyway now she knows all about landrover engines...oh dear God......

I declare that as it is now 4.15pm and there is no sign of a delivery, that DC gets on the phone and chases it up - most of our deliveries arrive in the morning, and I have a suspicion something has gone wrong. Good idea, he says, and gets on the phone, and soon I am trying to talk to clients, volunteers etc on my phone will David sits at the next desk having loud 'Do you know who I am?' conversations with stupidlaptopshop.uk..it turns out laptops have been despatched from one place with one carrier, and the laptops from somewhere else with another. Two phone calls later and the awful truth emerges..both carriers have been given the invoice address instead of the delivery address, so they have tried to deliver to DC's home address....cries of 'I don't believe it' and 'gross incompetence' and 'You will pay for this' and 'I want this delivered right now' and more 'Do you know who I am?' fill the air and MA and I stop even trying to work and watch, impressed as DC demands service, compensation, heads will roll...and gets nowhere.

So he gives up and goes home to check for delivery cards, MA goes home for a lie down, and I wait in the office just in case....David comes back with two cards, showing that the software is at a depot in Hemel Hempstead and the laptops up near Bedford.....time is of the essence, so I offer to help, and take the Hemel card (it's nearer) so we synchronise watches and head off to pick up our respective parcels....you'd think it would be simple.....