Well, I can tell you a couple of things
after being a delivery boy for a few weeks. No one living on the
bottom floor of a block of flats has ever ordered a box of veg. If I
was a small person or pregnant or... bone idle,
I would get some dumb lug to carry my 50 kilo of groceries up my
stairs for me, too. It does make me appreciate the places that have a
level driveway that points straight in the front door, though,
despite the horrendous feng-shui.
While I'm invoking the gentle art of
rearranging the furniture, another thing I've learnt while traipsing
into people's houses with their nose-bags
is that I don't feel so bad about my standard of house keeping. I'm
continually amazed at who has decided their lives would be improved
by getting their shopping brought in to save them time
to fight the Minotaur lurking
between their bathroom and bedroom.
There are far too many women out there
with far too many dogs. I'm wondering where
the cat-lady stereotype
came from because more often than not, the first thing I'm greeted at
the door with is the wall-of-dog smell, followed by yapping, then the
directions to, “Just take it down there, don't worry about Buffy.
Fluffy, Muffy and Cujo”. Maybe cat-ladies don't answer the door.
Maybe they just peer out through the gap in the dusty blinds,
muttering. Or, more likely, just lie there being eaten by the furry,
mewling throng.
It's not all
gloating about other people's squalor, though (my third favourite
kind of gloating). Since the last time I had to spend any time in
delivery vehicles there have been clutch-thumping leaps in that
particular workspace. It's positively luxurious now. This is an
unpaid endorsement - I have got to say that the Hyundai iLoad is a
very pleasant place to spend a day on the road. I can get the seat
far enough away from the wheel not to feel like I'm doing the quando,
the air-con is not only present, but good. The stereo is excellent,
with blue teeth and controls on the
steering wheel like it thinks it's luxury car! They're
automatic to the point that the one I regularly drive has cruise
control. You barely have to be there.
If I
had one improvement to make, well, two, it'd be the following. The
rear-collision detector needs to climb down from Def-Con 1.
Continually being panicked by the presence of the road on the other
side of the driveway is not helpful. When backing out of a perfectly
normal driveway it sort of sounds like a shark alarm at the beach.
“Oh
my god, there's tarmac here. And here. And here. And still over here.
Look out, there's ground. And more ground. Totally clear behind us but
beware of the planet earth underneath you. It's still there! Christ
I'm going to pass out.”
The
other change I would make is probably not so important and a little
more esoteric. It's just a matter of font. Here's the conversation I
had with my mum.
“So
what do you get around in?”
“A
Hyundai. It's marvellous.”
“It's
good is it? I think they've got tickets on themselves.”
“Why?
I don't understand.”
“Calling
itself an iLord. Bit egotistical isn't it?”
“It's
an “A” not an “R”, mum."
