Tag Archives: delivery

Disaster and Disaster and Disaster . . .

6 Replies

Well, I may be exaggerating a little, but the day started badly and carried on limping from problem to problem.

First, a phone call (this was last night to be honest) about the delivery time of my medication – the specialist one that needs refrigerating. I noted that the delivery time they had texted me was impractical and spent 30 minutes waiting until I could talk to someone on a very dodgy line. He agreed to change the delivery time from 8am – 8pm and make it 5pm – 8pm. However, when I checked my text this morning it said 2pm – 5pm. I don’t get home until 4.30pm. However, I didn’t have another half hour to waste so I decided to just let things happen.

Then, on the way to work, I got a phone call. Julia answered it because we were on the way to drop her off. There was no power at the shop and National Grid were desperately digging the road up to find the fault. So I arranged to go to the boss’s house to work, as he had collected a medal collection the previous night and we needed to go through it. That was two.

Third was the medal collection. It was, without doubt, the biggest anti-climax of my collecting life. I have known the collector for 30 years and, although he has spoken of his collection, I had never seen it, and never seen him buy anything. In a way I always doubted it was as good as he claimed, but couldn’t be sure. It may have been brilliant. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Almost everything was damaged, repaired or faulty. He had, as we always say, a good time building the collection, but it isn’t going to be an investment as his prices are are all based on prices for a medal in good condition.. We are going to tell him that we believe it would be better if he put it into an auction and let the market decide the value. To be honest, it saves us the task of criticising his life’s work.

South Africa medal with 1879 bar for the Zulu war. This is one that we bought in the shop – it’s possible for a 150 year old medal to look presentable, as you can see. Very few of today’s selection were as good as this.

The good news is that we were finished by lunchtime, the workmen say we will have electricty tomorrow and I got home in time to meet my delivery.

Then I knocked a four-pack of beans off a shelf and onto the floor. The whole thing fell on the edge of one can, the other three all added their weight, the lid split and bean juice oozed across the floor . . .

I can only wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Day 98

14 Replies

This morning my new office chair was delivered. Part of it was poking out of the box but it seemed to have escaped undamaged. Unfortunately when we opened the box another part was broken. The free next day delivery service seems to involve a lot of throwing things about and only a little padding.

To be fair, I got straight on the “live chat” section of their website and after ten minutes of chat and attaching photos it was all sorted. Packaging 0/10, customer service (so far) 10/10. However, I am waiting to see what happens before I become too optimistic. There’s a long way between promising something and delivering it.

In the evening I cooked roast veg, red cabbage, sausages and gravy and we had a healthy tea. I also cooked chickpea and sweet potato curry for Sunday. The plan is to make veggie burgers tomorrow as I had burger buns delivered tonight. Really we shouldn’t be eating all that bread but you can’t be good all the time.

This is my way of saving money and calories – if I have food and plans ready I am less likely to reach for a takeaway menu and the phone.

Chickpea and peanut butter thai red curry – almost chickpea and sweet potato

In between I put quite a lot of stuff on eBay for work and checked my medallion collection ready to start planning the talk. Miraculously, I found them all. They are in four different locations but they are all there. In size they vary from 16mm to 70mm so it’s not possible to house them all together. I’m thinking of ordering some new coin trays for one of my cases and in that case they might all go together, but that might just be an idle dream.

Top picture features vegetables that we were served at Carsington water in the days we used to go out.

The Scone Chronicles – 39 A Box from Bettys

10 Replies

I’m torn between wonder that I have got to Number 39, and a sense of lost that Covid has presented me getting to Number 70, which is where it ought to be.  I could try harder, and I didn’t even photograph the scones – just the gift box. It’s even taken me a month to get round to writing it up.

The Scones in question arrived in a small cardboard box from Bettys in Harrogate. My sister had ordered them on line as a treat for us. no particular reason, just because she’s a nice person. I will refer to it as a hamper, despite it being disguised as a cardboard box.

Bettys Hamper

Bettys Hamper – tea, scones, cake and jam

The blue box contains tea, the brown protects the jar of strawberry jam and the other two explain themselves.

The scones had been in transit for a day and it took us another day to get clotted cream(if you’re going to have afternoon tea you may as well have all the calories and fat that go with it. Despite this, and my sister’s worries, they were still fresh.

They were also very good.

Unfortunately, Bettys advertise themselves in a way that suggests they are the best in the world, and they aren’t. Generally I’d be happy with scones that were this good, but Bettys make a rod for their own back – they really need to up their game if they want to match the adverts.. See here for more comments on this, and for a comment on the dropping of the apostrophe in the name – this criticism still stands. If you can’t be bothered to put an apostrophe in your logo what else can’t you be bothered to do?

The jam was excellent, as good as any strawberry jam I’ve ever had. It’s quite runny and has an intense flavour that  grabs you under the ears (“meks yer tabs laugh” as they say in Nottingham). Top marks for that.

Same goes for the Yorkshire Tea Loaf – very good. We actually bought more scones and managed to make the contents of the box into three afternoon teas, which was even better than just having it for one. It was jam and cream scones the first day. jam and cream scone with Tea Loaf for the second day and jam scones with tea loaf the second day. It lasted well.

The tea, I’m afraid to say, was a bit overpowering for my taste, though that may be  a fault of my water rather than the tea.

It was, as I recall £16 when I looked it up, which is good value, including next day delivery. At the moment they have a Christmas themed selection which doesn’t strike me as such great value.

If you are looking for a hamper you could try Mrs Botham. Botham’s of Whitby offer great food, excellent pork pies, and a reasonably-priced selection, plus they treat apostrophes with proper respect.

Bettys Box Lid