Sunshine after rain

Today has been such a horrible and frustrating day. We woke up to a howling wind and lashing rain. Gavin left to do some errands while I stayed home waiting for the BT man to arrive, and Xena took one look out the window and knew she did not want to go for a walk in that!

I sat on the camp chair (no furniture in the house yet) doing admin and ordering bits and pieces we need for the house.

The only good thing that happened today was the delicious lunch we ordered online from Thorham Deli and Gavin popped out to collect - a superfood salad for me and a chicken flatbread and salad for Gavin. He also took Xena for a walk while I waited for the man to come.

Now the frustrating things …I received an email from UPS saying my parcel that I sent to SA for my niece (second attempt) has been delivered - but back to me, dumped outside my gate at home. It took about 20 minutes of searching on their website to find a contact number where I could speak to a human rather than a bot, that person was someone in Manila who told me it was returned as I did not include a commercial invoice with my shipment. None of the online forms I completed before shipping even mentioned a commercial invoice, and why would I have a commercial invoice for a gift, it was not a business transaction? She then told me to put a zero value if it was a gift yet their website warned not to submit a lower value in order to reduce the custom duty owing. I cannot win, it’s a hopeless situation and there is no representative in the U.K. at UPS to discuss this with, I have no idea where I even get a commercial invoice from.

The second annoying thing is we found out that most of our furniture we ordered will be delivered in December or January next year, 6 months after we ordered it. Covid, Brexit, the lack of HGV drivers and even the Suez Canal blockage were all cited as reasons for several months delay in orders of of furniture and many other things. Couriers are struggling and service levels have fallen off. It very much feels like things are falling apart in the  U.K. at the moment.

And the third annoying thing - yes it goes in threes doesn’t it - the BT man never came. We were given a 9am - 1pm time slot and so by the time it got to 1.30pm Gavin phoned to query where he was and was told he was on his way. Gavin ended up phoning 5 times, on the 4th call he was told he would be there by 3.15pm. At 4pm, on the 5th call, Gavin was told that he was never going to come as the cable in the road still had to be connected up and he had not even been booked to come out, and all the previous people Gavin spoke to were lying to him. Grrr!!!!

I had to let off some steam and after the wet and windy morning it was now beautifully sunny with blue skies so while Gavin was on about the 3rd call to BT Xena and I went out for a walk where I took some photos. The weather was so different from the morning.

We had planned to leave to go home at about lunchtime but we ended up only leaving at 5pm. Luckily it was an easy journey home, just over 3 hours with no traffic holdups.