Herself likes shopping.

This has been a bone of contention for many years as the house slowly but surely fills up with stuff to the point where it’s difficult to move around.

Stuff can mean anything. In particular it means clothing which will never be worn but can also mean furniture, paintings and weird objects that are supposed to decorate the place if only we had somewhere left to put them. Nothing gets thrown away. I have taken to sneaking stuff into the bin but what I really need is an industrial skip.

Of course this time of year is a grand excuse for more of her “retail therapy” and she is currently buying up half the Interwebs on the pretext of buying presents. This of course leads to a lot of parcel deliveries.

Parcel deliveries here fall into a few categories.

If it’s a big box or crate it is either dropped just inside the gate, where obviously they couldn’t even be bothered to open the gate, or else left on the wheelie bins just inside the gate. This isn’t too bad unless it rains in which case the box or crate gets soaked.

The next category is the plastic bag. This is usually clothing so fortunately it isn’t fragile. This is just as well as the method of delivery here is to carry it as far as the garage door and then do a Frisbee impression by flinging the parcel the rest of the way to the front door where it lies in a rumpled heap on the boot-scraper.

The final category is the small box. They define this as a size which is very approximately the size of our letter box. In most cases though they tend to be somewhat optimistic so the box gets rammed firmly into the letter box where it gets stuck and is very difficult to remove.

I am actually quite happy with these arrangements as they all have one thing in common – they are silent. Usually the delivery happens at some godforsaken hour in the morning and I wouldn’t be too pleased to be woken by the door bell.

I just hope Herself doesn’t order anything fragile…..