Swallows And Amazon (with apologies to Arthur Ransome)
Posted By Judith on 26th February 2018
Regular readers will know how pleased we were when the swallows took up residence in our garage roof last May and we spent many happy hours during the summer watching them zoom effortlessly in and out.
So it was with great sadness when one morning in late summer I discovered 5 bald swallow chicks scattered across the garage floor.
What could have caused this? We considered cats, though they would have had to be a serious acrobat, we then considered rats, but the chances are they would have attempted to eat the casualties, as would the cats and there was no evidence of that.
In the end we had to conclude it was some natural occurrence. Perhaps there was just not enough room in the nest and they simply fell out, but all 5 of them? Perhaps the adults couldn’t find enough food for them or perhaps they just ran out of steam, after all they’d been working hard for weeks feeding a previous brood.
At some point before they return this May we intend to look on top of the tarpaulin which we installed last Spring to protect the car from droppings, I hope it’s not littered with more bodies.
Elsewhere.
Way back in April we ordered 2 glass shelves for the downstairs shower room from a well known online retailer. Although we ordered and paid for 2, they actually sent us 9. Yes 9.
A similar thing happened to us several years ago. We ordered a long-handled strimmer on EBay but instead of just the one, we were sent 4. On that occasion a quick phone call had them scurrying back to collect the 3 ‘spares’, in fact we actually let them take all 4 back as it was a rubbish strimmer.
However I digress. Back to the story.
Peter was for keeping quiet about the shelf error but I thought we should let them know their (quite costly) mistake. Grudgingly he sent them an e mail.
Their reply was pleasant and polite and asked us to provide them with more details. What? More details? You know who we are, we ordered and paid for 2 shelves; we received 9; the 7 spares are in our shed, er that’s it!
Needless to say after that both me and the online retailer found ourselves in the doghouse!
Now, almost 12 months later, the 7 shelves are still in our shed and no further messages have been sent or received.
Someone somewhere is out of pocket to the tune of 7 glass shelves, but no-one seems to care.
I’m sure this must tell us something about the state of 21st century trade and consumerism, but I’m not entirely sure what it is.
