The Delivery

The other day we had a delivery.

This, by itself, is not particularly unusual, save the fact that we actually were in to receive the delivery, whilst normally what happens is that someone attempts to deliver a parcel when we're not in, and we get one of those cards through the door that says "Sorry, you weren't in, please collect your parcel from your local delivery office, which is two hundred miles away, and is open between the hours of two and three am on a Wednesday. Except for every other Wednesday, when the office is closed for staff training."

But on this most rare of days, we were in, and reached the door before the driver could realise the mistake he had made by knocking, giving us opportunity to answer him.

Surprisingly, the fellow seemed disinterested in the parcel that he was delivering and took great interest in our door.
 "That's temporary glass," he declared of fifty percentage of the glass set within our front door.

I must admit that I've never taken a great deal of interest in the front door, beyond ensuring that the question "does it work" is answered with a yes.  Beyond that, as long as it keeps things out which are supposed to be outside, and generally, and more importantly, keeps things inside that ought to be inside, I've allowed it to go about its business unchallenged (and indeed unmolested).

But I now know that our front door only has leaded stuff with pictures in one half, with the other half being plain, and the plain stuff is apparently termed "temporary glass".

Those are supposed to be flowers in the left hand side.

Your man went on to give me details of a firm that would photograph the glass (the non-temporary half), and copy it.  He led me to understand that the door had a good, thick mullion, which would aid the project no end.

He then went on to advise me that we ought to have toughened glass installed, because people knock on the glass and could break it (there may be other reasons for toughened glass - indeed he looked at our glass and it may be that some of it is toughened, but I was reeling from the unanticipated volume of glass-related information.

I thanked him for these insights, and assumed that, door inspection complete, we would proceed to the parcel delivering part of the visit.

Not yet - it was then pointed out to me that the leaded glass is actually the wrong way out - it apparently has a smooth side and a rough side, and the smooth side should be on the outside so that the elements (aka dirt) won't stick to it - there's no wonder that we have to clean our door so often, it was remarked.  I did think to myself that we had managed not to clean the door for the last five years and so it perhaps even the rough side of the glass had managed to repel dirt well enough.

But, there is a saving grace - at least we don't have stick-on lead.  I got the impression that stick-on lead strips was something punishable by death, if not something more unpleasant.

After all this the chap realised that it was about time to give me a parcel, and ask me to sign for it.  This went flawlessly.

To be fair to the chap it was all very interesting and I do say thank you to the delivery man for being possibly the most interesting courier I have had occasion to meet for many moons.  I think that it should be an essential part of delivery-person training that they should be able to impart fascinating knowledge about an area of life never normally considered by delivery recipients, it makes the exercise much more interesting.