Services and Shopping

[bunn]

This morning as I walked the dogs along the pavement-less lanes, Az wandered in his vague, old-dog manner, towards the middle of the road, as a van was approaching.  I leapt to retrieve him, fearing that it might be the Tesco delivery van, which is driven by a man who feels that White Van Men are wusses and Tesco groceries must be delivered at a minimum of 40 mph or they may explode.

But no!  It was the Waitrose van!  So of course it pulled politely to a halt until the driver was quite sure that it was safe to pass, which he did giving me a nice smile and a little wave.  

This made me think how odd it is that in my lifetime, we have gone from Things Are Delivered (because a lot of people don't have cars) to  Things Are Not Delivered - because why would you pay for all the costs of delivery, when if you have money, you could drive to the supermarket or the post office?  back to Things are Delivered again.  Round and round...

At the top of the lane is a BT man with his van, doing something with (I hope) fibre-optics in a big hole in the ground.  I observe that when it is raining, the BT Man and Van park as close as they can possibly get to the hole, whereas when the sun is shining, the BT Van parks further up the hill where, if they open their side door, they can sit in the van and have a nice cup of tea taking in the rays and admiring the view.   Did you know BT vans had a sort of little caravan-style kitchen?  They do!

I'm hoping that the BT man is delivering faster broadband.  We used to have The Only Internet In the Village, which meant that our 64K ISDN line, despite its meagre capacity, often seemed blindingly fast. Whereas now, in theory, we have 8Mb broadband, but now that everybody and his goat has got an Internet, the contention in the evening over a copper network that was designed for phones like these makes things veeeerrryyyyyy ssssssslllllooooooowww :



I still have my fingers crossed that one day, telephone and internet and shopping will all work via Star Trek Transporters...

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I'd been thinking of the delivery thing recently as well. When I was little (1980s), getting food delivered by vans was a little bit looked down upon in that delightfully snobby way where of course you wouldn't hold it against someone else, you just wouldn't *dream* of appearing to be that type of person yourself (*wince*).

We mostly use Ocado and Abel and Cole now. Delivered, to us of course, because of how much greener it is (this is a lie, it's because we are lazy and they're good for vegan ready meals).

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It's strange how perceptions change, isn't it?

Also, how we cannot forgive ourselves for picking up the attitudes of the period, when we'd actively expect other people in Times Gone By to reflect the small snobberies and prejudices of their time...

I tend to fail on the ordering groceries front and make a mad dash to a supermarket or the local market town when I open the fridge and find it unaccountably empty.