A day of parcel force and printed stress

This account will either be incredibly boring or mildly interesting.

Friday morning -

Can you drop off these prints as you are going to London today? To this auction house near Battersea Park, the entries close for it today and you are going to the embankment anyway aren’t you Pea, I’ll pay for a taxi to take you there.

This was correct. I for once, the person out of the two of us that often seemed to go through the week in a half depressed day dream had a meeting in London at 5.30pm.

What time does your train get into Paddington? errr I think 4.20, yes ok I’ll take them, but you’ll have to bubble wrap them for me…

I was preoccupied at this time of conversation, much more worried that my delivery of 5 bags of layers pellets being supposedly and vitally delivered today via Parcel Force was going to come after 2pm and ruin this whole planned day of 2. 30pm taxi to the train station and then onto London. I had been notified that it was on its way from the Gloucester depot via the usually reassuring text message, which of course on this occasion was not that reassuring. Your parcel is due to be delivered today by agency from Parcelforce and it should be with you between 0:00 to 0:00. You can track your parcel at…. you most likely know the texts unless you are indeed a purist. 0:00 what does 0:00 mean … midday - midnight? I know this reads as a very diva like phone addicted persons problem and it was my very stupid problem. I’d managed after waiting 5 minutes to get through to talk to a person but as soon as I said hello, I lost the phone signal.

I should have ordered the hen feed a day earlier to avoid all this stress but I had not and I don’t drive so I order most things in this fashion. It is incredible how much chicken feed 30 odd hens get through especially in the winter when they don’t have much to supplement this with foraging. It makes you realise just how much feed huge farms containing sheds of thousands of birds must get through each day.

I walked up the hens at around 10am, cleaned each hen house out in the usual droppings board and straw fluffing up fashion and then recorded a fingers crossed paid advert for a magazine subscription with my phone on selfie mode which took several takes and I am now at the annoying point of, having sent it to my agent waiting to hear back from the client, this is influencer talk the client and the supposed talent. The client will probably expect me to be moonshining from those lights people/proper professional influencers or Only Fans personas seem to have around the place. Anyway, there was none of that, they have been sent me in full song, lady in the van look mode with all the hens around my feet.

Once I had done that, I went and shovelled some gritty stones and sand into my wheelbarrow and dumped them around the doors to two hen houses. I don’t like suffocating areas of pasture that could be back to grass by May but the mud had become too much here due to my daily footwork. By the time I had done this, praise the parcel force driver, the layers pellets had been delivered to the stable yard on the farm and so I then had more wheel barrow trundling of backwards and forwards which yet again made me realise how unfit I am. Hen feeders filled, I walked home in time to be back for 1pm.

Get home, some spoonful’s of apricot Jam and a cup of tea, emails, wash face, pack rucksack, phone charger , tooth brush, wallet as I was going onwards from London to Nottingham.

The prints both in frames, James had left for me leaned against the desk. Both lightly bubble wrapped, I put one under each arm with determination and love of doing him a helpful deed. Out to the taxi then out at Charlbury station onto the train to London, frames sinfully taking up their own seat but it luckily was not too busy and they were worth thousands of pounds also, I’ll note that now but it didn’t worry me they were too small for me to loose.

Out at Paddington into London black Cab like a leaf cutter ant willing worker carrying prints or some sort of odd, instinctual penguin on a mission. It was by now 4.25pm. Just enough time.

The cab zig- zags, zig - zags and zig- zags. Where the fuck are we going, I don’t know London that well really but I think have faith, we have time, the clock creeping up to ten to five.

We go past the Serpentine gallery that I notice has some lovely cornus dogwoods planted around it and the cab is spat out the other end of Hyde Park past my favourite little park keepers temple and its lovely plantings of seasonal bedding into Kensington then through to Sloane Square then we get to the corner of the Chelsea Barracks, those ultra posh at the same time, ghastly apartments opposite the Grounds of the Royal Hospital where Chelsea Flower show is held. I know these pavements well because most years, I work the show as shop boy for Sarah Raven and last year especially, this involved me having to converse these crowded pavements with a rickety old sack trolley several times in order to restock the shop we had within the flower show. The trade stands have to park their stock vans quite a distance away behind a tennis court, anyway all quite boring, indeed thanks if by now you haven’t nodded off in my ramblings.

So back in the taxi, it is now 5.11, the auction house closes at 5.30pm. The traffic is standing, we are not moving. Big red bus’s ahead, the usual London traffic madness that goes on and on. The clock is ticking and my anxiety is in overdrive.

My phone dismally, of course is by now, with me having been looking at where the taxis was heading for on google maps, on the last little red line of battery symbol juice.

I ask the silent cab driver who’s meter is going up and up, past £35 ‘Is this traffic normal, will it suddenly start moving?’ ‘Well its not moving’ an obvious reply from him from a stupid question asked by me. Right I think, sod this.

I paid the taxi, flung open the door out onto the pavement and proceeded to march walk, painfully, to be honest, with a heavy rucksack, all the way down what is quite a long road to the Chelsea Bridge, fully panic stricken as I tried to not now look at google maps which had informed me that walking would take something like 22 minutes on my dying phone.

If the phone did turn off before I found this bloody place then I really would be fucked because that was telling me how to get to this auction house that I had never visited before. What was I going to do with two very valuable print paintings if this place was shut up by the time I got there and I then had no phone to ring anyone to help, I would really be f’d. By now, I’m realising also that my meeting wasn’t going to happen. I’d already warned them back in the cab about the traffic in a text. This was totally cold sweat, panic, concern and annoyance. Of course at these moments you realise its a small world, too small and skimping past me is an annoying vision of someone I know not someone I know through personal preferences, holding his black French Bulldog under his arm in full smarmy complexion, the fakest of quick smiles from him and a blunt hi from me, actually I think I’d rather be me than that so it does give me a tiny boost of, come on get a move on.

And so, I ring James, a possibly fatal risk the phone it could just turn off and be blank become what it is a hollow friend but it is now 5.22pm. I’m over the Bridge but I have to get myself to Battersea, past the park, over a traffic island and down and round under this bridge according to google maps.

Ring James - Hi darling, all so nectar rich his voice could have been a Gordon’s country crisp advert narrative. YOU’VE GOT TO TELL THEM TO KEEP THE PLACE OPEN I’M ON FOOT, THE TRAFFIC, ITS A NIGHTMARE, RING THEM DON’T LET THEM CLOSE! ok. end call. continue.

Finally, the street name comes into view that my tiny mind has tried to remember, Ingate bastard place, thank god almost there. I waddle through these black gates and then through a luckily open back office door to smiling, fresh young faces amongst stacks of framed paintings. What I must look like by now I don’t want to know probably a red faced, orange sweating ex circus clown like Noddy. A bad tempered and knackered storm of a little daft, stressed character. They inspect and accept the prints happily and I leave them, two slim lined treasures that I have known for the past four years. Not picked by me but part of James life.

One is a large print of a photo of a white stallion horse turned beautifully into a Unicorn, very elegantly ghost like but camp at the same time. The other is an apt title of Little Fool. I’ll leave it there.

Did you enjoy this diary like entry? Let me know. Best Arthur