Lockdown diary, day six

A Sunday on which one cannot go to church is a very strange thing indeed.

Instead my family lit a candle and prayed for everyone at this very difficult time, especially those who have contracted COVID-19 and their families and friends, and the souls of those who have died after contracting it, and their families and friends.

Spent some time in the garden, clearing out the rabbit hutch and tidying up dead leaves etc. I noted that a tree had made a miraculous recovery - see previous post,

"Sunday Reflection: Life finds a way."

And yes, I know that's not an original line, it is of course a reference to a quote from Jeff Goldblum's character Dr Ian Malcolm in the first Jurassic Park film.

We were supposed to have three parcels delivered by yesterday. In two cases the delivery people were very sensible, knocked on the door or rang the bell, put the package by the front door and stood two metres back to check from that safe distance that we were there to collect.

However, the most charitable explanation of what happened to the third one is that the Royal Mail delivery person somehow could not find the correct address. I got a message saying that they had attempted to deliver the third package on Saturday and we didn't appear to be in, which astonished me as of course we were at home all day.

The Royal Mail tracking service claimed there had been an unsuccessful attempt to deliver the package at 1.47 pm yesterday, a time when I would almost certainly have heard any knock on the door. More to the point, no card was put through the door.

Now have to decide whether the item is important enough to justify going down to the Post Office depot to collect it given the COVID-19 restrictions on leaving the house, or asking them to make another delivery and praying that this time the post office send it via one of their people who actually know how to find us.

We did a shop for essential supplies at Morrisons this afternoon, and the store were responsibly bending over backwards to minimise any risk of transmitting infection. Only a certain number of people are allowed in at any time,  and where necessary customers are asked to queue, waiting two metres apart, until they can enter.

There was a table at the entrance with hand sanitiser and wipes to clean trolley handles.

In the shop we were asked to maintain two metres separation from other customers and from staff.

There was a good supply of toilet paper available and almost everything we were looking for.

Generally I will give Morrisons nine out of ten for handling a difficult situation.

There was only one thing which jarred, which was that one of the things we wanted to buy - packets of a particular brand of coffee - was being sold at a substantial discount from what is supposed to be the normal price and yet we were only allowed to buy two units of the item concerned as coffee is supposedly in short supply.

(And no, the packets were not out of date or anything)
Now, if the normal price was really the normal price this would be economic insanity. Why on earth would you cut the price of something which was in seriously short supply or subject to excess demand?

I can think of a number of explanations but the most likely is that someone has not thought this one through. Maybe they applied the limit because they were short of some brands of coffee but didn't notice that they had plenty of others.

In which case it would make more sense to limit the number of items you can buy at a time of those coffee products which really are in short supply, (hence the limit to two items,) but make clear that this does not apply to those coffee products which they are trying to shift, (hence the discount.)
One could easily come up with other explanations but they get us into conspiracy theory territory and I'd rather not go there. Hanlon's razor is usually the best thing to apply:


Stay well everyone.

Stay home: protect the NHS; Save lives.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Looks like an early intervention for the Gold Blend Commander.
Chris Whiteside said…
My God, that comment is actually funny!

All the more so if you read the following day's post and find there really was an early intervention ...

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