Sometimes living on the Bonsai Mountain poses a few difficulties, especially in winter where you need a four by four and motivation to break out to civilisation. We are content being marooned, especially when there is a roaring fire and a good stock of food. Since we have lived here there have been a few run ins with delivery drivers. The absolute classic can be found in the archive when a stroppy driver from a well known electrical store with a name similar to an ethnic spicey dish refused to drive his everso small lorry up our dirt track on the basis that it was impossible to get the lorry there. Even when shown photographic evidence that the same lorry had delivered the day before the oaf tried to make off with my fridge that I had been waiting 9 weeks for. He dumped it in the Oracle's yard and Ben, Fifi and I managed to get it back to HQ without breaking it or ourselves.
So, we are explicit with the delivery drivers, you need a small lorry, and the majority pay heed. Small versions of oil tanker lorries deliver the fuel for the Rayburn, medium sized cement mixers dropped off the stable floor in three loads, builders merchants use the small flat bed and one bad tempered but up for a challenge driver eventually got his huge eight wheeler with crane to drop off five pallets of nine inch concrete blocks. All is well. One final snag here is that they have to reverse up the Bonsai Mountain, there's no way to turn around and they cant drive up as invariably the load is dropped behind the truck so they would have to stay until we used the delivery, which is sometimes weeks.
The stone was delivered for the patio. On a separate note why is it cheaper to get 45 square metres of ethically sourced stone for a patio from India, via York, and dropped here, rather than our local quarry who wanted nearly three times the money for the same sort of stone. Anyway, on with the tale of the lucky driver with the lorry load of stone. Warning signs were apparent, on reflection, the delivery hub phoned up and asked it there was anyone who could help get the stone of the truck. Well not really. The driver has to use a pallet truck to get it off, is the surface its unloaded onto smooth, well no, its a dirt track and its a hilly dirt track. Never mind he will manage. OK, but remember a small lorry, yes we remember, small as in less than an eight wheeler, yes its a six, non articulated, yes a small six wheeler with a tail lift, be with you in the hour. Great. As can bee seen from the video above, a dimension we all forgot about was height. The first we knew of any problems was seeing an irate chap in the lane cursing the foliage. Down by the pig pen he gave up his battle with the trees and begged to be allowed to drop the load there. Luckily for him, and me, our ever so friendly Mr Digger was here and he got to grips with the heavy pallets and dropped them by portal to the patio, the white visible from space gate. Our hapless driver set off grumbling about being higher without the weight of the stone in the back, the words he was going to have with his transport manager but thankful for the gallon of cider given as a small thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment