Speaking as someone who likes to stockpile – I’m not a prepper, I just have a big basement – I can appreciate the appeal of the newly launched Amazon Fresh. For, having just had a jolly outing to Costco and returned with circa 300 loo rolls and enough dried pasta to sink the Bismarck, I realised that lunch would have to progress without a skerrick of bread and butter or a drop of milk. I might be the proud owner of a new mini-trampoline, but I didn’t even have the wherewithal for a cup of tea.
I’d forgotten the immediate essentials because I was too busy being dazzled by baubles, not to mention bauble-multipacks, three for two. Had I been shopping on the net, I might have been pointed to my favourites, my shopping list history, my stored special offers, et cetera, et cetera. When I use my customary online grocery retailer, the checkout process is a chicane of reminders so tailored that I begin to believe they actually care about me.
But real shopping has one enormous advantage. It is temporary respite from a brand-new nightmare that, if it were a reality show, would be called “Home Delivery Hell”. It would feature a version of me, morphed into a cuckoo clock at noon, running to the door every 10 minutes. Imagine being a person who works at home, has much to do with the world of books and also likes frocks; add in a cohabitant who gathers up vinyl rarities from independent record stores and collectors across the globe and you have some idea.
The postman is the easy bit. He comes at the same time each day, his beaming face the antithesis of Viz’s misanthropic Postman Plod; we have a quick laugh, I worry about him getting rained on and off he goes. Chaos rules the rest of the day. Either you are waiting for the precision timing favoured by some couriers (“your item will be with you between 11.12 and 11.16”) or cut loose by the laissez faire attitude of others (“Tuesday”). You are entirely at the mercy of whichever company your retailer has chosen to use; some are wonderfully efficient, others you’d think twice about asking directions from to the end of the road. Though, to be fair to them, the end of the road is pretty clogged with delivery vans.
You blithely pop out while waiting for a small, letterbox-shaped item, only to discover when picking it up two days later from a depot miles away that it’s been packaged as if it were a microwave (a whole other can of worms). Even if you are in, you are caught cashless in the face of unexpected custom charges, malfunctioning signature machines, deliveries to entirely other people. On bleak days, these interruptions can seem like company. Otherwise, they simply offset the advantage of not having to travel via Piccadilly Circus by bringing that byword for bustle and noise to your very front door.
But back to my cuppa. There used to be this system: a guy came round first thing every morning with a bottle of milk and deposited it on your doorstep. If you were making a rice pudding, or had a lacto-maniac staying, you left a note requesting more. When you went on your hols, you asked him not to bring any for a bit. It was terrific. Rumour has it there are still some of these “milkmen” left in small enclaves throughout the country. But it surely can’t be true.
