waiting

Most of my Christmas shopping arrived yesterday, in three separate deliveries.  Last week DPD sent an e-mail saying that one of the parcels would arrive on Friday, and would I ensure that somebody was there to sign for it.  On the morning of the due day they nailed the time slot down to between 11.32 and 12.32, which wasn't very convenient as I had a haircut booked in Colchester.  The Systems Administrator hung about, but nothing came, and when I checked the tracking information on-line at the end of the day it said that the parcel had gone back to the depot, because they couldn't find the address.  Given that the house has been in the same place since the 1950s, and we are regular internet shoppers, this seemed rather lame for a professional delivery company, but there you go.  The previous time that DPD delivered anything they took two goes, and after the second I found a scrunched-up piece of paper in the drive, which turned out to be a map of how to find our house.  You'd think they'd keep a crib book of hard-to-find addresses on each route.

When I got in from work yesterday I enquired how the SA's day had been, as sympathetic spouses and partners do.  The reply was that the SA had mended the stove in the study (an inspection plate fell out.  The SA can't see how it ever stayed put in the first place), watched some racing, and gone for a walk in the front garden waiting about for my parcels, with a warning that we were low on milk because the SA hadn't been out.  One package came at lunchtime and another late afternoon.  It seems rather hard to have to spend the day hanging around for your own Christmas present to be delivered, but that's the downside of internet shopping.  At about half past six there was the faint whisper of what could have been a distant train, or wheels on the gravel, and it was the third and final parcel, looking very lonely as it was the last box left in a long wheelbase transit.

Meanwhile the beekeepers committee won't decide what we are doing for Thursday's monthly meeting.  A couple have said that they won't be able to be there at all, which is fair enough, as people do have work and family commitments.  The others have mostly remained silent, and it has fallen to the membership secretary to try and chivvy them along, simply because she maintains the e-mail contacts list for members.  If ever a body of people was in urgent need of leadership, this one is.  I suppose I will feel duty-bound to go on Thursday, simply because I am an officer of the society by dint of being Treasurer, and it seems wrong for members to turn up and find nobody there, but at the current rate of progress there is going to be nothing going on.  They don't read cardunculus, by the way.

Nor do the committee members of the music society, where I am waiting for confirmation that tonight's get together to talk about publicity is on.  The Systems Administrator, trying to organise the day's meals, asked me whether I was going out tonight, and I had to confess that I didn't know, since I hadn't heard from my prospective hostess and felt rude chasing her.  In fact I have now chased her, and all I could suggest about supper was to make something with flexible portion sizes that would keep, so that if I went out this evening my share could be recycled as tomorrow's lunch.

There is something about being in limbo and not knowing what you are doing later that is peculiarly unsettling.   Should I start compiling a quiz?  The weather forecast was for rain, but it is not raining very much.  Should I go out into the garden?  The excellent Buddhist principle of mindfulness would say that I shouldn't worry about it.  Enjoy the rest of the morning, and the afternoon, and see what if anything turns up.  Excellent principles can be very hard to apply in practice.  I don't like waiting about in a state of uncertainty.  I suppose it is time to start practising, since the older I get the more of it I'll probably have to do, one way and another.