Oh, what a tangled web...

Getting hold of three kilogrammes of jute twine should really not be complicated.

Yes, I'm well aware that's a lot of twine; the feature photo shows only one of those kilogrammes. But the drama group is going to need a lot of netting, so that's 2 kg of twine in natural colour, and I thought I might as well get some green at the same time for my string bags and save on the postage. So I duly ordered it on Wednesday last week, and rather to my surprise I got an e-mail to say it would be arriving the following day. It was being delivered via The Alternative Parcels Company. I'd never heard of them, but I'm sure new couriers are springing up all the time.

At ten past twelve on Thursday, I got an e-mail from the courier to say that this parcel had been delivered and received by "McEvoy". That was the first I knew about it; having said that, I'm very well used to delivery drivers lying about having handed me the parcel personally, especially if they are in a hurry. The driver clearly hadn't bothered to ring, but what I initially assumed had happened was that they'd left it outside the door of my flat. That counts as one fault, because I expect them to ring, but not a very severe one. I went to look.

The parcel was not there. I was a little taken aback, and then I recalled that occasionally you got a really bad courier who'd leave the parcel outside the main front door of the building, in full view of the street. I got out Stanley, my trusty rollator, and made my way to the front door to have a look. There was, again, no parcel. And it certainly wasn't that I'd overlooked it in some way; 3 kg of jute twine is a fairly substantial parcel. It was quite definitely not there.

So I rang the company and explained the situation, and the bloke on the phone said he'd speak to the driver. He put me on hold for a few minutes while he did this, and then he got back to me. The parcel, he explained, was at the gate. The driver had not been able to get in through the gate, so he had left it there.

"Oh," I said. "Well, that would sound very plausible, except for the fact that there isn't a gate."

The bloke on the phone was now a little embarrassed. He assured me he would speak to the driver again, which he duly did. This time, the driver changed his story. He said he had gone up to the front door of the building and rung the buzzer, got no answer, and so left it outside the building.

By this point I was getting quite annoyed - not with the bloke on the phone, who was stuck in the middle, but with this mendacious driver. I repeated what I had told him before: the driver had not rung the buzzer (or the doorbell of my flat, or anything else), and he had not left it outside the building because I had had to get my walker out to go and check. I emphasised that I was disabled and I didn't appreciate this driver messing me about.

The poor bloke on the phone didn't know where to put himself. He was most apologetic, and he assured me that he would speak to this driver yet again and get the whole thing sorted out for me, after which he hung up in a fluster. By this time I had to go and make myself some lunch, so I decided that if I didn't at the very least get some further news by the time I'd finished eating, I'd be on the phone to them again.

I didn't have to. At five to one there was a knock on the door, and it was the delinquent himself, with my parcel under his arm. You might have expected someone barely out of his teens, but no; he can't have been that much younger than I am. This time, he insisted he'd originally left it in the communal hallway, and gestured at the spot where he said he'd left it.

"You did not," I said. "I had to walk past that spot to see if you'd left it outside the front door. I would have seen it."

I was about to add that I'm just mobility-impaired, not blind, and then give him a lecture about the other places where he'd initially claimed to have left it; but he cut in. "Well, you've got it now," he said, and sloped off without further ado or any hint of an apology. A few minutes later, I got a second e-mail saying that it had been delivered, and that this time it had been received by someone called "Mcvy".

"Right," I thought. "And if I ever see you again, I'm going to take all your vowels out, too."

Needless to say, I e-mailed the twine people giving them chapter and verse on what had just happened, and strongly encouraging them to consider a different courier, because "The Alternative Parcels Company" was a highly misleading name in the circumstances. They would be better called "The Alternative Facts Company". I didn't get a reply, but I expect they will at least log it and then consider making a change if they get further complaints. It's true that it was only one driver; but I doubt it's the first time he's demonstrated such a flagrant economy with the truth. His employers have a duty to the public to pull him into line or send him packing. I am, obviously, in favour of the former if it's at all possible.

There's also the question of why he did it. I don't suppose I shall ever know whether he was just very lazy or he was planning to steal the parcel; however, I'm slightly inclined towards the latter theory, because he tried to maintain for as long as he could that he'd left the parcel in an insecure location. Now courier companies usually impress on their drivers the great importance of not doing that, so you'd think if he had claimed to have left it outside a gate (and not even tried to put it over the gate for a bit of security), he'd have got into trouble, and he'd have known that. So I suspect he was prepared to risk a telling-off for leaving it in an unsuitable place in order that he could blame some passer-by for making off with it; I'm sure he didn't expect me to chase it up immediately.

And if that is the case, then I can only surmise what on earth he thought the parcel contained, because I have no idea what anyone round here other than me would want with 3 kg of jute twine...