by Henry VIII collects a parcel from a department store and discovers convenience has its own waiting room
I once had goods delivered directly to my chamber by royal barge, no queue, no ticket number, no standing in the rain beside a stranger arguing about a returned toaster.
The Collection Point
The department store’s click and collect desk occupied a corner near the perfume counter, marked by a single retractable barrier and a queue of eleven people, each holding a phone displaying a confirmation email, the modern equivalent, I suppose, of presenting a royal seal, except considerably less impressive and considerably more likely to have a battery die halfway through the wait.
The Wait
I stood behind a woman collecting six identical jumpers in six sizes, intending, she explained to nobody in particular, to keep only one and return the rest, a strategy I found genuinely admirable in its confidence and genuinely baffling in its logistics. I have annexed smaller territories with less advance planning than this woman brought to a jumper.
The Verification
When my turn came, the assistant asked for photographic identification to confirm I was the person named on the order, a level of scrutiny I have not faced since attempting to enter my own coronation, and even then the guards simply recognised my face and stood aside. Here a teenager named Ashleigh compared my passport photo, freshly taken and freshly rejected twice before finally passing, to my actual face, and paused for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time before nodding.
The Parcel
The parcel itself, when finally produced, contained a single pair of shoes I had ordered eleven days earlier for a gig, now largely unnecessary since the gig had already occurred, a timeline failure I found entirely unsurprising given everything else about the process. I once received urgent dispatches from Calais faster than this store could locate a shoebox already sitting in its own building.
The Reflection
I left clutching my shoes, my dignity, and a receipt I did not ask for, and reflected that convenience, in this century, appears to mean the item exists somewhere on the premises rather than needing to be shipped, but says nothing whatsoever about how long a man must stand beside a perfume counter to actually receive it. I once summoned an entire wardrobe department to my chamber within the hour. This shop required eleven days, a queue, and photographic proof that I am, in fact, myself.
The Next Order
Ashleigh told me, as I left, that I could avoid the identification check entirely next time by having the parcel delivered directly to my flat instead, a piece of advice that arrived roughly eleven days too late to be useful but which I have already applied to every order since. I have concluded that convenience in this century simply means choosing the version of a queue you personally find least offensive.
The full shoe saga, gig included, continues over in the chapters. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: Amazon’s own recent shopping cart addition of considerably more than a shoebox, the definitive guide to London’s smallest, most judgmental cafes, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
