the book that vanished

  This book is beautiful. While I am being careful with new purchases, sometimes I just go for it. Right now my favourite things to throw together are salads and charcuterie boards, hence the reason I've bought books on both recently.
It was ordered on Friday with delivery due on Saturday. By mid afternoon it hadn't turned up, I checked the order and saw it was out for delivery. I was in the bedroom doing bits and pieces when I heard a van outside. I looked and saw it was Amazon. I also saw it was driving away and no delivery had been made here. So I checked the website again and saw the words 'delivered. Package was handed to resident'. Erm. No it wasn't. Immediately I knew it had been delivered to the wrong address. I gave it a few minutes hoping that someone would appear and post it after realising the mistake. I've done that before when something has been posted through the letterbox by mistake, I returned it straightaway. That didn't happen. So this annoyed me. Bill was in the back garden and I loudly told him what I thought had happened and that one of the "lovely" people around here had basically stolen my book. I ranted for a while, said I'd seen the delivery van and roughly where it was so it wasn't hard to work out what had happened. After an hour or so and still no returned book Bill phoned Amazon. They babbled something about how the gps system had made a mistake and it had been delivered elsewhere. Didn't really add up, as the time given as delivery time - 3.31 - tied in exactly with me seeing the delivery van. It had been delivered around here, but as I've said before we live in a sea of idiots, some that you know you wouldn't trust in any way. Amazon were apologetic and said they would re send the book at no extra charge, which was kind of them and appreciated.

Several hours later, around 7 p.m, a knock on the door and it's the chap from next door. He'd been out all day but his horrible wife had been home. He garbled something about how she'd taken a couple of deliveries in and this one was underneath but she 'handn't noticed'. Oh really. Don't believe a word of it. Given how crazily she's been acting over the past couple of months I have no doubt that she noticed the error and decided to take it. You'd notice straightaway and say to the delivery person it wasn't for them, that's something else I've done before. Mix ups can and do happen. I also know she was in her garden when I was ranting about the how someone had stolen the book, talking about the time and where I'd seen the delivery van. I feel 100% certain that she knew she had our delivery and that she wasn't going to give it back, more like to throw it out thinking we'd never know she was the one who took it. It strikes me as the tale of 'putting this under the other deliveries without noticing' was total fiction. Mainly because if it was posted by mistake, no explanation needed. You only need a story if it's to cover up a lie. What's the one thing everyone does when handed a letter or delivery? You look at it. It's automatic. I did it on Wednesday when Fortnum's delivered. I knew it was from them as it said on the box, I expected the delivery on that day and I knew what it was. Yet the first thing I did was to look at the addresss, it's just what you do isn't it? I find it very unlikely that anyone would accept any delivery and not glance at the address at all.

When she heard me going on about it in the garden she must have realised that actually, it's not impossible to track down who took in the package. So when her husband returned she told a fib or two and made him bring it round, she wasn't going to do it.
This is what I'm dealing with. Some vile creature who just because we had work done on our house and used our own drive, sees nothing wrong in intercepting our post, presumably to make herself feel better or get her own back. Ridiculous woman. You might read this and think 'you don't know it was deliberate'. I disagree. I do. I've seen her behaviour recently and this isn't out of character.
Project B isn't due to start this week, I got that wrong, it's meant to start on Monday. It's going to be loud and messy, and OH NO, people will be on our drive again. She's going to go back to complaining and taking photos, but I'm not in the least bit sorry. I hope it annoys her massively.
Anyway. Now I have two copies of this book thanks to her stupidity, so I shall give the extra one to my mum. She's not one for books, but it's so lovely I think she'd enjoy it too.