Last week when our new tent arrived the order was somehow duplicated and we got two delivered. Once I’d realised I was quite delighted and fully intended keeping the extra one to sell and recover some of the cost of the one we’d paid for, but a quick ask around proved my sketchy idea that after a certain period wrongly delivered stuff becomes yours was not the case and that actually if I did keep it then legally I had to keep it in the same condition in which it had been delivered. Which meant I couldn’t use it, sell it or do anything with it. Which seemed a bit pointless. The tent had come without a central groundsheet though so I decided to contact the seller about that and mention the duplicate tent arriving, semi hoping that as they are in Germany they may just tell me to keep the extra tent rather than spend money arranging for collection. They emailed back to say they would send me a groundsheet and arrange for collection of the extra tent and thanking me for my honesty.
I told my parents about it all this evening and they are rather colourful and were utterly horrified at me for not keeping / selling the extra one, so now I feel all silly for being honest 🙄 – you just can’t win!
It’s been quite a productive day today. We had a list of things we needed to get out of this month’s budget so as I got paid today we went off to tick some of those things off our list. At Tescos we got Davies some new shorts and trousers and some goggles for swimming, some saucepans and cutlery for camping to replace last years Tesco saucepans and cutlery which had gone rusty in our garage over the winter (and will be put away to store properly next winter) and a fleece for Tarly as she only has heavy winter coats or too small hand me down fleeces from Davies. They didn’t have any of the £2 Tesco Value ones but they did have nice zip up £4 pink ones. The smallest size they had was age 6-7 which looked tiny and when she tried it on was only slightly large on her, so we bought that and she’s happily worn it all day :).
Then we went to Littlehampton and into Peacocks. Both my pairs of cropped jeans from last summer have rips in them and as the denim is lighter weight on the cropped ones I did want to replace them rather than just turning up my normal jeans as I have been doing. Their cropped jeans were £15 a pair but they did have lightweight stretchy jeans reduced to half price from £12 to £6 instead so I got a couple of pairs of them and they can be turned up instead. We were also looking for sandals for Davies and sunsuits for each of them but had no luck on those. Davies has been changing his mind daily about whether to get some pretend crocs like Tarly and me or not and when we looked in a cheapo shoe shop at their sandals and he saw some orange crocs-a-like with smiley faces on he decided he did want those actually instead of sandals. They didn’t have his size but the shop had another branch in the next town so we left Littlehampton and went there instead. We found a parking space straight away and got him a pair of orange ones with smiley faces, which he put on straight away and seems to be delighted with. 🙂 Also got Tarly a pair of the jibbitz with cats on which I have managed to fix her broken strap using on hers so that was good. 🙂 We poppped into the Iceland next door and got various frozen food items too. Lots of interesting conversations in the car as always, mostly War of the Worlds or Dr Who inspired including in depth discussions about why creatures need to evolve, what ‘future’ is and how believing in aliens is a bit like God, Father Christmas, tooth fairies and ghosts – some people do, some people don’t and it’s all kind of up to you really.
We got home in time to cross paths with the Thank You Neighbour who offered to help me bring my shopping in and asked with a cheeky wink if I was off to go and have a lie down 😯 but I managed to discourage him! The children played with Barbies and Wallace and Gromit and then moved on to doing some drawing and colouring. Ali’s Freya phoned to speak to Scarlett which utterly delighted her. She knew she was going to ring and sat watching my phone, snatching it up as soon as it rang. She chatted away and listened with a smile on her face before saying goodbye and hanging up. Very sweet and very indicative of years to come!
Davies decided he wanted to make a dalek so he went and got an empty loo roll (he has a collection of these stored in his bedroom for just such eventualities) and various bits of paper, scissors and glue and made a good start. He asked for some help in making the sticky out bit so I showed him how to cut a hole in the tube and stick a rolled up bit of card in it which pleased him. Scarlett made something with the paint pens.
I made their tea, Ady came home, swiftly followed by my parents. Bedtime stories from my Mum and a very protracted bedtime with lots of reappearances from both children. Pizza for dinner and lots of general hilarity until a final conversation about Home Education and working mothers which we all very carefully avoided falling out over while all still getting our points across and then they went home.
Tomorrow’s plans rest on the weather, which is forecast to do one thing while I am hoping it does the other.
Your parents were horrified that you didn’t steal something. How odd. In my opinion you did the right thing. Treat people the way you would hope they would treat you in reverse. If you accidently sent someone £80 would you want them to tell you or not?
Indeed they were, they thought I’d done the equivalent of walking past an envelope stuffed with money. However I have always had rather different standard and morals to the rest of my family much to their despair / amusement so I do still think I did the right thing.
Yup I reckon you did the right thing too. I would have done the same, hoped the company really didn’t want to pay to collect it though 🙂
have you got any pictures of the tent, I’m dying to see it 🙂