So who said England was the first world? A couple of weeks ago I had to send my wheelchair off for some repairs. It had to go back to the factory in Birmingham, so I came up with a cunning plan. I got the factory to arrange for a courier to collect the chair on Monday, they would receive it on Tuesday and have Wednesday to work on it. Then I would drive up on Thursday to check that all was well and collect it. Straightforward enough.

They couldn't give me a specific time on Monday, but I had some work to do anyway so I could live with having to hang around for most of the day. And hang around I did. By 430 I was becoming a bit bored with hanging around so I phoned the factory, who phoned the courier. And of course nothing happened.

First thing Tuesday morning I phoned the factory back who assured me that today was the day! I explained that I really needed to go out on Tuesday afternoon so this morning needed to be the morning. This was relayed to the courier who duly phoned me directly and said it would be so. The morning came, and the morning went -- nothing! By now my sense of humour was through security checks, customs & the departure lounge and half way back to Africa. So I got back on the phones to be told on no less than 3 occasions that "the driver is just pulling up outside your house", only for him to magically vanish instantaneously. Really, did they think I wouldn't notice? Anyway to cut a frustrating story short the chair was eventually collected at 5 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. This meant that a factory should get the chair on Wednesday and we should be just about good for the work being done by Thursday.

So bright and early on Wednesday morning the doorbell goes and ……………………. the courier tries to deliver my chair back to me! To make things worse it was the very same driver who collected the bloody thing the previous evening!?! Did he really think all I was in need of was was overnight storage? I first pointed out that I was the sender and not the addressee and then suggested that we abandon the whole thing. At this point the driver informed me that he was unable to release the chair to me because I wasn't the addressee!

After no small amount of shouting on my part it was put on some sort of express delivery and arrived at the factory that evening. So, having lost all faith in humanity I set out on Thursday with very little optimism in my soul only to be very pleasantly surprised to discover that they had pulled out all of the stops and managed to just about get the work done by the time I arrived.

It's reassuring to know that I am still surrounded by genius!