A Disappointment

Today is the first day I have cried since being in New Zealand.

I left 85 days ago, and have been religiously recording every single day of the trip in a diary. I'm on my 3rd diary right now, a notebook that has a picture of a coffee cup in front of a stack of books on every page (perfect don't you think?).

This is important because it means I've already filled two diaries. One is part of a travel notebook that I'm still using to track other things, but the other is a full notebook that I've been carrying around.

Clever me, I thought I'd send that notebook home, along with the other things I was sending back for Christmas (a letter, a couple of hand made things for my parents, and a couple of other bits and bobs). The woman behind the desk (the villain of this story) helped me fill out the customs declaration form for the parcel. I paid the postage and left, feeling secure in the knowledge that my parcel would arrive before Christmas.

Fast forward two weeks, and my parcel still hasn't arrived. Thinking I'd see if there was a longer delivery time than I thought, I decided to look through the New Zealand Post website for some answers. That's how I discovered their extensive "Prohibited Items" list.

That's also how I discovered one of the items in my parcel was on that list.

Cue despair.

I rang the customer services number on my receipt and after a couple of minutes of useless information, I was connected to a human being.

I explained my situation. In return, she explained what she was going to do and that while she would investigate it, there was no guarantee of my parcel, or a refund if they couldn't find it. I tried to explain that I didn't care about the refund, that it wasn't the monetary value I was worried about, just getting the parcel back, but it was a line she had to say so all she could do was repeat herself.

What followed was a tedious recital of my return address, my home address, what was in the parcel, the information on my receipt. It was funny hearing her struggle to spell Monmouthshire (she didn't even attempt to say it) and she was as helpful as she could be, given the situation.

Even so, the result of the phone call was that someone was going to investigate the location of my parcel but there is no guarantee it will be returned to me.

I'm mad at the woman in the Post Shop for letting me send off the parcel, even though she knew exactly what the contents were, and I'd checked to make sure it was okay. But more than anything, even more than that, I'm really really heartbreakingly sad.

It's not serious, and it's not life threatening, but it's just a whole month's diary of all the little things that have happened, that we've seen or heard or done, and it's lost.

The first proper cry, and the first proper disappointment, of the trip.

Let's hope some good news arrives to balance it all out!