I’m not one normally averse to surprise parcels or indeed surprises outside my front door.

At university one morning I opened the door of my room to find a double bass sitting in the corridor outside. After closing my door and re-opening it the double bass was still there and I realised I wasn’t  hallucinating. Who put it there? My best guess is the scary people who lived downstairs.

Then there was the time a friend had gone back to Belfast for the weekend and in the need of a taste of home I’d requested a bag of Tayto cheese & onion crisps. Can’t get a taste of home better than that.  (I really really want to visit that castle one day!) But he returned empty handed and I tried to hide my dismay… only to find a few days later I had an exciting green slip in my pigeon hole telling me I had a parcel… a whole box of Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps – far too big to carry back on the boat and which I duly shared around my fellow ex-pats desperate for that unique taste of home.

And just a couple of years ago I was settling on my sofa for some Sunday evening TV viewing when my doorbell rang.  Opening my front door I discovered 5 Lindt chocolate bunnies sitting on my little path, referring to a joke we shared. The perpertrators may have hidden themselves but they couldn’t surpress their giggles for too long and I enjoyed sharing my new found confectionery with them over a nice cup of tea.

Imagine my surprise this evening however to arrive home from work to find a large box sitting outside my front door. Now, I don’t know if it’s just because I’m at the end of the terrace row but a lot of rubbish seems to gather round my house from time to time, particularly on Thursdays and Fridays. But on closer inspection the box was intact and looked like it had been set there deliberately.

I have very kind and generous friends. Perhaps one of them had sent me something exciting – the box was big enough to hold a helium balloon but there was no obvious occasion to be celebrating. Perhaps there were flowers inside but usually those are left with a neighbour. I didn’t remember ordering anything that big from the internet… in fact I hadn’t ordered anything from the internet.

There was no label on the outside so the only option was to open it up to find out what was inside. It wasn’t sealed so this was easily done…

And inside…

many, many, many incontinence pads.

What was going on?

I delved in to the box to find the delivery note… only to find that they had been delivered to the wrong address – the right house number and first part of the streetname but someone wasn’t looking carefully – it said Gardens, not Park.

So I duly put the box in my car – it was bit too bulky to carry and the thought of accidentally spilling the contents all over the pavement was enough to make me ignore my carbon footprint – and drove it down my street to the rightful recipient.

I had set the box on the ground just outside the front door so that I could knock the door. A little old man opened the door and it looked like he was on his own. I was embarrassed that I didn’t know him but that he knew that I knew what the box contained. He didn’t lift it, just dragged it in as quickly as he could.

But he gave me a little wave as I reversed to turn and drive the few hundred yards back up the street.

And as I did so I felt rebuked that this man’s pain had become my folly as I had laughed when I first opened the box and hadn’t understood what was going on.

And more selfishly I wondered… when I am old and frail… who will look after me?