The prompt was W is for Watch
Parcelwatching
I was watching my phone to get some clue as to when my parcel would arrive. It was to come from Peterborough to just outside Cambridge, a distance of some 36 miles.
It arrived, 277 miles later.
That’s over seven and a half times the distance it should have gone. What had happened? Where had this parcel been?
Had it hijacked the driver, demanding to be taken for a seaside holiday to get some sun on its cardboard and feel the breezy salt air ruffle its string? Had it been to London and done a tour of the great museums and theatres, soaking up knowledge and culture like some newly released long-imprisoned polymath? Had it been to Sheffield on a stag do and been chained to a lamppost, reeking of curry, after one last night of freedom before it was, forever, unwrapped? Had it ping-ponged between Dover and Calais a few times on a booze cruise?
No. It had bounced around the country like a startled gazelle trying to escape a ravenous cheetah.
From Peterborough my parcel hurtled south-west to Northampton, where it decided it was sick of travelling in a southerly direction and promptly fled north-west, stopping short of visiting Twycross Zoo by coming to rest in Tamworth.
Obviously horrified at what it found there, it did an abrupt about-turn and shot off south-east en route to Bury St Edmunds, which took it not only three-quarters of the way back to its starting point at Peterborough but also to within four miles of its destination.
I hope it waved as it barrelled past Cambridge because from then on my parcel was on an 80-mile jaunt for no apparent reason other than the desire to cross yet another county border, having already been to Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Cambridgeshire. To tick Suffolk off its cross-country bucket list, my parcel could have just nipped over to Newmarket but no – the exit slip road for the racing town was a mere in a blur in my parcel’s peripheral vision as, having built up a tremendous head of steam (or being possessed of no brakes to speak of), it blazed a trail towards sugar country.
Once at Bury St Edmunds – no doubt exhilarated by a high-speed trip along the A14 – it demonstrated a tighter turning circle than a sawn-off Mini and wheeled round 180 degrees, ripping up the miles on the west-bound carriageway of the road it had just travelled east-bound.
It finally collapsed on my doorstep, grinning maniacally and desperate for a wee, having done over 240 unnecessary road miles.
The irritating thing is that my parcel went further in one trip than I had in four months.
I resolved to get out more. On so many levels.
© Carol Carman 2026
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