Where there's a will...

The delivery man, who was quite tired after having driven a distance of over 200 miles, reversed his transit van down the drive. Slamming the door, he got out holding up his invoice, and with a look of puzzlement on his face, asked if we knew the whereabouts of a farm called Barleycorn. Having assured him that he had indeed got the correct address and that this was not a farm, he then asked where we kept our forklift truck. When told we had no such equipment, the air began to turn blue as he grew more and more alarmed as to how we were going to unload the butyl liner from the van.

It was so heavy, he said, in a voice becoming louder by the minute, that hydraulic equipment had been needed to lever it onto a pallet, following which it had been lifted up by means of a forklift truck and placed in the van. There was no way, he said emphatically, to get the butyl off his van without the aid of machinery. What on earth had possessed us to imagine, when we had placed an order for butyl, that he would carry that kind of equipment on his van, he demanded to know.