They didn't hang around long.
First day back at work and Daniel, our neighbour, got his redundancy notice.
He's been delivering around here for over twenty years. But with the fully autonomous vehicles now legal in Wales he's out of a job.
His company have got their new self delivery vans on order.
It means we will finally have to give in and get an AutoBox installed unless we want to drive to the main depot to collect all our deliveries.
At least they are offering a 35% discount for the over 70s if I wait a few weeks, so I guess we shouldn't complain too much!
If we'd been in a town we would have been in a drone delivery zone for a few years now, but we've got too many trees round here.
That suits me as I'm sure the drones are all hooked up to the Civic Surveillance Network.
Amazon denies it but I'm darn sure they didn't get to beat Tesco to that new Social Meal contract without a bit of give and take.
Daniel and Maggie were pretty cut up about the news. It's going to be tough for him to get a new job at his age.
Luckily the local chapter of the Infr's is pretty active so we should be able to help them til they getting something sorted.
I'm really glad I got involved with the Infr's.
The main shower feed tap sprung a leak today. Micky, one of the guys from the club, came and fixed it this evening. We could have been three days without water if we had gone through the official channels.
I've built up quite a good collection of plumbing bits and bobs over the years. Micky was happy to trade the job for a few taps and fittings. Since the Trade Supplies Tracking System was introduced it's been hard for him to get the stuff he needs without getting picked up for unlicensed maintenance work.
I really wish we'd got all our old plumbing sorted when we could have afforded it. We live with what we've got now - leaks and drips included.
So only two days into the new year and the rough edges are starting to show.
And we haven't heard from Anne yet what happened to her connection yesterday. She's staying in one of official state hotels and they are usually high speed everything.
Hopefully we'll hear from her tomorrow.
Goodnight for now.