You'd think, wouldn't you, that getting a box of chocolates delivered would be a fairly trouble-free process? Well, that's not always the case.

My mother was eighty-six last week, and since she's in a nursing home at the moment recovering from her fall, there didn't seem to be any point in getting all that creative about birthday presents. So I decided to get some chocolates delivered.

The nursing home where my mother is currently resident is on a leafy suburban road that was farmland within living memory. And that's where the problem lies.

On the Thorntons Web site, on the page where they ask you for the delivery address for the chocolates, they use a program called Quick Address. I know a bit about this, because it's a program I support at work. All the Web site user has to do is to enter the postcode of the property to which the chocolates should be delivered, pick from a list of choices - if the postcode refers to more than one property - and the program fills in the correct address on the Web page. What can go wrong?

Well, let's suppose that a farmer builds a property on the field adjacent to his farmhouse. He sells it and it becomes a separate property: but if no-one thinks to communicate this fact to the Post Office, they continue to consider the two properties to be one - like a farmhouse and an out-building for example. Over time, the farmer sells all his fields and you finish up with two houses on a leafy suburban street that share the same number and postcode.

Worse, when the chocolate delivery pantechnicon driver knocks at the door of the (wrong) house, he finds that the resident is not in. In fact, she's on holiday. The next door neighbours are also not in, so the driver leaves the box of chocolates with a neighbour far enough down the road not to realise that the name on the box is not the name of the resident of the (wrong) house; and the chocolates are well and truly lost.

Fair play to Thorntons: they are doing their best to sort things out. And I'm taking it in good heart. There are more important problems than chocolate deliveries to worry about in the world. But why did this one land in my lap?

Anyway, hopefully, my mother should get her chocolates any day soon. Before she leaves the nursing home, with any luck.

And talking of my mother, given that she's pretty well immobile at the moment as well as being somewhat confused at times, I've decided that it would not be kind to trouble her with trying to get to my graduation. My sisters and I have talked about it and decided to drop the subject, quietly, from conversation. Even if she could attend, I doubt that she would really understand what was going on.

But things move on. The Liverpool University Registry have contacted me with more details about the ceremony and pointed me to a Web site where I can hire the cap and gown and arrange for photographs. The struggling puritan within is shocked to find that hiring a cap and gown and having your picture taken will set you back £90.00, at least, and protests that it is little more than frivolity and vanity anyway. But my more selfish soul protests equally loudly that I've worked for three years for this and that I deserve my few seconds in the spotlight. A compromise has therefore been worked out. I will not be buying the DVD.

Oh! Did I tell you I'd passed? Well I have: with distinction.