This week’s column is dedicated to all those people who were expecting a parcel to be delivered before Christmas, but it didn’t arrive on time (or still hasn’t).

If that is you, I share your pain, and by way of consolation, those who read down to the bottom will be rewarded with a topical joke.

Thanks to the rise of online trading, an increasing proportion of the goods we now buy come in parcels, delivered to our door. Incredibly complex and damned clever systems achieve millions of deliveries a day, and even more at Christmas.

The system starts with an online order and ends with a driver carrying a hand-held computer, and because it also utilises the latest satellite-based GPS technology, the supercomputer in charge of it all no doubt knows the location of every parcel, every minute of the day, through every inch of its journey.

Father Christmas himself would be impressed by the operation.

It is so sophisticated that it even allows the customer to log into it and - in theory - discover when his or her delivery is actually going to turn up.

If only. All I ever seem to be able to discover is that my order ‘has been dispatched’, which would be great if ‘has been dispatched’ actually meant anything specific.

But it can mean my parcel has been dispatched from the shop, the factory, the warehouse, the airport, the national depot, the regional depot, the local depot, the sorting office, the delivery company’s yard, or various other possibilities.

It doesn’t actually tell me anything more about it than what I already knew - that they got my order, and it’s somewhere in their system.

Before Christmas we ordered some cat-themed socks for our daughter and were pleased to get an email to tell us we would receive the parcel - wait for it - ‘between December 24 and December 30’. Wow. Thanks for that. That’s a big help.

I also ordered some photo books that I thought would be nice to give as presents, but I left it quite late, so I didn’t know whether they would arrive before Christmas, and the confirmation of my order gave no clue.

However, a few days later we were delighted to be sent a link to a tracking system that promised more details.

Unfortunately, when we logged in, this so-called ‘update’ gave us the invaluable information ‘shipment documents created’.

Roughly translated, I think this means: ‘Somewhere in the world - possibly in China or Santa’s workshop - somebody has filled in a form to create a label, so rest assured that, one day in the not-too-distant future (although don’t count on it being this year) you should receive a parcel with your name on it.’ We are still waiting.

Even if you are eventually lucky enough to be given an estimated time of arrival for the parcel on a particular day, it will probably be the roughest of estimates, so you will still have to take the day off work or waste a day of your life, waiting for the doorbell to ring, just like the old days.

If this all frustrates you as much as it does me, hopefully the upcoming joke I promised at the beginning will cheer you up… I was walking to town the other day when a van drew up and the driver wound down his window.

“Excuse me, mate,” he said. “Have you got the correct time?”

I looked at the name on the van. It was a well-known delivery company.

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s between 10am and 2pm.”