DELIVERY SONGS
       
       2025-03-29
       
       Here in the UK, ice cream vans will usually play a tune to let you know
       they're set up and selling (It's not unheard of for cruel clever parents to
       try to teach their young children that the ice cream van plays music only to
       let you know it's sold out of ice cream. A devious plan, although one I wasn't
       smart (or evil?) enough to try for myself.). So when you hear Greensleeves
       (or, occasionally, Waltzing Matilda), you know it's time to go and order
       yourself a ninety-nine.
       
 (IMG) On a verdant manicured lawn under a summer sky, two parents walk barefoot after their young child, who is running towards a traditionally-coloured yellow-and-white British ice cream van with visible branding reading 'fresh dairy ice cream' and '99 flake'.
       
       Imagine my delight, then, when I discover this week that ice cream vans aren't
       the only services to play such jaunty tunes! I was sat with work colleagues
       outside İlter's Bistro on Meşrutiyet Cd. in Istanbul, enjoying a beer, when a
       van carrying water pulled up and... played a little song!
       And then, a few minutes later - as if part of the show for a tourist like me -
       a flatbed truck filled with portable propane tanks pulled up. Y'know, the kind
       you might use to heat a static caravan. Or perhaps a gas barbeque if you only
       wanted to have to buy a refill once every five years. And you know what: it
       played a happy little jingle, too. Such joy!
       
 (IMG) A grey-haired man wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans leans casually against the open doors of a white van that's visibly filled floor-to-ceiling with 19-litre 'water cooler style' water bottles, plus a pallet lifter. The van is parked between red-and-white striped cones on an Istanbul street.
       
       My buddy Cem, who's reasonably local to the area, told me that this was pretty
       common practice. The propane man, the water man, etc. would all play a song
       when they arrived in your neighbourhood so that you'd be reminded that, if you
       hadn't already put your empties outside for replacement, now was the time!
       And then Raja, another member of my team, observed that in his native India,
       vegetable delivery trucks also play a song so you know they're arriving.
       Apparently the tune they play is as well-standardised as British ice cream
       vans are. All of the deliveries he's aware of across his state of Chennai play
       the same piece of music, so that you know it's them.
       
 (IMG) Two men sit in the back of an open-backed vegetable delivery truck.
       
       It got me thinking: what other delivery services might benefit from a
       recognisable tune?
       * Bin men: I've failed to put the bins out in time frequently enough, over the
       course of my life, that a little jingle to remind me to do so would be welcome
       (Perhaps bin men could play Garbage Truck by Sex Bob-Omb/Beck? That seems
       kinda fitting. Although definitely not what you want to be woken up with if
       they turn the speakers on too early...)! (My bin men often don't come until
       after I'm awake anyway, so as long as they don't turn the music on until after
       say 7am they're unlikely to be a huge inconvenience to anybody, right?) If
       nothing else, it'd cue me in to the fact that they were passing so I'd
       remember to bring the bins back in again afterwards.
       * Fish & chip van: I've never made use of the mobile fish & chip van that
       tours my village once a week, but I might be more likely to if it announced
       its arrival with a recognisable tune.
       
 (IMG) 'Howe & Co' Fish & Chip van, painted in white and blue and parked in a residential street.
       * Milkman: I've a bit of a gripe with our milkman. Despite promising to
       deliver before 07:00 each morning, they routinely turn up much later. It's
       particularly troublesome when they come at about 08:40 while I'm on the school
       run, which breaks my routine sufficiently that it often results in the milk
       sitting unseen on the porch until I think to check much later in the day. Like
       the bin men, it'd be a convenience if, on running late, they at least made
       their presence in my village more-obvious with a happy little ditty!
       * Emergency services: Sirens are boring. How about if blue light services each
       had their own song. Perhaps something thematic? Instead of going
       nee-naw-nee-naw, you'd hear, say, de-do-do-do-de-dah-dah-dah and instantly
       know that you were hearing The Police.
       * Evri: Perhaps there's an appropriate piece of music that says "the courier
       didn't bother to ring your doorbell, so now your parcel's hidden in your
       recycling box"? Just a thought.
       
       Anyway: the bottom line is that I think there's an untapped market for jolly
       little jingles for all kinds of delivery services, and Turkey and India are
       clearly both way ahead of the UK. Let's fix that!
       
       LINKS
       
 (HTM) Wikipedia article explaining '99 flakes', a distinctively British ice cream treat
 (HTM) Guardian article talking about, among other things, how the raspberry syrup on soft serve ice cream might sometimes be called 'monkeys' blood'
 (HTM) YouTube recording of an ice cream van's chime of 'Greensleeves'
 (HTM) Work
 (HTM) İlter's Bistro
 (HTM) BBC News live coverage of the situation in Turkey
 (HTM) Cem
 (HTM) My house
 (HTM) Aiden Jones on Flickr
 (HTM) Wikipedia article about De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, song by The Police