Right now, sitting here, I know how Vladimir and Estragon felt. There they were, hanging round all day waiting for Godot, but what happened? Well – spoiler alert – they waited all day and he never arrived. Nor was there any sign of him the following morning. Or afternoon. In fact he never turned up at all. It is this that leads me to conjecture that Godot worked for a courier company.

I’ve been waiting in for three days for a replacement mobile phone. Of course I knew it wouldn’t come. Oh they said it would, but they lie.

This happens to me all the time. And probably to you as well. Once, all we had was blind hope, as we crawled on our knees to beg the vengeful god of deliveries (let’s call him Argos) to take pity on us and make sure that the courier company would deliver our thing when they said they’d deliver our thing, because we’d taken the day off work especially.

But now we have more than hope. Now we have a “unique tracking number”, with which we are invited to track our delivery online. I became obsessed with this. Every few minutes I would go to the courier’s website, enter the 13-digit number and check its progress. I first did this at lunchtime. It said: “7.46am. Your goods are scheduled for delivery today.” Woohoot! Oh hang on, that much I know already. I checked again at two o’clock. Again, it said: “7.46am. Your goods are scheduled for delivery today.” It also said the same at 2.30, 3pm and four o’clock.

I may be wrong, but to me the phrase “tracking system” implies that there is some sort of system in place that does some tracking. I want it to tell me exactly where my parcel is. To track it, in fact. I want it to say: “1pm. The driver is on the A2. He’s just stopped for a deep-fill BLT and a can of Lilt at Farthing Corner services. He has three drop-offs and yours will be last.”

At least I’d know the truth.

Then: “4.46pm. The driver is stuck in a queue to get off the slip road at Faversham and is picking his nose. It’s getting dark.” And: “5.30pm. The driver has decided it’s getting late. Truth be told, he couldn’t be arsed to find your house and has gone home.”

Come on, tracking system, tell it like it is: “The driver hid in a hedge outside your house all day, waited for you to pop to the chemist and then ran up and left a ‘We called but you were out’ card. You loser.”

At 5.50pm I checked again and the tracking system had been updated to say: “Unable to deliver. The package has been returned to depot.”

I called them. “Why were you unable to deliver?” I asked with barely controlled fury. “No one was in,” they said. “I was in. I was in all day. I’ve spent eight hours with my face pressed against the window like a child going to Chessington World of Adventures.”

“Let me check the tracking system. Oh.” “What?” “Well, sir, it seems your item was incorrectly scanned. It never even left the depot. Your goods are scheduled for delivery tomorrow.” Aaargh.

That was four days ago. The parcel has yet to arrive. In the olden days, before tracking systems and vans and lies, what we had were men on horses. These men would take objects and messages the length and breadth of the land, avoiding bears (probably) and the plague.

Goods were delivered on time, messages were conveyed correctly and everyone was happy. Indeed it was this arrangement that eventually led to the development of the modern courier company, which promptly went and ruined it for everyone. Hurry up and get here, Godot – all is forgiven.

Jon Holmes is a writer and broadcaster who appears on The Now Show on BBC Radio 4