All in a Day... as they say

Well that's been quite a week !!
At this time of year most business go a bit quieter after Xmas and we've been the same.
But its not easy to plan or accommodate for and always frustrating!
Well we've had a bit of luck at the end of this week.
The major star in the sky has been a request for a delivery to Helsinki, Finland - yep I kid you not !
Ok... no problem - customer called Thursday, mid morning, looking for delivery on Wednesday 18th.
So arrangements commenced - that was I started asking for quotes from trusted other couriers.
Then it started to unfold.... it  was around 4.30pm, my customer sent me an email....errrr their customer would now like delivery on Monday 16th !!.
The problem was I was on the road - well you don't read emails when you're on the road do you ? - at least I don't !
Got home (around 7.00pm) and, as always, needed to check emails, then my heart sank as I read the 'updated request' from my customer.
There were a number of quotes that had come in and we'd had a few calls with regards to the delivery on the 18th.
I contacted as many as I could about the change in delivery date - a deafening silence was heard ??!!
So, off to bed, but after a rather restless night and then up at 6.30am to see if there'd been any updated responses. One possibility and two outlandish re-quotes.....?????!!!!!
By this time I was on plan 'F' I think ???
Suddenly I needed to consider taking our newly acquired secondhand van.
The biggest issue I had was that the tyres, while they are virtually new (they were on the van when I bought it!) and of good quality - they were NOT winter tyres. Remember, I was looking at travelling all the way from Suffolk into France then Belgium, Germany, Poland then Estonia, before finally taking a ferry across to Helsinki, Finland - that's ~ 1700 miles in case you're wondering?
Had promised our customer a response by 9.00am Friday, but that was not to be as I was hanging out for a response from the one possibility.
Then at 9.40am I got a call - sorry I cant do this change of dates !!
Oh shit...
9.44am another call - Hi Steve, YES, we can do this, price is a bit higher....
Relief or what.
So back to customer with 'updated price' - thank you I'll just check with our customer......
30 minutes went...
An hour went....
An email sent to customer asking for a response - we're conversing with them I'm told....
Another 30 minutes went....
The driver who offered to do the job came back to me asking what  was going on (I'm being polite)
Finally at 11.45am we go the go ahead !
Same day delivery can be really quite exhilarating, in that you just DON'T know when the phone goes just where you'll be asked to go - but this was just a bit more than a nail biting finale