Travel in the 80s/90s was pretty fraught with such delays.
Around that time, my dad was a screw, working in the kitchens (before Serco et all got their grubby hands on it all). He did detached duty at a particular prison away from home, regularly and there was a stray cat which lived on the grounds. It was customary to put a package out for the cat, at the end of an evening serving, wrapped in brown paper to protect it from birds, which it would find and tear open. problem was, they had different security staff, one evening, for some reason or other.
So the poor cat got no tea because its dinner was blown up by a robot, as it was treated as a suspicious package!