Twists and turns

It seemed at the start of the week as if all had returned to normal.  The sun was out, and warm - just as April weather should be.  What a pity it took 29 days to get its act together!  Workwise, too, the week has indicated some kind of return to normal.  I know from experience that so much depends on the 'shape' of any individual day, and elation is seldom justified, but nevertheless I've felt encouraged.

I began with a local job I'd been given on Friday, to collect something from the far side of Northampton to go to Bedford, and it was lunchtime before a top-line main job was allocated.  I collected a computer part from Biggleswade to go to Kingston-upon-Thames.  This is a place I don't like: not least because, some years ago, I got a parking ticket there.  I was convinced that I had parked at the right time, in the right place, but it wasn't worth contesting it, I wasn't likely to go back there to check the signs nearby.  But it still rankles, as does my confusion at their one-way system.  However, I didn't have long to muse over these matters, for I was quickly diverted to collect a letter from a Hitchin solicitor for an address in Aldershot, and with these missions duly completed, I was home in time for the bell-ringing practice.  Here, albeit a couple of weeks 'late', we rang a new composition in honour of the Titanic centenary, Titanic Triples.

This set the pattern for the next two days.  On my way back from a local job on Tuesday morning, I was called to pick up two items from the office.  One was to go to a hotel in the middle of Birmingham, and the other was for the NEC.  I've often delivered to an exhibition centre while the stands are being erected, actually in progress, sometimes when there's been no one there from the exhibitor to receive the goods, but never before when the exhibition is actually in progress.  This situation carries its own snags and security problems, and I was very glad that the delivery in Birmingham afterwards was not urgent.  On Wednesday morning, I stayed at home until I was required.  This will be a feature of life now the office has moved, since most of our customers are more easily reached from here than from the office, and it keeps my own mileage down too.  I didn't have long to wait before I was despatched to a packaging firm in Chatteris with some large cutting boards that are made at a factory just down the road from my flat.

I was on my way back from this when I received instructions for a collection in Biggleswade for a regular job to a racing firm in Oxfordshire.  Before I got to the pick-up I'd been diverted instead to another customer just across the road who had an urgent delivery in Lincoln.  With my mind quickly re-tuned, I seized the box and set off back up the A1 again.  The location of this delivery was one I'd been to before, in a pedestrian (except for access) precinct beside the river's edge, and in the early afternoon sunshine it was quite beautiful.  A college rowing team had just completed a photo-shoot as I arrived, and I couldn't fail to be impressed by their colourful regalia.  On my way there I'd had another call for a collection in Hull.  Since Humberside is one area for which I never did get a map, and with SatNav still on the sick list, I had the unusual experience of being talked in to the pick-up address.  This was a consignment of - believe it or not - door handles, which I then took to a building site in north-west London.  I was home not long before bedtime.

Sometime during Wednesday's excursion I'd been told of a job for the following morning, an 8.0 pick-up from a firm in Soham that used to have premises in Letchworth, and required some panels to be taken to Melbourne, Derbyshire.  To my surprise, I arrived only a couple of minutes late, but then had to wait while the goods were identified and located.  Fortunately, some months ago when the M1 had been closed, I'd diverted through Melbourne to get to Derby, so the road was familiar to me, and the delivery point couldn't have been more favourably located, the second premises off the approach road to the town.  A collection near Milton Keynes, in fact the reverse of a job I'd done only a couple of weeks ago completed a nice wind-down day after the rigours of Wednesday.

In fact, the wind-down was more of a re-charge for, before leaving the office that evening, I'd been assigned a straight-forward, but demanding pair of jobs for yesterday, a 10.0 collection from a hospital in Manchester, followed by a delivery in central Birmingham.  I reached the delivery - at a medical conference centre - just as that day's participants were gathering for lunch, and the goods were to be left in an office beside the dining room.  The temptation was great to join the food queue!  I resisted, however, since I knew I must call the office: another job awaited me.  I was to divert to an hotel in Kidderminster, one of a national chain, where I would collect a parcel for their head office near Luton.

It's been a busy week, but there has been time for a bit of reading, and some planning for the weekend.  Today holds the attraction of a half-day course at the Society of Genealogists, and then I'm off for a family weekend in the east midlands.