Same old ... same old ... and more!

I've written here many a time and oft about that Repeating Genie, that takes one back again shortly to somewhere not visited for ages.  Last Friday afternoon I delivered to a shopping centre in Gloucester; On Monday, after a couple of local jobs in the morning, I was sent to the Royal Hospital in that same city, which I last visited in August, but my records show that prior to that I last went there in October 2009 - when again it was twice in six days!  On this occasion, I was asked to go on to Hereford, to the home of an engineer whom I have visited twice previously this year, making Monday a very good day.

This was as well, since the next day the phone was completely quiet.

Wednesday found me off to the south coast with two slabs of granite: to Portslade, which my atlas told me was to the west of Brighton.  I stopped on the way for another delivery in Hayes, not far from Heathrow airport.  When I phoned in to announce my return in the afternoon, I was invited to go to the same customer next morning, where I collected one smaller piece of granite to go to Seaford, between Brighton and Eastbourne.  This was accompanied by a canvas bag which I collected in north London on the way, and took to a firm in Crawley.

And that genie wasn't going to let go of me easily.  Friday began with another local job, which in a small way echoed last week's dips into my own history, for I found myself parked to load beside a small industrial silo manufactured by a firm I worked for in the '70s, and my attention was diverted for a few seconds as I reminisced about the differing hole patterns that could be punched in sheets of steel 1220 x 2440 mm, in a variety of nine different thicknesses .... my memory still drifts easily back to the days of the 'three-day week'.

Recovering from that reverie, I was quickly sent off on a sequence of three jobs that finished with a collection from a conference in ... Eastbourne!

In these last few weeks, I have noted that there have been several mentions of the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, and my few personal recollections of that time included my dad tossing the daily paper aside in despair saying, "There could be a war any time!"  Mum remonstrated, "Don't say things like that."  "That's right, though," returned dad, "We could all be blown to smithereens!"

With this conversation ringing in my ears down half a century, I began to wonder this week where that word 'smithereens' came from.  A bit of quick research on the internet this morning confirms my 21st century suspicions that it's of Irish origin, coming from smiodar, the Irish word for fragment.  I now wonder where my father got it from, for this was certainly not the only time I'd heard him use it.  I've been thinking much in recent months - and have mentioned before, here and here - my great uncle George, whom I tracked down after several years' searching, in Ireland.  Curiosity has raised the question of whether he had any contact with the rest of the family after his 'migration', since I never heard any mention of him in my childhood.  This latest recollection suggests that maybe he did, although I have little hope of tracing to what extent.

So, where will next week take me?  Answers after the event!