I've long since stopped being surprised at the amazing twists and turns that this job involves. I was looking round for something that would describe this week, and thought of Ayers Rock: something sticking up into the sky in the middle of nowhere. Then I remembered that it's been renamed - or named back, depending on your point of view - with its Aboriginal name; when I looked this up, I found a picture revealing that it isn't the best illustration of what I had in mind in the first place.
But having found it, I'm using it - this has been a (sort of) Uluru week.
So, what's this geographical gibberish trying to say? Let me try and answer that with some statistics. From my ten jobs this week, I estimate I shall have earned roughly the same as the average of the last four weeks. In each of those four weeks there was one job significantly greater than all the rest, representing from 19 to 40% of that week's earnings; in the four weeks overall, those four bigger jobs contributed over 32% of my income. This week, however, has topped the charts! It's been the surprise to beat surprises. Over half my income will have come from one job, a job that has taken almost 54% of my total mileage in the week. So, to the detail, before I bore everyone.
On Monday I left the men's breakfast saying, as usual, that I had no idea where I would be going. I had plans of pottering about at home for much of a quiet day. Not to be. About 8.30, I was sent to collect two identical items, each about the size of a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. One was to be taken to a store in Oxford, the other to a similar store in Bristol. Oxford and Bristol would normally be a nice combination, but for a multiple job for the same customer the remuneration is far less, so I returned home thinking, 'it's only Monday, the week may improve.' and I went off to bellringing practice for the first time for a while.
Knowing I was already on the list, I settled down on Tuesday morning in much the same vein. With predictable similarity, I was called around 9.0 to take something from Letchworth to Hertford. I returned and waited, and waited ... and waited. In many ways I was glad to be able to make some more progress on my background project on the Sturgeons of Stanton, but even that had paled in interest when at 4.0 the controller rang to send me round the corner to collect four boxes of plastic mouldings to go to a firm just outside Oxford the following morning. Day over - and I returned to my warm lounge and the computer with renewed vigour.
The trip to Oxford - actually it was nearer Abingdon - went hitch-free. I rewarded myself with a bacon-and-egg baguette from the stall on the A40 on the way home, and rang in when I was back. "I'm sure they'll be getting you out again soon," replied the office manager. Sure enough, I hadn't waited long before the phone went, with two local jobs to keep me from being idle. About two hours later, as I came back from the second of these, the same young controller was on the line again, with a familiar form of words, "are you all right for a long job tonight?" This was a 'holding mechanism', and I recognised it as such; It meant that my name had risen to the top of the list, or nearly so, and a good job was coming up which they'd rather give to me than to someone else, but it wasn't ready yet so they wouldn't tell me the details until it was confirmed.
Forewarned, then, I came home and assembled a few essentials, but got sent out on another local job before eventually collecting a box of metalwork for a firm of industrial services people. My guess is that they are doing a job for a client in the offshore oil/gas industry, because I was to deliver the box to the premises of a shipping company on the Aberdeen quayside for onward transmission to the northern isles.
After a leisurely meal at Markham Moor Truckstop, it was just a straightforward case of 'drive till tired, sleep till cold, and repeat' throughout the night. I remember stopping at the place in Carlisle where I'd slept on the way back from Motherwell last week, because I popped into the 'pay-at-the-pump' Asda across the road for some fuel, but I can't recall how many other breaks there were. What should have been an eight-and-a-half-to-nine hours' drive filled thirteen to fourteen hours. I just let SatNav have its way and followed where it led. Arriving at about 6.45, I decided to have a wander round to get my bearings, see whether there were any sign of life that early, and then get back into the warm van to wait until whenever someone might turn up. I discovered that it was a much larger depot than the place where I'd parked indicated - I must have been at the end of the building.
As I turned to walk back to the van, someone parked beside me and asked if I were looking for something. I explained that I was making a delivery, and on learning what firm it was for was told they wouldn't be there until 8.0, but what had I got? When he learned that it was a box I was able to carry, my new friend told me to drive round to the pedestrian gate beyond where I'd parked, and he would accept it there. Sure enough, in the time it took me to return to my van and drive the 50 yards further, he had opened up and walked through the premises. By 7.0 I had made my delivery and was on my way out of the quayside area, with my eye open for a BP Connect I'd passed earlier, where I could get something warm to eat and drink!
The return journey was much more enjoyable, although too cold to hang around sightseeing. I decided to take the shortest 'decent' route, and began by exploring the 'Coastal Trail' A92 as an alternative to the main A90 route that I'd used every time I've been to Aberdeen as yet. Seen in bright daylight, unhindered by driving into the sun, it was often quite charming, starting at Stonehaven and going through Montrose, Arbroath and into Dundee from the east. In fact, I followed A92 across the Tay Bridge and through Fife to Cowdenbeath, joining the A90 in time to cross the Forth Bridge and find the Edinburgh Bypass. I then picked up the A7, and passed some of the places I'd visited on my Borders holiday three years ago, before arriving in late afternoon at the same junction on the A6 where I'd visited the Asda fuel station eighteen hours before.
By then tiredness had begun to kick in again, and I was pleased to stop at Wetherby on the A1 for a decent break before hitting the last leg home. When I finally returned home at 10.20, the only thing on my mind was bed, and I slept almost solidly until about 8.0 on Friday morning. There was the admin to attend to, but when I rang in to get added to the list - hoping for a light day - I was told they were very busy, would I wait while they checked whether there was something I could get on to straight away. There was, of course, and so began a normal busy Friday, involving trips to an unexpected office on a Reading housing estate, and then Stansted airport before finishing with a local delivery of some printed matter to a private house in rural Bedfordshire.
Now, with chores done, and admin too, I'm looking forward to a leisurely weekend ... oh dear, it's almost over!
Saturday 23 February 2013
Friday 15 February 2013
Sliced and diced
My few hobbies include bell ringing, where many of the tunes ('methods' we call them) are named after places. One of the earliest methods encountered by a novice ringer is Cambridge, being one of a number that are rung on six bells and as a group are called Surprise Minor. A few years ago, with this safely under my belt, I was invited to ring Primrose ... a method of which I'd never heard, although I quickly realised that it was a re-arrangement of the five blocks which make up Cambridge, simple arranged into a different order. A few weeks later the invitation was Ipswich, and after studying this I found that it consisted of the same blocks as Cambridge and Primrose, but this time each block had been split in half, making ten smaller chunks of the Cambridge method, stitched together, as it were, in an unfamiliar sequence.
Why am I baffling my readers with all this technical guff? Quite simply, because the term I coined then to describe Ipswich Surprise Minor was 'Cambridge, not sliced but diced!' and that's how this week has seemed to me. It began on Sunday, when I was staying at my cousin's to take part in the celebrations for her husband's 70th birthday. As always, when I'm there for a weekend, I went along to St Mary's church in the town, to join in worship with a growing number of friends there. I stood in the hall after the service, clutching my coffee and wondering if there was a face that I recognised. All of a sudden I was seized from behind, and steered gently to a table to join three folks who confessed that they were anxious to know who I was - had I just moved into the town, and so on. I explained that I was only there for the weekend, as I had been on a number of occasions, and that I also write articles for their parish magazine (which appear in the companion blog to this one)
So by the time I returned home, I felt pleased that I had gained some new friends. After the regular early breakfast on Monday, enjoying the company of a cluster of well-established friends, my attack on the working week was different from normal. I had arranged for my van to have its annual MOT test, and since it was booked in for 12.0, I was reluctant to ask for a job before this, knowing the great propensity for jobs to be finished by a certain time to overrun. I took the van around to the garage mid-morning so there would be a chance to get any minor work done in advance of the actual test. Meanwhile, I completed my January accounts, submitted my VAT Return, and tidied up a number of other items on my desk. I also rang my GP about an annoying condition that has bugged me for a while now, but had drifted into that category of things that I'd get around to 'one day'. One day, I decided, had come!
After recovering the van, I rang in for work, and was sent to Stevenage to collect something for Stamford, the town of spires in Lincolnshire that formed a wonderful backdrop for a TV presentation of Middlemarch a few years ago. I had only got a little farther than Letchworth when a call offered me a run to Motherwell instead. When I said yes, I was asked to go to the office to pass the Stamford job to someone else. Meanwhile, I was told, the package for Motherwell was being collected for me, and I could receive this from another driver at Stevenage shortly. While I waited there I was told of a small item to be collected near Bedford to be delivered in West Bromwich on the way. I was really pleased at this, because so often a job to Scotland goes alone. I made the midland destination by 6.30, and headed north, along the M6 that I absolutely detest, breaking the journey for a snack at Hilton Park services. By the time I'd delivered at Motherwell it was 1.0 am, and I'd all but exhausted my selection of podcasts. I followed the pattern of a few weeks ago when I'd delivered in Livingston, and aimed for Carlisle. Here I settled into the car park at the truckstop and had a few hours refreshing sleep before going inside for breakfast about 7.0; after that there was little else to note of the journey, and I was back to the office about 2.30pm.
The day finished with a run to St Albans hospital, and a collection in Letchworth for delivery at 8.0 in Cambridge the next morning. I was already confused - was it Tuesday, or Wednesday? I'd just got home the following morning after that Cambridge delivery when I was sent straight off to Stevenage to collect the first of two jobs for Leicester, which took me until well into the afternoon. This would have satisfied me, but the day wasn't yet over. There was time for a short run to St Neots. The following morning I had purposely kept clear in order to visit the surgery, where the ever-busy GP spent a regimented ten minutes dealing with my problem. Armed with a whole bag of goodies from the pharmacy next door, I sped home and had time to change the bed and fill the washing machine before setting off on a job to Basildon. I had also taken some of the tablets I'd brought home, giving no thought for the instruction that they were to be taken with food. Consequently, I felt very tired, and the return from Basildon took a good two and a half hours!
Notwithstanding this, I was sent over to Sandy to collect a van load of small items for delivery in Haverhill early this morning, and while there I decided to get a few items of shopping from the Co-op on my way home. On my return, I set the washing machine going - usually a Friday evening job, as is the shopping. This morning, once I'd returned from Haverhill, I started the day anew, sitting with my breakfast in front of the computer, and then got all the ironing done before wondering where the next job would send me. Just as I was thinking about lunch, I was sent to collect the first of two jobs, one to Milton Keynes, and the other to Rugby.
I'm now situated at a pinnacle of comfort, at the start of the weekend but with all the regular weekend jobs done already - shopping, washing, ironing all crossed off the list. I can look forward to a well-earned lay-in tomorrow, followed by a gentle run down to Hillingdon for the family history meeting. And the sunshine this afternoon reminded me that after the MOT, the need was highlighted for a new windscreen, so that is tentatively booked for next week. Life is looking good, settled and calm. What other demands could there be on my time?
Oh, by the way, I've never managed to ring Ipswich Surprise Minor!
Why am I baffling my readers with all this technical guff? Quite simply, because the term I coined then to describe Ipswich Surprise Minor was 'Cambridge, not sliced but diced!' and that's how this week has seemed to me. It began on Sunday, when I was staying at my cousin's to take part in the celebrations for her husband's 70th birthday. As always, when I'm there for a weekend, I went along to St Mary's church in the town, to join in worship with a growing number of friends there. I stood in the hall after the service, clutching my coffee and wondering if there was a face that I recognised. All of a sudden I was seized from behind, and steered gently to a table to join three folks who confessed that they were anxious to know who I was - had I just moved into the town, and so on. I explained that I was only there for the weekend, as I had been on a number of occasions, and that I also write articles for their parish magazine (which appear in the companion blog to this one)
So by the time I returned home, I felt pleased that I had gained some new friends. After the regular early breakfast on Monday, enjoying the company of a cluster of well-established friends, my attack on the working week was different from normal. I had arranged for my van to have its annual MOT test, and since it was booked in for 12.0, I was reluctant to ask for a job before this, knowing the great propensity for jobs to be finished by a certain time to overrun. I took the van around to the garage mid-morning so there would be a chance to get any minor work done in advance of the actual test. Meanwhile, I completed my January accounts, submitted my VAT Return, and tidied up a number of other items on my desk. I also rang my GP about an annoying condition that has bugged me for a while now, but had drifted into that category of things that I'd get around to 'one day'. One day, I decided, had come!
After recovering the van, I rang in for work, and was sent to Stevenage to collect something for Stamford, the town of spires in Lincolnshire that formed a wonderful backdrop for a TV presentation of Middlemarch a few years ago. I had only got a little farther than Letchworth when a call offered me a run to Motherwell instead. When I said yes, I was asked to go to the office to pass the Stamford job to someone else. Meanwhile, I was told, the package for Motherwell was being collected for me, and I could receive this from another driver at Stevenage shortly. While I waited there I was told of a small item to be collected near Bedford to be delivered in West Bromwich on the way. I was really pleased at this, because so often a job to Scotland goes alone. I made the midland destination by 6.30, and headed north, along the M6 that I absolutely detest, breaking the journey for a snack at Hilton Park services. By the time I'd delivered at Motherwell it was 1.0 am, and I'd all but exhausted my selection of podcasts. I followed the pattern of a few weeks ago when I'd delivered in Livingston, and aimed for Carlisle. Here I settled into the car park at the truckstop and had a few hours refreshing sleep before going inside for breakfast about 7.0; after that there was little else to note of the journey, and I was back to the office about 2.30pm.
The day finished with a run to St Albans hospital, and a collection in Letchworth for delivery at 8.0 in Cambridge the next morning. I was already confused - was it Tuesday, or Wednesday? I'd just got home the following morning after that Cambridge delivery when I was sent straight off to Stevenage to collect the first of two jobs for Leicester, which took me until well into the afternoon. This would have satisfied me, but the day wasn't yet over. There was time for a short run to St Neots. The following morning I had purposely kept clear in order to visit the surgery, where the ever-busy GP spent a regimented ten minutes dealing with my problem. Armed with a whole bag of goodies from the pharmacy next door, I sped home and had time to change the bed and fill the washing machine before setting off on a job to Basildon. I had also taken some of the tablets I'd brought home, giving no thought for the instruction that they were to be taken with food. Consequently, I felt very tired, and the return from Basildon took a good two and a half hours!
Notwithstanding this, I was sent over to Sandy to collect a van load of small items for delivery in Haverhill early this morning, and while there I decided to get a few items of shopping from the Co-op on my way home. On my return, I set the washing machine going - usually a Friday evening job, as is the shopping. This morning, once I'd returned from Haverhill, I started the day anew, sitting with my breakfast in front of the computer, and then got all the ironing done before wondering where the next job would send me. Just as I was thinking about lunch, I was sent to collect the first of two jobs, one to Milton Keynes, and the other to Rugby.
I'm now situated at a pinnacle of comfort, at the start of the weekend but with all the regular weekend jobs done already - shopping, washing, ironing all crossed off the list. I can look forward to a well-earned lay-in tomorrow, followed by a gentle run down to Hillingdon for the family history meeting. And the sunshine this afternoon reminded me that after the MOT, the need was highlighted for a new windscreen, so that is tentatively booked for next week. Life is looking good, settled and calm. What other demands could there be on my time?
Oh, by the way, I've never managed to ring Ipswich Surprise Minor!
Saturday 9 February 2013
Coming Together
Somewhere, in a film, I think - answers anyone? - I once heard the expression, "Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?" This morning I'm feeling a bit like that, because it seems that, during the last week, a number of strands of life have gelled, if not together, at least so as to work they way they should. I fear my explanation may turn out as garbled as this opening paragraph ... I hope not.
For a number of weeks - perhaps since the new year - there have been a couple of things that I've had on my to-do list that keep getting postponed because one Saturday after another gets taken over by something more pressing. One is the upcoming expiry of my mobile phone contract. Even as long ago as November, while I was driving, I had a cold call from a phone agency about a new contract, with attractive terms and a brand new, up-to-the-minute handset. It wasn't until I learned later that it wasn't with the provider I've now got used to, and with whom I wanted to stay, that I managed in time to pull out, and I resolved that, to avoid yet another cold-call pitfall (I've suffered from a number over the last couple of years), I should go to the showroom in nearby Stevenage, talk to the experts and get things sorted out to my satisfaction, and in my own time. The other was the ever-increasing need for a haircut (!)
Last weekend I managed to get the tyres checked on my van - another much-delayed operation. Fortunately it was just before they had become illegal, so I was able to get them replaced, at the expense of a greater slice of my Saturday! They replaced a set that had taken me 43,500 miles since last July, so I have no real complaints. The afternoon was taken up by the long awaited visit to the phone shop. Here I discovered that my former contract, the product of one of those expensive cold calls, was with the business division. Not only are they closed on Saturdays, but also it proved impossible simply to replace that contract with a new personal one for the deal I'd seen advertised, giving me a much more comprehensive service than I had, for little more than half the cost. After much toing and froing, I managed to return home with a new phone, sufficiently similar to the old one that I needed only one evening to master the basics, and a couple of delays during the course of this week to enable me to become comfortably familiar with it.
Monday began with the church breakfast as usual, and afterwards came an admin session before work became 'live'. The first call was to the phone company to cancel the business contract; I discovered that I was just in time to give them the required month's notice that I didn't want the 24-month term to be automatically extended, for which I was grateful. Next came another sequence of calls which brought to a satisfactory conclusion another matter that has dragged on since the end of November. On my way back from a tiring journey to Aberdeen and back, I'd called at a local filling station to refuel for the next day. An administrative mix-up had resulted in my paying for someone else's fuel in addition to my own, and I have been chasing both the garage and the fuel card company to get the extra charge, which duplicated the payment made by the other driver, refunded. As a result of Monday's calls I now have the credit note in my files, to be set against future purchases.
As soon as these things had been addressed, I had a call from the office, sending me to Liverpool, where I made my delivery to a private hospital right next to Penny Lane, of Beatles fame. Tuesday was full, but uneventful, and ended with my weekly visit to the office to deal with paperwork and collect my self-billing invoice, showing how much I would be paid for the previous week.
Wednesday was a flat day for small vans, and the only job I did was a local one midway through the afternoon. A morning at home proved most productive, enabling me to complete my accounts for January, and then my quarterly VAT Return and some outstanding correspondence with my IFA regarding my pension arrangements. I then turned my attention to family history, and made further progress on the project on which I've been working for some weeks, detailing the history of the Sturgeon families in the village of Stanton, Suffolk, in the nineteenth century. As it happens, this fitted in well with the second of my Thursday jobs, which were a delivery in Leicester, followed by a collection in Bedford which needed delivery to central Suffolk. From there it was easy to re-route my journey home through Stanton, although there was no time for photos!
Yesterday began with a regular run from an industrial unit just opposite my home to Pinewood Studios. Then I was sent over to East Anglia again, with a delivery in Colchester, and an attempted one to the library in Wivenhoe, which proved to be closed, following the local authority expense cuts. The goods were therefore returned to the depot, and more effective attempt will be made next week, now that the office knows the opening hours.
And today - in an echo of 'Penny Lane' - the long awaited haircut ... bliss!
For a number of weeks - perhaps since the new year - there have been a couple of things that I've had on my to-do list that keep getting postponed because one Saturday after another gets taken over by something more pressing. One is the upcoming expiry of my mobile phone contract. Even as long ago as November, while I was driving, I had a cold call from a phone agency about a new contract, with attractive terms and a brand new, up-to-the-minute handset. It wasn't until I learned later that it wasn't with the provider I've now got used to, and with whom I wanted to stay, that I managed in time to pull out, and I resolved that, to avoid yet another cold-call pitfall (I've suffered from a number over the last couple of years), I should go to the showroom in nearby Stevenage, talk to the experts and get things sorted out to my satisfaction, and in my own time. The other was the ever-increasing need for a haircut (!)
Last weekend I managed to get the tyres checked on my van - another much-delayed operation. Fortunately it was just before they had become illegal, so I was able to get them replaced, at the expense of a greater slice of my Saturday! They replaced a set that had taken me 43,500 miles since last July, so I have no real complaints. The afternoon was taken up by the long awaited visit to the phone shop. Here I discovered that my former contract, the product of one of those expensive cold calls, was with the business division. Not only are they closed on Saturdays, but also it proved impossible simply to replace that contract with a new personal one for the deal I'd seen advertised, giving me a much more comprehensive service than I had, for little more than half the cost. After much toing and froing, I managed to return home with a new phone, sufficiently similar to the old one that I needed only one evening to master the basics, and a couple of delays during the course of this week to enable me to become comfortably familiar with it.
Monday began with the church breakfast as usual, and afterwards came an admin session before work became 'live'. The first call was to the phone company to cancel the business contract; I discovered that I was just in time to give them the required month's notice that I didn't want the 24-month term to be automatically extended, for which I was grateful. Next came another sequence of calls which brought to a satisfactory conclusion another matter that has dragged on since the end of November. On my way back from a tiring journey to Aberdeen and back, I'd called at a local filling station to refuel for the next day. An administrative mix-up had resulted in my paying for someone else's fuel in addition to my own, and I have been chasing both the garage and the fuel card company to get the extra charge, which duplicated the payment made by the other driver, refunded. As a result of Monday's calls I now have the credit note in my files, to be set against future purchases.
As soon as these things had been addressed, I had a call from the office, sending me to Liverpool, where I made my delivery to a private hospital right next to Penny Lane, of Beatles fame. Tuesday was full, but uneventful, and ended with my weekly visit to the office to deal with paperwork and collect my self-billing invoice, showing how much I would be paid for the previous week.
Wednesday was a flat day for small vans, and the only job I did was a local one midway through the afternoon. A morning at home proved most productive, enabling me to complete my accounts for January, and then my quarterly VAT Return and some outstanding correspondence with my IFA regarding my pension arrangements. I then turned my attention to family history, and made further progress on the project on which I've been working for some weeks, detailing the history of the Sturgeon families in the village of Stanton, Suffolk, in the nineteenth century. As it happens, this fitted in well with the second of my Thursday jobs, which were a delivery in Leicester, followed by a collection in Bedford which needed delivery to central Suffolk. From there it was easy to re-route my journey home through Stanton, although there was no time for photos!
Yesterday began with a regular run from an industrial unit just opposite my home to Pinewood Studios. Then I was sent over to East Anglia again, with a delivery in Colchester, and an attempted one to the library in Wivenhoe, which proved to be closed, following the local authority expense cuts. The goods were therefore returned to the depot, and more effective attempt will be made next week, now that the office knows the opening hours.
And today - in an echo of 'Penny Lane' - the long awaited haircut ... bliss!
Sunday 3 February 2013
It's All in the Figures!
I believe it's Disraeli who gets the credit for distinguishing between 'lies, damned lies and statistics'. I wonder sometimes whether this was actually the progression it's usually taken to be, indicating three grades of the same generic untruth, or if it could be interpreted as a contrast between, on the one hand, lies (for emphasis damned lies), and on the other, the mathematical accuracy (and hence truth) of statistics. My conclusion is that it depends how you read statistics.
Despite passing my maths O-level a year early, and eventually getting top grade at A-level, when I studied statistics at college for six months I found it insuperably baffling. I part, I blame the teacher, but I think there's general agreement that statistics is a discipline that has built around itself strong bulwarks of confusion, supported by a library of technical terms and structures. The skilled statistician can produce from the same data a variety of results that, while all true, will convey vastly differing pictures to the layman. Take for instance, the terms 'average', 'mean' and 'median' ... or maybe not, because this isn't the place and I've already confessed, in effect, that I'm not the best person to make that distinction. Suffice to say that these three sound to the layman as if they are three words for the same thing, simply progressive in their degree of professionalism, whereas in fact they are, or can be, vastly different assessments of the same basic facts.
Why this sudden academic twist to what is usually a boring diary of a week's work? Simply that, looked at on paper - or more accurately on the computer screen - it would be easy to say that, having done sixteen jobs this week, compared to ten in each of the two previous weeks and twelve the week before that, it's been a much better week for my bank balance. In truth there is very little difference between the financial product of the four weeks, since many of these sixteen were short jobs and none of them to places any great distance away. While the three previous weeks have included Bradford, Runcorn and Livingston, the furthest I went this week was Ramsgate!
After the excitement of the snow, if I'm honest, the return to decent driving conditions, though welcome, has been a bit of an anti-climax. Along with the gradual lengthening of the days, and the progress of the calendar into February, it's been a reassurance that normality isn't far away, and probably the biggest triumph of the week was a collection in Hastings from a flat that is just far enough off the Old London Road to make it difficult to spot. I did this pick-up several years ago, and it came to mind when I was given it again this week. I thought it was in Southampton, but when I looked on Google the previous evening, I recognised the locality, acknowledged my failing memory of the town, but remembered where I would need to park.
The other success came a couple of days later, when I took some ventilation accessories to a site in Ramsgate High Street. When I arrived, twilight was beginning to set in, and I was a little anxious that the people there might have gone home. As I pulled up at the gate, someone came down a side alley and asked, "have you brought my grilles?" I was so pleased, I stopped at a chip shop on the way out of town and treated myself to a celebratory portion of cod and chips before making my way home!
I wonder what treats and excitement next week will bring - no doubt it will appear here too!
Despite passing my maths O-level a year early, and eventually getting top grade at A-level, when I studied statistics at college for six months I found it insuperably baffling. I part, I blame the teacher, but I think there's general agreement that statistics is a discipline that has built around itself strong bulwarks of confusion, supported by a library of technical terms and structures. The skilled statistician can produce from the same data a variety of results that, while all true, will convey vastly differing pictures to the layman. Take for instance, the terms 'average', 'mean' and 'median' ... or maybe not, because this isn't the place and I've already confessed, in effect, that I'm not the best person to make that distinction. Suffice to say that these three sound to the layman as if they are three words for the same thing, simply progressive in their degree of professionalism, whereas in fact they are, or can be, vastly different assessments of the same basic facts.
Why this sudden academic twist to what is usually a boring diary of a week's work? Simply that, looked at on paper - or more accurately on the computer screen - it would be easy to say that, having done sixteen jobs this week, compared to ten in each of the two previous weeks and twelve the week before that, it's been a much better week for my bank balance. In truth there is very little difference between the financial product of the four weeks, since many of these sixteen were short jobs and none of them to places any great distance away. While the three previous weeks have included Bradford, Runcorn and Livingston, the furthest I went this week was Ramsgate!
After the excitement of the snow, if I'm honest, the return to decent driving conditions, though welcome, has been a bit of an anti-climax. Along with the gradual lengthening of the days, and the progress of the calendar into February, it's been a reassurance that normality isn't far away, and probably the biggest triumph of the week was a collection in Hastings from a flat that is just far enough off the Old London Road to make it difficult to spot. I did this pick-up several years ago, and it came to mind when I was given it again this week. I thought it was in Southampton, but when I looked on Google the previous evening, I recognised the locality, acknowledged my failing memory of the town, but remembered where I would need to park.
The other success came a couple of days later, when I took some ventilation accessories to a site in Ramsgate High Street. When I arrived, twilight was beginning to set in, and I was a little anxious that the people there might have gone home. As I pulled up at the gate, someone came down a side alley and asked, "have you brought my grilles?" I was so pleased, I stopped at a chip shop on the way out of town and treated myself to a celebratory portion of cod and chips before making my way home!
I wonder what treats and excitement next week will bring - no doubt it will appear here too!
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