There comes a time when you have to face facts. What's gone is gone ... lost and gone forever! Such a time came for me this week. It's over two and a half years now since that memorable Friday in December, when I had great difficulty starting my van after I'd fuelled up for two deliveries in Norfolk. As I carried out those final duties, it became apparent that the end had come. My friendly garage confirmed my suspicions that, if I wanted to use it any more, that van would need considerable investment. It was time to stop work and enter full-time retirement.
As I've responded to friends enquiring about my coping with not driving, I miss it. I don't miss the actual work: kneeling in the van, neatly packing boxes of print to get another job on with them, dropping something heavy on my finger as I try to unload it, or scouring Google maps before going to bed so I would be able to find a faraway factory at 6.0 in the morning. What I miss is the good bits: eating a meal at a truck-stop amidst other drivers after a long day on the road, the excitement of getting on or off a ferry, and the midnight magnificence of topping a rise of an up-and-down road and coming face to face with the full moon to show me the way home.
When I learned last spring that my former boss had started a new company that basically re-kindled the business he had sold three years before, I wondered about driving for him again. After briefly discussing it with friends, I did nothing about it, but it's a thought that has haunted me ever since, until last weekend, when I decided it was time to 'kill or cure' the ghost of the past. With the general idea of dedicating a day a week to the project, I e-mailed Dave asking if we could 'explore the possibility of my rejoining the team' and on Wednesday I paid him a visit in his smart new office ... which stands on the site of a factory where, some ten years before, I had collected plastic mouldings for delivery.
After the anticipated greetings from all around, we talked seriously about my requirements and it quickly became clear that, while I would be most welcome to return on the same basis as before - i.e. as an owner-driver - there was no opening for a one-day-a-week driver, and the expense of hiring a van, or buying and insuring my own, for that level of activity would result in a negative rather than positive impact on my financial situation.
So where does this leave me? Certainly with no resentment; it's financial common sense. To spend more than I earn would be folly, and I couldn't expect any favourable guarantee of the most profitable jobs to cut my loss, but should have to take my chances alongside the regular drivers. I still yearn to travel and see familiar if distant places, but these appetites will have to be confined to holidays and kept within the mileage limit that applies to my new car.
As to the use of that 'spare' day that I would have offered to Dave, I feel that I'm being nudged towards following up possibilities of other voluntary work in addition to my support for the weekly drop-in where I help on Thursday mornings.
Friday 31 August 2018
Friday 24 August 2018
Home is Where the Heart is
In the sunshine of Tuesday afternoon, I decided to go for a walk. Nothing unusual there, of course; I try to get out at least once a week, maybe walking to the shops or to sit in the park for a few minutes before walking back; on this occasion I decided to go to the Common. It's quite an extensive 'lung' in the middle of the Garden City, and its history goes back many centuries. In one part the ridges and dips that can be seen are understood to be evidence of a medieval strip cultivation system.
My walk took me into an almost totally enclosed 'meadow' area, with a couple of trees in the midst. Although quite close to the backs of houses that surround the Common, and within earshot of the open-air swimming pool, visually, I could have slipped back into a long-bygone age. Peaceful tranquillity only partially describes the feelings I experienced. From there, my chosen way home took me past the fragrant gardens of some of the early Garden City cottages, built just before the First World War.
Along the road, I noticed a sign I hadn't spotted before, indicating the presence of a playschool for the younger children living in that locality. Alongside thoughts of frenetic mums trying to occupy their children during the long school holiday, my mind went back to my own early childhood on a housing estate, and the variety of things that might have occupied my own early summer days. I muttered to myself as I walked along, 'Where is my home?' and then came the answer, 'Home is where the heart is.'
Perhaps it was with these thoughts still in the back of my mind that, the next morning, I realised that it would have been 75 summers ago that my uncle Charlie - whom I apparently closely resembled, as I had often been told as I grew up - had died while working on the Burma Railway as a prisoner of war. Something made me check the actual date of his death - 21st August, 1943. Tuesday was the 21st ... the anniversary.
Those walking thoughts now went back to a home that was a happy part of my childhood, not my own home, but that of my grandparents. I would often be taken there - their house was just round the block from ours - and I came to look forward to such visits because it was quite likely that my cousin would be there as well, and we were often left to play together, while the grown-ups, our two mums and their mum, would get on with 'adult business' ... which was, of course, the real reason for the journey. I believe that expression, 'Home is where the heart is' was originally '... where the hearth is'.
And Nanna's hearth was always a homely and welcoming place. Beside her armchair was the wireless and above that, fixed to the wall, some bookshelves that could be accessed by climbing children willing to risk adult wrath! Such exploits were sometimes rewarded, however, by being allowed to have some of the books down to read. Although little of the contents would have been understood or appreciated by our young minds, the ability at least to read them was of no small benefit when we went to school!
As I look back I realise that, little more than ten years on from his death, there would still have been many memories in that home of our late uncle, plucked by the war from its midst in his early twenties. One I clearly recall was a fretwork picture that he had made of RMS Queen Mary, although I don't remember where it used to hang. He had built a cabinet for all his woodworking tools, which found its way into my teenage after the grandparents' home had been cleared.
Although Charlie died long before his sisters married, and many years before I was born, I can't remember a time when I was unaware of his existence. The great loss they felt when he didn't return with his comrades at the end of the war was possibly prolonged because the three had been so close. In a sense, he was still a very real part of their lives as I was growing up, and I'm sure that my physical resemblance to him played a significant part in my early life. I have often said that my life began some years before I was born!
My walk took me into an almost totally enclosed 'meadow' area, with a couple of trees in the midst. Although quite close to the backs of houses that surround the Common, and within earshot of the open-air swimming pool, visually, I could have slipped back into a long-bygone age. Peaceful tranquillity only partially describes the feelings I experienced. From there, my chosen way home took me past the fragrant gardens of some of the early Garden City cottages, built just before the First World War.
Along the road, I noticed a sign I hadn't spotted before, indicating the presence of a playschool for the younger children living in that locality. Alongside thoughts of frenetic mums trying to occupy their children during the long school holiday, my mind went back to my own early childhood on a housing estate, and the variety of things that might have occupied my own early summer days. I muttered to myself as I walked along, 'Where is my home?' and then came the answer, 'Home is where the heart is.'
Perhaps it was with these thoughts still in the back of my mind that, the next morning, I realised that it would have been 75 summers ago that my uncle Charlie - whom I apparently closely resembled, as I had often been told as I grew up - had died while working on the Burma Railway as a prisoner of war. Something made me check the actual date of his death - 21st August, 1943. Tuesday was the 21st ... the anniversary.
Those walking thoughts now went back to a home that was a happy part of my childhood, not my own home, but that of my grandparents. I would often be taken there - their house was just round the block from ours - and I came to look forward to such visits because it was quite likely that my cousin would be there as well, and we were often left to play together, while the grown-ups, our two mums and their mum, would get on with 'adult business' ... which was, of course, the real reason for the journey. I believe that expression, 'Home is where the heart is' was originally '... where the hearth is'.
And Nanna's hearth was always a homely and welcoming place. Beside her armchair was the wireless and above that, fixed to the wall, some bookshelves that could be accessed by climbing children willing to risk adult wrath! Such exploits were sometimes rewarded, however, by being allowed to have some of the books down to read. Although little of the contents would have been understood or appreciated by our young minds, the ability at least to read them was of no small benefit when we went to school!
As I look back I realise that, little more than ten years on from his death, there would still have been many memories in that home of our late uncle, plucked by the war from its midst in his early twenties. One I clearly recall was a fretwork picture that he had made of RMS Queen Mary, although I don't remember where it used to hang. He had built a cabinet for all his woodworking tools, which found its way into my teenage after the grandparents' home had been cleared.
Although Charlie died long before his sisters married, and many years before I was born, I can't remember a time when I was unaware of his existence. The great loss they felt when he didn't return with his comrades at the end of the war was possibly prolonged because the three had been so close. In a sense, he was still a very real part of their lives as I was growing up, and I'm sure that my physical resemblance to him played a significant part in my early life. I have often said that my life began some years before I was born!
Saturday 18 August 2018
Lose (Loose?) Ends
After an interval of some months, I wrote on Wednesday evening to a not-to-distant cousin, (either genealogically or geographically ... she's only a second cousin and lives in the London area). By way of a 'catch-up', I listed some of the technical and technological upheavals that seem to have bedevilled my life this year. Looking back after two days, I realise that the first of this chain had evaded my memory - having to replace my SatNav back in February - and that, had I delayed my e-mail until today, I could have added the need to replace my printer ... the complete exercise of selecting collecting and installing of which occupied the whole of yesterday morning.
It occurs to me that the fact of my writing the e-mail at all is a reflection on a far greater loss of ends. I have written many times previously on this blog (the latest of which was here) about my great-uncle George and the family that he raised in Ireland towards the end of the nineteenth century. He was the second in my great-grandfather's family of ten children and, as I think of my father's awareness or otherwise of his Irish cousins, I mustn't lose sight of George's older sister, the first of the family, who lived in Lancashire and married there before my grandfather's eighth birthday - a story for another day.
The cousin to whom I wrote this week is the granddaughter of my maternal grandfather's sister. That family comprised eleven children: nine boys, of whom my grandfather was the eldest, and two girls, who were the second and third in the sequence. This was the first of three second cousins I've discovered in this family in the last two years. I've recently made contact with a grandson of the youngest brother, and last summer I discovered a granddaughter of the second son (i.e. fourth child), who has the unusual distinction of also being related to another distant branch of my family ... albeit only through a brother's marriage!
The trouble with those large families of past generations is that one end's children get involved with the other end's grandchildren ... like a constantly-running roundabout!
We genealogists certainly discover tangled webs ... although it's doubtful whether they were ever intended to deceive! Robbie Burns would have had a field day!
It occurs to me that the fact of my writing the e-mail at all is a reflection on a far greater loss of ends. I have written many times previously on this blog (the latest of which was here) about my great-uncle George and the family that he raised in Ireland towards the end of the nineteenth century. He was the second in my great-grandfather's family of ten children and, as I think of my father's awareness or otherwise of his Irish cousins, I mustn't lose sight of George's older sister, the first of the family, who lived in Lancashire and married there before my grandfather's eighth birthday - a story for another day.
The cousin to whom I wrote this week is the granddaughter of my maternal grandfather's sister. That family comprised eleven children: nine boys, of whom my grandfather was the eldest, and two girls, who were the second and third in the sequence. This was the first of three second cousins I've discovered in this family in the last two years. I've recently made contact with a grandson of the youngest brother, and last summer I discovered a granddaughter of the second son (i.e. fourth child), who has the unusual distinction of also being related to another distant branch of my family ... albeit only through a brother's marriage!
The trouble with those large families of past generations is that one end's children get involved with the other end's grandchildren ... like a constantly-running roundabout!
We genealogists certainly discover tangled webs ... although it's doubtful whether they were ever intended to deceive! Robbie Burns would have had a field day!
Friday 10 August 2018
It's a Matter of Give and Take
I didn't know the date without looking it up, but 16th March 2014 marks a landmark in my life. Its significance is apparent as I look around my home, for that was the day I first signed up to Freecycle. Now part of 'Trash Nothing', it's a wonderful scheme by which anything that would otherwise find its way to the junk yard, or worse to landfill, can be offered to anyeone else who might be able to use it.
A bookshelf in my bedroom, my radiant heater, and the laminator in the cupboard all bear testimony to its success. Some things have a complex story behind them; my desk, for example. I arrived at my present home with a desk that was clearly too big for the room. Via Freecycle I acquired a metal computer desk - the traditional design with a pull-out shelf for the keyboard - which was soon found to be too small for my needs. By this time, the original desk had been collected by someone else. I then saw offered a rosewood desk at a median size that would suit both my requirements and the room. I contacted the owner and discovered that her situation was much the same as mine had been. The rosewood desk was too big for her room and what she needed was the metal computer desk that I was saddled with ... Result x2!
Other things have come and gone by the same means. I acquired a small lamp on a stand, which I could place behind my armchair as a reading light. Months later, it was being offered again, after I found the ideal standard lamp lying in a lay-by, just a little buckled but easily recoverable.
Of course, it's a game of win and lose. Several times I've posted a 'want' of a long-arm stapler, which has never materialised. Clearly anyone who has one is hanging onto it for dear life! On the other side, I've lost count of the times when I've expressed interest in something, and either been told that it had already been taken ... or heard nothing at all. This happened the other day in the case of a two-manual keyboard.
That's the most recent chapter of quite a long saga. Some years ago, I had been offered a harmonium, at the time in the home of the offerer's parents. Owing to the difficulty of co-ordinating communications between them and me, and the demands of my work, it ended with me hunting for their address at the same time as the parents, having given up on its being collected, had taken it to the dump! I subsequently obtained an electric (as opposed to electronic) keyboard, but found after a while that I used it so little that its space was more valuable than its presence. So far as this week's offer was concerned, had I been successful I would have been a little challenged to make room for it, but decided it was too good an opportunity to ignore.
This week, as well as the disappointment of the keyboard, I offered a number of items that had come out of my old car and for which no place could be found in the new. At the same time, I also offered a small cafetiere that I realised I no longer use. The car items were collected within hours of my post, but the lady who had expressed interest in the cafetiere cried off for reason of 'domestic chaos', so it's still on the shelf.
It's a great use of the internet, simple to use, and amazingly useful for anyone on a limited budget!
A bookshelf in my bedroom, my radiant heater, and the laminator in the cupboard all bear testimony to its success. Some things have a complex story behind them; my desk, for example. I arrived at my present home with a desk that was clearly too big for the room. Via Freecycle I acquired a metal computer desk - the traditional design with a pull-out shelf for the keyboard - which was soon found to be too small for my needs. By this time, the original desk had been collected by someone else. I then saw offered a rosewood desk at a median size that would suit both my requirements and the room. I contacted the owner and discovered that her situation was much the same as mine had been. The rosewood desk was too big for her room and what she needed was the metal computer desk that I was saddled with ... Result x2!
Other things have come and gone by the same means. I acquired a small lamp on a stand, which I could place behind my armchair as a reading light. Months later, it was being offered again, after I found the ideal standard lamp lying in a lay-by, just a little buckled but easily recoverable.
Of course, it's a game of win and lose. Several times I've posted a 'want' of a long-arm stapler, which has never materialised. Clearly anyone who has one is hanging onto it for dear life! On the other side, I've lost count of the times when I've expressed interest in something, and either been told that it had already been taken ... or heard nothing at all. This happened the other day in the case of a two-manual keyboard.
That's the most recent chapter of quite a long saga. Some years ago, I had been offered a harmonium, at the time in the home of the offerer's parents. Owing to the difficulty of co-ordinating communications between them and me, and the demands of my work, it ended with me hunting for their address at the same time as the parents, having given up on its being collected, had taken it to the dump! I subsequently obtained an electric (as opposed to electronic) keyboard, but found after a while that I used it so little that its space was more valuable than its presence. So far as this week's offer was concerned, had I been successful I would have been a little challenged to make room for it, but decided it was too good an opportunity to ignore.
This week, as well as the disappointment of the keyboard, I offered a number of items that had come out of my old car and for which no place could be found in the new. At the same time, I also offered a small cafetiere that I realised I no longer use. The car items were collected within hours of my post, but the lady who had expressed interest in the cafetiere cried off for reason of 'domestic chaos', so it's still on the shelf.
It's a great use of the internet, simple to use, and amazingly useful for anyone on a limited budget!
Saturday 4 August 2018
Broken and Twisted ... but not Bitter!
As hinted in my last post, this week's steep learning curve has been coming to terms with a new lady-friend, some ten years younger than the last, more sophisticated although less gymnastically capable, but hopefully less demanding and more reliable ... and I'm NOT talking about the saleslady!
Following the demise of Tina the Tigra, I questioned both the accessibility and the wisdom of getting another secondhand car. Firstly, there was the problem of transport. I could think of no secondhand dealer within walking distance, and only two on my regular bus-route, neither of whom fill me with confidence. There are several main dealers in the town, but a glance at their websites told me that even their secondhand prices were beyond my resources.
The way forward seemed to be a contract on a new vehicle. Although in many ways it's kicking the can down the road - a principle that I normally detest - it is a way out of an unacceptable situation. In only two weeks, I realised both the frustration and the limitation of having to walk everywhere, whether directly or to get the nearest bus, which is a ten-minute walk over the railway bridge ... not to be considered lightly in the context of shopping, for example. Church is a 20-minute walk, and to ring bells on Sunday was an impossibility to co-ordinate, it being a similar distance in the opposite direction.
So, I've been discovering the great electronic prowess of Keziah, my new VW Up! (what a name for a car! - 'Up!', not 'Keziah' - the latter was inspired by the registration letters, and means sweet smelling like cinnamon). She also has a DAB radio, which promises cricket-filled journeys if they're cleverly planned!
The other learning associated with this transition is more of a puzzle ... and something of a caution. I wrote the other week of the impressive speed with which the insurance company dealt with the aftermath of the accident. It happened on Sunday; I rang my broker first thing on Monday to report it and was told to send the estimate for repair when I'd received it, which I did the next day. That afternoon (Tuesday), the insurance company texted me to say they had been contacted by the third party's insurers and would I call them.
When I did so, and tried to explain that my brokers were handling this on my behalf, this was poo-poo'd, and I was persuaded to provide them with the estimate, which led to the prompt financial outcome later in the same week. I heard nothing from the brokers until a week later, when they e-mailed to say they had sent the estimate to my insurers to authorise the repair! Feeling that they were a waste of space, I sent off a caustic reply ... expecting to hear no more from them. But this was not to be.
On Wednesday this week, came an apology from the brokers for their delay and what appeared to be a casual enquiry whether my policy excess had been deducted from the settlement, in which case they might be able to recover this from the third party's insurers. When I replied that there had indeed been such a deduction, the brokers' response floored me. "I'm surprised that this wasn't waived, since the third party insurer accepted liability very early into the claim."
Now, my insurer had advised me that, whoever had caused the accident, because I was the one driving onto the roundabout I would be deemed to be at fault. Having suffered in a similar way some years ago, I reluctantly accepted this at the time as an 'insurance convention'. Now I'm wondering just how much of these exchanges is 'insurance speak', and how much actually reveals what's going on. I hadn't seen the other car until just before he hit me; I could have been a bit cursory in making sure nothing was coming, or he could have been coming at excessive speed (he was coming down a hill towards the roundabout). Instinctively - as I suppose most drivers would - I felt it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't be sure. If, as my insurer had led me to believe, there is a convention that made me at fault, why should the other insurer 'accept liability' ... unless his client had told him that he was to blame?
It's all water under the bridge now - or, more accurately, car on the scrap-heap - but it does leave me wondering just what is the relationship between insurer and broker, and how do their respective responsibilities to the client interweave? Having accepted the Volkswagen insurance on my new car for the present, I have twelve months in which to ponder these things before I have to consider how to proceed next year.
Following the demise of Tina the Tigra, I questioned both the accessibility and the wisdom of getting another secondhand car. Firstly, there was the problem of transport. I could think of no secondhand dealer within walking distance, and only two on my regular bus-route, neither of whom fill me with confidence. There are several main dealers in the town, but a glance at their websites told me that even their secondhand prices were beyond my resources.
The way forward seemed to be a contract on a new vehicle. Although in many ways it's kicking the can down the road - a principle that I normally detest - it is a way out of an unacceptable situation. In only two weeks, I realised both the frustration and the limitation of having to walk everywhere, whether directly or to get the nearest bus, which is a ten-minute walk over the railway bridge ... not to be considered lightly in the context of shopping, for example. Church is a 20-minute walk, and to ring bells on Sunday was an impossibility to co-ordinate, it being a similar distance in the opposite direction.
So, I've been discovering the great electronic prowess of Keziah, my new VW Up! (what a name for a car! - 'Up!', not 'Keziah' - the latter was inspired by the registration letters, and means sweet smelling like cinnamon). She also has a DAB radio, which promises cricket-filled journeys if they're cleverly planned!
The other learning associated with this transition is more of a puzzle ... and something of a caution. I wrote the other week of the impressive speed with which the insurance company dealt with the aftermath of the accident. It happened on Sunday; I rang my broker first thing on Monday to report it and was told to send the estimate for repair when I'd received it, which I did the next day. That afternoon (Tuesday), the insurance company texted me to say they had been contacted by the third party's insurers and would I call them.
When I did so, and tried to explain that my brokers were handling this on my behalf, this was poo-poo'd, and I was persuaded to provide them with the estimate, which led to the prompt financial outcome later in the same week. I heard nothing from the brokers until a week later, when they e-mailed to say they had sent the estimate to my insurers to authorise the repair! Feeling that they were a waste of space, I sent off a caustic reply ... expecting to hear no more from them. But this was not to be.
On Wednesday this week, came an apology from the brokers for their delay and what appeared to be a casual enquiry whether my policy excess had been deducted from the settlement, in which case they might be able to recover this from the third party's insurers. When I replied that there had indeed been such a deduction, the brokers' response floored me. "I'm surprised that this wasn't waived, since the third party insurer accepted liability very early into the claim."
Now, my insurer had advised me that, whoever had caused the accident, because I was the one driving onto the roundabout I would be deemed to be at fault. Having suffered in a similar way some years ago, I reluctantly accepted this at the time as an 'insurance convention'. Now I'm wondering just how much of these exchanges is 'insurance speak', and how much actually reveals what's going on. I hadn't seen the other car until just before he hit me; I could have been a bit cursory in making sure nothing was coming, or he could have been coming at excessive speed (he was coming down a hill towards the roundabout). Instinctively - as I suppose most drivers would - I felt it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't be sure. If, as my insurer had led me to believe, there is a convention that made me at fault, why should the other insurer 'accept liability' ... unless his client had told him that he was to blame?
It's all water under the bridge now - or, more accurately, car on the scrap-heap - but it does leave me wondering just what is the relationship between insurer and broker, and how do their respective responsibilities to the client interweave? Having accepted the Volkswagen insurance on my new car for the present, I have twelve months in which to ponder these things before I have to consider how to proceed next year.
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