Regulars, Repeats and a Return ... with bookends!

My last post ended with the annoyances generated by my visit to Melksham on Wednesday morning.  The day finished with a couple of semi-local jobs, one to St Neots, and the other to a Northamptonshire village I'd never heard of, let alone been to before.  It's called Wappenham, and it's very small, but it boasts a small industrial estate as well as church and chapel - I didn't notice a pub!  This rounded off the day nicely, and I was able to divert on my way home to get a meal at Jacks Hill Cafe.  I hadn't been there for quite a while and I was pleased to discover that it has been noticeably brightened up in the interim.

Thursday morning I was sent to an engineering firm in Hitchin, to do what has lately become a regular run for them, to a treatment firm in Shoeburyness.  The job consists of delivering their products to the cleansing department on one industrial estate, and then collecting finished goods from the paintshop about five miles away on the other side of the town.  It takes just over four hours, there and back, and I returned about 2.30pm.  I made coffee, collected my book from the van and sat down to what I felt would be a long wait until jobs were allocated for the next morning.  I had just taken the bookmark from its lodging place when my name was called, and I was sent back to the same firm in Hitchin, this time to deliver some of their finished products to an aerospace firm at Luton Airport.

At last convinced that the day had finished, I returned, read a few pages of my book, and eventually was asked to be at the Pathology department of the West Suffolk Hospital at 9.0 am on Friday for an exact repeat of the job I'd done on Tuesday afternoon.  After only a short wait upon my return, I was summoned to collect a small package which formed the repeat to that tiny Northamptonshire village I'd visited on Wednesday.  Along with this I was asked to collect a small pallet of specialist metals for Red Bull Racing in Milton Keynes, which meant that this time I arrived at Wappenham along the A5, and realised just how close it is to Towcester.

When I got back to the office I became one of several who were waiting for the end of the day to come.  Realising that I was too far down the list for a Monday morning job, I approached the controller's desk and suggested that I should go and do my weekend shopping.  He was unwilling simply to say 'All right,' and pretended to make it a condition of my departure that I should accept the 'burden' of a job this morning - having first interrogated me as to whether I would be available for it.

So it was that, at 7.30 am, as we recovered from what was described as the coldest night of the winter, I scraped my van and drove off to a flower firm in Chatteris.  My assignment was not to collect flowers, but a batch of plastic lids to go to our customer, another flower firm in Sandy.  These lids were sealed on pallets three high in the yard, and over the last couple of days had acquired a covering of four or five inches of snow, which had thawed a little and was now frozen into the top layers of lids.  We quickly realised that the stacks of lids were too tall for my van, so two of us spent a very chilling half-hour in the yard loading as many of the lids as we could loose into the van.

Bishopshalt School

I was home after this experience soon after 11.0, and set about warming myself up.  After checking that the event was on, I set off soon after an early lunch to a place which, three times a year, is one of my favourite locations.

Bishopshalt School in Hillingdon was originally built in the mid 19th century as a private house, and the school itself now extends greatly beyond the original building, which now serves as its administrative offices. 

This is the venue for the regular meetings of the Suffolk Family History Society - West London Branch.  The sun made the grounds look so beautiful, with the melting snow, and squirrels romping around the trees, I couldn't resist attempting an impromptu picture with my mobile phone.  The meeting went very well, and the speaker demonstrated selections from his amazing collection of ephemera - ranging from wartime propaganda to recycling instructions, and a draft constitution for the European Union - if it's in paper, he stands a chance of having a copy!

Incidentally, if all goes well, this will be the last picture of this van, since I should be able to collect its successor sometime next week, following an unexpectedly successful visit to a suitable establishment yesterday afternoon.  Now all I have to do is work out how I'm going to pay for it!