Rough edges

Have you ever had one of those 'I never thought I'd say this' moments?  I had one this week.

Let me turn the clock back for a moment.  I used to swear by the boxful of maps that had accumulated over the years, and filled my passenger foot well.  With this trusty library to refer to, I could find any address in the kingdom it seemed, ... except, that is, for any of the increasing number of roads that had appeared since the maps were printed!  On 26th November 2006, life changed for ever when I bought a GPS navigation device (commonly known as SatNav.)  In the next four years I got so used to this that the maps gradually became all but redundant.  Although they still had a place in the van, their prime purpose was to provide a corporate 'shelf' for my lunch, and any academic reference to their contents was very much the exception.

Two Christmases ago, I realised that the maps on this device were no longer current and, as it had been a cheap clear-out item when I'd bought it, I had no means of updating them.  I decided to replace it with a newer, and more capable model - one that boasted live traffic information as well as navigation expertise.  I have been very grateful for this facility on occasions, and it's my habit to update the data on it every weekend.  Last weekend, it developed a fault after the update session, and try as I might I couldn't get it past the start-up screen.  The box of maps was hastily re-loaded into the van, and the docking plate on my windscreen has been vacant all week.  After an exchange of e-mails with the customer support people, I finally took my little friend to the post office this morning, on special delivery to the SatNav hospital, and I'm hoping that within a few days I shall receive it back in full working order.

As I narrated this sorrowful situation to another driver the other afternoon, I realised that he would remember my adamant stand against the new technology, and to forestall any 'I told you so' line, I said, "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm lost without it."  Fortunately he had recently suffered a similar experience and could empathise.

Another colleague was reflecting over past times this week, as he organised the repair of his van after his first accident in over twelve years as a courier.  Statistically, he's done well with only one incident in almost a million miles.  Fortunately the collision happened at low speed, and damage was not too serious; I think his pride was the greatest casualty ... along with looking forward to a higher insurance premium next year!

I think the initial chaos of our relocation has now been overcome, although the property itself has had a few teething troubles.  It seems that these are being dealt with on the basis of how essential each is to the maintenance of normal operations.  A work station was quickly established in the warehouse, for example, so that someone can sit there every afternoon to process the packages that are accepted for consolidation and transhipment by an overnight carrier.  I noticed the other day that, in the rafters above his head, is perched an old sealant container to catch the water from a leak in the roof.  I'm wondering how long it will be before he gets an unexpected hair-wash!

And talking of water, the weather, and drainage, it seems that the down-pipe outside the warehouse door is blocked - a circumstance that provided a spectacular display yesterday afternoon for those of us not in the line of fire!

My fears about 'commuting' (i.e. my joining the majority of my colleagues who all live further from the depot than I) have eased somewhat, as I have been able to set off from home some mornings on pre-booked jobs, or have finished late enough to go straight home. I still resent mornings like this Thursday, however, when I drove empty to the depot, and an hour later had to retrace my steps for a collection in exactly the opposite direction!

Now all I really have to worry about is the price of diesel - which, thankfully, seems to be falling slightly at last!

Limbering up indeed!

In this game there are - to my mind, at least - three kinds of job.  There are 'back-end' jobs: these comprise local work that is given out to someone low down on the list, as a 'filler' while they are waiting, or jobs which, because of where they are going, or their urgency, won't be willingly undertaken by someone who has done his waiting time, and is due a 'proper' job.  Then there are these 'front-end', or 'proper' or 'top-line' jobs, the normal, run-of-the-mill work which makes up most of a driver's income; he looks for these jobs in doubles or trebles, so that the same mileage can earn him more money.  Often lately, such combinations have not been possible, and we have had to go off with just one job, the result of which is that, although income has been good, the margin on it is less than expected.

Occasionally, we see jobs of the third kind, described as 'long' or 'good' according to the individual's preferences, for not everyone likes to go long distances, especially towards the end of the day.  I reckon that anything over 150 miles comes under this heading, and occasionally such jobs are combined with others, which is really the icing on the cake!  In the first three months of this calendar year, only ten jobs in this category have come my way, two to Wales, two to the west country, and six to the north of England.  Last Friday, after what seemed quite a long wait I had a job to Hull.  It was the first long job this month, and I smiled to myself as I drove home from it, 'I'm limbering up; I wonder what for.'

As I looked at the first two days of this week, I could have been forgiven for considering thoughts like that well off the mark.  On Monday I took the van to the garage to have fitted the reversing sensors that I'd bought on line in readiness.  The job took far longer than I'd been led to believe, and when I eventually go to the office it was for a boring and unproductive afternoon.  After being allocated a 9.0am pick-up in Cambridge on Tuesday, I returned home feeling somewhat dejected.  The Cambridge job was going to Burton-on-Trent, and common sense dictated that it should go off directly rather than look for another job from the same collection area.  In the afternoon, I was given a local job that finished up in Royston, so I rang in empty and went home.  In two days, I'd earned less than one!

Then the week kicked off!  A phone call on Tuesday evening sent me off for a 7.0 am job to King's Lynn, and after only an hour's wait in the office I was summoned about noon to be asked if I was OK for a 'very' long job.  My throwaway response, 'the longer the better' was appropriate, as I was despatched to a computer service company in Hitchin to collect materials for a call-out from their engineer in Glasgow.  It was a trouble-free journey, hindered only by the weather.  Indeed, there were two very welcome changes from my last venture in that direction. 

adornment to a nearby factory

The long-term roadworks on the A1 near Leeming Bar have been completed, and about 20 miles of 50mph limit lifted.  Then I discovered that the M74 into Glasgow has also been finished, and it was here that I was to go.  In bright evening sunshine, I made my way to the office block where the engineer approached me at the door to relieve me of my cargo.  On my way back to the motorway, I couldn't resist raising my camera to a piece of local 'scenery' - relevance unknown!

The return journey went according to plan.  After a meal at Bothwell Services, I left the motorway and struck off for a gentle run across country, via Lanark, Peebles, Galashiels and Jedburgh to get onto the A1 at Newcastle.  I crossed the Tweed at 11pm, and the border at Carter Bar at 12.45.  An hour's sleep at Washington Services, and another couple in my favourite lay-by near Wetherby, left me reasonably fresh by daybreak.  The transformation was continued by a truck-stop breakfast, and then completed by a bath and my normal prayer-time at home.

Just before 10.0, I rang in as available for work, and said I would stay home for a while catching up on my admin.  No more than twelve minutes elapsed before I was called for two local jobs, to which a third was added just as I had delivered the second.  Things then really took off, and before delivering that one, I had collected two 'top-line' jobs, which caused me to finish up in King's Lynn again.  By the time Thursday had staggered to a finish, (with a 9.30 bedtime that felt more like 11.30 judging from my tiredness), I had covered over 1,200 miles in the two days.

Unsurprisingly, Friday began slowly.  I remember waking up at the alarm, but my next memory was about half-an-hour later.  I went over to the office, filed my paperwork, and gave my van a mini-valet in the sunshine.  Soon I was sent off on a job to Corby (borderline local/normal: I wasn't sure which).  Later came the greatest adventure of the week.  I was given the details of a collection in Bushey for Rochdale, cloaked with copious warnings of a possible scam, the need to take care, and to collect the cash for the carriage charge before releasing the goods.  After hours battling with the Friday afternoon traffic (good old SatNav!), I finally rang the office as required, 15 minutes short of my arrival, and soon received a call back, saying that my contact might be a few minutes late after going to collect the cash to give me.  The hints of black dealings were repeated, and I was urged to be careful. 

I found the street, parked as near as I could to the designated address, and waited.  After being greeted by a local resident, anxious to help, but unable to do so, a tap came at my window and my quest was at an end.  Once I had the cash in my pocket, I was guided back onto the waste ground at the end of the road, and soon drove off, leaving my contact standing beside a couple of boxes surrounded by rough vegetation and nettles, peering at his mobile phone.  Looked at objectively after the event, I'm not sure that anything untoward was going on, but the combination of all the warnings, the darkness and the location in a poorly-lit cul-de-sac at an address which technically didn't exist (I was looking for no. 90a in a street where the odds ended at 83 and evens at 66!) were certainly spooky! 

I was home at 2.45 this morning, and I'm unspeakably pleased to have a weekend in which to recover!

The End of an Era

As I said to myself on the morning that my daughter was born, and quoted recently to a friend, whose wife is expecting their firstborn, "Life will never be the same again!"  They're probably the truest words I've ever spoken ... or ever will, and they came to mind again yesterday.

One could argue that the typical week of a normal courier consists of waiting for work, doing it, watching TV and talking about his favourite Premier League team.  I know it's not really that simple, but, having come to the profession from a business background, I also take an interest in what is going on in the office as well.

That's why, last Thursday afternoon as I was indeed waiting for work, I quietly asked the office manager, "Would you like an extra pair of hands on Saturday?"  For yesterday was the designated day for The Move.  It had clearly been on the cards for some while, and gradually rumour turned to fact as things began to disappear first from the storeroom, then from the warehouse and finally from the office.  A couple of weeks ago, it was reported with some confidence that the weekend after Easter would see M-day.  Realising that I had a free morning I suggested that, since he would inevitably have a host of other things to do, I might usefully amuse myself setting up the computers, which were being shipped to the new site immediately after the office closed on Friday evening.

It's a simple enough job, but it's surprising how many people - although confident in their daily use - baulk at the suggestion of doing anything physical with computers.  I knew my boundaries, however, and ceased operations on each desk at the point before switching on the electricity.  After all, a professional network engineer was there for the move and, as part of his planned workload, he would be visiting each workstation in turn to link up to the network, switch on, log in, and make sure everything was working as it should; things which, as a mere driver, are well beyond my authority if not my capability.  Nevertheless, I was pleased to fill the need for someone at that intermediate level, who could spare the professional the unnecessary time for the mundane, also releasing the manager to co-ordinate other aspects of the move.

It must be about eight years ago, by my reckoning, that the firm moved into the offices we've just left.  I remember thinking that we'd played leapfrog.  When I started with them ten years ago, the office was just along the road from my flat.  At about 200 yards, it was the closest I'd ever worked to home.  Then I moved to the flat where I now live, about three times as far from the office, in the opposite direction.  Shortly afterwards the time came when the business had outgrown the capacity of that small unit, and they moved to another place about a quarter of a mile beyond my new home, but still comfortably within walking distance.

Walking distance applies no longer.  About five miles now separate home from office. It's not only in another town, but in the adjacent county!  This may not sound much, but it will mean about 2,300 additional miles in a year, something like 3½% more travelling for a guaranteed zero increase in income.  With many drivers travelling from far greater distances to work with us, my situation is exceptional and, in common with one or two others, I've enjoyed this unspoken advantage for many years.

But now it's payback time, and life will never be the same again!

A National Gift - the story of a long weekend

When I finished my allotted task on Wednesday - a delivery in Brownhills (for the uninitiated, that's somewhere near Walsall, but doesn't boast a League One football team) - I realised that I just had time for a meal at a truckstop on the way past and make church for the 8.0 meditation.  There are normally meditative services on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week and, unusually, I've made it to all three this year.  It was well worth it.

What I wasn't worried about was getting onto the list for work the next day.  Holy Thursday is renowned in the industry as the busiest day of the year.  Everyone, it seems, is keen to get away for the four-day break, but more anxious to get their stuff out and delivered to customers before they go.  It's like trying to cram two days' work into one, as one controller put it to me a few years ago.  I certainly had no fears about getting work on Thursday.

The office staff were certainly busy.  Tearing their hair out would be but a slight exaggeration.  The snag, from my point of view, was that most of the work coming in was either for bigger vans than mine, or forward bookings for next week.  Eventually, I was called early in the afternoon, and given deliveries in St Albans and to a building site in Bracknell.  By the time I reached the building site, I was getting a mite anxious that the workers there would have cleared up and gone home.  There was no need to worry: my delivery was expected, and I was met at the gate by a foreman who quickly indicated where I should park, and unloaded my van.  A last minute panic came as he returned to the van to sign my sheet.  "That one's the wrong size!" he said, pointing.  However, he quickly realised that nothing could be done about it at 4.10pm just before the holiday, and signed me off, resolving to sort out the difficulty on Tuesday.  My own holiday weekend was about to take off.

It began with a very pleasant duty that comes round about six times a year.  I'm on a rota to read news items from the local paper as part of the process of distributing weekly tapes to the blind or partially-sighted people in the neighbourhood.  Five of us gather in someone's front room: three readers, the 'editor', who has already given up half his afternoon to fillet the papers, and someone to man the mixing desk.  An hour later, we have filled both sides of a 'master' tape, and one of us takes it to the office where the following morning it will be copied and despatched.

So to the holiday weekend itself.  Good Friday, of course, is special.  There are church services to attend, and there was a March of Witness in the town, where the various denominations join in a common act of worship.  I chose to come home after the preliminary service at St. Paul's, but in the afternoon I went along to the hour's meditation service at All Saints'.

Saturday is a 'normal' day, with regular domestic preoccupations to fill the hours.  I had said I'd be available for work on Saturday and Monday, but the phone has been remarkably silent.  Sunday has its regular pattern of worship - special this weekend, of course, being Easter Sunday - and relaxation.  After reading the weekend papers and catching up with correspondence, e-mails and so on, where does the day go?

But now it's Bank Holiday Monday: the first of three that clutter up the calendar just now.  What is their nature, their purpose?  Why do we either love or hate them?  According to Saint Wiki, they began in 1871, when legislation made 'bank holidays', i.e. days when the banks were closed for business, into public holidays, i.e. holidays for everyone - and incidentally, changed which days should be so designated.  Others have been added to those first four over the years.  Some years, depending when Easter falls, the spring pattern is quite regular, with two normal weeks between two that are shortened by bank holidays.  This year, because of the Diamond Jubilee, the last of the three is a week later so, work-wise, we have longer to recover from the impact of May Day.

You'll gather that, being self-employed, I'm not a lover of these imposed breaks into the working week.  I guess that's true, up to a point.  I certainly resent the reduction of the number of available days in which to earn a living, which is why I mainly offer myself for work on them.  However, with a few notable exceptions, there is little likelihood of actually getting work.  This means that, subject to some obvious restrictions, I can enjoy much the same freedom and relaxation as the next man.  And that brings me (at last!) to what prompted this blog in the first place.  It's a Holiday, a gift from the nation to me.  This gift is a day when I can do whatever I want.  No religious disciplines, no shopping trips, no chores to fulfil; a day to relax and not feel guilty at doing so.  I'm jolly well going to enjoy doing nothing all day!

But ...

... but ...

... I wonder if ...

... maybe I could ...

... what else was I ...

... is it over yet? ...

... gosh, it's boring with nothing to do!