New Light on Old Ways

It's been a strange sort of week, but at last a new pattern of life seems to be emerging after the relocation of the office.  Some of us had rather taken matters into our own hands, but now it's official.  A notice appeared in the crew-room this week asking that, if we live in Letchworth, Hitchin or Stevenage (the areas where about three-quarters of our customers operate), we stay at home, ring in to be added to the list, and have confidence that, when our turn comes, we will be contacted with details of a job.  This means that, apart from saving us unneccesary journeys to and from the office, we will still be able to offer a prompt corporate response to urgent calls.  But that's not the only reason.

You'll have noticed, I'm sure, how politicians campaigning for election make certain promises that, once the candidate is elected, seem to fall off the agenda.  That is, in one aspect, how the new office has turned out.  One of the alleged advantages of moving was that the new office had lots of space, and far more room to park vehicles without inconveniencing other users of the estate.  We now find that there is room for at most about a dozen vans of various sizes in the compound around the building, with perhaps another half dozen in the roadway behind.  While that may seem quite a lot, it's but a small proportion of the whole fleet.  Until work builds up so that the majority of them are already out on jobs when the day starts, there can be many more vans around first thing than there is space for.

Anyway, it suits me well to be at home in the mornings.  I can easily find stuff to do, whether catching up on admin, or furthering my family history searches, or simply watching the odd interesting TV programme on i-Player.  And if the weather is fine, there are always the windows of the van to clean.  Scarcely a day goes by without me grumbling about either the dust from dry roads, or the oil thrown up in the spray from wet ones.

Workwise, for a four-day week, this hasn't been too bad.  I won't bore my reader with the full details, but the highlights included the regular daily delivery of medicines on two afternoons to a rural health centre in Suffolk, a replacement computer part for an office in beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, and an early evening collection of prescription drugs from the hospital for a patient in a Letchworth nursing home.  The week finished with me taking 20 cases of wine to the seaside.  This wasn't for a wild beach party, nor to give the bottles a treat, but to re-provision the bar at a holiday camp.

The fact that this was at Great Yarmouth was too tempting for me not to dawdle awhile rather than come home by the most direct route.  Both the place itself and the surrounding area carry far too many memories for that.  For all its being only 112 miles, the journey home took me about three-and-a-half hours, turning down one lane after another, soaking up the bright rays of sunset and casting my mind back to one of life's episodes after another as the scene changed around me.

It was fitting that this was the day before a meeting of the Family History Society at Hillingdon (see the picture here).  I had built up a list of things to be done before leaving for West London, but thanks to the new working arrangements, I had had the opportunity to deal with at least some of them during the week, so there was only really the shopping to be attended to.

Recently, I've been looking into the family of my oldest aunt's parents-in-law.  When she appeared in the 1911 census, uncle Tom's mother was said to have had nine children of whom seven were still living.  Only five were listed with their parents and I've now managed to trace all the other four, two of them having died at a young age; the other two married and living nearby with their own families. 

One of these families consisted of two stepsons, and it was to some amusement that I announced last weekend that I was looking for 'three weddings and a funeral.'  I found the weddings of the two brothers of uncle Tom, but the identity of the late first husband of the wife of one of them eluded me.  In order to learn more, I was faced with sending off for either the couple's marriage certificate or a birth certificate for one of the boys, and I questioned whether I could justify this expense for someone who wasn't actually related to me at all.  At last temptation overcame me and I'm now looking forward to the delivery of the birth certificate sometime next week.

Talking of ordering things on line: before the recent increase in postal charges, when there were reports of shortages of stamps as people buying thousands of stamps at the lower prices, I followed up a tip I'd seen about buying them on line direct from Royal Mail.  The chap who'd posted this tip had calculated that, even for a small quantity, the delivery charge was less than the difference between old and new prices, making it economical to place a direct order and avoid a perhaps fruitless queue at the post office.  I place my order - for just two books of stamps - and on 17th April I received an e-mail acknowledgement stating that delivery would be in about five working days.  By 30th April, I was beginning to think they wouldn't be coming, so sent them a complaint.  I'd just about forgotten about the whole matter by Friday this week when ... they arrived, along with a delivery note dated 1st May!  I now feel justified in making the complaint, as well as in my initial decision to stock up at the old prices in this way.