One thought ... leads to another

On Wednesday afternoon, I did a 'local' job, taking a vanful of boxes from Welwyn Garden City to Peterborough.  When I arrived, I found the door of the receiving warehouse open, and as soon as I could be seen reversing up to it, someone came out to see what I'd brought.  I made a comment about the label on the otherwise blank boxes, that this particular text suggested that they were for a conference, and was told that I'd guessed right, and that they would be going to just such an event the next day.

We worked quickly together to unload the boxes, and my new friend asked, casually, how long it had taken me to get there.  I admitted, with all honesty, that I had no idea.  "I just go onto autopilot," I explained, "especially when there's a good podcast to listen to."  He asked what I had been listening to, and by the time I'd explained, he'd signed my sheet and I was away.  I drove out of the industrial estate, reflecting on this innocent, but unusually revealing conversation, and thinking as I did so, '... or when something else takes over my mind.'

As I had made my way out of town along the A15, to the point where Lincoln Road gives way to Werrington Parkway, I'd found my thoughts drifting back some 26 years (I'll come back to my actual thoughts in a moment) to the time when I had a job that involved spending some part of the time in a sixth-floor office in Peterborough, and the pressure of work at a particular time had necessitated working into the evening, beyond normal office hours.  On the specific evening that I now recalled, it was about 6.30pm, and the only other person in the office was a lady who had lived at the time in the part of the town where I found myself delivering this week.  Each of us had come to the end of our respective tasks and we were gathering our possessions ready to leave: she for her home, and I for a nearby pub, where I was lodging for convenience, to avoid a long drive home only to return the following day to carry on the work in hand.

Suddenly Liz gave a shriek and announced that she had just spotted a mouse crossing the office only feet away from her feet!  I too saw it before it had time to disappear, and - anxious to appear the 'brave hunter' - I gave chase.  More by luck than skill, I eventually had it trapped in the unfurnished vestibule of the floor, between the main office space and the landing where one emerged from the lift.  The only weapon to hand had been a sweeping brush, but it proved quite adequate for the task, and soon the poor animal had been despatched.  With teasing gallantry, I picked it up by the tail and, after parading my trophy before the admiring (?!) Liz, I opened a window and with great ceremony allowed the corpse to drop to the ground beneath.  We then made our own exit by more conventional means, and emerged to the car park.

As we did so, Liz realised that her car was parked beneath the window that had so recently been the scene of the undignified egress of the mouse; there was now a dent in the roof of the car, and the dead mouse was to be seen where it had bounced to the ground in front of it.  I felt silly, embarrassed, and not a little guilty for having thoughtlessly caused damage to someone else's property.  Fortunately, in the time we had been working together, we had established a friendship that was close enough for her to forgive me instantly, and the story was often referred to with amusement during the remaining time that we were both there.

So, what had been my actual thought, as this little episode came to mind?  Simply this - as I crossed the roundabout where the A15 makes that change of name I'd realised that, although I'd often delivered to a factory in the cul-de-sac that enters that roundabout, I'd never before gone further along the A15 towards Werrington.  Then I recalled that Liz, who'd been involved in the 'mouse incident', had at the time lived in an avenue just off this main road - a fact I'd discovered when one day, for some reason now hidden in the depths of time, I'd taken her home from work.  My thoughts are often expressed in the Suffolk/Norfolk dialect with which I grew up, and they now added, 'do that's only the once.'

This phrase brought back to me the way my father would have expressed the idea that, if I had ever been further along that road, then it would have been on no more than one occasion.  But its strange use of the word 'do' also reminded me of an exchange in our adult years with someone with whom I'd attended primary school.  In our recollection of growing up in the fifties, we recalled the unusual applications of this word, but somehow our opinions differed as to its 'translation'.  He was convinced - and others since have supported this view - that it simply replaced the word 'if', for example, "do you want to go on the train, you'll have to buy a ticket."  My recollection, however, was the very opposite, that it represented the words 'if not' or 'or else'.  The only example I could come up with when we were having this discussion was, "you must behave yourself when we get there, do you'll get a smack." and, for want of further evidence at the time, I fear I lost the argument.

So this week, as my memory of long ago once more came to the fore, and I thought to myself, "I haven't been along here before - do that's only the once", I'm reminded again of the peculiar phrases of the past.  I don't suppose people use them at all nowadays, but if by chance my readers happen to include someone who has heard this one, then perhaps you'd let me know.