Damp Squib Goes Mad

I've lost count of the times when I've complained about the week starting badly but ending well, and this has been yet another one.  I do wonder what it is about Mondays and/or Tuesdays that make them slack; perhaps everyone got things done last week and now they've got to build up again ... was that a pig I saw up there?  Back to earth ...

Monday offered me only one job, taking a box of machined parts from Hatfield to Papworth, which enabled me to join in a mirth-filled bell-ringing practice in the evening.  I'm not sure why this was so, apart from two colleagues who are now on the brink of recovery from illness, but we were all in joyful mood, and the chatter just flowed.  Tuesday gave me a 'there and back' double to south Essex, taking some paint to Horndon-on-the-Hill, and then making a collection from a doctor in Woodham Mortimer for a laboratory in Royston.  With little more on the clock by Tuesday evening than the target for one day, I was hoping for an improvement as Wednesday dawned.

The pattern of 'in and out' continued for two days.  Fairly early on Wednesday, I was sent to Rolls Royce in Derby with some parts from a local firm, and had got about half-way back when the phone went.  "Where are you?"  "Just coming down the M1 to junction 18 ..."  "Can you get off?"  After a quick check that it was safe, I was able to rumble over the hatched area at the top of the slip lane; I pulled onto the hard shoulder at the foot, continuing the conversation, "Yes, where did you want me to go?"  I was given an address in Manchester, asked to make a collection there and then deliver it the following morning to Broxbourne, just beside the M25.  It was then about 12.30, and as I quickly estimated travelling times, I cancelled any thought of attending a prayer meeting at the church that evening.  Instead, I found myself tucking into liver and onions at the Rugby truck-stop.

I made my delivery on Thursday morning, enjoyed the almost mandatory egg-and-bacon roll and refuelled the van, and then called in to see what might be next.  I didn't have long to wait before I was asked to collect from a factory almost opposite my lounge window - that's the advantage of working from home - to go to Benfleet.  Almost home from there, came another 'turn you round' call and I was sent to a large manufacturing establishment in Hertford, for a repeat of a job that I'd done three weeks ago.  It was a true repeat, right down to the need to wait half an hour for them to finish the job and prepare it for despatch!  At 4.45 I set off for Wolverhampton, thinking that I would be in time for the second night in a row to dine at Rugby - roast chicken this time.

After two quite full days, I was content that things were fairly slack and local yesterday.  In the morning I took some equipment to the West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, and also a parcel to one of the many freight forwarding companies that surround Heathrow, and in the afternoon came another hospital visit, this time to the Queen Elizabeth II in Welwyn Garden City.  On the way back I was offered another, similar trip too, to finish the week as it had begun in Papworth, but I declined this one, having quite a lot to do on the home front. 

And now, things seem to be nicely squared off, firstly to celebrate Fathers' Day with the men's group from the church, who have been practicing a musical presentation for tomorrow's service, and then to go into packing-and-preparing mode in readiness for the annual seaside holiday that begins on Monday.  I wonder what I shall manage to leave behind this year?