Bacon Breakfast Bonanza!

It's nice when one job runs on to the next, with no time wasted in between.  That's how this week started. My first delivery had to be in Horsham by 8.0, so I opted out of the church breakfast in order to miss the worst of the traffic build-up, and stand some chance of getting there on time.  While this aim was successful, I didn't find anywhere nearby to get any breakfast, so my tummy had to wait for satisfaction until I got to Stevenage, where I knew the search would be successful.  The phone went just as I got into the van armed with a bacon roll ... a collection in Letchworth for Doncaster, the start of quite a successful week.

As I waited for my invoice in the afternoon, I was assigned the delivery on Tuesday morning of something that was then being collected from north London, so I went home to await a call from the driver when he had arrived with it.  This being done, I was free to join the ringers in the evening, where we practiced a more advanced method, which was in fact new to some, with the promise of a more demanding variation of it to follow this week, if the right people are there.

The second of four 'outside' breakfasts of the week was more assured, for I knew there would be a convenient facility parked outside a public house, just off the M6.  Again I was summoned as I drove home, and when I called into the office (this being on the way), I was given details of two jobs that took up the remainder of my day.  I'm amazed at the differing ways two minds can assess the same situation.  As I collected the second of these, which was going to the village of Enstone in Oxfordshire, I asked whether Lotus F1, the consignee, was a new identity of Renault, to whom I had made many deliveries in Enstone in former times.  "Oh no," I was told, "This is down a tiny lane, and when you think there's nothing down here, and you wonder whether you've got the wrong road, all of a sudden it opens up and there's the security gate!"  I agreed, then, that this couldn't be the same place, because I recalled the entrance to the Renault site being right beside the road in open countryside. It was, though - the very place to which I had been before, now re-designated, but essentially the same as it ever was!

Wednesday's breakfast was the forerunner to a somewhat hectic, and rather aggravating morning.  I had two jobs, the first being to deliver some display material to the East Midland Conference Centre on the campus of Nottingham University, within a 30-minute pre-8.0 window.  With a bit of target-time-management, the second one ought to have been almost achievable, an 8.0 collection at Bilsthorpe, some 20 miles away.  I left in good time, snatched an 'eat-as-you-go' breakfast at an M1 service station, and all went well, until I left the motorway.  I'd heard that the Nottingham rush-hour is horrendous; I was aware of roadworks on the A453, so wasn't surprised that SatNav took me up to the next junction to enter via the A52, which was, in fact, a more direct route to my destination.  Even so, I was totally unprepared to take over an hour for the last five miles or so of the journey!

The day's disasters had only begun.  I arrived 35 minutes late, with four parcels, two of which were beyond my power even to remove from the van (I'd watched two quite young men struggle to get them on board the previous afternoon!) to find that the marquee where the event was to be held was empty, apart from the designated stand frames.  There was no one about, apart from another driver, similarly confounded.  Luckily he responded to my plea for help, and we carted these items inside.  I was relieved of any obligation to reciprocate by the fact that he had a colleague with him, and instead departed into the traffic once more to make my way to the day's second challenge.  I was chased by phone calls every few minutes until I arrived at 9.45, to be confronted by the apologetic news that the goods weren't yet ready - they'd be about another hour!  I've no idea what had been going on behind the scenes, but I was then told that there had been an exchange of phone calls the previous afternoon to explain that the goods ought be ready by 10.0, and that therefore the courier (me!) should be deferred until that time.  Talk about panic for nothing!

I called the office when I left, a little before 11.0, and then quite enjoyed my drive down to north London, interrupted by only one phone call, just as I'd re-fuelled at Colsterworth services.  It was a relief to deliver in a pleasant cul-de-sac to builders who had been forewarned of the traumas of my morning, and were understanding of the delays to their consignment.

Thursday was much more relaxed, and more amusing than annoying.  As I recall it, I'm reminded of Noel Murphy's song about a hod of bricks.  It started with breakfast at home, and a nice convenient pair of jobs, to Sunbury-on-Thames and Basingstoke.  As I came home round the M25 I was called to change direction and make for Surrey, where there was a collection for Colnbrook.  I'd got about as far as the A30 exit, when another call told me that this job had been cancelled, so would I like to turn round again and head home.  No sooner had I got beyond the M40 exit for the second time, than a third phone call apologised profusely, and turned me around once more - the job was back on!  It then proceded smoothly, apart from the fact that it was a job on behalf of a customer in Hertfordshire, and their supplier, from whom I was collecting, didn't have the address of their customer, where I had to deliver ... and there was no mobile signal there, so I had to stop just before I got back onto the motorway to call the office for the address!

After all this, Friday seemed quite tame, with an early morning delivery in Huntingdon, followed by three nice easy local runs, one after the other, which took up the rest of the day, until I was assigned a couple of modest jobs for tomorrow, beginning with an 8.30 collection, which will enable me to enjoy breakfast with my fellows at church first.