Looking Forward and Back

This is the sort of job, as many have observed, where you just don't know from one day to the next what you'll be doing, or where; nor, for that matter, how long it will take you.  It's also the sort of job where, sometimes, you get to the end of the week and, looking back, you can't remember where on earth you've been, what has filled those last five days, and so on.  This was just such a week.

Although I've done nineteen jobs in the week, only three of them have been beyond 70 miles distant: Slough on Tuesday morning was one of those jobs that, a few years ago was quite regular, and enjoyable.  This time, however, I discovered that the receiving company has been taken over, and its premises are now a few streets away from where I had been before.  Add to that the officious manner of the receiving staff, and it wasn't anywhere nearly so pleasant.  Coventry, the next day, was much better.  I always prefer to go north rather than south ... there's a distinct feeling of comfort, somehow, in heading away from the M25.  Although nominally Coventry, it was actually to a factory owned by a nationally-known company and located on the outskirts of a small village between two motorways, the access to which was quite circuitous, which added to the interest.

The only major job of the week, on Monday evening, was probably also the most interesting of the week.  That repeating genie, of which I've written often, seems to have changed his mode of working, and now offers the same pattern at the same time each week, instead of the same unusual location two days running.  This week's Monday task was a carriage-forward job to a housing estate on the edge of Derby.  I was loaded with a number of quite heavy boxes, and instructed to call the recipient when I got there.  Finding myself outside quite a large block of flats, with no individual address, I had no alternative.  In response to my call, a young man approached me from a side turning opposite the flats, and told me to follow him a few yards down the road, and round the to a block of garages behind the houses on the side of the road opposite from the flats.  I felt distinctly suspicious but, after a prayer for safety, I did as I was bid.  The young man explained that the consignee was indisposed, but had asked him to meet me and receive the goods.  As a matter of discipline, we are advised against leaving goods other than at the address given when we collect them.  However, there was something open about this chap's manner, and coupled with the fact that he knew approximately how much he would have to pay me - and had the not insignificant amount of cash in his pocket - I decided that this time it would be OK.  I left him standing outside the garage, to which he had no key, to mind the boxes and await his friend.

The rest of the week, although nose-to-tail, has been relatively local, and having exhausted the regular collection of podcasts, I've been glad sometimes to drive in silence ... just thinking.  With Christmas just around the corner, there has been much to think about, of course.  The annual newsletter for distant friends and family; the Christmas card list; church activities and my part in them, and so on.  I've also been thinking a lot about a short story that I'm writing, trying to complete it within the month of November, but wrestling with one flaw after another that has been revealed in the plot as it progresses.

Another thought, a recollection really, that came to me unbidden the other day, concerned an incident some years ago.  I was driving in Letchworth one winter's evening, and had stopped to wait for traffic on a roundabout in the town centre.  BANG! there came the sound and the feel of an impact, as someone drove into the back of the van.  I know I have to stop when there's a collision; this time there was no need - I was stationary.  I got out, fearing to inspect the damage; fearing too, the potential impact on my work.  As I walked gingerly around the van, I was met by a chap of about twenty or so, of Afro-Caribbean appearance, emerging from a maroon saloon.  He looked aghast at the front of his car.  The bonnet was severely bent, and a sinister puddle of green fluid under the engine, getting bigger by the second, indicated a broken radiator. "Oh, my lovely motor!" he moaned, sheepishly.

I looked at my own vehicle - amazed at what I found.  There was a rip, about half an inch long - little more, anyway, in the plastic skin of the rear bumper.  Otherwise, everything was intact.  The bumper of the van, of course, is the step of the door, and really solidly made to bear the weight of a man, and much more.  I commiserated with my adversary in his loss, we acknowledged that the collision was his own fault, since he had taken his eyes off me to look at the roundabout, and, since I could do nothing to assist him, I carried on my way.  I could sympathise with his predicament since, although this was more serious, the circumstances were exactly the same as my own first accident.  This happened at a roundabout on the Norwich ring road, when I was driving the van I wrote about last week, that I found great difficulty in parking.

What goes around, comes around.  The moral of the story, if there is one, is that, if you're angry with a white-van man, there are more effective ways of expressing your feelings than ramming his van!