Back to the 'Up and Down'

After mentioning the 'repeating genie' last week (the first time for a while), it confronted me in a new guise yesterday.  I'd returned home from a delivery of pharmaceuticals to a nearby hospital, only to be alerted from my perusal of social media by a call from the office.  "Now you know the way there, would you be able to do another job for <the same supplier> to <the same local hospital>?"  This time, I discovered, it wasn't just something that had been omitted from a regular order, but medication that was urgently required.  I walked along the corridor and into the ward, to find two nurses at the drugs trolley.  As I approached, one said to the other, "Oh, it's arrived!"  She turned to me, smiled, and pointed to the list in her hand.  "I need that for the patient right now!"  The third item on her list was the same as the drug named on the delivery note in my hand.

That was the conclusion to a week that for me had definitely been black-and-white.  By Wednesday evening I was feeling very thankful for those much-trumpeted gold and silver weeks at the start of the year, for in three days my earnings had only just staggered beyond the expectation for two.  With only one job on Monday, three medium-range trips on Tuesday (together making up a decent day), and only one on Wednesday, albeit a pleasant run to the Essex coast, I felt that things had bounced back to the 'old days' at the start of the recession, when we were anxious about meeting essential bills without dipping into savings.

"Trust, Brian; trust!" chided my conscience, as Thursday and yesterday each consisted of nose-to-tail sequences of medium-range work that matched Tuesday for productivity.  Thursday began with another early-morning run to Pinewood Studios, which was followed by another 'regular' safari for our customer in Royston, visiting a factory in Letchworth on my way to Daventry and back to Royston.  I was about to exchange my heavy, steel-toecapped shoes for carpet slippers, and drift into evening mode, when I was given an early evening job to Witham (the repeating genie sending me once again onto Essex roads little-used of late).

Yesterday began with two early collections in Stevenage, for delivery in Bletchley and Milton Keynes; from there I was sent to Bedford to collect four beautiful prints, newly-framed, to be taken (carefully!) to Boston.  After last week's delivery near Spalding, this again was a repeat: a pleasant drive through the flat tranquility of the fens, before those two dramatic deliveries to the hospital.

So, how has 2014 actually settled in - were those good weeks in January and February just flukes, or true green shoots of recovery?  I think the latter is more truly the case, for although there hasn't been a constant stream of lovely long jobs to occupy my time - and as I told a friend on Sunday, 'I haven't been to Scotland yet this year!" - nevertheless, these mundane, 'up-and-down' weeks have proved sufficiently consistent to be encouraging as well as modestly profitable.

As the man on my much-favoured, if illogical, Sunday afternoon radio programme (Gardeners' Question Time) says, "Onwards and upwards!"