The Only Way is ...

I don't know what it was I did, but something sure made the repeating genie wild!  This was "Essex week".  More particularly, it was "Essex-along-the-A127 week".  Monday's job, to be fair, was interesting.  I was sent to Bury St Edmunds, to the depot of a firm we used to do a lot of work for when they had a place in Hatfield (... I don't know whether it's still there or not; I've not been on that road for several years).  I collected a heavy duty shackle for use on a building site in Laindon.  I like 'triangular' jobs like that: they usually involve taking roads that are less familiar, ones that I call 'circumferential routes' because they go around my home-base, rather than to it or from it.

From that point on, the week seemed to lose all novelty and much of its interest, too.  Tuesday's mix brought the most distant job of the week: to Crawley - which says it all! - sandwiched between well-known jobs to Luton and to the pleasant Bedfordshire village of Northill.  Wednesday started in 'routine' style too, with an early run to Pinewood Studios.  Then came another echo from a couple of years ago, a job for an engineering firm in Hitchin, to deliver to a treatment plant in Southend, and bring back some items already processed.

This job used to be in two parts, delivering to one address, and collecting from another some miles away in Shoeburyness.  Now, however, both delivery and collection were at the same, new, address.  It took some time to find, because (according to SatNav) all the units on that estate have odd numbers, and I was looking for unit 6.  Eventually I gave up, and resorted to the older system of 'ask someone'.  I interrupted a chap painting the window frames of one unit, and enquired where I might find no. 6.  The man smiled, and gestured with his brush-handle, "It's this one!" His words were a melody to my ear.  It seems that the firm has amalgamated its operations here quite recently, since the name outside is still that of the previous occupants, and there were clear signs inside that things were not yet properly organised.

Thursday began with an 8.15 pick-up for Basildon, complemented by a collection from this same new location in Shoeburyness.  On this second visit in as many days, the goods weren't ready for me and, as I waited inside, sheltering from the rain, I watched their operation with interest.  It's nice to have a few minutes without the pressure of something else that ought to be done instead.  As I watched, I thought of the general matter of settling into new surroundings, be it a factory like this, or a change of job, removal to a new home, and so on.  One thought led incoherently to the next, and soon I found myself reflecting upon recent international events, and the matter of Russian authorities 'settling in' to their newly re-acquired province of Crimea, wondering just how the after-shocks of that situation will play out.

Friday's major task was a collection for one of our customers in Letchworth, from - you can almost guess where - Southend!  On my way home, I diverted to Ponders End to pick up a job for another driver, but even then the week's link with Essex wasn't over, because now the pressure of the month-end was building up, and instead of being consigned to the discharge of my shopping list, and heading gently into the weekend, I was asked to collect a couple of chairs, for delivery in Margaretting, just down the A12 from Chelmsford!

Now, with all the demands of the working week finally discharged, I can report that next week will not, at least, begin in Essex.  On my way there for the last time yesterday, I called at a firm in Hertford and collected a van-load of stuff to take to a hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Monday morning. Meanwhile, I can enjoy the rest of a foreshortened weekend, during which religion and tradition merge in the observation of Mother's Day or, as one of my 'twitter-friends' reminded her followers the other day, 'it's actually called Mothering Sunday, because we celebrate the act of mothering, whoever does it.'  Debate aside, this morning I joined with other men of the church in what has become something of a tradition for us, the assembly - amidst coffee and doughnuts - of posies to be presented tomorrow to all the ladies at church, be they mothers or not.