History Repeating Itself

I've lost count of the number of times friends ask me at the weekend, "Have you been anywhere interesting this week?"  Most weeks there is something I can pick out of the preceding days to amuse or occasionally enthrall them, prompting either envy - like when I stepped through the hallowed black door of no. 10 Downing Street - or more often empathy when I tell of being confronted by an incomplete or misleading address, or totally unco-operative 'Jobsworth' types who are neither use nor ornament when it comes to getting a job done.

This week's interest was not one but two instances of history repeating itself; in each case the original event had been potentially a unique occurence.  And amazingly, as I searched the annals for chapter and verse, I discovered that both of those original events had taken place at about this time of year.

In May 2008 one of our customers, a printing company, had either discovered or been advised of an error in the preparation of exam papers.  These exams were to be taken by students in certain private schools across the country.  On the afternoon of the day prior to the exams, our customer requested that we make arrangements for disks containing the corrected papers to be delivered to all the schools involved by 9.0 am the following morning, so that staff could print out the correct text for the exam later that day.  I happened to be in the office waiting for work when the envelopes arrived for assignment, and was given one for a school in Blandford, Dorset.

When all other available drivers had been allocated one, two or three of these, according to their geographical spread, one disk remained, for a school near Clitheroe, Lancs.  I hadn't had a very good week thus far so, after doing a quick calculation, and taking into account that these were boarding schools and would therefore have staff on site all the time, I made a suggestion. Instead of setting off in the early hours to reach Blandford by 9.00, I offered to set off immediately, taking with me the disk for Clitheroe as well.  My suggestion was accepted, and after the necessary stops en route for a meal and some sleep, I delivered the second disk at around 6.30am.  It was a round trip of 632 miles.

This week, after a good day on Monday and nothing but a cancellation on Tuesday morning, I was asked mid-afternoon to collect a job for Stafford. This was not particularly out of the ordinary but what did surprise me was to be told by our customer to return immediately to my van because the office would be phoning me shortly.  The controller advised me that there were in fact two jobs to be collected, and asked if I would be happy to do them both. He explained that, in addition to the one for Stafford, which was urgent, and had to be taken immediately, the other was for a factory in Plymouth, and was to be there by 8.0am.  It was as I made my way down the M5 calculating where I would need to leave the motorway to find fuel and somewhere to spend the night, that I recalled that former occasion when I had made roughly the same triangular journey, but in the opposite direction.  This time, the distance would have been slightly shorter, had it not been for a phone call on Wednesday morning, as I headed up the A303 past Andover.  I was diverted to a night club in Bournemouth, to collect three air-conditioning units for delivery in Hemel Hampstead on my way home.

The rest of the week was pleasantly gentle, finishing this afternoon with the collection of an electrical generator, to go to a building site in Ashford, Kent.  As I approached the delivery point, I puzzled over the detail of the address, "Ashford W-T-W".  It wasn't until I passed the safety warnings about deep excavations, that I noticed those key words, "Wastewater Treatment Works", and my mind whizzed back to April 2009, when I had followed a narrow lane alongside the A1 between Doncaster and Pontefract to a similar site at Wrangbrook.  The situation there, though similar in purpose, was completely different.  Today, I went down a dark leafy lane; on that occasion the lane, though narrow, was on an open hillside in brilliant sunshine, and I was delivering some chemicals to aid the repair of the concrete tanks.

I thought it then a unique - if uninspiring - experience to be able to report that I'd been to a sewage works.  Twice this week I've learned that - though one might have to wait five or six years - even the most unusual can come round again in this bizarre lifestyle.