What's in a Community?

I've been thinking a lot this week about communities.  It all started on Saturday, as I returned from watching a football match in a nearby town. During my eight-mile drive home, I thought about how much I'd enjoyed the game, and then recalled that the winning team - like many these days - was drawn not from the local community but from a pool of known talent that is transferred from team to team as finances and careers in the sport rise and fall: as skills wax and wane.  By then I was passing through a large village, and passed a couple of men outside the pub, chatting over a late afternoon drink.  I remembered the meal I'd shared with my son a couple of weeks ago, while watching another football match on TV, and I realised what a place sport has in community life, whether it is live, as I'd just enjoyed, or secondary as we'd experienced on that occasion.  I found myself regretting what seemed to be the single shortcoming of my present lifestyle: the absence of a village ambience.

After a relaxing bank holiday weekend (made more so by typical bank holiday weather, which greatly discouraged any going out!), on Tuesday morning I found myself once again in that mid-Bedfordshire countryside, passing through two villages on my way to deliver in a third.  In one, I saw a large open space where, on sunny summer weekdays, as well as at the weekend, it's quite likely there'll be a cricket match in progress.  My delivery was to a pleasant cottage opposite the church; I've been there a number of times, and always marvel at the many antique items that clutter the yard.  It would be a little boy's exploratory heaven!  I wondered about the owner and his history, presuming him to be a former businessman, now able to indulge a passion for such things while spending his retirement in these very pleasant surroundings.

A particularly straight road led through the third village, and from some way off I could see a postman walking from house to house with his deliveries. There was no one else to be seen; it was calm and the quiet was interrupted only by my passing van.  And yet, was this place the idyll I had first imagined? I could see no shops; the nearest doctor was probably some miles away, and for someone without a car, what public transport would be available?  I had seen no school, but towards the end of the school holidays, I hadn't seen any children either.  Without children, where was the vitality of the village?  I noticed some building going on at the edge of the village, but would these be executive dwellings for wealthy people seeking a country retreat in their middle age?  Or would they be the affordable homes that would make it possible for the village's own young people to remain there to strengthen the community?

Today I was offered the chance of a delivery in Norfolk - something I rarely turn down - and loyalty to my native county earned its reward.  I found myself driving through Breckland's narrow lanes (with passing places!) between high hedges, with an occasional gap through which you can see for miles across arable land, meadows, and in the distance are more hedges. Between the few market towns are lots of villages, one after another, each with its shop, a pub sometimes indicating a declining clientele by its need for a lick of paint, its medieval church, and the houses: some of red brick, some of flint, but many more built of a combination of the two.

The former station at East Rudham,
which saw its last train in 1967 after
closing to passengers 2nd March 1959

Many a village has a Station Road which shows no sign of station nor relic of railway, until suddenly, in the middle of the countryside a steep incline is encountered and here is a house by the site of a level crossing, showing those unique characteristics that denote a former station, that served a number of villages and yet wasn't really in any of them.  Some of these sites have retained one or both of the original platforms, but between them now is a footpath instead of sleepers and rails, and in the middle distance a barred gate, beyond which is someone else's section of the former railway.

History, Near and Far

It's a great benefit, and also an indispensible necessity, of a life on the road to listen to radio programmes - either directly or by podcast.  Yesterday morning, for example, I enjoyed the first of Sue MacGregor's new series of The Reunion on BBC-Radio4, which featured a number of people who had been involved in the Berlin Airlift.  Following the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, all the needs of a city of 2.2 million people had to be supplied by air.  The blockade lasted from June 1948 until May 1949, but the flights continued until September, finishing only a few months before I was born.  At its peak a cargo plane was landing in Berlin every minute, round the clock!

Like many today, I had known little about these dramatic events before the programme, and drove happily along, learning something new every minute. At one point a piece of contemporary music was played, and my mind zoomed straight back to schooldays or beyond.  For some reason I remembered in particular times when I was ill and confined to bed, the monotonous hours being filled with countless loaned copies of comics and other magazines, like Reveille and Weekend.

In my spare time over the last couple of weeks, I've been compiling an annotated transcript of a diary that I kept about fifteen years ago.  As the words were copied from handwritten page to computer screen, the events that they narrated needed little prompting to seem quite real in my mind.  As I listened to this radio programme, and remembered my childhood, I began to think about the general adult conversation that would have been going on around me in those days.  If my vivid memories of fifteen years ago are any guide, it's quite likely that some of the events of at least that time-span would have figured in those childhood echoes - fifteen years, for example would have gone back at least to the war years.  I wrote here only a few weeks ago, for example, about how I 'grew up in the knowledge that my mother's brother had been a victim of the war': he had died on the Burma Railway in 1943. What I don't remember is any specific instance of being told that fact.  Like the language itself, I learned it by hearing conversation.

At the other extreme of the historical continuum, let me give you just a smattering of this working week.  It caught my eye as I recorded the details this morning - and it has to be a first, because I'm sure I would have spotted it, had it not been so - that in a week of five days, there were fifteen jobs: one on Monday, two on Tuesday, three on Wednesday ... you get the idea; and the aggregate daily income forecast was also in line in the same way.  On Thursday evening, I finished with a delivery at Rolls Royce in Derby.  It's one that I've done many times now, and every time - except the first, of course! - I've derived great satisfaction that, on such a vast and complex site, I know exactly where to go, and can find it first time without a lot of hunting around for the right access point.

The aspect of the job that fits in with this week's historical theme, however, came on the journey home.  I was listening to a programme about trials at the Old Bailey, presented by Prof. Amanda Vickery, and realised that this was a repeat of what I had heard only twelve-and-a half hours before.  As the programme advanced, I found I could remember almost tree by tree where I had been driving on the former occasion.

I'm fascinated to note how history, in so many different ways, is all around us.

Spot ... the Difference!

That title deliberately has a gap in the middle.  First of all about the Spot.  All of CitiSprint's vehicles are tracked; that is to say, all the PDAs in them are tracked, so the controllers can see on their screens exactly how far each job has got towards its destination, enabling up to the minute reports to be provided to anxious senders without the expense and delay of a phone call to the driver.  They can be 'spotted' on the screen.  The controllers can also spot other vehicles than their own who happen to be in their area.   It's quite beneficial to the drivers, too.  That's how I got the job in Ipswich that I mentioned last week.  Read on, then, as I describe more of this Difference from what I've become used to over the last twelve years.

On Monday morning, I was trundling gently up the M1 on my way to central Milton Keynes with a couple of rolls of insulation for an office block that's being refurbished.  The phone rang, and I was asked if I had been allocated anything else to follow this job once I'd delivered.  My negative was met by a further question, "How far would you like to go?"  The throwaway reply, that my preference was north, and as far as you like, couldn't have been better suited to what came next.  An hour later, I was indeed heading north, with two small parcels of books, one for Chester-le-Street, the other for Johnstone, Renfrewshire.  I was delayed at the first one, but was reassured about the level of driver support available after finding no one at home.  Once permission had been secured to leave the parcel with a neighbour, the search was on to find such a person.  No one responded to my knock at the three houses on either side, and I could find no obvious access to the back door.  Then I spotted a window in the house opposite that was open far wider than merely for ventilation, as were some of the others nearby.  There had to be someone at home there!  Indeed there was, and within minutes I was on my way once more.

The more distant delivery was simplicity itself, for the householder was home from work by the time I arrived.  What's more, the rain had stopped - although more was clearly on its way.  I defied the last tail-swish of Hurricane Bertha, and by 10.0 I'd secured a meal and a room at the truck-stop on the outskirts of Carlisle.  I left at 7.0 am for an uneventful journey home, during which I may have been spotted, but without the reaction of being assigned any further activity.  My office called me as I drew close, and when I explained that I would appreciate an hour or so to gather my thoughts and deal with personal 'stuff' before being available, I was invited to ring in when that might be ... which I did.

About an hour later came a call from one of the 'new' staff there.  He began with an apology for disturbing me on a day when I was clearly not working. My protest that I was indeed working, and had phoned in as available, was met by a passing comment about 'there's nothing in your file,' and he went on to ask the query that had prompted the call.  I had some papers with me that I'd intended to deliver to the office on Monday afternoon, and now took them there, since there seemed to be no work coming my way.  As I handed them over, I enquired about that comment 'nothing in my file', and was shown a blank square on the controller's screen, where any jobs that I'd done that day would have appeared.  Since I'd spent virtually all day driving home from Scotland, it was empty.  It's an indicator that there's a whole new language out there that I and others will have to assimilate in the coming months!

The week then unfolded quite normally.  Yesterday morning I was given a job to Holbeach, and as I drew near, I decided to call the nearest office to see if they might have something for me to run onto once I'd delivered.  I was told they hadn't.  Not to worry, I thought, nothing ventured ...   I'd not gone more than a couple of miles on my homeward journey when a job appeared on my screen, to collect from a hospital in Boston for a destination in Skegness.  It seemed simple, but rarely have I been so wrong in my assessment.  I won't bore you with the detailed steps of my dealing with one problem after another, but a simple summary will suffice.

I thought I was collecting from the hospital - I wasn't; I was supposed to be meeting a delivery driver from a medical firm, who was also delivering there. I thought the job had come from the local office whom I had called earlier - it hadn't; it had come from another office, miles away, who'd spotted me in the right location. It transpired that this delivery was to a leisure park for a holidaymaker who wasn't going to arrive until today.  Once again, driver support was excellent, as I waited for about an hour and a half while the details of this circumstance slowly unfolded, drip by agonising drip. Meanwhile, I was parked in the middle of a car park that was getting busier by the minute, and began to be of concern to the security guard, who had to come and ask me to move on a couple of occasions.  At last, agreement was achieved, whereby the goods were lodged with the reception staff, who were none too pleased that no one had had the courtesy to forewarn them of the circumstances surrounding this particular guest and his essential needs.

I was home by tea time, calm, satisfied ... and a whole lot wiser!  What revelations will next week bring?

Settling in and, incidentally, a Pair of Bristols!

It's true what they say about familiar things.  I remember when my own children were young, sitting in church and being intrigued by the way that one particular toddler was accompanied every week by a certain blanket, which seemed to get grubbier from one appearance to the next.  He just loved to chew one corner of it, and I suppose his mum realised that it brought him comfort.  Hence it always came with the family to church.

Thus, I am pleased to report that the Repeating Genie has made the same enforced leap with me under the umbrella of the new(-to-us) company.  For quite a while earlier in the year, it seemed that my use of the Dartford Crossing and the accompanying 'beep' of the electronic device in my van was confined to one journey towards the beginning of each month.  The last of the pattern was on 2nd June.  Now, in three weeks, I've made four expeditions to the nominal 'Garden of England' ... and most of them to the same small area!

During the last week before the Great Upheaval, I made a collection from Meopham; last week brought a delivery in Swanscombe, and now this week came four successive jobs, delivering in Frindsbury and collecting in Sidcup on Thursday, followed the next morning by a delivery in Northfleet and a collection from Greenhithe - Great to have you on board, RG!

In other news (as they say - infuriatingly in my opinion - on the radio), I made my first visit for ages to Bristol on Monday, delivering to Southmead hospital before returning just in time to join in the national hype over the First World War centenary.  I had warned my bell-ringing friends that, if I weren't working, I would be attending a commemorative service at All Saints', our sister church.  This is a lovely medieval church in one of the villages upon which this First Garden City was founded in 1903, and was the perfect venue for the occasion.  As well as a solemn and prayerful recollection of what it means to be at war, it afforded an opportunity to obtain a copy of a little booklet prepared by one of the stalwarts of that church, containing a brief biography of each of the men named on the war memorial outside.

On Wednesday came a reflection of the more recent past.  I made a delivery to the offices of a large factory on the outskirts of Spalding.  Last time I was there it was for a collection, and the goods were not ready.  While I waited, I was engaged in conversation by the receptionist.  I mentioned how long I'd been in this work, and how I couldn't imagine working once more in an office; she took up the driving theme, and spoke of her apprehension about her upcoming driving test.  This week I was met by the same young lady. Unsurprisingly, she showed no recognition of me; after all, that was six months ago, and the uniform was different.  I did wonder, however, whether she's now happily driving or still worrying about it.  Somehow, in a brief exchange of parcels for signature, it didn't seem appropriate to mention it.

The latter part of the week brought a degree of frustration.  As if the PDA problems I described last week weren't enough, there have also been difficulties getting access to the website where the drivers can look at, and download, our self-billed invoices.  Finally, through the courtesy of one of the interim staff sending me an e-mailed copy, this hurdle was crossed, only to be followed by annoyance that the funds resulting from last week's endeavours hadn't found their way into my bank account.  The same e-mail had also asked me to provide a selection of personal and vehicle documentation to be copied for the new company's records so, as I complied with this request, I took the opportunity to enquire after the money.  It transpired that - despite the numerous occasions I've quoted the data in the twenty-plus years I've had the account - I'd managed to make a mistake in providing my bank account details!  Happily this has now been corrected, and a more successful transfer should be completed early next week.

To provide balance, there was also a foretaste of the benefits of the change in management of our business.  Yesterday lunchtime I was sent to a small industrial estate just outside Stowmarket; I'd just completed the job, and was making my way to a nearby garage to get some coffee, when a new voice came on the phone.  This was the controller in Norwich, who wondered if I might like to pop down to Ipswich to collect some paper for a printing firm in Hertford.  If technology were sufficiently advanced, I would have shook the man's hand!   I collected in a lovely sunny interval between the heavy showers, and then was lucky enough to find another such interval in which to deliver, following which I was tentatively asked whether I'd like more work in the evening.  Having been on the road since 6.0 am with only a short admin. break, I declined, and the weekend began.

The week ended in fine style today, with a visit from my son, armed with the necessary equipment to upgrade my computer system.  This was an exercise which, of necessity, involved a visit to a nearby hostelry, where my weekly desire for football viewing was satisfied by the SkySports broadcast of Sheffield United's opening League One home game of the new season, a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Bristol City, playing in a dazzling purple and lime away strip - strange colours for Robins!

... Plus c'est la même Chose!

I was going to head this post 'All Change', and then I realised that not everything has changed.

Nearly forty years ago, the MD of my then employers announced to the workforce that he had sold the firm to an American company.  This company's UK subsidiary had been one of our suppliers, and the event led directly to personal excitement for me, as I was one of two employees delegated to visit this operation in Southampton.  Part of the deal was that as we became part of this international group, we would incorporate their present UK distribution into our manufacturing base.  The mission assigned to the two of us was to absorb in a week the key elements of their operation, so that we could help to ensure that business would continue as smoothly as possible following their move to Norfolk.

As he made this announcement, our fatherly MD, who had founded the firm in the late 'fifties, explained that, as he drew closer to his own retirement, he had decided to preserve the business from similar 'decay' by selling his interest in it ... not that that meant his departure!  He was still to be seen pottering about the place, doing lots of otherwise neglected administrative 'chores' for years afterwards.

I learned last week that our courier firm has now suffered from the same 'preservative'.  Fast forward ten years from the narrative above to a time when the print industry was undergoing great change, covered by the general term 'new technology'.  This was a change of which I witnessed the tail end during my year working for the publisher of a number of local newspapers. Technology change has been our fate this week, as we have seen an overnight switch from what had been an essentially manual operation to the sophisticated digital system demanded by a nationwide organisation.  In addition to new uniform and new faces, we have had to get used to recording our movements and collecting signatures on a hand-held device (I've still not learned what the term PDA actually means!)

I'm sure I've not been the only one to experience 'teething troubles' with these machines.  At first it was like driving in a daze, dealing with the usual traffic hazards while keeping an eye on my new dashboard companion lest it should try to tell me something.  Every time that a message does arrive, twenty loud pips are generated, jarring you out of any distant thoughts; and can I read black text on a red field in this week's strong sunlight?  I leave you to guess that one!  Other problems have included losing the signal, so there's no digital connection ... even where there was ten minutes ago ... and the consequent adventure of re-booting the PDA; and the sad occasion when I mis-remembered which button is where on the tiny screen, and accidentally deleted the signature I'd just collected!

Despite these 'improvements', I've managed to clock up nineteen jobs this week, although the majority of them have been fairly short range.  The only ones worthy of note were to King's Lynn on Tuesday, to a village in Derbyshire called Loscoe on Wednesday, to the centre of Derby itself on Thursday, and to Norwich yesterday evening.  We now have to await an internet glitch being overcome so that we can address the website to download our invoices next week.  I have to say, however, that the courtesy and helpfulness of the company staff who have descended on our office this week have been superb - so far as my own experience is concerned, that is.  It must be much worse for the office staff, who have new computer systems to contend with in order, not only to process all the work from their existing customers, but also to link in with other depots across the country.  I'm glad - once more - that my office days are over!