I've been thinking about light this week; and that, of course, includes lights, and more philosophical enlightenment, too.
On Monday and Tuesday I wasn't working. Instead my attention was focussed on a hospital appointment on Tuesday afternoon, when I underwent a colonoscopy procedure. As you may know, this involves a camera, and normally cameras don't operate without light. There was also light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, when the doctor announced at the end of it that he had found nothing. Until that moment, I hadn't realised how anxious I had been about this beneath the surface, but suddenly there came a feeling of great relief, as if someone had switched on a great light!
The sky on Thursday evening was riven with more lights, as lots of fireworks were let off to mark Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. I was a little apprehensive, since I had to get up early yesterday morning, but fortunately my bedroom is on the opposite side from the 'noisy quarter', and I was undisturbed.
You may think it strange, but I like driving in the evening, at night, or in the early morning. For one thing it's usually more peaceful, but often there is beauty to be seen, too. I remember one night driving home from Scotland along the A68, where a straight road on the map is actually so up and down that at times it looked as if I were driving straight at the full moon. On another occasion, I had set off early for a destination up the A1, and was able to delight in the sunrise over my right wing-mirror.
Yesterday's early departure was for Avonmouth and Weston-super-Mare, but the illumination wasn't provided by sunrise, but by a car on fire on the hard shoulder of the M25. Now when I say on fire, it wasn't just a plume of smoke, although that was there as well; there were flames shooting high into the sky, and the heat was quite intense as I passed in the second lane. It looked - thankfully - as if driver and passengers were safely standing by another vehicle some way off.
As dawn was breaking my mind was on a totally different kind of light ... or rather the lack of it. The news bulletins reported the story of the requirement by the EU of an additional contribution of £1.7 billion from the UK, according to the headlines because of our increased productivity. The main item revealed that this was actually the result of revised calculations under terms agreed nearly twenty years ago, but you wouldn't think so to hear some of the politicians interviewed, who were quick to make party capital out of the news. Terms like 'an extra tax', 'an illegal tax' were heard; later bulletins reported our PM bemoaning the short notice - which I feel is valid - but then going on to grumble about being asked to pay more anyway, when in previous years we benefitted from a rebate ... which presumably was not so objectionable. At least the interviews in this morning's news programme were more reasoned and understanding of what is going on. However, I do wish this country would for once get a grip on the fact that it is PART OF EUROPE, instead of always belly-aching about THEM and US as two sides of a constant battle!
While controversy reigns, let's turn back to the hospital I visited at the beginning of the week, where I couldn't have received better treatment ... as has always been the case. What a shame that nurses and other public sector employees were taking industrial action last week about pay. I confess to a degree of enlightenment there myself: I hadn't realised that these people earn so little that they can't afford to keep their families. I suppose, because my income fluctuates as much as it does, I've lost any feeling for seeing the same figure week after week, knowing that it won't change until the next annual review. Over the past quarter, for example, my highest weekly income was more than twice the lowest; and the lowest figure wouldn't have been enough to meet the monthly rent on my flat, let alone cover my business expenses - of which fuel alone is nearly £8,000 a year! I guess it's all a matter of balance.
And having got all that off my chest, I notice it's time to change the clocks back to GMT tonight! It sort of puts things into a greater perspective, somehow ... and gives us a bit more light in the mornings!
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Friday, 17 October 2014
It's All in the Mind ... or Not!
I recognise that the phenomenon that I call the Repeating Genie, and about which I write often here, can be explained completely by the variety of matters that are passing through my mind at any one time, and the way this mixture promts me to notice and link certain things that are going on around me. Understanding this, you will recall that I wrote last week about the Genie taking on new guises; this week I spotted another new one. I have made deliveries in and to a variety of strange places and recipients over the years, including on one occasion - which I wrote about here - to a piece of street furniture: a telephone 'cabinet'. At the beginning of last week, I delivered - for the first time, I'm sure - to a car park, more particularly the overheight car park at Heathrow Airport. A never-to-be-repeated occurrence? Not a bit of it! This Tuesday saw an almost parallel occasion, when I took some security equipment to the office on the sixth floor of a municipal multi-storey car park in one of our east Midland towns. The moral: never underestimate the power of the Genie!
Wednesday was 'words' day. On Tuesday evening, I got around to attending to something that has niggled me for months. I noticed that on my new hi-viz vest there were a number of long threads where the seams had been untidily stitched, and each time I saw them I remembered that I'd planned to snip them off. Like so many things, this had been put off until the next time I saw them ... and again ... until Tuesday evening when the deed was done. I entered the lounge on Wednesday morning, saw the hi-viz laying on the sideboard, ready alongside my lunch for my departure to the van, and a word came into my mind as straight from my father's lips. What I had cut off that garment the previous evening were fraisles, at least that's how I've written it; I've never seen the word in print, but I remember dad talking about the old, thin jacket he would wear for work in the summer time, how the cuffs had become frayed, and would need the fraisles taken off.
Many of the old Suffolk dialect words I've only ever heard from him, and I have suspicions that centuries ago they blew across the North Sea. I could even picture this one spelled in the original language as 'frayzel', but when I looked for anything similar in my Dutch dictionary there was no sign of it. Another such word, one that I'm convinced did come that way, was the 'bate' that was given to horses to eat in the morning. It was also used for the worker's breakfast. They used to start work at 6.0 in the summer time, and the horsemen even earlier, so by 9.0 (the traditional hour for breakfast) they would be getting hungry. Many years later, in the course of my work I discovered the Dutch expression for 'bed and breakfast': 'overnachting en ontbijt', and I felt I'd found the origin of the 'bate', since the Dutch 'ij' is pronounced like the flat 'a' of plate.
Later that morning I found myself driving along the motorway behind a van bearing the slogan "Services for your patients and their caregivers". Here was another strange word, I thought. Carers are common, but what are 'caregivers' and how might the two differ? My mind was once again scampering through the pages of the dictionary. If carers and caregivers were one and the same, then this slogan was certainly correct, however strange it might seem, because that's what carers do: they give care. Then I went on to think about people taking care of others, and how that, too, meant the same thing rather than the opposite: taking care as opposed to giving care, and yet meaning the same. And what about caretakers? Yes, I suppose they take care - or give care - in the same way, but more usually of buildings than people. Perhaps it was as well for my sanity that it was about then that I reached my destination.
This afternoon really took the biscuit. It was a reminder of another party to the whole courier scenario. We've got the sender, and the receiver, who is usually the sender's customer, or sometimes the sender's customer's customer. And then there are those occasions when we deliver directly from the sender's supplier to his customer. Rarely, if ever, do we have to consider the sender's customer's host. It was coming up to 5.30, and I had a pallet of printed matter to get rid of before people went home for the weekend. The address I had was clear, <name of consignee> Unit 3 <streetname>. Unfortunately, there were two separate Unit 3s in that street and which one came first? Yep, the wrong 'un. I'm not saying there was a connection, but by the time I found the right place, it looked very shut up.
But hey, there's a board outside with the right name on. At least that confirms it's the right place, and it's one of those flappy signs that stand outside on the pavement ... and the reception light is on ... and the door's ajar! Only it wasn't quite so my-lucky-day as it seemed. I walked into reception to see whether they had a fork truck they could get out and use. There was a sign on the desk and a bell push. All off a sudden, "WAAAIIIILLLL!" The alarm was sounding. I hesitated, looked around, listened ... no sound except that din outside. The Marie Celeste came to mind: there was no one around at all. After a minute or so, I went outside - no other door seemed remotely occupied. There was a phone no. above the door, so I rang it, got the predictable recording about 'leave a message and we'll get back to you', so I did, although it was obvious what was happening.
I'd just got through to my office to report the situation when the police car turned up. I told the controller I'd ring him back, and started explaining to the Sergeant what was going on, while her colleague looked around. Meanwhile another police car arrived, with two more officers, followed closely by two separate vehicles with the keyholders of the premises. Eventually the place was secured, the police satisfied, and then I piped up about my load of printed matter. The place was opened up again, and the two men helped me to unload the boxes. Then one of them exploded, "They're not even for us! Why couldn't he have told us he was expecting something?" I suggested that perhaps that was why the door had been left open ... . This only made things worse. "He hasn't been near the place all day," came the reply (indicating that it was this man's own colleague whose oversight had caused the problem). "He runs his business in a room that he rents from us. He's only here three days a week, and expects us to run around behind him for the rest of the time!"
So memo for the future ... beware the 4th party!
Wednesday was 'words' day. On Tuesday evening, I got around to attending to something that has niggled me for months. I noticed that on my new hi-viz vest there were a number of long threads where the seams had been untidily stitched, and each time I saw them I remembered that I'd planned to snip them off. Like so many things, this had been put off until the next time I saw them ... and again ... until Tuesday evening when the deed was done. I entered the lounge on Wednesday morning, saw the hi-viz laying on the sideboard, ready alongside my lunch for my departure to the van, and a word came into my mind as straight from my father's lips. What I had cut off that garment the previous evening were fraisles, at least that's how I've written it; I've never seen the word in print, but I remember dad talking about the old, thin jacket he would wear for work in the summer time, how the cuffs had become frayed, and would need the fraisles taken off.
Many of the old Suffolk dialect words I've only ever heard from him, and I have suspicions that centuries ago they blew across the North Sea. I could even picture this one spelled in the original language as 'frayzel', but when I looked for anything similar in my Dutch dictionary there was no sign of it. Another such word, one that I'm convinced did come that way, was the 'bate' that was given to horses to eat in the morning. It was also used for the worker's breakfast. They used to start work at 6.0 in the summer time, and the horsemen even earlier, so by 9.0 (the traditional hour for breakfast) they would be getting hungry. Many years later, in the course of my work I discovered the Dutch expression for 'bed and breakfast': 'overnachting en ontbijt', and I felt I'd found the origin of the 'bate', since the Dutch 'ij' is pronounced like the flat 'a' of plate.
Later that morning I found myself driving along the motorway behind a van bearing the slogan "Services for your patients and their caregivers". Here was another strange word, I thought. Carers are common, but what are 'caregivers' and how might the two differ? My mind was once again scampering through the pages of the dictionary. If carers and caregivers were one and the same, then this slogan was certainly correct, however strange it might seem, because that's what carers do: they give care. Then I went on to think about people taking care of others, and how that, too, meant the same thing rather than the opposite: taking care as opposed to giving care, and yet meaning the same. And what about caretakers? Yes, I suppose they take care - or give care - in the same way, but more usually of buildings than people. Perhaps it was as well for my sanity that it was about then that I reached my destination.
This afternoon really took the biscuit. It was a reminder of another party to the whole courier scenario. We've got the sender, and the receiver, who is usually the sender's customer, or sometimes the sender's customer's customer. And then there are those occasions when we deliver directly from the sender's supplier to his customer. Rarely, if ever, do we have to consider the sender's customer's host. It was coming up to 5.30, and I had a pallet of printed matter to get rid of before people went home for the weekend. The address I had was clear, <name of consignee> Unit 3 <streetname>. Unfortunately, there were two separate Unit 3s in that street and which one came first? Yep, the wrong 'un. I'm not saying there was a connection, but by the time I found the right place, it looked very shut up.
But hey, there's a board outside with the right name on. At least that confirms it's the right place, and it's one of those flappy signs that stand outside on the pavement ... and the reception light is on ... and the door's ajar! Only it wasn't quite so my-lucky-day as it seemed. I walked into reception to see whether they had a fork truck they could get out and use. There was a sign on the desk and a bell push. All off a sudden, "WAAAIIIILLLL!" The alarm was sounding. I hesitated, looked around, listened ... no sound except that din outside. The Marie Celeste came to mind: there was no one around at all. After a minute or so, I went outside - no other door seemed remotely occupied. There was a phone no. above the door, so I rang it, got the predictable recording about 'leave a message and we'll get back to you', so I did, although it was obvious what was happening.
I'd just got through to my office to report the situation when the police car turned up. I told the controller I'd ring him back, and started explaining to the Sergeant what was going on, while her colleague looked around. Meanwhile another police car arrived, with two more officers, followed closely by two separate vehicles with the keyholders of the premises. Eventually the place was secured, the police satisfied, and then I piped up about my load of printed matter. The place was opened up again, and the two men helped me to unload the boxes. Then one of them exploded, "They're not even for us! Why couldn't he have told us he was expecting something?" I suggested that perhaps that was why the door had been left open ... . This only made things worse. "He hasn't been near the place all day," came the reply (indicating that it was this man's own colleague whose oversight had caused the problem). "He runs his business in a room that he rents from us. He's only here three days a week, and expects us to run around behind him for the rest of the time!"
So memo for the future ... beware the 4th party!
Saturday, 11 October 2014
One End of a Week ... and the Other
Although I didn't realise it at the time, last weekend I was in the midst of a unique (so far) series of jobs. My old friend the Repeating Genie had adopted a new guise and, in the space of just four days, I did no less than six jobs for one particular customer in nearby Stotfold. It's not uncommon for the same job to be repeated a number of times within a few weeks, if a customer is fulfilling a protracted delivery schedule; in fact, it makes sense for the same driver to be used, because after the first time the location and personnel are familiar and provide continuity for the customer and increased satisfaction for the driver. But amongst these six were four different jobs, and all for the same customer.
It began last Thursday afternoon, when I delivered several bundles of part-finished items from our customer's premises to a firm in Bedford to have further work carried out on them; this job was repeated on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, my first job on Friday was to collect for them from a firm in Walsall (this was the pallet whose securing I extolled in my post last week). Monday morning's activities included the collection of materials for them from a warehouse in Bicester, upon delivery of which I collected the second load of part-processed items for Bedford, and the same thing happened at lunchtime on Tuesday, when I delivered materials I had brought for them from the delightfully-named Hampton Lovett in Worcestershire.
When the same roads figure again and again in the course of a few days' work, the mind tends to wander, and I think it was Tuesday when my eye caught a row of council houses in the village of Moggerhanger ... houses past which I must have driven hundreds of times on my way to and from Bedford. My mind went back to the estate where my cousin and I grew up in adjoining streets of such houses in Norfolk. I had often compared my home to my cousin's, without particularly wondering about the reasons for the differences between them, beyond the fact that one was about three years older than the other. I now questioned whether these that I was now passing might be the same layout as either of those houses with which I had been familiar in childhood, or of yet another design. From the outside, the style of windows and brickwork seemed to cry out "late-'forties-early-'fifties", i.e. dating from the same era as our early homes.
My father was a farm worker, and ours was one of six houses built around a small roundabout that were said to be specifically 'for farm workers'. On one hand, their designation for this purpose could simply have been to relieve the pressure caused by farmers no longer willing to provide tied cottages for their workers. On the other hand, I failed to see any way in which the design of those dwellings could provide for any specific needs of farm workers as opposed to tenants engaged in any other occupation: after all, their work would be carried out on the farm, not at home! The basic difference between my cousin's home and my own was that their kitchen extended from the back of the house into a living area with a window to the front, whereas our kitchen was confined to the rear, and the corresponding front window was in a totally separate room. Both houses had another living room stretching from front to back on the opposite side of a central hallway.
The puzzles of the past must remain there. Meanwhile I'm aware that recent posts here have neglected the minutiae of my daily assignments throughout the week. This is almost certainly a good thing, but let me just give you an insight into the variety - and busy-ness - of yesterday. When I went to Ireland the other week I had missed an evening training session. While I fundamentally disapprove of training in our own time, rather than during the day, I would have gone along with everyone else had I not been elsewhere. However, yesterday I was invited to rectify this lost opportunity once I'd completed two early jobs. I was half-way through the 'excitement' of learning how to prevent medicines becoming contaminated or spilt whilst in my custody, when the controller begged the trainer to release me in order to satisfy a particular job that was becoming urgent owing to the mysterious habit of manufacturing firms to leave off early on Friday afternoons. You'll not be surprised to know that this didn't exactly disappoint me.
On my way back from this, I was diverted to another job which is a daily regular, although I haven't done it for some weeks. Sadly the security officer at this establishment was a stand-in, and neither he nor I knew the specific detail that no one had told him, i.e. whom he should call when I arrived to collect parcels for an international forwarding company. Overcoming this deficiency involved several phone calls and took quite a while, and once the job had been successfully completed, any idea of resuming the training session was far from anyone's thoughts, as the end of a busy day drew ever nearer. I was asked whether I would be available for more work; when I said I would, I was offered a choice of two jobs to East Anglia, or a combination of Tyneside and Edinburgh. Having no desperate commitments today, I decided to choose the longer distance.
After also collecting a Tender for delivery in Southampton on Monday, I made hasty preparations for a night out, and found myself taking two items to a delightfully-designed (from what I could see by street lighting and moonlight) modern housing complex in Gateshead, and then delivering two stents to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This latter job was, strangely, accompanied by an instruction to call a mobile no. when I arrived. I did so, expecting the answer to come from someone within the hospital who would then emerge to take charge of the goods. Not so. My interlocutor explained that he was, in fact, in Paris; he simply advised that I should make my way to the Emergency Entrance, one place where he knew I would be able to obtain access to the hospital. Here I was given the necessary directions to the theatre suite, where I made my delivery, but I then had to overcome the difficulties presented by one-way doors only negotiable in the opposite direction by staff with the appropriate electronic pass! Amazingly, I eventually emerged nearer to my van than I had entered, and at 2.0 am began my slow journey home, interrupted by the anticipated stops for sleep and food, and food and sleep as nature dictated.
It began last Thursday afternoon, when I delivered several bundles of part-finished items from our customer's premises to a firm in Bedford to have further work carried out on them; this job was repeated on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, my first job on Friday was to collect for them from a firm in Walsall (this was the pallet whose securing I extolled in my post last week). Monday morning's activities included the collection of materials for them from a warehouse in Bicester, upon delivery of which I collected the second load of part-processed items for Bedford, and the same thing happened at lunchtime on Tuesday, when I delivered materials I had brought for them from the delightfully-named Hampton Lovett in Worcestershire.
When the same roads figure again and again in the course of a few days' work, the mind tends to wander, and I think it was Tuesday when my eye caught a row of council houses in the village of Moggerhanger ... houses past which I must have driven hundreds of times on my way to and from Bedford. My mind went back to the estate where my cousin and I grew up in adjoining streets of such houses in Norfolk. I had often compared my home to my cousin's, without particularly wondering about the reasons for the differences between them, beyond the fact that one was about three years older than the other. I now questioned whether these that I was now passing might be the same layout as either of those houses with which I had been familiar in childhood, or of yet another design. From the outside, the style of windows and brickwork seemed to cry out "late-'forties-early-'fifties", i.e. dating from the same era as our early homes.
My father was a farm worker, and ours was one of six houses built around a small roundabout that were said to be specifically 'for farm workers'. On one hand, their designation for this purpose could simply have been to relieve the pressure caused by farmers no longer willing to provide tied cottages for their workers. On the other hand, I failed to see any way in which the design of those dwellings could provide for any specific needs of farm workers as opposed to tenants engaged in any other occupation: after all, their work would be carried out on the farm, not at home! The basic difference between my cousin's home and my own was that their kitchen extended from the back of the house into a living area with a window to the front, whereas our kitchen was confined to the rear, and the corresponding front window was in a totally separate room. Both houses had another living room stretching from front to back on the opposite side of a central hallway.
The puzzles of the past must remain there. Meanwhile I'm aware that recent posts here have neglected the minutiae of my daily assignments throughout the week. This is almost certainly a good thing, but let me just give you an insight into the variety - and busy-ness - of yesterday. When I went to Ireland the other week I had missed an evening training session. While I fundamentally disapprove of training in our own time, rather than during the day, I would have gone along with everyone else had I not been elsewhere. However, yesterday I was invited to rectify this lost opportunity once I'd completed two early jobs. I was half-way through the 'excitement' of learning how to prevent medicines becoming contaminated or spilt whilst in my custody, when the controller begged the trainer to release me in order to satisfy a particular job that was becoming urgent owing to the mysterious habit of manufacturing firms to leave off early on Friday afternoons. You'll not be surprised to know that this didn't exactly disappoint me.
On my way back from this, I was diverted to another job which is a daily regular, although I haven't done it for some weeks. Sadly the security officer at this establishment was a stand-in, and neither he nor I knew the specific detail that no one had told him, i.e. whom he should call when I arrived to collect parcels for an international forwarding company. Overcoming this deficiency involved several phone calls and took quite a while, and once the job had been successfully completed, any idea of resuming the training session was far from anyone's thoughts, as the end of a busy day drew ever nearer. I was asked whether I would be available for more work; when I said I would, I was offered a choice of two jobs to East Anglia, or a combination of Tyneside and Edinburgh. Having no desperate commitments today, I decided to choose the longer distance.
After also collecting a Tender for delivery in Southampton on Monday, I made hasty preparations for a night out, and found myself taking two items to a delightfully-designed (from what I could see by street lighting and moonlight) modern housing complex in Gateshead, and then delivering two stents to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This latter job was, strangely, accompanied by an instruction to call a mobile no. when I arrived. I did so, expecting the answer to come from someone within the hospital who would then emerge to take charge of the goods. Not so. My interlocutor explained that he was, in fact, in Paris; he simply advised that I should make my way to the Emergency Entrance, one place where he knew I would be able to obtain access to the hospital. Here I was given the necessary directions to the theatre suite, where I made my delivery, but I then had to overcome the difficulties presented by one-way doors only negotiable in the opposite direction by staff with the appropriate electronic pass! Amazingly, I eventually emerged nearer to my van than I had entered, and at 2.0 am began my slow journey home, interrupted by the anticipated stops for sleep and food, and food and sleep as nature dictated.
Saturday, 4 October 2014
Where Were You?
It's become something of a cliché in the last fifty years. Where were you when Kennedy was shot/Elvis died/war was declared/whatever? Until quite recently, there were only two of those questions to which I could provide an answer. I remember where I was when I heard the first news of the Seven Day War in 1967 - sitting in the school library, talking to about five others, of whom I can remember only one by name. And I remember where I was when I heard the first news of the 9/11 bombings - sitting in my office in Royston, when a colleague returned from lunch, having seen the live newsreel on TV.
I realised this week that I can add a third momentous event to that catalogue.
It's funny, isn't it, how one thought leads to another and that one to another and so on until, as a friend said after reading one of my magazine articles, "I had to go back and read it all again because I just couldn't believe how you'd got from the opening comment to the final conclusion!"
Yesterday morning, I had to make a collection from an industrial unit in Walsall. It was one of those estates that is divided into blocks, presumably according to the original stages in the development of the site. The address I had was 'Unit 2A' so, quite reasonably, I thought, I'd look for unit 2, and would find it divided into two or more parts. There was no sign of unit 2. Eventually I came upon a map: an essential component of every industrial estate in my experience. Here I discovered that there were five parts of the estate - A, B, C, D and E. I had already passed the entrance to part A, assuming incorrectly that it was all one large premises, and noticing that it didn't bear the name of the firm I was looking for. By the time I'd back-tracked and located unit 2 in this area, I was about five minutes behind my scheduled arrival time.
As I approached, two men were wrapping a pallet of goods more thoroughly than I think I've ever seen before, not only horizontally, but vertically too, with the pallet perched on the tines of the fork truck, and the men passing the roll of wrapping film from one to the other over and under it. Having confirmed that it was this pallet that I had arrived to collect, one of them promptly loaded it into my van, and ushered me inside to wait for the paperwork. As he did so, I commented on their thoroughness, referring to a very badly wrapped consignment I'd carried earlier in the week. In this case, the wrapping was applied very skimpily, once the goods had been piled on the pallet inside the van. "You're not going far," said the man, "you won't be braking suddenly, will you?" I had agreed that I shouldn't, but it wasn't the braking or not that was important. As I steered around the first roundabout, at only 8 mph, a 'whoosh, clunk' came from the rear of the van: the goods had already slipped off the pallet!
I stood in this Walsall unit, and looked around me. The whole place exuded that same care that those men had shown in their wrapping. The floor was clean, and the walls, too, apart from a few cobwebs far too high to be either reachable or any threat to what was going on beneath. The operator at the far end of the workshop, carrying on his task oblivious to my studious eye, seemed to be applying the full attention to detail to meet the requirements of the most fussy customer.
As I waited, taking in all around me, I considered just what management skills might be required to run a business in these difficult times, provide work for and appropriate rewards to at least two employees - perhaps more - and make a profit at the end of it all. Still the paperwork hadn't appeared, and my attention turned to the radio that was playing in the background. It was tuned to BBC Radio 2; by then it was coming up to 9.30 am, and Sara Cox, sitting in for Chris Evans this week, was handing over to Ken Bruce. Suddenly something flashed in my mind, and I remembered clearly where I was at 9.30 am on December 18th 2009.
I had just come to the end of one of those tricky, overnight jobs where you pick up the goods during the evening, and you know it's not really worth going home, because you'll only get a couple of hours' sleep before you need to be up to leave to drive across the country in order to make your delivery time. So you drive, slowly at first until it seems ridiculous, then normally; and you stop at an amazing number of services in order to get coffee, use the toilet or choose an attractive chocolate bar. You find a lay-by where you can grab a few minutes' sleep to keep safe for the rest of the night, and by 7.0 you get to your destination when there's no one about. You run the engine to keep warm, hoping that you don't disturb nearby residents. In between dozing, you see people going about their business as the town wakes up. Eventually someone comes and opens the shop ...
That morning I made my one and only ever delivery to a chemist's shop in Caernarfon, having purposely driven all the way up the A5 from Milton Keynes, knowing that it would take far longer than any normal route. And I listened to Radio 2 as I began the next leg of my 565-mile assignment, to collect from Liverpool for the same customer. I think that was the last morning I listened to Radio 2 - it just had no more appeal without that soft Limerick voice.
So, where were you when Sir Terry Wogan signed off for the last time?
I realised this week that I can add a third momentous event to that catalogue.
It's funny, isn't it, how one thought leads to another and that one to another and so on until, as a friend said after reading one of my magazine articles, "I had to go back and read it all again because I just couldn't believe how you'd got from the opening comment to the final conclusion!"
Yesterday morning, I had to make a collection from an industrial unit in Walsall. It was one of those estates that is divided into blocks, presumably according to the original stages in the development of the site. The address I had was 'Unit 2A' so, quite reasonably, I thought, I'd look for unit 2, and would find it divided into two or more parts. There was no sign of unit 2. Eventually I came upon a map: an essential component of every industrial estate in my experience. Here I discovered that there were five parts of the estate - A, B, C, D and E. I had already passed the entrance to part A, assuming incorrectly that it was all one large premises, and noticing that it didn't bear the name of the firm I was looking for. By the time I'd back-tracked and located unit 2 in this area, I was about five minutes behind my scheduled arrival time.
As I approached, two men were wrapping a pallet of goods more thoroughly than I think I've ever seen before, not only horizontally, but vertically too, with the pallet perched on the tines of the fork truck, and the men passing the roll of wrapping film from one to the other over and under it. Having confirmed that it was this pallet that I had arrived to collect, one of them promptly loaded it into my van, and ushered me inside to wait for the paperwork. As he did so, I commented on their thoroughness, referring to a very badly wrapped consignment I'd carried earlier in the week. In this case, the wrapping was applied very skimpily, once the goods had been piled on the pallet inside the van. "You're not going far," said the man, "you won't be braking suddenly, will you?" I had agreed that I shouldn't, but it wasn't the braking or not that was important. As I steered around the first roundabout, at only 8 mph, a 'whoosh, clunk' came from the rear of the van: the goods had already slipped off the pallet!
I stood in this Walsall unit, and looked around me. The whole place exuded that same care that those men had shown in their wrapping. The floor was clean, and the walls, too, apart from a few cobwebs far too high to be either reachable or any threat to what was going on beneath. The operator at the far end of the workshop, carrying on his task oblivious to my studious eye, seemed to be applying the full attention to detail to meet the requirements of the most fussy customer.
As I waited, taking in all around me, I considered just what management skills might be required to run a business in these difficult times, provide work for and appropriate rewards to at least two employees - perhaps more - and make a profit at the end of it all. Still the paperwork hadn't appeared, and my attention turned to the radio that was playing in the background. It was tuned to BBC Radio 2; by then it was coming up to 9.30 am, and Sara Cox, sitting in for Chris Evans this week, was handing over to Ken Bruce. Suddenly something flashed in my mind, and I remembered clearly where I was at 9.30 am on December 18th 2009.
I had just come to the end of one of those tricky, overnight jobs where you pick up the goods during the evening, and you know it's not really worth going home, because you'll only get a couple of hours' sleep before you need to be up to leave to drive across the country in order to make your delivery time. So you drive, slowly at first until it seems ridiculous, then normally; and you stop at an amazing number of services in order to get coffee, use the toilet or choose an attractive chocolate bar. You find a lay-by where you can grab a few minutes' sleep to keep safe for the rest of the night, and by 7.0 you get to your destination when there's no one about. You run the engine to keep warm, hoping that you don't disturb nearby residents. In between dozing, you see people going about their business as the town wakes up. Eventually someone comes and opens the shop ...
That morning I made my one and only ever delivery to a chemist's shop in Caernarfon, having purposely driven all the way up the A5 from Milton Keynes, knowing that it would take far longer than any normal route. And I listened to Radio 2 as I began the next leg of my 565-mile assignment, to collect from Liverpool for the same customer. I think that was the last morning I listened to Radio 2 - it just had no more appeal without that soft Limerick voice.
So, where were you when Sir Terry Wogan signed off for the last time?
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