It's been an interesting week. Let's begin with some statistics: it's only the second time since the take-over that I've done 20 jobs in a week; and yesterday was only the eleventh time in my twelve-and-a-half-year career that a single day has provided seven jobs! All five days this week have involved early starts, most needing me to leave home at 6.0 or earlier, and some evenings I wasn't home until quite late. These extensions to the working day play havoc with any kind of food planning, to say nothing of actual food intake! One evening 'meal' consisted of a (large) sausage roll! It's true what some say: this is not a job for a family man!
And before we consign the statistics to the past, let me just add that only the first and last jobs of the week went further north than Cambridge, and only two further west than Southampton. All in all, the week has been very much concentrated in the south-east of the country. Four of the seven jobs yesterday formed a neat chain, beginning with a collection in Letchworth for Harrow; then came a leap-frog sequence, with a Harrow collection for St Albans, a Watford collection for a customer in Stevenage, and a Hatfield collection for Cambridge.
The collection in Hatfield was one of those visits that took twenty minutes when three would have sufficed, had the full information been provided. It was one of those office blocks accommodating two or more companies. When I announced my purpose at the reception desk inside the door, I was asked 'which company are you collecting from?', and then 'which floor?' I could answer the first, but not the second, so I was directed to their own reception just down the passage. Here, a well-meaning, girl who seemed totally out of her depth tried to help me. As she looked through a number of items apparently awaiting collection, she asked, 'Do you have a contact name?' 'No,' I told her, 'only the name of the recipient, Cassy T.......' (who, incidentally, later turned out to be Cathy!) 'Where is it you're going?' I had already told her Cambridge, so I told her the post code CB4. She clearly thought I was offering the name of a company, for she said hopelessly, 'I don't recognise that name.' At a total loss, she suggested I try first floor reception. I made for the lifts.
I emerged on the first floor, and found a locked door with no obvious means of attracting attention. As I looked around helplessly, someone emerged from another lift. I explained my problem, and was told there was no reception on this floor - try the third floor. I could feel my hackles rising as I returned to the lift. As I opened the door on the third floor - which was encouragingly marked 'Reception' - I didn't need to explain again what I was there for. The young lady at the desk spotted the ID badge around my neck, told me I was going to Cambridge, and handed me a large envelope. What a difference two extra words would have made!
After Cambridge there came two local deliveries for an engineering firm in Letchworth, and then I collected a pallet of recycled electronic components for Milton Keynes. This latter was to be accompanied by a pick-up in Hitchin for Castle Bromwich, a repeat of a job I did one evening a few weeks ago. As before, I arrived after the factory there had closed; as a result of that earlier experience, I knew where to look for the canteen window, and was pleased to see the same security man inside. This time, however, the gates of the site were locked, and I wondered how I could let him know I was there. I tried rattling the gate. In a deserted street, it's quite amazing how much noise can be made by steel gates 3 metres high! His face looked up; I held aloft the box I was delivering; he opened the door, and then opened the gate in order to complete the formalities. As before, no one had thought to tell him that I was on my way, and we shared this frustration as he signed my PDA.
It was a week that saw visits to a number of places I'd not been to for some while. On Monday I made a return visit to Whittington Hospital, the first time for nine or ten years; and on then to Canning Town, through London streets which had become familiar to me in those far-off days before our joining operations with another company relieved us of most of the London work. I'd been before to the firm to whom I delivered in Harrow yesterday, but I didn't realise this until I entered their yard, at which point I remembered having to go round a tight blind corner to reach the goods-in door, which opens onto the rear car park.
It all goes to show that what goes around does, sooner or later, come round again.
Saturday 29 November 2014
Saturday 22 November 2014
Off the Pitch!
"Thass bin a funny ow week!" as my mother might have said. A funny (in the sense of strange) week indeed. Let's look at work for a start: 18 jobs, which is quite good, but apart from one - which I'll tell you about in a moment - only one other was over 60 miles, so it wasn't a particularly profitable week. Most of its highlights came 'off the pitch', to steal a footballing metaphor.
On Monday, as I returned from a hospital run to Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, via a collection from another hospital in Peterborough, Dave my controller rang me because he couldn't track me on his computer and wondered how I was getting on. Apparently the goods I'd collected were quite urgently required for another hospital. I took advantage of the call to seek a meeting with him about my retirement, and was told, "come in any time." I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and after delivering to our customer in Letchworth, I visited the office.
Over the last few weeks I've been playing with figures, to come up with a plan for a 'graduated retirement'. I've heard many tales of men at this age. One week is work as normal, the next week ... nothing! And how do they cope with a change to life that can seem like falling off a cliff? Some find it no problem, with hobbies and outside interests that easily expand to fill the vacant hours. Others have been so wrapped up in work that life suddenly seems empty.
My father for instance, after a lifetime working on the farm, had quite upset my mother, getting under her feet as he wandered to and fro, not feeling needed in the home. He quickly found a part-time job at a nearby nursery, where the owner had engaged quite a number of ex-farm workers, who provided agreeable company for each other alongside their work. Another man, whom I knew quite well, was a church organist; he and his wife were childless, and had plans to travel after he had retired. Only a few months after he had finished work at an office in the town, he had gone to church early one Sunday to practise the day's music, and was found dead at the organ later in the morning.
I have no desire to be killed off by a sudden change in the pattern of life! So I'm planning to spend the next two years 'in decline', so to speak. Rather than simply retract to a four-day week, as some have done, I'm thinking of a working/retired 'sandwich', working full weeks, but not so many of them, and interspersing these with periods of other activity. Fine plans were - and still are - in the making, but the key requirement had yet to be obtained. Would it be acceptable to work like this? Hence the meeting with Dave. It went just as I'd predicted. I presented him with my plans, we exchanged a few words of explanation, reference was made to his being well satisfied with my work, and within minutes were were talking about the football team that he manages in his spare time! This formality over, my plans have been taken to a more detailed degree this week, as I've tried to finalise my financial needs and arrangements.
As our meeting took place, telephones were ringing in all directions, and there were frequent interruptions from colleagues. One call had announced that the customer to whom I had just delivered needed something taken that evening to the far side of Bristol, so as I took my leave I said to Dave, "Can I be cheeky and suggest that I go round to <customer's name>?" He smiled and replied, "Good idea!" - it was the best job of the week!
With so many jobs this week, there have also been a number of convenient slots between them in which I've been able to keep up with 'stuff' that has piled up on other fronts. One morning I had just listened to the morning service on my way home, and decided that I really ought to give some thought to my assigned task of leading the prayers in church on Christmas Day. I'd just added the final full stop to my draft as the PDA by my side beeped to announce the next job!
On another day, the podcast of an excellent talk by Audrey Collins at the National Archives inspired some notes of possible lines of research to discover what my uncles were doing in the First World War, which I hastily scribbled before the next job arrived! Survivors with common names are among the most difficult to trace, and following up these ideas might utilise one of the first creeping fingers of my retirement!
As my geography teacher once told his class, "The land is like life itself, if it doesn't change, it dies!" - wisdom not wasted!
On Monday, as I returned from a hospital run to Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, via a collection from another hospital in Peterborough, Dave my controller rang me because he couldn't track me on his computer and wondered how I was getting on. Apparently the goods I'd collected were quite urgently required for another hospital. I took advantage of the call to seek a meeting with him about my retirement, and was told, "come in any time." I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and after delivering to our customer in Letchworth, I visited the office.
Over the last few weeks I've been playing with figures, to come up with a plan for a 'graduated retirement'. I've heard many tales of men at this age. One week is work as normal, the next week ... nothing! And how do they cope with a change to life that can seem like falling off a cliff? Some find it no problem, with hobbies and outside interests that easily expand to fill the vacant hours. Others have been so wrapped up in work that life suddenly seems empty.
My father for instance, after a lifetime working on the farm, had quite upset my mother, getting under her feet as he wandered to and fro, not feeling needed in the home. He quickly found a part-time job at a nearby nursery, where the owner had engaged quite a number of ex-farm workers, who provided agreeable company for each other alongside their work. Another man, whom I knew quite well, was a church organist; he and his wife were childless, and had plans to travel after he had retired. Only a few months after he had finished work at an office in the town, he had gone to church early one Sunday to practise the day's music, and was found dead at the organ later in the morning.
I have no desire to be killed off by a sudden change in the pattern of life! So I'm planning to spend the next two years 'in decline', so to speak. Rather than simply retract to a four-day week, as some have done, I'm thinking of a working/retired 'sandwich', working full weeks, but not so many of them, and interspersing these with periods of other activity. Fine plans were - and still are - in the making, but the key requirement had yet to be obtained. Would it be acceptable to work like this? Hence the meeting with Dave. It went just as I'd predicted. I presented him with my plans, we exchanged a few words of explanation, reference was made to his being well satisfied with my work, and within minutes were were talking about the football team that he manages in his spare time! This formality over, my plans have been taken to a more detailed degree this week, as I've tried to finalise my financial needs and arrangements.
As our meeting took place, telephones were ringing in all directions, and there were frequent interruptions from colleagues. One call had announced that the customer to whom I had just delivered needed something taken that evening to the far side of Bristol, so as I took my leave I said to Dave, "Can I be cheeky and suggest that I go round to <customer's name>?" He smiled and replied, "Good idea!" - it was the best job of the week!
With so many jobs this week, there have also been a number of convenient slots between them in which I've been able to keep up with 'stuff' that has piled up on other fronts. One morning I had just listened to the morning service on my way home, and decided that I really ought to give some thought to my assigned task of leading the prayers in church on Christmas Day. I'd just added the final full stop to my draft as the PDA by my side beeped to announce the next job!
On another day, the podcast of an excellent talk by Audrey Collins at the National Archives inspired some notes of possible lines of research to discover what my uncles were doing in the First World War, which I hastily scribbled before the next job arrived! Survivors with common names are among the most difficult to trace, and following up these ideas might utilise one of the first creeping fingers of my retirement!
As my geography teacher once told his class, "The land is like life itself, if it doesn't change, it dies!" - wisdom not wasted!
Saturday 15 November 2014
Things Recalled, Things Remembered
It's been another week of triumph for the Genie, in both regular and novel modes. I've lost count of the number of times I've thought to myself, 'here again! Genie at work!'. Then, yesterday, came a new guise. Four times in succession, I was misled by SatNav, the electronic marvel who isn't the all-seeing eye we think him to be. The day started in darkness, with a 6.30 collection of pharmaceutical samples for pre-noon delivery in a variety of locations. I was one of three drivers attacking this task, and was assigned Watford and West Molesey. In Watford, just as day was dawning (although one could be excused for not noticing this fact, owing to the torrential rain!), I was directed to a private estate of executive houses, which I knew instinctively was going to be wrong, because these goods are usually sent to warehouses or distribution centres. In fact, although I didn't recognise the name, it was a large establishment I'd visited before, about two streets away.
On, then, to West Molesey, where I found myself on an industrial estate, but sent to a dead end, with the roof of the place I wanted peeking cheekily from the adjacent road over those immediately before me. On the way home, I was diverted from the M25 for another job, collecting from Uxbridge for a specialist aviation repair firm near Southend. My collection was from a well-known logistics firm where I recalled being held up for some while waiting for goods on a previous occasion. There was no change from this yesterday but, before I could enjoy this experience, I had to overrule the instruction to take the previous turning! As I keyed in my final journey, for the delivery in Rayleigh, I had the feeling. 'this one isn't going to be right, either!' The delivery note told me 'Claydons Lane', but when presented with the postcode I'd been given, SatNav had come up with 'Rat Lane' which, although adjacent, required me to drive around the block a second time, and then make a verbal enquiry, before I could see my target.
So much for routine. There is nothing routine about a famous star of the silver screen reaching the age of 80. Twice this week, on Tuesday and Thursday, I was sent to my East Anglian homeland. On Tuesday to Hadleigh and Ipswich, and on Thursday closer to 'home', to the village of Hoxne, where I was to collect a guitar autographed by a famous singer-songwriter. As I drove along the A14 on Thursday morning I was thrilled to find myself listening to the first item on Woman's Hour, as Jenni Murray interviewed Sophia Loren about her 'fairy tale life'. You can hear the interview on the BBC website here.
Why did this so delight me, you may ask, and especially why so as I travelled towards the area where I grew up? Many possible explanations come to mind, ranging from 'coat-tail clinging' through 'name-dropping' to 'stealing glory that belongs elsewhere'. I prefer to think of it as simply pride to be associated, however tenuously, with such a romantic story. My link is this. Apart from the fact that she was an immigrant to our rural community, my mother-in-law had two other claims to fame. One was that her birthplace was mentioned in the Bible (Acts 28:13), albeit in a variant form of the name; the other was that, while she was growing up in Pozzuoli, and serving as a Sunday School teacher, in her class had been the future Sophia Loren.
My mother-in-law, long widowed, died in the spring of last year, and our lives had been lived far apart for the last thirty years or so, but I have often recalled this unusual claim to fame ... if I'm honest, probably far more often than, in her humility, she did. Maybe that's because my own life, lived for so many years in one place, and very much steeped in routine, boasted no such peaks of innocent achievement to celebrate.
This week has been quite a time of remembering; indeed, this whole year has been so, and I find - perhaps like many - that 'remembering', or rather the calling to mind of events that happened too long ago to be remembered in the literal sense, has become somewhat mind-numbing. I'm suffering from 'WWI overload'. I recognise its importance in our history; nevertheless, the fact that there are four more years of 'remembering it' to go through, none of which will match the horror of the original, is rather daunting. So it seems refreshing to have something lighter, while equally 'too long ago to be literally remembered' to think about.
On, then, to West Molesey, where I found myself on an industrial estate, but sent to a dead end, with the roof of the place I wanted peeking cheekily from the adjacent road over those immediately before me. On the way home, I was diverted from the M25 for another job, collecting from Uxbridge for a specialist aviation repair firm near Southend. My collection was from a well-known logistics firm where I recalled being held up for some while waiting for goods on a previous occasion. There was no change from this yesterday but, before I could enjoy this experience, I had to overrule the instruction to take the previous turning! As I keyed in my final journey, for the delivery in Rayleigh, I had the feeling. 'this one isn't going to be right, either!' The delivery note told me 'Claydons Lane', but when presented with the postcode I'd been given, SatNav had come up with 'Rat Lane' which, although adjacent, required me to drive around the block a second time, and then make a verbal enquiry, before I could see my target.
So much for routine. There is nothing routine about a famous star of the silver screen reaching the age of 80. Twice this week, on Tuesday and Thursday, I was sent to my East Anglian homeland. On Tuesday to Hadleigh and Ipswich, and on Thursday closer to 'home', to the village of Hoxne, where I was to collect a guitar autographed by a famous singer-songwriter. As I drove along the A14 on Thursday morning I was thrilled to find myself listening to the first item on Woman's Hour, as Jenni Murray interviewed Sophia Loren about her 'fairy tale life'. You can hear the interview on the BBC website here.
Why did this so delight me, you may ask, and especially why so as I travelled towards the area where I grew up? Many possible explanations come to mind, ranging from 'coat-tail clinging' through 'name-dropping' to 'stealing glory that belongs elsewhere'. I prefer to think of it as simply pride to be associated, however tenuously, with such a romantic story. My link is this. Apart from the fact that she was an immigrant to our rural community, my mother-in-law had two other claims to fame. One was that her birthplace was mentioned in the Bible (Acts 28:13), albeit in a variant form of the name; the other was that, while she was growing up in Pozzuoli, and serving as a Sunday School teacher, in her class had been the future Sophia Loren.
My mother-in-law, long widowed, died in the spring of last year, and our lives had been lived far apart for the last thirty years or so, but I have often recalled this unusual claim to fame ... if I'm honest, probably far more often than, in her humility, she did. Maybe that's because my own life, lived for so many years in one place, and very much steeped in routine, boasted no such peaks of innocent achievement to celebrate.
This week has been quite a time of remembering; indeed, this whole year has been so, and I find - perhaps like many - that 'remembering', or rather the calling to mind of events that happened too long ago to be remembered in the literal sense, has become somewhat mind-numbing. I'm suffering from 'WWI overload'. I recognise its importance in our history; nevertheless, the fact that there are four more years of 'remembering it' to go through, none of which will match the horror of the original, is rather daunting. So it seems refreshing to have something lighter, while equally 'too long ago to be literally remembered' to think about.
Saturday 8 November 2014
New Lamps for Old
Yes, it won't be long until the panto season! But Aladdin and his stories bear no real relation to my tale this week. It has been a week - more than ever before, I think - of two very different halves.
But first, why that title? Well, there have been many new things lately. The take-over at the end of July brought a whole new way of working, and with it not just the use of the much-grumbled-about PDA. (When I reached a delivery the other day, my finger misjudged its stab as I tried to tell the beast that I'd arrived. I took ages to get out of a completely alien screen; when I went inside with my package, my tale of woe met with wit as well as sympathy, "I just thought you were never going to get out of the van!") Now that our self-billing invoices come online on Thursdays instead of a paper document on Mondays, I'm having to adjust to a new financial discipline as well.
In August and September, there seemed to be far more work, and it was easy to ascribe this to the new régime, too. This made October's abyssmal performance feel far worse than simply a return to the mediocre levels of the spring. Early this week, realising that in two days I'd earned scarcely more than one day's expected income, I totted up that in the last three weeks I'd done only three jobs that were more than 100 miles in length, compared to 29 in the previous eleven weeks since the take-over. I began to wonder whether I had been singled out for punitive treatment!
I chewed this over during my daily quiet time next morning, and found a sort of perspective about it, realising that, as a consequence of attentions focussed elsewhere, my work had been largely absent from my prayers lately. Now, I'm fairly sure that Dave, my controller, is not a 'God-botherer'; I'm not so sure of the extent to which he is or is not 'God-bothered'! He rang me as I was returning from yet another local job that afternoon, to ask if I would be able to do a couple of jobs that evening. In my acceptance, I decided to advise him of that statistic. He sounded quite shocked, and shortly afterwards rang me back to add another hospital delivery to the one that he had already instructed, along with the relief of someone who had locked himself out of his van ... this an all-too-common occurence for this customer, of whom I've written here before!
Thursday morning began quite tamely, returning the afore-mentioned van key, and then deliveries in Hemel Hempstead and Uxbridge. As I drove through Uxbridge, about a mile from my second delivery, the phone rang. I was given a job I'd done a few weeks ago, collecting some computers from a training session in a hotel near Gatwick airport, and taking them to another one in the chain for a similar session the next day. This wouldn't be until after 3.0 pm, but I was being told now since it would save my travelling if I were to go straight there. It was about 11.0, and I received this news with mixed feelings. A couple of idle hours, but then a good job; a good job, but overall a very long day.
I hadn't gone far after making my delivery when the phone rang again. This time it was the Reading office, offering me a complex, but in the event an undemanding and interesting job. I collected seven deliveries of car parts from a logistics firm in Slough, passed four of them on to other drivers, and then delivered the other three, finishing only three miles from the hotel, just on 3.0! What better way to fill idle hours? Then came the planned delivery of the computers to Manchester, hampered by motorway traffic, but otherwise uneventful, from which I returned home at 3.15 am.
In the last three weeks, when there was a lot of waiting time, I had begun making tentative plans for retirement. Having seen and heard many instances of resulting torment and trauma, I've no intention of this being an overnight life change. Instead, I'm planning a gradual transition, and incorporating within it the acquisition of a motorhome, so I've been looking at what is available within my budget. There's a vast spectrum of possibilities, and some very attractive models which I don't feel I can justify for just one person. As I've considered these, I've come to realise ways in which this vehicle will not be merely a 'toy' for holidays, but that its arrival will herald a whole new life-pattern.
As if to underline this train of thought, I listened this week to a sermon podcast based on the parable of new wine and old wineskins from St Matthew chapter 9, and it seems that in order to accommodate the 'new wine' of the motorhome, I shall have to renew the 'wineskin' of my lifestyle.
Time will tell, and no doubt this blog will report in due course!
But first, why that title? Well, there have been many new things lately. The take-over at the end of July brought a whole new way of working, and with it not just the use of the much-grumbled-about PDA. (When I reached a delivery the other day, my finger misjudged its stab as I tried to tell the beast that I'd arrived. I took ages to get out of a completely alien screen; when I went inside with my package, my tale of woe met with wit as well as sympathy, "I just thought you were never going to get out of the van!") Now that our self-billing invoices come online on Thursdays instead of a paper document on Mondays, I'm having to adjust to a new financial discipline as well.
In August and September, there seemed to be far more work, and it was easy to ascribe this to the new régime, too. This made October's abyssmal performance feel far worse than simply a return to the mediocre levels of the spring. Early this week, realising that in two days I'd earned scarcely more than one day's expected income, I totted up that in the last three weeks I'd done only three jobs that were more than 100 miles in length, compared to 29 in the previous eleven weeks since the take-over. I began to wonder whether I had been singled out for punitive treatment!
I chewed this over during my daily quiet time next morning, and found a sort of perspective about it, realising that, as a consequence of attentions focussed elsewhere, my work had been largely absent from my prayers lately. Now, I'm fairly sure that Dave, my controller, is not a 'God-botherer'; I'm not so sure of the extent to which he is or is not 'God-bothered'! He rang me as I was returning from yet another local job that afternoon, to ask if I would be able to do a couple of jobs that evening. In my acceptance, I decided to advise him of that statistic. He sounded quite shocked, and shortly afterwards rang me back to add another hospital delivery to the one that he had already instructed, along with the relief of someone who had locked himself out of his van ... this an all-too-common occurence for this customer, of whom I've written here before!
Thursday morning began quite tamely, returning the afore-mentioned van key, and then deliveries in Hemel Hempstead and Uxbridge. As I drove through Uxbridge, about a mile from my second delivery, the phone rang. I was given a job I'd done a few weeks ago, collecting some computers from a training session in a hotel near Gatwick airport, and taking them to another one in the chain for a similar session the next day. This wouldn't be until after 3.0 pm, but I was being told now since it would save my travelling if I were to go straight there. It was about 11.0, and I received this news with mixed feelings. A couple of idle hours, but then a good job; a good job, but overall a very long day.
I hadn't gone far after making my delivery when the phone rang again. This time it was the Reading office, offering me a complex, but in the event an undemanding and interesting job. I collected seven deliveries of car parts from a logistics firm in Slough, passed four of them on to other drivers, and then delivered the other three, finishing only three miles from the hotel, just on 3.0! What better way to fill idle hours? Then came the planned delivery of the computers to Manchester, hampered by motorway traffic, but otherwise uneventful, from which I returned home at 3.15 am.
In the last three weeks, when there was a lot of waiting time, I had begun making tentative plans for retirement. Having seen and heard many instances of resulting torment and trauma, I've no intention of this being an overnight life change. Instead, I'm planning a gradual transition, and incorporating within it the acquisition of a motorhome, so I've been looking at what is available within my budget. There's a vast spectrum of possibilities, and some very attractive models which I don't feel I can justify for just one person. As I've considered these, I've come to realise ways in which this vehicle will not be merely a 'toy' for holidays, but that its arrival will herald a whole new life-pattern.
As if to underline this train of thought, I listened this week to a sermon podcast based on the parable of new wine and old wineskins from St Matthew chapter 9, and it seems that in order to accommodate the 'new wine' of the motorhome, I shall have to renew the 'wineskin' of my lifestyle.
Time will tell, and no doubt this blog will report in due course!
Saturday 1 November 2014
When I Worked at the White House
It's funny how the smallest detail sometimes leads to an almighty turning back of the memory clock.
One of the embarrassing aspects of working with a PDA is the need to ask people their names. In the 'old days', I could just hand them the clipboard and say 'sign and print, please' and, so long as there was a clear indication in each box, I'd be on my way. Now, if there's a delivery sheet to sign as well, it seems something of an insult to ask, implying - however correctly - that their printed name is illegible; and if there isn't a piece of paper, then to ask a name seems nothing less than a blatant intrusion into 'their space'. To cover my embarrassment, I notice that I've developed the occasional habit of making some comment about the name I'm told. (I have to be careful what I say is not racist, of course!) This backfired on me the other day.
I'd made a delivery to a car showroom in Ashford, Kent. On arrival, I was approached by she who appeared the junior of the two ladies on duty behind the reception desk, and after putting the parcel on the floor, I asked her name. "Birch," she said. "Oh," I replied, "I used to go to school with a girl named Birch." Quick as a flash came the amused rejoinder. "I've aged very well!" She must have been in her early twenties, at most. I hastily covered my embarrassment with a comment about her being much too young, and retreated. As I drove away I thought 'Birch'.
There were, in fact, three sisters of that name. At school I knew Angela and Susan, who were respectively two years and one year older than me, and I had little to do with either of them ... shy boys of eleven didn't in those days. It wasn't until ten years or so later, when I was newly married, and a junior accountant with a manufacturing firm, that I discovered that they had a younger sister. Their works was at Harleston, about ten miles from my home town, and rather than provide my own transport, I would often travel there on the bus that was provided for the factory workers, many of whom lived in Diss. One Monday there was an attractive addition to the passengers, and as the only two office staff amongst the otherwise overalled gathering, it was perhaps natural that we should sit together.
In the following months, we shared many a Monday morning and Friday evening journey, and I learned that Julie was the sister of Angela, who by then had found a job working not with me, but in the same office, and Susan. She was married to an airman, I believe and, having found work at the factory, in the office next to ours, she lodged during the week with Angela, who lived nearby. On Fridays, she would travel to Diss, on the first leg of a complex journey to spend the weekend with her husband, making the reverse journey on Monday.
Unsurprisingly, this arrangement was not conducive to happy family life, and it only lasted a few months, by which time Julie had obtained a more suitable job nearer the base, enabling her to commute from married quarters. I was flattered that, on the first of only three occasions in my whole career, she asked me for a reference to support her application. I have no idea what it was that I wrote, given that my work and hers rarely coincided, if at all.
This whole recollection brought back many happy memories of the four years I worked at that factory, and the many faces that were familiar, although with the passing of forty or so intervening years, many of the names are now casualties of time. I remember sometimes wearing a red hand-knitted pullover, and being nicknamed 'the robin' as I walked round the shopfloor collecting data. Then there was the time when I made some notes in the presence of one of the young women who graced the shopfloor as secretaries to the departmental managers. "Coo," she exclaimed, "haven't you got nice writing ..." My head began to swell with pride until she added, "... for a feller!"
A few weeks ago, I made a delivery in the Suffolk town of Beccles, and my homeward journey would naturally have taken me past Harleston, so I took advantage of the opportunity to divert through the town and look at the site of this particular chapter of my early career. The factory building is no longer, having been demolished a few years ago to make way for housing, but the canteen is still there, now a community hall, with the car park still in use around it. More significantly, from my point of view, so too is the white house on the opposite side of the car park from the factory, which in those days housed the administrative departments. I could almost hear the slam of that solid front door as I stood by the roadside with my camera.
One of the embarrassing aspects of working with a PDA is the need to ask people their names. In the 'old days', I could just hand them the clipboard and say 'sign and print, please' and, so long as there was a clear indication in each box, I'd be on my way. Now, if there's a delivery sheet to sign as well, it seems something of an insult to ask, implying - however correctly - that their printed name is illegible; and if there isn't a piece of paper, then to ask a name seems nothing less than a blatant intrusion into 'their space'. To cover my embarrassment, I notice that I've developed the occasional habit of making some comment about the name I'm told. (I have to be careful what I say is not racist, of course!) This backfired on me the other day.
I'd made a delivery to a car showroom in Ashford, Kent. On arrival, I was approached by she who appeared the junior of the two ladies on duty behind the reception desk, and after putting the parcel on the floor, I asked her name. "Birch," she said. "Oh," I replied, "I used to go to school with a girl named Birch." Quick as a flash came the amused rejoinder. "I've aged very well!" She must have been in her early twenties, at most. I hastily covered my embarrassment with a comment about her being much too young, and retreated. As I drove away I thought 'Birch'.
There were, in fact, three sisters of that name. At school I knew Angela and Susan, who were respectively two years and one year older than me, and I had little to do with either of them ... shy boys of eleven didn't in those days. It wasn't until ten years or so later, when I was newly married, and a junior accountant with a manufacturing firm, that I discovered that they had a younger sister. Their works was at Harleston, about ten miles from my home town, and rather than provide my own transport, I would often travel there on the bus that was provided for the factory workers, many of whom lived in Diss. One Monday there was an attractive addition to the passengers, and as the only two office staff amongst the otherwise overalled gathering, it was perhaps natural that we should sit together.
In the following months, we shared many a Monday morning and Friday evening journey, and I learned that Julie was the sister of Angela, who by then had found a job working not with me, but in the same office, and Susan. She was married to an airman, I believe and, having found work at the factory, in the office next to ours, she lodged during the week with Angela, who lived nearby. On Fridays, she would travel to Diss, on the first leg of a complex journey to spend the weekend with her husband, making the reverse journey on Monday.
Unsurprisingly, this arrangement was not conducive to happy family life, and it only lasted a few months, by which time Julie had obtained a more suitable job nearer the base, enabling her to commute from married quarters. I was flattered that, on the first of only three occasions in my whole career, she asked me for a reference to support her application. I have no idea what it was that I wrote, given that my work and hers rarely coincided, if at all.
This whole recollection brought back many happy memories of the four years I worked at that factory, and the many faces that were familiar, although with the passing of forty or so intervening years, many of the names are now casualties of time. I remember sometimes wearing a red hand-knitted pullover, and being nicknamed 'the robin' as I walked round the shopfloor collecting data. Then there was the time when I made some notes in the presence of one of the young women who graced the shopfloor as secretaries to the departmental managers. "Coo," she exclaimed, "haven't you got nice writing ..." My head began to swell with pride until she added, "... for a feller!"
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| Mendham Lane, Harleston - former factory canteen and car park |
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| The White House - my office was on the top floor of the nearest corner |
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