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!