The Present Reality... with Echoes from the Past

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.