Whatever Next ...?

... Or, put another way, 'a week not without incident'.

It began with an uninspiring visit to the office, where my PDA was unjammed, during which time I joined a new driver and completed my official training in the handling of medical samples.  At the end of this I was allowed to sign a certificate, which will be kept in the office, and was presented with more 'essential' equipment, a home for which must be found in my already over-crowded van.  The day proper continued with jobs to Harwich and Cambridge.  Despite being home soon enough, I missed my ringing practice because of an instruction to be in Stevenage for a 6.0 collection the next morning.

I confess, I was late, and didn't get there until about 6.15, but it made little difference.  No one at the warehouse knew anything about what I was supposed to collect, and I had to wait until the day shift arrived at 7.0 before I could collect the fresh produce that I took to Norwich to be photographed for publicity materials.  Upon my return, I was sent north again, this time to exchange nine cooker hobs on a building site in Manea.  There was then just time to clean the van's carpet and my boots before darkness fell, and I was about to settle down for the evening, when another call sent me off once more, this time to a medical practice in rural Essex.

Wednesday morning's fruitless exercise took place in Hertford.  As a matter of interest, it was at the very same building (although this time for the host company) where a few weeks ago I managed to set off the security alarm (see the full story here).  This week's job was to take 36 boxes to a retail park near to the Dartford river crossing.  We tried loading them one way and another, but there was no way this quantity of fairly large boxes would fit into my van.  The sender gave up, rang the office, who said they'd sent out a bigger van, and I left to make my way back home.  I got as far as the last junction up the motorway before mine, and was then turned back to visit a white goods firm in Hemel Hempstead.  The job was to collect two items, one for a hospital in Colchester, the other for a building site near Sudbury.

After a long wait, it transpired that I would only be collecting a large oven for the second of these, since the other job had been taken by another driver earlier in the day.  Once I was loaded, and about to depart, I rang the office to advise them of the change, whereupon the next phase of the saga unfolded.  It seems that the other driver had been 'persuaded' to take this Colchester job, notwithstanding that he was actually going to central London - not a combination that would normally be entertained!  By this time he was on his way back with it, and I was asked to meet him to collect my second job (which would actually be the first one) from him.  I set off for South Mimms services.

It was there that I learned the sorry truth.  The Colchester job was not one item but two and, with the oven already on board, there wouldn't be room in my van for both these additional items.  After some further discussion, I left for Suffolk with the one item I had collected, surprisingly unfazed by the fact that, after a completely wasted morning, this was the only job I would do that day.  This time it was too dark when I returned to clean the van a second time in as many days.

Thursday was a better day; possibly the best of the week.  It started with a large envelope to be taken to a converted granary office on a Norfolk farm. I'd woken up that morning with a strange feeling of regret that I had no pictures of the graves of my immediate family.  No sooner had I crystalised this thought, than I realised that this very day I could do something about that fact and, once my delivery had been made, it added only a couple of miles to my return journey if I diverted via the cemetery in my native Diss. Upon my arrival, I went straight to the oldest of the graves I sought, that of my paternal grandmother, for I remembered its prominent position, and found it neatly trimmed - a contrast to the last sight I had had of it, covered in long grass, with the headstone barely visible.

My father's grave

One by one, I found all the others.  My father's, a rugged York stone, that I had chosen myself to match his rugged life on the land, next to my mother's grave, unmarked save for a strange marker I didn't recognise and can't explain, thrust down into the site of a long-removed flower vase.
My maternal grandparents', neither of them marked by a stone, were surprisingly easy to find, because I remembered many a visit made with my mother in my teens, when we always recognised them by the adjacent stone which bore an unusual surname, Wass.  The last one took longest to locate.  It was that of my paternal grandfather, who died in 1950. I knew the rough area, but when I looked there, all the graves were much, much older, and somehow as I progressed with the dates, I then found myself amongst far newer ones than that which I sought.  At last, I explored in the opposite direction, and struck gold, as it were.  This particular plot may have initially been occupied by a garden or perhaps was a later addition, for here were several of this 'intermediate' age, as if positioned here as 'infill', long after the cemetery had been started in the mid-nineteenth century.

Thoughtfully I continued my journey home, and back to the world of work. A local job appeared on my screen just before I got home, and following this a hospital transfer that proved to be non-existent as both I and another driver sought it to no avail.  Someone had apparently got his wires crossed! Then came that crucial late-afternoon question, 'are you available for more work this evening?'  I decided that I was, and was persuaded to make another trip to Norfolk, to deliver some wine to a night club in the centre of Norwich.

The return journey was more exciting than I either expected or desired.  As I drove down the A11, delighting in the new dual carriageway through Suffolk at about 65 mph, with dipped headlights out of consideration for drivers coming in the opposite direction, suddenly the blackness of the road surface was broken by blood and gore.  I remember thinking that this stretched further than usual along the road but, since it was all between my wheels, I dismissed it as a larger-than-usual badger that had met its end.  No sooner had I done so than my lights picked out a large white object.  LUMP! I'd hit it and was up in the air.  CRASH! in a split second I was down again, and - amazingly - still travelling smoothly along the road.  It must have been a full-grown deer that had been killed by a passing lorry.  This morning my first call was at the garage, where I sought to confirm that nothing serious had befallen the van.  The staff there were only too pleased to run it onto one of the ramps before the work of the day got under way.  It was concluded that my alignment when I'd hit the beast was about as fortunate as it could have been.  A few inches either side and the result could have been serious. As it was, the only damage was to a few fuel-pipe clips that had been twisted a little out of position, the radiator grille needed re-fitting where it had been knocked loose, and I'd lost one half of the front skirt.

I think I can say that's the first time in my motoring history that I've hit an animal - alive or dead - and I'm quite content for it to be the last!  After that, the rest of the day pales into insignificance, with nothing more venturous than two loads of printing, one from Stevenage to Ampthill, the other from Hitchin to Barking, and in between some fibre-glass moulds and products from Bedford to Letchworth.

Tomorrow sees yet another rehearsal for our annual carol service the following day, and this intense weekend will be the opening phase of the festivities, with only three more days before the start of the long Christmas and New Year holiday.  No doubt there will be some account of the procedings here, but timing might be a little uncertain!