A 'Memorable' Week

One of the downsides of the regime under which I'm now working is 'blindness'.  I have no idea of the overall picture into which my little scene fits.  All I know is how it affects me, now.  It's very easy, when things are going well, to assume that everything is rosy, and not just my neck of the woods; conversely, when things are not so good, it's easy to take it for granted that I'm being picked on, or treated unfairly.  This week has definitely felt in the latter class.  Out of 18 jobs, only four have taken me further than 50 miles away, with the average job being only 35 miles.

What I can say is that the two longest jobs of the week have given me time for reflection, and have enabled me to add a sort of perspective to life.  The first of these came on Wednesday, when I had a job from Royston to Milton Park, south of Abingdon.  It was a sunny day, and there seemed to be nothing of interest on the radio, so my mind was 'in idle', and largely governed by the countryside through which I was driving.  Not surprisingly, while I was in Royston there were passing thoughts of the time I was working there, for a large part of which I was living there, too.  Perhaps the sunshine determined that I should recall that, amidst the dark background trauma of a failed marriage, there were shafts of light and glimpses of normality.

I decided to avoid the motorway and go 'cross-country', a journey that led my thoughts somewhat back in time, too.  Abingdon itself - not that I actually passed through the town this week - always reminds me that it was there that I bought my father a painting for his eightieth birthday.  It was an uncharacteristic present, for a man who had never shown any interest in art, but it was of a country cottage, with a clearly poor woman at the gate, and I thought it would remind him of his younger days.  I never got to find out how successful had this aim been, for he died two days later, and my grieving mother asked me to take the picture back.  I still have it in a drawer at home.

On this occasion, I recalled the circumstances that had taken me to Abingdon, for it was long before I took up driving for a living.  My then girlfriend's mother lived in Spain, and her daughter had gone to spend some of her school holidays with her grandmother.  In mid-August, I took my lady to Victoria for a coach departure to spend a couple of weeks in Spain herself, and then return with her daughter in time for the new school term.  I had taken a day off work for this purpose and, instead of returning directly home, I drove up to Oxfordshire and stayed in a rather unusual B&B in the village of Stadhampton.  What made it unusual was the fact that this two-bedroomed bungalow was not alongside the road, but situated behind two others, down a short roadway just wide enough for a car.  Furthermore, in order to make their own bedroom available for guests, as well as the spare room, the owners - a couple in their early sixties - were sleeping in the loft! Finding the shop in Abingdon was the highlight of my onward journey back to Norfolk.

As I neared Milton Park, it wasn't surprising to pass within sight of the power station chimneys that mark out Didcot for miles around, and my thoughts moved on to a later relationship, with a resident of that town.  This was a liaison that lasted only a few months and, given the geographic constraints within which it tried to flourish, it was destined from the outset to be short-lived.  It was with a lady whom I met on a bank holiday bell-ringing gathering in Bedfordshire.  Like me, she had travelled there alone, in response to the magazine announcement of an 'open day', and after sharing each other's company in a number of towers, we exchanged addresses, and visited each other on a number of subsequent weekends.  She had two elder daughters who had 'flown the nest', and her life was complicated at that time by their younger sibling, still at home and passing through a turbulent teenage: I remember on one Saturday evening accompanying this lady to the town centre at a somewhat late hour in response to a call from the local constabulary!

Yesterday morning's journey was to a lady in one of the many small communities that occupy that area bounded by Southampton, Portsmouth, the coast between them, and the M27.  I was to be there for a 9.0 collection, and at 8.57 I reversed carefully into her narrow drive, only to be compelled to advance a few feet in order that her garage door could be opened without damaging the van.  The journey there had quickly exhausted any interest that the early news bulletins might have offered, and I began to reflect on the week's events.

The news earlier in the week had spoken of Prince Charles' visit to Ireland, and his momentous, if brief, chat with Gerry Adams.  There was much talk of the significance of this in the context of the peace process, and the ongoing reconciliation of the two communities.  In a strange way, this theme of reconciliation formed a backdrop to the week for me, and to my thoughts yesterday morning.  On Monday evening our bell-ringing practice was graced by a visit from Chris, an 'occasional' ringer, whose wife died earlier this year.  This man, a retired professional, is clearly devastated by his loss. "There's so much to cope with;" he said, "take the cooking ... I've no idea what is in all the drawers and cupboards.  I shall have to empty them one at a time and see what to do with it all.  I can't decide what to eat; and there's the shopping, too ... and I need to look after the garden ... and I find myself talking to her ... she's still there, in the house with me!"

Chris is having difficulty reconciling himself to a life alone.  After living alone for the majority of the last thirty years, my problem is somewhat the reverse.  One of the benefits of the life I'm living, driving around such a variety of places, is the opportunity to 'lay ghosts of the past' to rest, and enjoying some of the memories that each place has to offer.  I realised the other week that I've been living in the world's first Garden City for sufficient years now that I 'have history here'.  I'm beginning to recall changes that have taken place in the time I've been here.  Just as I recall changes in my birthplace, 'I remember so-and-so being built, but not what was there before', so too, I'm now thinking of things that appeared here in the years soon after I came, but not what they replaced.

The great thing about all this looking back at the past, is that it's reconciling me to my past - perhaps to life itself - certainly to some of the disappointments and heartaches of earlier times.  And it makes me a bit more able to sympathise with people like Chris, for whom at the moment the future looks cold and empty.