Pluses and Minuses - the Arithmetic of Life

It seems that there are pluses and minuses, ups and downs, to every part of life ... certainly that's true of being taken over by a nationwide company. Nowadays we're far more likely to get 'back-loads' (another job that will pay all or part of the cost of returning from a distant destination) than we were under the 'ancien régime'.  On the other hand, whereas we used to get paid from base, wherever we collected the goods, now we only get paid from collection to delivery, wherever our base might be.  Because we often get another job while still on the way back from the previous one, much less time is spent at the office, and consequently there is much less interaction with other drivers.  Some people find this distressing, to the extent that they have left; since I have been working from home for some while, this doesn't bother me at all, although I do wonder whether this will be allowed to continue when we are fully and finally under the jackboot of the new methodology.

Some of these factors figured in this week's to-ings and fro-ings.  Take Monday for example.  I collected a single very fragile item in Letchworth at 9.0am to be taken to the university in Nottingham.  It seemed fairly unlikely that I would get anything very productive after an immediate return, so I rang the office there, and gambled half an hour waiting to see if anything might come from them.  Meanwhile I listened to a podcast while parked in a sunny side street and ate my lunch.  I'd just given up and begun to make my way out of the city, when the call came.  A pick-up not three miles away, to be taken to Cambridge ... and there was another job - albeit fairly local - afterwards as well, so the week was off to a good start.

Good start it might have been, but it went gradually downhill after that.  So much so that, at the end of the week, the average length of all 23 jobs was only 27 miles!  I continue to be amazed at the way my mood swings from buoyancy to despondency according to the demands upon my time.  On a day when I leave with one job early in the morning and enjoy a succession of others non-stop through the day, I feel good, even if tired, at the end of it. Contrariwise, if I return from such an early job, to sit at my desk for two or three hours in anticipation of a further call, I can feel quite unwanted. Sometimes a day might consist of half a dozen jobs totalling perhaps 200 or 250 miles, but with obvious gaps between them; at the end of such a day I often feel as if I'm being used as the 'odd-job' man, although I've never decided whether this is simply the 'roll of the dice', or the result of an imagined conspiracy because of my semi-retired status.  That said, it only takes one 'good' (i.e. 100-mile-or-so) job, or maybe two half-decent ones together, to snap me out of the black mood again.

This week had just such a finish, as yesterday began with the exciting challenge of taking a couple of items to a destination in Swindon, to make a 7.30 booking-in time.  On this occasion, there was a cheerful welcome to my call to the local office after I'd delivered, but no resulting work, so I came back home empty.  The day continued, however, with another four jobs, before I finally took my boots off at 5.50 pm, feeling quite satisfied.

I must add that there are frequently little snippets of what some would call serendipity.  The week had a couple of those, too.  On Tuesday evening, I opened an e-mail to find an invitation to follow a free on-line tutorial - allegedly worth £81 - and found myself absorbed for a couple of hours learning about an intricate aspect of spreadsheet analysis.  Whether I'll ever need to use it is a totally separate matter!

Then, as I waited yesterday at the door of a print works in Letchworth, the afternoon breeze brought to my nose the smell of one of the chemicals being used in their processes.  They say this is the most powerful of the senses; I was instantly transported through almost sixty years to the days when, over the course of a number of weeks, a gang of white-overalled men would work their way along the street where I lived, repainting all the doors and windows, first with undercoat, and then with the gloss.  It was always exciting to find out what colour our front door was going to be after their visit.  What I smelled yesterday was the very same as that gloss paint ... although I'm sure it wasn't paint at all that was being used!

Now I'm looking forward to the bank holiday and being 'retired' for the rest of the week.  I wonder how 'useful' I'll feel on the following Monday morning!