How's It Going, Then?

When someone asked me yesterday evening, "How's the phased retirement going?", I confess I had to trot out that old cliché, "I don't know how I found time to work!"  Only, in this case, it was a simple acknowledgement of the truth of it, for at present I'm still trying to combine both lives into one.  At the start, it had seemed quite straightforward, with time to 'do things' on the weeks that I wasn't working.  But now, six months into the plan, I'm finding that all the 'things' that happen in those non-working weeks have tails: tails that need to be fitted into working weeks, either because they can't be left, or because I'm too impatient to wait for the next non-working week to do them.

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a three-pronged trip to North Wales, which was the first real trial for the motorhome. (I must get into the habit of calling it a motor-caravan, which is apparently the more accurate term, and doesn't risk confusion with those mansions on wheels at the far end of the market.)  There were a couple of things that I wanted to do before I use it again.  One was to re-fit a bit of trim which had pinged out of the leading edge of the over-cab and, with the help of a tube of glue and the bathroom stool, this was accomplished in the sunshine the day after my return.  The other will take just a little longer, and involves modifying the additional woodwork that a previous owner had fitted inside one of the cupboards. With two fairly full weeks' work since then, and the prospect of another next week, this has been put on hold so far, which is becoming a bit frustrating, given that a tentative plan is forming for another short excursion the following week.

Last weekend was given over to accounts, and the striking competition (in which we came a comfortable fourth out of six teams competing!) and some personal letters ... which never work out saying what you want them to say in just minutes!  This weekend is similarly dominated by other 'stuff', this time in connection with a church gathering.  Luckily, there is the occasional break between jobs during the week, that allows me to do the odd errand, so that not everything gets pushed into the weekends.  This isn't strictly linked to the retirement situation, of course, but rather to the fact of working from home, which has been an absolute boon for a couple of years now.

I can't let this post go without commenting about a couple of things from the week's driving assignments.  I've spoken before about other offices 'spotting' me and providing what's known in the trade as a 'return load', i.e. something that means you don't drive all the way home with an empty van.  The ultimate return load situation comes when a sequence of jobs form a chain, starting and finishing at the same place, and you realise when the records are put together, that you've been paid for every mile of that circuit.  This happened on both Thursday and Friday this week.  The first was when I was spotted just as I got into the van to drive home, and was given a job within a mile of my then position, to bring to a business just across the road from my home.  The second was as I approached the further of two delivery points and received a call to collect something across the street, to be brought back to Letchworth, thus making another complete triangle.

And finally ... I never fail to be impressed by the skills of a fork-truck driver. Sometimes, I admit, the skill is praised in its absence, such as when a careless move has buckled a door-steady, but usually it's a case of marvelling at the apparent gymnastic ease with which a load has been manoeuvred into or out of my van.  Yesterday, however, I think I saw the pinnacle of achievement, when two fork-trucks were used in tandem to manipulate into the back of a solid trailer, a load that was awkwardly positioned on a very long pallet.  The understanding between the two drivers had to be seen to be believed ... it couldn't be heard, for it was expressed in silent concentration as they passed the burden of their load from one to the other like a juggler tossing a tennis ball between his hands.

Who knows?  By next weekend I might have fitted my little woodwork job into an empty evening, and can go carefree on my travels again ... until another 'tail' appears!