It's What You Get Used To

This back-to-work week has been a bit tough.  I'll try to put it into context.

Some years ago, I had a brief chat with a colleague who was playing a prominent part in our company's support in (or put another way, financial benefit from) a Scottish bank's campaign to replace all its computers.  For him this meant, for a number of consecutive weeks, two return journeys per week from Hertfordshire to Edinburgh and sometimes beyond.  I suggested to him that a single journey of that distance - over 370 miles by the most direct route, not allowing for diversions or variety - must be exhausting, let alone there and back twice a week!  Without undue modesty, he explained that, the more you did a journey, the shorter it seemed.

Put that way, I had to agree.  Indeed, I remembered some of my early jobs, when to travel up the M1 to the distribution centre at Crick (just off junction 18) seemed quite daunting, and a journey to Bradford almost into another world!  After a few years - months, even - the longer jobs came to have a distinct attraction for me.  Partly, I think, there was the freedom ... there is always more than one way to get somewhere and, if the destination is at some distance, the choice of one road over another becomes less significant in the overall distance and time taken for the whole journey.  There was also the sense of achievement ... going to the far side of the country, and we shouldn't forget the financial rewards, too ... although the profitability of a long journey for a single job is always questionable.

As time passed, I quickly became accustomed to driving an average 300 miles a day without batting an eyelid, sometimes in a single journey, sometimes split over several separate ones.  In fact, it is surprising just how quickly the body accustoms itself to changes like this.  In a totally different way, I had had a similar experience a few years earlier.

Taken in 2000, long before 'selfies'
were the fashion, near Dublin, CA

When I first set foot in California in July 2000, I was reluctant to step out in the sun and made quickly for the nearest shade, so shocking was the summer heat.  Yet, in only three weeks, I can remember waiting for a lift on a street corner, in full sun and not feeling any discomfort.

And that's where I came in.  In recent months, work has usually stretched from 8.0 or 8.30am into the early evening.  When the occasional late night has seen me arrive home around midnight, I've gone straight to bed, had a slightly later start the next morning perhaps, and thought no more of it.  As to early mornings, a 7.30 pick-up has been about the limit.  This week, by contrast, I had agreed to be one of three who stepped in to fill the absence of someone who regularly has a 5.30am collection.  The days for which I was selected to do this were Tuesday and Thursday, and on Wednesday, I had an 8.0am delivery at a hospital in Bournemouth, which necessitated leaving home at about the same time.

Those three early starts, each followed by a day of normal working, left me drained.  It was a new pattern of life to which my body hadn't adjusted.  It had started to do so - on Thursday morning I woke more refreshed than on the other two - but the process was by no means complete.  Let me expand the picture by taking a slightly longer view.  As I've mentioned here before, I examine each week's activity and classify the good weeks as 'gold' or 'silver' according to whether the results beat my budget in the criteria of income, profitability and mileage, or just the first two.  The last two weeks I've worked (and because of my phased retirement plan, that means two of the last four, which may also have some bearing on the matter), have both been 'gold', with an average of 1,465 miles per week compared to an average for this year from April of just under 1,600.  This week's travels have involved 1,645 miles - by no means beyond the 'normal', but well above what my body has recently been used to.

It might seem that I'm moaning, whingeing or just being grumpy.  Let me reassure you, dear reader, that this is not so.  I'm happy as ever with my lot. It was fascinating, for example, to drive through Cardiff - or should I say Caerdydd? - on Wednesday afternoon viewing the roadsigns in a new light as a result of the early lessons of my Welsh course: realising why on some signs 'University' was translated as 'Pryfysgol', and on others as 'Bryfysgol'. And, even as I write this, I see that this is yet another example of the whole subject of this post: what the body - in this case the brain - gets used to.

And here I'll stop, as I debate whether or not to go and watch one of today's FA Cup ties ... more miles!