Fireworks!

Today I'm looking back at the week through the ashen haze of November 5th and all the significance of that day.  Some have suggested that, had the Gunpowder Plot not been detected, the ensuing explosion could have wiped out not only the King and the Commons, but such a large slice of the country's higher society sitting in the House of Lords that the vacuum left could have given rise to complete anarchy.  At least one public voice has forsworn marking the occasion because of the burning of catholic effigies; ... the event still causes comment and controversy after 410 years!

For me the week began with an emotional 'banger' when, on Monday afternoon, I made a delivery to the Tata steelworks in Corby.  The present activity is but a small percentage of what once went on at the site, and in some ways it was like driving through a graveyard, with vegetation creeping over almost every piece of concrete and brickwork.  Even the occupied buildings are dismal, and this was matched by the demeanour of the few people I encountered.  The storeman's hi-viz jacket looked as if it hadn't seen a laundry for a year or more, and after he had torn himself away from a conversation with two others, similarly attired, his attitude to me - while not offensive - was at best desultory.  I got the impression that he would have preferred to be anywhere but there, but that there was no choice for him ... which is probably not far from the truth.  I was reminded of some factories where I have worked in the past, and I wondered what it must have been like to work there, say, thirty or forty years ago.

Ouse Valley Viaduct;  photo credit:
Joshua Dunlop, expertphotography.com

Contrast this sad scene with the catherine wheel that was the delight of Tuesday afternoon.  This was, I think, the second time I've driven past the Ouse Valley Viaduct near Balcombe in Sussex, and it was no less surprising and spectacular than previously.  Wikipedia tells me that it's 96 ft high, and its 37 arches stretch for a distance of 1,475 ft. ... well over a quarter of a mile!  Made of 11 million bricks in 1841, the viaduct is still in use, carrying over 100 trains a day between London and Brighton.

Wednesday began with a handful of sparklers: a trio of local jobs, before the day's squib, a trip to Cheshire.  However, it was more like a damp squib because, by the time I arrived at Mottram St Andrew it was dark, and I discovered that the delivery point was an executive dwelling in a road where each house had a name rather than a number.  I was very glad that my job had been updated to provide me with a phone number, but even so there was a little confusion about where in the road I had parked to make the call, and my mission was only successful because the householder came outside and spotted my stationery headlights along the road!

Thursday took a shape rather parallel to its predecessor; more sparklers were followed by a rocket, but one with a broken stick.  I was returning from Biggleswade when a phone call invited me to consider a morning delivery in Glasgow.  A quick calculation sent me home briefly, to gather a few essentials together and make a telephone booking for a room at the truckstop in Carlisle for the night before heading to Stevenage for the pick-up.  The first problem was that no one knew what I was supposed to be collecting.  A phone call quickly identified the person who had made the booking, but she was not at work that day.  More delays and phone calls ensued.  Eventually it was revealed that I had been despatched in response to what had been no more than a quotation provided some days previously: a quotation that had proved too expensive, and the goods had already been despatched by other means.

Yesterday's sequence resembled a roman candle, beginning with a couple of low-level jobs, firstly collecting for one customer from two local suppliers and then, on my way back, being diverted to the hospital in Stevenage to collect some documents for an address in Letchworth.  Then came deliveries to a couple of surgeries in Buckinghamshire before the final explosion, a small parcel for a private address in Mangotsfield, just off the Bristol ring road.  It seemed that half London was escaping down the M4, and my delivery time advanced almost as quickly as the traffic.  What had set out as a planned 5.30 delivery finally hit the doorstep at 7.40; fortunately my fears that the consignee had given me up and gone out for the evening were unfounded!

Now I can prepare for November's usual pattern to move forward another notch, to commemorate both national and personal war dead on Remembrance Sunday tomorrow.