A 'Winter Holiday' Week

I've chosen my title for this week's blog in recollection of of times when - in certain industries at least - holidays had to be taken within set periods of the year.  My dad, for example, was entitled to a week in the summer and a week in the winter.  While it was a valuable break from the hard work of the other fifty weeks, the winter week was always a bit flat for him.  Once he'd done what he needed to get the garden straight, I don't think he knew what to do with the rest of the time.

For me, this week has been dominated by three things ... one of which shouldn't have been a dominant item in the first place.  I agreed to use my van to take some of the inevitable post-holiday club 'clutter' from the church to the local dump: one van-load would save a number of car trips, so it made sense.  At least it did until I got there on Monday morning.  There I learned that a new permit scheme for all vehicles other than cars had been in force since the beginning of the year.  I was annoyed, because I had been there within the last few months to dispose of an item I'd replaced in the home, and had been admitted without let or hindrance.  I therefore knew nothing of the permit scheme.  The permit is free, but needed to be applied for on line ... from an office in Liverpool!  I made the application immediately, of course, but I'm still waiting for the permit to arrive!  The cardboard, meanwhile, has been 'parked' in the motorhome.

Last weekend, I noticed that there was a small puddle of oil beneath said motorhome, so another task on Monday was to have this checked over.  Now that I've got all the equipment I think I need to make proper use of the vehicle, I felt it would be a good point at which to check the overall weight against that permitted according to the official plate in the cab, so I also incorporated a trip to the nearest public weighbridge, where I learned I have about half a tonne capacity to spare!  The garage cleaned the bottom surfaces and told me to run it for a few days and return.

Ducks doing what ducks do best

On Tuesday, therefore, I sought somewhere interesting to visit not far from home, and discovered a nature reserve near Tring called Cottage Lake, which fulfilled both purposes i.e. a journey in the vehicle, and the ideal of time away from work: relaxation.  When I returned to the garage on Thursday, there was no sign of a leak, so apart from keeping an eye out, all seems to be well.

Then there's the matter of the laptop.  I decided it was time to replace my computer, which is getting a bit tired and, since it's a desktop machine, it puts me at a disadvantage when I go to meetings or for research, in that I need to use a less capable intermediate device.  Following good advice, I ordered on line, thinking it would be in my hands by now.  Sadly there was a problem with the credit card ... well actually a card-user interface difficulty, i.e. I had made an error when I filled out the order document on line ... and the simplest solution was to let that order lapse and re-order it 'properly' later.  I was waiting until this morning, therefore, for confirmation of the order and provision of a delivery date in order to know that all is well at last.

When things aren't going well, I find I tend to think of times long ago, and the other morning I recalled an office where I'd worked some 45 years ago.  In particular, I recalled a typist at that establishment who had a comparatively uncommon surname, and I wondered how easy it would be to find anything out about her now.  I have to praise findmypast.co.uk (although I did complain heavily about their new website last year).  Within little more than half an hour I'd traced the girl's marriage, the birth of her daughter, and a recent address and, thanks to Google Maps, I had found a picture of the neat dwelling that she and her family have occupied for the last thirty-odd years.  Fantastic!

This weekend has seen the first encounters in a competition that will end next May with two top football teams meeting at Wembley ... yes, it's the extra-preliminary round of the FA Cup.  As on the Friday evening of the comparable weekend two years ago, I ventured into Norfolk to support my native team, Diss Town in their efforts.  Sadly, as on that previous occasion at Thetford, today's match ended in a home win, but what a different Diss team set foot on the park at the Elgood Fenland Stadium.  The eighth minute goal that determined the result was very much against the run of play, even up to that early point in the game.  All through the ninety minutes, whenever there was a loose ball, there seemed to be an orange shirt to meet it, and most of the activity seemed to be in the Wisbech half.  The only - but crucial - thing Diss seemed to lack was finishing power.  So many shots landed directly in the goalkeeper's hands and, while not denying that man's power and skill, he didn't have a lot of work to do.

Today also marks the 70th anniversary of VJ-Day.  I had felt that I wouldn't be observing the occasion at all, apart from pondering over my researches concerning the uncle whom I grew up being told that I closely resembled, and who died of malaria while a PoW working on the Burma Railway.  This morning, however, as I drove into town, I happened to notice a gathering by the war memorial.  Putting two and two together, I walked back after parking the van, and was able to join in a short service of commemoration.  Having been unable to take part in the ringing of bells for the occasion, owing to a mis-match of other commitments among the ringers, I felt this more than compensated.

"When you go home, tell them of us and say,  

For your tomorrow, we gave our today."

                                                            -  Kohima Epitaph

Family Matters

It seemed like the end of an era.  I learned last week that my late cousin's widower had died.  This week's post brought a neat, handwritten card from their daughter, advising me of this fact, and also relating the death last month of another cousin, whom I hadn't seen for years, but who was still on my Christmas card list ... something that seems to govern regular, albeit rare and inexpressive communication between distant friends and family members.  As I've got older, this topic has ceased to be a morbid one, and if you find it so, dear reader, then I can only apologise.

Even in this clinical and post-modern age, death is inescapable ... and especially so in big families.  My father was the eighth of nine to survive infancy from a family of twelve.  Two of his siblings didn't marry, two more didn't have children, and the other four had a total of twelve children between them.  I remember him making a comment - probably in the mid-1970s - that there seemed to have been family funerals every year for ages. This wasn't actually the case; in fact there were five deaths of either siblings or in-laws in the '60s, and four in the '70s, but with two in three months at the end of 1976, it must have felt that way to him, and as he got older, he must have been wondering when his turn would come.  He lived another ten years.  The death of his youngest sister in 2002 ended that generation.

As the son of a youngest son, my birth was followed in almost annual succession by the first three daughters of the next generation, as the grandchildren of my father's eldest siblings began to arrive.  It was one of these three who had written to me this week.  I believe it was her mother, just over two years ago, who was the first death of the next, i.e my, generation.  I can't be certain about that, because there are - or were - a number of cousins with whom I have had no contact for decades.

The man who has just died, although not a blood relative, played a significant part in my early life, as I indicated in an earlier post of this blog. He and his colleague Geoffrey not only ran the shop where I spent much of my spare time in my mid-teens, but were also good friends outside of work, being two of the leading lights in the town's Cage-Bird Society, and their Autumn Show was an annual highlight for a bored schoolboy, albeit one who had no interest in birds.

One thing that does intrigue me I only discovered in the last few years.  I wonder whether Cyril had any idea that there was possibly a distant and contorted link between his colleague and his wife's family.  It appears that Geoffrey's aunt's second marriage was to the great-nephew by marriage of Cyril's wife's great-aunt.

What a small world we live in!

Friday Night and Saturday Morning

It's been quite an exhausting week.  With four early mornings, three late nights, two of them following a continuous day on the road, and one night tormented by some kind of allergy - I notice the rape is in flower - I was glad yesterday evening to settle down briefly at Beaconsfield Services.  After eating my Carvery Express (the healthier alternative to KFC, only marginally more expensive, and far less messy on the fingers!), I cradled my coffee and examined the world as it bustled to and fro all around me.

There's one in every week, and I've lost count of the times I've noticed something intangibly 'special' about them.  At last I've grasped the nettle of trying to set down in words that special whatever-it-is about Friday afternoons.  I use that term with some elasticity, of course, because there is great variety in the times at which people leave off ... something I regularly have to take note of if I want to make a successful delivery!  But whether it's lunchtime, or 3.30, 6.0 or - as in my case yesterday - 9.35, that point of stopping work at the end of the week has a special quality.  It has the power to make the transition, in the words of the ubiquitous Mars Bar advert, from the world of work to the world of rest-and-play.

I grew up in a world where, to my young eye, there seemed to be little distinction between these three phases of life for the working man.  After 'proper work' was over more jobs could easily be found at home.  The garden would need attention, or something had to be done in the shed; there was coal to be brought in for the fire, or wood to chop.  With luck there might be an hour or so to look through the newspaper, or watch TV, but it was likely that this pleasure would be overtaken by sleep in the armchair.

And then came the end of the week.  In my father's case it was Saturday lunchtime, for the normal working week of forty-eight hours couldn't be fitted into five days.  I well remember the glow that seemed to fill the house once lunch - on the table immediately upon his homecoming ... just like the evening meal during the week - had been eaten.  At the age of about eight or nine, I would follow him to the bathroom and watch the progress of the weekly shave, marvelling that he could wield that razor (with its blade that I was expressly told not to touch because it was so sharp) up and down his throat with such carefree abandon.  Now, many years later, I make just the same moves with the same nonchalance.

I was looking forward to my weekly walk with him into the town, perhaps to stand on the market place while he chatted to some friend or other, maybe to make some small purchase from one of the shops, but almost inevitably to finish up at the football ground, where I was infused with an interest that had stayed latent until about four or five years ago when I suddenly felt a Saturday 'tickle' to rekindle it again.  If we happened to arrive after half-time we could get in free, because the man at the ticket stall would have shut his window.  Otherwise I think it was 6d for adults and 3d for children.  I was more interested to see who else was there that I might know than to watch the game, but there was a feeling of excitement nonetheless, and the homeward journey would always be paused at the market stall to buy some chips to take home for tea.

Diss Town played in the Norfolk & Suffolk League in those days; for the the bigger and better teams there was the Eastern Counties League, and for the smaller ones the East Anglian League.  After I ceased to be interested in the world of football, the two smaller of these leagues merged to become the Anglian Combination of today, with its many divisions and reserve divisions, of which only the premier division figures at step 7 in the national pyramid.  Diss by then had moved up to the Eastern Counties League, where now they seem to flit between the premier and first divisions.

When I moved into the world of work, I began to see a different format to Friday afternoons, but all with that same 'glow'.  Wherever I've worked, there has been a particular atmosphere that surrounds people leaving behind their workplace behind them.  I carry with me an image - partly real, partly an imagined stereotype - of men and women, young and old, streaming from a factory gate to rows of back-to-back houses, or walking in ones and twos down a country lane to a solitary row of cottages or post-First World War 'homes for heroes', each one looking forward to time with their family or friends, and to whatever the weekend holds, be it routine or special.

For a lot of my time I've been fortunate to work where or when the economy was strong, and there seem always to have been calls for people willing to work overtime on Saturdays.  As an office-worker, I was rarely called to do so myself, but sometimes it was nice to go in at the weekend to catch up on something, and on such occasions the feel of the place was totally different. At one factory, I would often see on a Monday morning that men from last week's evening shift, working normally from 2.0 till 10.0, sometimes with overtime each night until midnight Monday to Thursday, had left off at 10.0 on Friday only to arrived again at 7.0 on the Saturday morning for another five or six hours.  I was filled with a mixture of admiration for their stamina, and sheer wonder at their home life.  Looking back now, though, I realise that, with small children preventing their wives from taking up paid employment, the extra hours, along with the shift work itself, would have made such a difference to a young family.

In the history of mankind, the weekend has occupied only a tiny place; but for those of us who have enjoyed the privilege of this break from constant work for an employer or at a business, it has become precious.  It feels an unalienable right, and I think it does us good from time to time to reflect on what a great benefit it represents in the lives of us all.

Wandering Mind

Have you ever emerged from a pleasant reverie and questioned just what thought sequence had led you down that track?  I hesitate to call it old age, but this was my experience the other morning.  Try as I might, I can't recollect what it was in either St Peter's first Epistle, or my Bible notes, that triggered this diversion, but I found myself thinking of shops in Diss during my childhood, and the fact that the names above the windows rarely matched the people inside.

Take, for example, the one that I wrote about here at some length almost three years ago.  The shop was called W. Bale & Son, and I can just remember seeing the original William Bale, a short man with glasses, and also his son, another William (but always known as Billy), who had already retired when I worked in the shop in my schooldays.  By then it had been sold as a going concern to the firm who ran the wine merchants across the road, John Lovibond & Sons.

Before wine had come along, these premises were part of what I suppose had been a small deparment store, known as 'Bobby's'.  Here was the place to go for quality tailoring, but also for crockery and - I believe - furniture, too. One of the younger generation of the family was only a few years older than me, and I recall being in the store one day when someone came in to see him.  I recall my stifled amusement when the man behind the counter referred to him as 'Mr. James'; so far as I knew the boys at school just called him Jimmy Bobby!

Just across Market Hill from this store was a chemist's shop, with a great stone façade.  Carved into this, in the manner of a giant tombstone, was the name 'Gosling & Co.'  The man who ran this business was William Black, a tall man with grey hair.  I believe there was another man before him, a Mr. Fox, but of that I can't be sure.  I think the original proprietor Mr Gosling, died early in the century.  There was another chemist's shop on the opposite side of the block (which is now known for tourism purposes as the Heritage Triangle), called 'Batley & Stratton'.  I remember the front opened on to a narrow pavement, made even narrower by the existence of rails outside the window.  These were very useful for parking one's bicycle! Opposite this ancient store, with its double doors, so narrow that one could scarcely pass through if only one were open, was a rather shabby shopfront that was far from off-putting, in fact very attractive to young boys and girls.

The wider door of this shop opened into a broad room in which was a great table where, stacked in orderly manner, were all kinds of sweets, still in the boxes they had come in from the wholesaler.  On shelves behind were large jars of more sweets, to be pulled down and weighed out by the quarter-pound ... although if our pocket money was tight, it was no trouble to provide just two ounces if we wanted.  On the opposite side of the room was a display of pipes, cigarettes and tobacco, for the sign above the window - not that we ever looked at it, of course! - read 'Tobacconist and Confectioner'.  My memory isn't clear, but I think the name on this sign was Hurren, although the shop was run by a couple named Forsdyke.  Their advert in the parish magazine said 'AF & GB Forsdyke', anyway.  I suspect that the old lady who welcomed us to her sweet emporium may have been the daughter of the original Hurren, for my mother always referred to the shop as Hurren's, and to this lady as 'Miss Hurren', which would imply that at some point she had married a Mr G. Forsdyke.  Mr Forsdyke may have had another job, because he wasn't seen much in the shop.  My recollection of him is of a tall slim man, usually in a formal suit, who had an elegant way of holding his cigarettes from underneath.

Behind Batley & Stratton, was a wholesale grocers, where I was often sent on errands.  It was called Aldrich & Bryant, and just around the corner, beyond the Midland Bank, was the established firm of solicitors, Lyus, Burne and Lyus, always known locally as Lyus & Burne.  I think both Lyuses had long since departed this life, but Dick Burne was still around in those days, a regular communicant at the early service at the parish church, and his wife was a customer at Bales'.

Like Batley & Stratton and Aldrich & Bryant, many of the other shops and businesses in the town probably began as partnerships, such as the ironmongers, Larter & Ford, whose premises ran down to the Mere, a six-acre lake around which the old town grew up.  Then at the apex of the triangle was another clothing business, Aldiss & Hastings.  I'm sure each of these businesses catered for their own sector of society, for there seemed ever to be a sort of 'us and them' distinction into which I grew up.  So, for our clothing needs, my father - and I in his wake - would go to another shop where the name didn't fit the proprietor, Cullens, managed by Mr Alan Bailey, a very helpful man who lived on the same estate as us, and who spoke with a lisp.

And finally to mention a business that I had no dealings with, a partnership that made its fortune from that noisy invention, the motor car.  Mr. Watson and Mr. Smith owned the showroom that eventually became the town's Vauxhall dealer, and - possibly in common with others in the town's history - invested their profits in the erection of houses.  This pair of substantial semi-detached houses were called Cherwell Croft and Willow Brae, and stood only a little way back from that prestigious entrance to the town, Victoria Road.  I have a vague recollection of the two widows, Mrs Smith being a tall lady, and Mrs Watson considerably shorter, and having a mouth always on the go ... by which I don't mean to suggest that she was a gossip, rather that she suffered from a nervous twitch.  By the time I knew her, she had moved to a bungalow next door to the original houses, and it was into a flat in one of these houses - I never knew who had owned which - that I moved with my bride when first married.

All this goes to show what an uninteresting week it has been, work-wise. Although not particularly unproductive, the only day that was really full nose-to-tail was yesterday, which brought four of the week's thirteen jobs. The other days tended to stagger to a close - rather than end - mid-afternoon, and Thursday began late, because I had to resort to the van-doctor when I was threatened by that most sinister of icons in the modern vehicle, the picture of the car partly obliterated by a giant spanner!  In this case the diagnosis was straightforward - replacement of glow-plugs required, but it does disrupt the flow of the week.

Looking Back

After commenting - some readers might suggest I was complaining, but I did say that slackness was typical of early January - that there wasn't much work last week, this week has brought much more in terms of both variety and overall activity.

I have often said over the last twelve years that I could never go back to an office job.  The excitement of not knowing until the last minute what I'm going to do next, and yet being confident in my basic ability to deal with whatever it might be, was the very thing that evoked my delight in the first place, and has maintained it ever since.  This wouldn't suit everyone ... and doesn't!  Some try it for a week or two and are not seen again; others hear of certain regular jobs and negotiate to be allocated to them, or else have already made it plain that this would suit them better, should such an opportunity arise.

For example, one of my colleagues a few years ago, whose family circumstances it suited, liked to start work every morning from about 6.0 knowing that he would be home most days from about 3.30, or at least by then he'd know for certain what time he would return.  From time to time, customers ask for someone to perform a specific run early each morning, and Peter was often assigned to these tasks.  Once he went on a fortnight's holiday and I was asked to stand in for him.  The particular job he was doing at the time involved collecting boxes from an office in Welwyn Garden City at 6.30 am, taking them to a similar office in Wokingham, and bringing back the empties from previous days.  The task was simple and straightforward, but by the end of the first week, I was yearning for his return, even though I was back home by mid-morning and that the rest of the day brought the variety I craved.

Another such regular job, which has been performed daily since long before I joined the team, consists of providing an internal mail service between the many sites operated by our local college.  There were always a small number of drivers who knew this run, and I was invited to become one of them soon after I arrived on the scene, although I was clearly a 'reserve', since records indicate that I performed it only 34 times in just over two years.  I hadn't been asked to do it for almost ten years ... until this week, when one of the current 'regulars' was in France, another was already committed, and the third had pressing family business that required his absence from work for a day.  Who, then, could the controller turn to but ...?  I was asked to undergo a verbal update via a phone call to the one who would be away, and learned of a couple of new twists to the routine, but in some ways it was just like turning the clock back.

Talking of clocks in reverse gear, three other things have happened this week that fall into that category.  First was the appearance on facebook of the school photo from 1969.  This was the year after I'd left the establishment, but naturally most of the faces were familiar, and it was interesting - and not a little embarrassing - to discover that some of those names that I ascribed to unlabelled faces, I then found had been correctly applied to a different face on another page!

Then the local paper published a picture from five years earlier of the pupils at one of the primary schools in the town.  Although this wasn't the school I had attended, I did recognise some of the faces as belonging to children from my own street, or who had appeared later at the high school when I was there.

Full credit for the final ocurrence of 'historic' significance should go to my 'number one cousin', who spotted the remarkable coincidence of two sur-names from our family history appearing in the same obituary column.  I have identified one of them as being the widow of our fourth cousin, and in so doing I discovered a number of details in my records that still require verification, along with more recent relatives from the newspaper announce-ment who can now be added to the family tree.  As to the other lady, further investigation is required to link her family - whom I have now traced back to the late 19th century - to that of our great-great-grandfather.

Whatever Next ...?

... Or, put another way, 'a week not without incident'.

It began with an uninspiring visit to the office, where my PDA was unjammed, during which time I joined a new driver and completed my official training in the handling of medical samples.  At the end of this I was allowed to sign a certificate, which will be kept in the office, and was presented with more 'essential' equipment, a home for which must be found in my already over-crowded van.  The day proper continued with jobs to Harwich and Cambridge.  Despite being home soon enough, I missed my ringing practice because of an instruction to be in Stevenage for a 6.0 collection the next morning.

I confess, I was late, and didn't get there until about 6.15, but it made little difference.  No one at the warehouse knew anything about what I was supposed to collect, and I had to wait until the day shift arrived at 7.0 before I could collect the fresh produce that I took to Norwich to be photographed for publicity materials.  Upon my return, I was sent north again, this time to exchange nine cooker hobs on a building site in Manea.  There was then just time to clean the van's carpet and my boots before darkness fell, and I was about to settle down for the evening, when another call sent me off once more, this time to a medical practice in rural Essex.

Wednesday morning's fruitless exercise took place in Hertford.  As a matter of interest, it was at the very same building (although this time for the host company) where a few weeks ago I managed to set off the security alarm (see the full story here).  This week's job was to take 36 boxes to a retail park near to the Dartford river crossing.  We tried loading them one way and another, but there was no way this quantity of fairly large boxes would fit into my van.  The sender gave up, rang the office, who said they'd sent out a bigger van, and I left to make my way back home.  I got as far as the last junction up the motorway before mine, and was then turned back to visit a white goods firm in Hemel Hempstead.  The job was to collect two items, one for a hospital in Colchester, the other for a building site near Sudbury.

After a long wait, it transpired that I would only be collecting a large oven for the second of these, since the other job had been taken by another driver earlier in the day.  Once I was loaded, and about to depart, I rang the office to advise them of the change, whereupon the next phase of the saga unfolded.  It seems that the other driver had been 'persuaded' to take this Colchester job, notwithstanding that he was actually going to central London - not a combination that would normally be entertained!  By this time he was on his way back with it, and I was asked to meet him to collect my second job (which would actually be the first one) from him.  I set off for South Mimms services.

It was there that I learned the sorry truth.  The Colchester job was not one item but two and, with the oven already on board, there wouldn't be room in my van for both these additional items.  After some further discussion, I left for Suffolk with the one item I had collected, surprisingly unfazed by the fact that, after a completely wasted morning, this was the only job I would do that day.  This time it was too dark when I returned to clean the van a second time in as many days.

Thursday was a better day; possibly the best of the week.  It started with a large envelope to be taken to a converted granary office on a Norfolk farm. I'd woken up that morning with a strange feeling of regret that I had no pictures of the graves of my immediate family.  No sooner had I crystalised this thought, than I realised that this very day I could do something about that fact and, once my delivery had been made, it added only a couple of miles to my return journey if I diverted via the cemetery in my native Diss. Upon my arrival, I went straight to the oldest of the graves I sought, that of my paternal grandmother, for I remembered its prominent position, and found it neatly trimmed - a contrast to the last sight I had had of it, covered in long grass, with the headstone barely visible.

My father's grave

One by one, I found all the others.  My father's, a rugged York stone, that I had chosen myself to match his rugged life on the land, next to my mother's grave, unmarked save for a strange marker I didn't recognise and can't explain, thrust down into the site of a long-removed flower vase.
My maternal grandparents', neither of them marked by a stone, were surprisingly easy to find, because I remembered many a visit made with my mother in my teens, when we always recognised them by the adjacent stone which bore an unusual surname, Wass.  The last one took longest to locate.  It was that of my paternal grandfather, who died in 1950. I knew the rough area, but when I looked there, all the graves were much, much older, and somehow as I progressed with the dates, I then found myself amongst far newer ones than that which I sought.  At last, I explored in the opposite direction, and struck gold, as it were.  This particular plot may have initially been occupied by a garden or perhaps was a later addition, for here were several of this 'intermediate' age, as if positioned here as 'infill', long after the cemetery had been started in the mid-nineteenth century.

Thoughtfully I continued my journey home, and back to the world of work. A local job appeared on my screen just before I got home, and following this a hospital transfer that proved to be non-existent as both I and another driver sought it to no avail.  Someone had apparently got his wires crossed! Then came that crucial late-afternoon question, 'are you available for more work this evening?'  I decided that I was, and was persuaded to make another trip to Norfolk, to deliver some wine to a night club in the centre of Norwich.

The return journey was more exciting than I either expected or desired.  As I drove down the A11, delighting in the new dual carriageway through Suffolk at about 65 mph, with dipped headlights out of consideration for drivers coming in the opposite direction, suddenly the blackness of the road surface was broken by blood and gore.  I remember thinking that this stretched further than usual along the road but, since it was all between my wheels, I dismissed it as a larger-than-usual badger that had met its end.  No sooner had I done so than my lights picked out a large white object.  LUMP! I'd hit it and was up in the air.  CRASH! in a split second I was down again, and - amazingly - still travelling smoothly along the road.  It must have been a full-grown deer that had been killed by a passing lorry.  This morning my first call was at the garage, where I sought to confirm that nothing serious had befallen the van.  The staff there were only too pleased to run it onto one of the ramps before the work of the day got under way.  It was concluded that my alignment when I'd hit the beast was about as fortunate as it could have been.  A few inches either side and the result could have been serious. As it was, the only damage was to a few fuel-pipe clips that had been twisted a little out of position, the radiator grille needed re-fitting where it had been knocked loose, and I'd lost one half of the front skirt.

I think I can say that's the first time in my motoring history that I've hit an animal - alive or dead - and I'm quite content for it to be the last!  After that, the rest of the day pales into insignificance, with nothing more venturous than two loads of printing, one from Stevenage to Ampthill, the other from Hitchin to Barking, and in between some fibre-glass moulds and products from Bedford to Letchworth.

Tomorrow sees yet another rehearsal for our annual carol service the following day, and this intense weekend will be the opening phase of the festivities, with only three more days before the start of the long Christmas and New Year holiday.  No doubt there will be some account of the procedings here, but timing might be a little uncertain!

Off the Pitch!

"Thass bin a funny ow week!" as my mother might have said.  A funny (in the sense of strange) week indeed.  Let's look at work for a start: 18 jobs, which is quite good, but apart from one - which I'll tell you about in a moment - only one other was over 60 miles, so it wasn't a particularly profitable week.  Most of its highlights came 'off the pitch', to steal a footballing metaphor.

On Monday, as I returned from a hospital run to Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, via a collection from another hospital in Peterborough, Dave my controller rang me because he couldn't track me on his computer and wondered how I was getting on.  Apparently the goods I'd collected were quite urgently required for another hospital.  I took advantage of the call to seek a meeting with him about my retirement, and was told, "come in any time."  I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and after delivering to our customer in Letchworth, I visited the office.

Over the last few weeks I've been playing with figures, to come up with a plan for a 'graduated retirement'.  I've heard many tales of men at this age. One week is work as normal, the next week ... nothing!  And how do they cope with a change to life that can seem like falling off a cliff?  Some find it no problem, with hobbies and outside interests that easily expand to fill the vacant hours.  Others have been so wrapped up in work that life suddenly seems empty.

My father for instance, after a lifetime working on the farm, had quite upset my mother, getting under her feet as he wandered to and fro, not feeling needed in the home.  He quickly found a part-time job at a nearby nursery, where the owner had engaged quite a number of ex-farm workers, who provided agreeable company for each other alongside their work.  Another man, whom I knew quite well, was a church organist; he and his wife were childless, and had plans to travel after he had retired.  Only a few months after he had finished work at an office in the town, he had gone to church early one Sunday to practise the day's music, and was found dead at the organ later in the morning.

I have no desire to be killed off by a sudden change in the pattern of life!  So I'm planning to spend the next two years 'in decline', so to speak.  Rather than simply retract to a four-day week, as some have done, I'm thinking of a working/retired 'sandwich', working full weeks, but not so many of them, and interspersing these with periods of other activity.  Fine plans were - and still are - in the making, but the key requirement had yet to be obtained. Would it be acceptable to work like this?  Hence the meeting with Dave.  It went just as I'd predicted.  I presented him with my plans, we exchanged a few words of explanation, reference was made to his being well satisfied with my work, and within minutes were were talking about the football team that he manages in his spare time!  This formality over, my plans have been taken to a more detailed degree this week, as I've tried to finalise my financial needs and arrangements.

As our meeting took place, telephones were ringing in all directions, and there were frequent interruptions from colleagues.  One call had announced that the customer to whom I had just delivered needed something taken that evening to the far side of Bristol, so as I took my leave I said to Dave, "Can I be cheeky and suggest that I go round to <customer's name>?"  He smiled and replied, "Good idea!" - it was the best job of the week!

With so many jobs this week, there have also been a number of convenient slots between them in which I've been able to keep up with 'stuff' that has piled up on other fronts.  One morning I had just listened to the morning service on my way home, and decided that I really ought to give some thought to my assigned task of leading the prayers in church on Christmas Day.  I'd just added the final full stop to my draft as the PDA by my side beeped to announce the next job!

On another day, the podcast of an excellent talk by Audrey Collins at the National Archives inspired some notes of possible lines of research to discover what my uncles were doing in the First World War, which I hastily scribbled before the next job arrived!  Survivors with common names are among the most difficult to trace, and following up these ideas might utilise one of the first creeping fingers of my retirement!

As my geography teacher once told his class, "The land is like life itself, if it doesn't change, it dies!" - wisdom not wasted!

When I Worked at the White House

It's funny how the smallest detail sometimes leads to an almighty turning back of the memory clock.

One of the embarrassing aspects of working with a PDA is the need to ask people their names.  In the 'old days', I could just hand them the clipboard and say 'sign and print, please' and, so long as there was a clear indication in each box, I'd be on my way.  Now, if there's a delivery sheet to sign as well, it seems something of an insult to ask, implying - however correctly - that their printed name is illegible; and if there isn't a piece of paper, then to ask a name seems nothing less than a blatant intrusion into 'their space'.  To cover my embarrassment, I notice that I've developed the occasional habit of making some comment about the name I'm told.  (I have to be careful what I say is not racist, of course!)  This backfired on me the other day.

I'd made a delivery to a car showroom in Ashford, Kent.  On arrival, I was approached by she who appeared the junior of the two ladies on duty behind the reception desk, and after putting the parcel on the floor, I asked her name.  "Birch," she said.  "Oh," I replied, "I used to go to school with a girl named Birch."  Quick as a flash came the amused rejoinder.  "I've aged very well!"  She must have been in her early twenties, at most.  I hastily covered my embarrassment with a comment about her being much too young, and retreated.  As I drove away I thought 'Birch'.

There were, in fact, three sisters of that name.  At school I knew Angela and Susan, who were respectively two years and one year older than me, and I had little to do with either of them ... shy boys of eleven didn't in those days. It wasn't until ten years or so later, when I was newly married, and a junior accountant with a manufacturing firm, that I discovered that they had a younger sister.  Their works was at Harleston, about ten miles from my home town, and rather than provide my own transport, I would often travel there on the bus that was provided for the factory workers, many of whom lived in Diss.  One Monday there was an attractive addition to the passengers, and as the only two office staff amongst the otherwise overalled gathering, it was perhaps natural that we should sit together.

In the following months, we shared many a Monday morning and Friday evening journey, and I learned that Julie was the sister of Angela, who by then had found a job working not with me, but in the same office, and Susan.  She was married to an airman, I believe and, having found work at the factory, in the office next to ours, she lodged during the week with Angela, who lived nearby.  On Fridays, she would travel to Diss, on the first leg of a complex journey to spend the weekend with her husband, making the reverse journey on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, this arrangement was not conducive to happy family life, and it only lasted a few months, by which time Julie had obtained a more suitable job nearer the base, enabling her to commute from married quarters.  I was flattered that, on the first of only three occasions in my whole career, she asked me for a reference to support her application.  I have no idea what it was that I wrote, given that my work and hers rarely coincided, if at all.

This whole recollection brought back many happy memories of the four years I worked at that factory, and the many faces that were familiar, although with the passing of forty or so intervening years, many of the names are now casualties of time.  I remember sometimes wearing a red hand-knitted pullover, and being nicknamed 'the robin' as I walked round the shopfloor collecting data.  Then there was the time when I made some notes in the presence of one of the young women who graced the shopfloor as secretaries to the departmental managers.  "Coo," she exclaimed, "haven't you got nice writing ..."  My head began to swell with pride until she added, "... for a feller!"

Mendham Lane, Harleston - former
factory canteen and car park

The White House - my office was
on the top floor of the nearest corner

A few weeks ago, I made a delivery in the Suffolk town of Beccles, and my homeward journey would naturally have taken me past Harleston, so I took advantage of the opportunity to divert through the town and look at the site of this particular chapter of my early career.  The factory building is no longer, having been demolished a few years ago to make way for housing, but the canteen is still there, now a community hall, with the car park still in use around it.  More significantly, from my point of view, so too is the white house on the opposite side of the car park from the factory, which in those days housed the administrative departments.  I could almost hear the slam of that solid front door as I stood by the roadside with my camera.

It Never Rains but ... and it's Still Raining!

In the town where I grew up there was a soft drinks company named Doubleday.  Where that name came from I have no idea, but it comes back to me now as I review a few days of distinct ups and downs.  Best, as always, to begin at the beginning.  On Monday I had the usual enquiries from my friends at breakfast as to what I would be doing today, and unusually I was able to answer them positively.  Normally if there's a definite answer, then I'm already on the road, and not there to give it.  This Monday, however, I knew exactly where I'd be for most of the day, since the van was booked in for a service and MOT.  A couple of years ago I had an argument with a bollard on one of Tesco's car parks and come off second best, with the result that I've been driving around with a headlight that was fully functioning but with a cracked glass.  Gradually since that assault the interior has been gathering dust and damp, and has grown ever dimmer so, deciding that now should be the time to have a replacement, I was fairly sure that the whole sequence would take up most of the day . . . a day easily absorbed by my current family history project, once I'd completed my January accounts and submitted a VAT Return.

Tuesday and Wednesday were both good days, and went some way to compensating for the loss of income on Monday.  Tuesday began early with a local collection for Northampton, and goods to bring back to our customer in Letchworth, followed after only a brief interlude by a couple of local jobs.  I was nearly back from the second of these when I was diverted to collect from our office, where there is a small medical warehouse facility.  Three items were then taken to the Russell Hall Hospital in Dudley - another journey made easier by having done the exact same job five months ago - resulting in a return home about 9.45 pm.  I made straight for bed, resolving to do the daily admin when I got up.

As soon as I'd finished breakfast on Wednesday I rang in as available.  It was about 8.30, and I anticipated having an hour or more to record the doings of the past day and read through the e-mails and social media that had accumulated since Tuesday morning.  Not so.  Within about five minutes came a call asking me to collect something urgent for Oxford from a healthcare firm in town.  By the time I'd collected this, another job had come in for something to be taken from Welwyn Garden City to Didcot.  The visit to John Radclife Hospital in Oxford resolved a doubt I'd expressed a couple of weeks ago as to whether or not I'd been there before.  Clearly I hadn't, for I'm sure I should have remembered it, if only for the difficulty in finding the main entrance.

My goods were designated for the theatre, so having once found a reception desk and placed my enquiry I was distressed to learn that they had at least two operating theatres.  Since I had no indication which one I needed, it was agreed that I should be sent to 'main theatre', and followed the directions to the main entrance, which I had already bypassed in ignorance in my original search.  Once there, the staff were very helpful, and examined the goods I'd brought, in order to determine their application.  On discovering that these bore the critical word 'paediatric', they sent me further afield to the Children's Theatre, escorted for convenience by a member of staff, whose swipe card could gain access through the otherwise securely closed doors.  Once the delivery had been completed, I was then escorted in the opposite direction to recover my van at the main entrance.  Taking into consideration the length of the corridors, and the speed and energy of my escort, I felt I'd had this week's workout by the time I set off for Didcot!

After negotiating an alternative route to avoid a road closed owing to floods, I had almost reached home when the almost dreaded call came, sending me immediately onto another job.  This involved collecting a small bundle of timber from Hitchin for a public house just outside Nottingham.  I'd just picked this up when another call announced that a customer in Letchworth had a small parcel for Leicester (which turned out to be a large box of plastic trays - bulky but lightweight).  This was definitely two days in one, and by now the rain had settled in for the night, although it was still only about 3.0 pm.  An accident on the M1 caused a diversion on the way up, and the road conditions made it slow going anyway, so I was getting a little anxious that all the staff would have gone home by the time I arrived at my destination.  In the event the manager was looking out for me; the door opened just as I pulled up outside and, by the time I'd completed my paperwork after making the delivery, he had secured the premises and driven off himself!

On then to Arnold, where the Greyhound Inn is being refurbished.  By good fortune I had the phone number for someone involved in the operation, and a quick call resulted in a door opening to indicate how access was to be obtained.  Another late night ensued, and at 10.30, it was time for bed when I got home.  When I got up on Friday morning I already felt tired, and decided that a couple of local jobs would satisfy me quite nicely to end the week.  So this time, I didn't ring in after breakfast to say I was available.  In fact, I didn't need to, because the phone had already rung before I'd finished my cereal!

Friday was already under way.  I managed to squeeze in a little essential admin before I was sent to Luton, following which I was summoned once more for the next job before returning home.  This time I collected from Stevenage for Rochford, to deliver to badly-identified premises on an industrial estate behind Southend airport.  I confess, I didn't hurry home, was then conveniently given a job to start off next week, and felt confident in beginning my weekend routines.  When the controller rang at 5.45, to ask if I would be able to do another job that evening, I was pleased at the way I confined my response to a polite but firm 'No,' following this with the advice that, since two late nights had robbed me of two evenings, I needed to catch myself up before embarking on a busy weekend.

And so it is; my busy weekend has already begun with a follow-up to that MOT: a tyre check that reveals the need for a new set of four!

When Memories Take Over

The other afternoon I was listening to a podcast about the development of supermarkets, and my mind shot right back to my teens, when I used to help out at the grocery shop of W Bale & Son.  It was actually two shops in one, 2-3 Market Place, and it had two front doors - well, three actually, since there was another one in the closed, warehouse end that had been no. 2.  Customers only saw the actual shop, no.3, and being right on the corner, overlooking the market place, it was usually bright and sunny.

Entering by the door further from the corner you had to go down a couple of steps to floor level, and were immediately beside the bacon slicer.  This shining silver and red machine was cleaned every evening by one of the two men who ran the shop, Geoffrey and Cyril.  It was operated by turning a big handle at the far end, as a result of which a system of gears and levers moved the carriage from one end to the other of the bed, and each turn of the handle moved it slightly to the left, and nearer to the circular blade that revolved with a constant whirr as the handle went round.  On the carriage were either two or four poles, between which lay a side of bacon, or a big ham, held firmly in place by a set of fierce metal teeth, part of a securing cover which slid up and down on the poles.

I was always fascinated to watch the rhythmic motion of the men, swinging to and fro as one hand turned the handle while the other caught the rashers as they fell from the blade.  These in turn were swung with equal precision onto a sheet of greaseproof placed there for the purpose.  When by their judgement enough slices had accumulated to make the required weight, this was moved swiftly to the scale, and checked.  Maybe another slice was required, and then he would wrap it up in one smooth movement, tucking in the last end and placing it on the counter facing the customer, as the other hand reached for the ubiquitous pencil perched on his ear, ready to write the price on the outside.  Meanwhile he was already asking, "... something else, Mrs Brown?"  Never a moment was lost, in those days when there was personal service for everyone.

By the time I was about thirteen, I was already familiar with the shop, since my mother had worked there before I was born, and I'd been taken there regularly from a toddler.  It had been suggested that I go and help out for the weeks when Geoffrey, Cyril and their colleague Roly who drove the van, took their annual summer holidays.  At two weeks each, that would nicely occupy me during the long and boring weeks off school.  I was put to gentle duties like shelf-filling, and taking orders around the town on the trade bike, which was brought out of retirement and cleaned up for the occasion.

The customers were the predictable mixture of 'old faithfuls' who lived in the town and called in on a daily or weekly basis, younger families living on the council estates to the east and south-east of the town centre, and farmers and the rural elite from the surrounding villages.  Some would take their groceries with them; others would have them delivered.  One lady from Kenninghall or Fersfield sent her chauffeur, and there was a delightful chap who would have done P G Wodehouse proud, who arrived with a monocle and a limp, and pronounced his greeting, " 'Morning, Mr Hubbard! 'Morning Mr Haystead!" [to Roly] "Hello, young man!"  In turn I too received my due ... a silent smile.  I believe he was an 'Honourable', and had a place in "Who's Who".

On my first day behind the scenes, I was shown round the store, and then introduced to a manually operated coffee grinder located on the second floor by a beautiful oriel window overlooking the churchyard.  The premises were quite straightforward.  Each of the two shops consisted of living accommodation above a sales floor.  There was access between the two on the ground and first floors, but above that they were independent.  Because of the slope of the ground, the back doors were on the first floor, and opened onto the churchyard.  We normally used the back door of no.2, beside which was a tiny kitchen, while the rear of no. 3 led to what had once been a little veranda.  It was by that time a dark and dingy place and home to vast colonies of spiders, whose webs seemed to be everywhere.  It was secured to the outside by vertical shutters at the foot of two or three steps that ran the length of the shop; between these and the back door was a kind of rough storage area, secure but open to the elements.  This was where the bike lived.

Behind this almost unused door there were two rooms, the windows of which had been bricked up, so they were always dark, and illuminated when required by lone, unshaded electric bulbs  In one was kept sugar and biscuits, and in the other a variety of tinned fruit, jams and marmalades.  When it was delivered, the ordinary, granulated sugar arrived at the back door in brown paper packages each containing fourteen two-pound bags.  On the next floor were two more rooms, bright and airy, with a big window overlooking the market place, which were used to store coffee and tea, sweets and chocolate.  My first task that morning was to fill the coffee drawer with powder freshly ground from beans emptied from a one- or two-pound bag into the machine. 

When it was full, the drawer was carried down two flights of stairs to its place in the long wooden counter which ran most of the length of the shop.  There was a gap in the middle of the counter to allow access to the 'staff area' behind it, and at the end nearer the bacon slicer was a small office.  As well as coffee, the drawers underneath the counter contained rice, sugar of many kinds, and a variety of dried fruit.  When they were empty, or in slack times, simply running low, they were carried upstairs, refilled and returned.  On this brown wooden counter stood the magnificent cash register, with its sliding markers for pounds, shillings and pence.  Once the correct amount was set, the handle was turned rapidly and the cash drawer opened.  Change was counted up into the hand of the customer, as I've described elsewhere.

Past the office door was a small passage up a couple of steps that led into the ground floor of no.2, and its little-used front door.  I only saw it opened for two regular purposes.  One was the loading of the delivery van from wooden racks that filled most of this former shop area, where the orders were placed once picked.  The other reason for opening this door was when bacon and cheese was delivered, for at the far end there was a great refridgerated cupboard, and the delivery driver would carry the bacon straight from the lorry to the fridge.  At the back of no.2 was a brick arch, through which two or three steps gave access to a small dark cellar, which was actually beneath the churchyard.  Here the cheeses were stored until required.  As the level of custom in the shop allowed, one of the men would take a sharp knife and go into the fridge to remove the bones from the bacon, packing them into a small cardboard box.  One of my less pleasant duties when I was there involved carry this box round the corner to the abbatoir in Chapel St, where I was thankful to leave them in a pre-arranged corner, just inside the door.

Access to the third floor of no.2 was by means of a staircase at the far end, small enough almost to be a spiral, and one of my abiding memories is of struggling up and down those stairs with a box containing 36 giant packets of Kelloggs Cornflakes.  The two topmost floors of no.3 and the top floor of no.2 were all empty, and some of them were still covered with wallpaper from their time as bedrooms.

In the shop there seemed to be a place for everything, and of course everything had to be in its place.  Across the middle of the ceiling, just in front of the counter, was a shelf for the cereals, with lots of cornflakes at one end, and porage oats at the other.  In between were the usual varieties that were advertised on TV and favourite with the children, like Frosties and Rice Krispies, Sugar Puffs and Shreddies; and beside the Weetabix ... do you remember the yellow boxes of Force Wheat Flakes, with a picture of Sunny Jim on the front, vaulting a gate?  In front of this shelf, the ceiling was supported by two metal columns that helped to bear the weight of the four floors above, and the furniture of the shop was completed by a seat in front of the counter where the more elderly customers could rest their legs whilst waiting to be served.

As the week progressed, not only did the constant flow of people through the shop receive the personal service to which they were accustomed, but phone calls from isolated farms would be recieved in the office and answered with orderbook and pen, providing lists from which their requirements could be picked and packed ready for the regular deliveries.  There were four specific rounds over the course of the week, one on Tuesdays to the villages north and north-east of the town, two on Thursdays to the north-west and south-west, and then one on Friday mornings to the south-east.  At holiday times, Roly was required in the shop, of during the day, of course, and so these had to be accommodated in the evenings, and it was my excitement to go along with him on these occasions, ostensibly to help and reduce the time they took.  More often than not, the customers were only too pleased to see a new face, and embarrassed me by their friendly interrogation.

During my time at the shop, I learned many skills that are of no use today, and have now passed into history.  These included (with varying degrees of proficiency) wrapping a wedge of cheese in a neat greaseproof parcel; later on I was even allowed - with guidance, and for known, tolerant customers - to cut it myself, using that wire that ran down the middle of the marble slab!  Similar progressions were made in other matters, such as pouring sugar or rice from the scalepan into a blue bag without spilling any, before folding the top of the bag so that none should spill out.  Then came the greatest test of all -wrapping a pound of ground coffee in a plain white paper.  This involved bringing up both sides and folding these edges together so as to form a sort of tube, but gently so as not to shoot the coffee all over the counter; then the whole was swung onto one end, trapping the coffee against the counter while the other end was folded in the manner of a sugar bag; and finally - great risk of spillage here - inverting the whole thing and tucking in the other end.  On many occasions my efforts weren't deemed roadworthy as I'd left them and had to be tied with string for safety!

What a field day the health and safety people would have in such a situation as this today.  Such a lot of risk assessments; the need for clean hands; and the carrying of heavy boxes up all those hazardous stairs!  And I'm sure the employment people would have been quick to prevent me going along voluntarily as I did on Saturdays when holiday cover couldn't justify my paid attendance, simply because I enjoyed the company and the activity!  Such vivid and happy memories - it's hardly possible that they were almost fifty years ago!

When I press the 'off' button

There are times on long journeys - and on short ones too! - when the chatter, or the music, or the serious talk coming out of either radio or mp3 player just don't satisfy, and I press the 'off' button.  Admittedly, it doesn't stay off for long, and I soon resort once more to the entertainment machine, but now and again it's nice just to be quiet and let the thoughts flow.

Often, I find, such times happen when I'm driving through the countryside, or when I've just been listening to something that has a 'pastoral' flavour.  At times like this I find that my thoughts turn back to my childhood in Norfolk, or to how I imagine my parents' life to have been in the twenties and thirties, or during wartime.

The town where I grew up had survived the war virtually unscathed - in material terms, anyway.  A stray enemy fighter had strafed the town centre one lunchtime, I believe, but there had been no intense bombing as in larger places up and down the country.  Inevitably there were human casualties of the war, including my uncle, who had died while working as a PoW on the Burma Railway.  But by the time of my boyhood (I am old enough to have had a ration card, but not old enough to remember it!) the town had recovered, and was getting to grips with the New Elizabethan age.  My parents took possession of a brand new Council House two weeks before their wedding, and my widowed mother was still living there when she died some 56 years later!

Many of the shops in the town centre and local businesses still bore the names of their nineteenth or early twentieth century founders - some engraved into the facades of the buildings!  Names like E E Anness, W Gostling, Wallace King and W D Chitty; partnerships such as Aldrich & Bryant, Bateley & Stratton and Watson & Smith were part of the overheard conversation with which I grew up.  Even though many of the businesses had since been taken over by sons-in-law, or bought by new proprietors, they were still known by the names they had borne for decades.  Change came slowly to country folk - and probably still does!

My parents kept themselves to themselves.  Maybe this was because neither of them had been born in the town - although they had lived there for over twenty years when they married!  Whatever the reason, this isolation left its mark on me.  For good or ill, the outlook that my parents had on life shaped my own development.  It gave me a strong sense of independence and self-sufficiency, but I also found it difficult to mix with others ... and still do.  Although quite willing to pull my weight, I wouldn't describe myself as a 'team player'.  Some of the prominent families on our estate got together in the early 'fifties and formed an Association to enable the people who lived there to gather together socially for outings and the like.  One of their achievements was to obtain, and have erected on the green in the middle of the estate, a roundabout and a set of swings to provide a focus for the many children who were growing up there.  My parents had never joined the Association, and I was forbidden to play there.  There was a definite 'us and them' demarcation, of our own making.  It was many years before I realised this, and many more before I was able to get my mind completely around it - long after it had ceased to have any relevance for me!

And then something jerks me back to the present, and the radio goes on once more ....