Muddle and Get Nowhere

In my native Norfolk in 1893, a number of small railway companies that over the previous fifteen years, under a variety of names, had linked communities in equally varying combinations, were amalgamated to form the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Company.  This was operated jointly by the Midland Railway and the Great Northern Railway; it was universally known as M&GN, and affectionately as 'Muddle and Get Nowhere'.  Although having no connection whatsoever with railways, this week for me fits that title admirably.  It's been quite enjoyable in parts, I have to admit, but not greatly productive.

As an example, at the start of the week, I presented my new insurance certificate, which was copied and submitted to the driver admin people.  On Thursday an e-mail was received, pointing out that the word 'Courier' didn't appear on it, so could I provide other evidence confirming that this was indeed the intended meaning of '... and the policyholder's business'.

On Tuesday morning, I was supposed to collect one tyre from a local company at 8.30 to be taken to Kent.  I was given another job - 'available at 9.30, but perhaps you can get it earlier' - to go with it.  After nearly an hour's investigation, interrogation, and numerous phone calls, it was finally established that the tyre was supposed to be collected from the company's depot in another town, and I was left with the second job, which by then I had picked up at a nearby factory.

As I began this present stretch of three weeks of work, I realised that the MOT on the motorhome would expire before my next week off, so I arranged for this to be done, along with an annual service, on Monday.  After (as I thought at the time) dealing with the van insurance, I took the motorhome to the garage, saying that I'd collect it between jobs later in the week.  I eventually collected it after returning from the Kent delivery on Tuesday afternoon.  It had failed the first test, simply because the horn wasn't working.  Once the electrical contacts had been cleaned, it passed second time around.

Both Wednesday and Thursday mornings were spent at home, as I waited for work.  Although not actually wasted, because I managed other things, it was frustrating, especially as I looked back to such full and flowing days only a few weeks ago.  There was more frustration when I picked up a job on Thursday afternoon which should have had borne a bar-code.  This would require different treatment with my hand-held device, and the job had been set up that way.  With no bar-code to scan, this was extremely difficult; although I eventually managed to record that I'd got the box on board, there was no way it was going to accept a signature for it when I made the delivery.  I had to phone the office with the name of the recipient, and get them to enter it.  However, the job still lingered on my screen, so more time was wasted on Friday morning as I attended the office once more to get it sorted ... not to mention also the insurance!

There were, however, four highlights of the week.  On Monday after returning from taking the motorhome for its MOT, I was sent for another 'practical Welsh lesson', going to the Rhondda, to Ysbyty Frenhinol Morgannwg, or the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.  On Thursday, during my absence dealing with that box, some leads were delivered that I had ordered only the previous morning, enabling me to fit up the screen I had saved from my old computer, so I can now sit in the comfort of my armchair and watch i-Player TV or a DVD, instead of sitting at the desk.  I also benefitted from the exercise of emptying a bookcase and shifting it in order to plug the screen into a socket behind it, and then putting all the books back again!

Yesterday's only job was to a private hospital in Sheffield, to get to which I had to pass through some areas I had first encountered almost twenty years ago, when I had run away from home and spent a couple of weeks tramping around in the February snow trying to find work there.  It seemed strange to be there many years later in autumn sunshine; yet at one point I could almost feel the damp and smell the snow ... more ghosts layed!

And finally, today was the annual autumn outing of the bellringers' group. Along with friends from other towers, we visited five churches in south Cambridgeshire, enjoying the challenge of ringing other bells, the fellowship of people we don't meet every week, and the fun and laughter of an away day together.

St Mary Magdalene, Ickleton

Preparing to ring at Trumpington

Back in at the Deep End

The week began with harvest festival at the church.  A new choir had been formed during the summer, which I had readily joined, and this was our first 'outing'.  The service was followed by a simple lunch for about 120 ... no small task for the catering team, who did an excellent job!  In the afternoon - across the town - the bellringers attempted a quarter peal, which was unsuccessful, although not before over 1,000 changes of good ringing had been achieved.  A healing service in the evening rounded off a very busy day.

After two weeks of 'retirement', courier work this week came as more of a shock than any time since my reharnessing after Easter.  And there was no gentle easing into it, either.  After a couple of hours' wait (which allowed me to marshall my thoughts about entering to my various records all the stuff I'd collected at the record office on Friday), my first job was to Pontefract. This was a repeat run of one I'd done during my last working week, albeit that had been late in the day, so the road-busy-ness pattern was different. Returning about 4.0pm, I thought the day would be at and end, but I had to think again when I realised that the job that had appeared on my screen was for delivery that day, rather than Tuesday, and a run to Greenford neatly knocked out my attendance at bell-ringing practice.

This week has included a bit of most things that have made up my courier carreer, the cancellation of my evening plans being only the first.  Next came the 'single job in a day', when Tuesday's job - to Cheltenham General Hospital - didn't begin until 11.0, so once more I had a morning at the keyboard, this time setting-up my newly installed computer Bible program. Wednesday's task was pre-announced, so I had the chance to research it online first.  It took me to Jarrow, a place I had first visited over 24 years ago, as part of a 'Medieval Monks and Monasteries' course at Durham University.  In fact this destination - reached midway through a day best described as 'a 6-hour car-wash' - was a small engineering works only a few hundred yards from St Paul's Church, where the Venerable Bede had started his ministry towards the end of the seventh century.

Thursday's experience was at the opposite end of the spectrum.  I had phoned in as usual at 8.0, but having heard nothing by 2.15pm, by which time I had entered all my family history data and finalised my budget for 2016, I decided to ring again.  I was told that I was their only driver (but wondered, perhaps ungraciously, whether I might have been overlooked completely).  My suspicions were strengthened five minutes later when I received a call suggesting that, if I were willing to help out with a local job then, I could get a 'decent' job for the next day.  The local job was to take some printed circuits to Newmarket; the 'decent' job turned out to be from Hertford (one of two that another driver was collecting) to Manchester airport ... for 9.0 am delivery!

Not having any idea what the effect of the morning rush-hour might be, I decided to allow almost an hour, and left home at 5.0.  It worked.  I arrived at 8.50, found the right office and made my delivery.  Returning to the van, I called the local City Sprint office.  Contrary to my expectations, I wasn't told to hang around while they waited to see what might come in; my next challenge was issued immediately, a collection near Crewe for an organisation in Melton Mowbray that, although I had never been there, I had registered many years ago as being one with whom I had had dealings in a past employment.  My next phone in was nowhere near so productive ... so I headed home, thinking that early start had merited an early finish.

Just as the premature counting of unhatched chickens is decried, I had looked forward too early to a lazy evening.  Before I had reached even the neighbouring county, let alone home, my screen had been visited by two more jobs, one to Leicester Royal Infirmary, and the other to a major industrial site in Nottingham.  By the time I had stopped at a truckstop for an evening meal I had clocked up a sixteen-hour day ... and the week wasn't over yet!

Yesterday began with a short but futile attempt to achieve the usual weekend routines.  Then, shortly after lunch, I set off on a personal journey.  The first destination was to attend a football match in Bury St Edmunds ... part of the annual 'Non-league Day' celebration ... and then I paid a long overdue visit to my son and his wife, the excuse for this being to hand over my old computer which he had undertaken to coax on the next steps of its career.

At last comes the weekend rest ... all too short, I fear, before an early alarm heralds tomorrow's breakfast gathering!

Busy Week of 'No Work'!

As hinted in my last post, this week began with the trip to Cambridgeshire. It's often the case that, whether it's meeting a new correspondent for the first time, or a visit to an unknown venue, the actual differs considerably from the anticipation.  I was apprehensive about what I might achieve, and had imagined some walking over (hopefully dried) muddy fenland tracks.  Both of these fore-thoughts were far from the case ... and not independent of each other!

The first surprise was to find that I had the place to myself.  Apart from three parked-up unoccupied caravans, the park was empty ... and I saw no sign of fishermen either until the day I left.  This was quickly followed by discovering that there was no phone signal, so not only did I not have to worry about incoming nuisance calls ... there was therefore no Wi-Fi, so there was no distraction from social media either!  Amazingly, by an hour or so after the shock of finding myself 'cut-off', this didn't bother me.

The site was separated from one of the fishing lakes by a line of leylandii, but a path led to the other side of this barrier, and on both afternoons I enjoyed the experience of walking round the lake on the broad grassy surround, in warm sunshine, and without the slightest hint of a muddy track!  It was the ideal opportunity to marshall my thoughts and, by Tuesday afternoon I found that I had accomplished all that I'd intended.  I was also rewarded on one of my afternoon strolls by the shocking - and beautiful - sight of a fish rising vertically out of the water, like a bather pushing up from the floor of a swimming pool.  Having displayed itself, it then sank back into the lake, leaving only an intense pattern of circular ripples to confirm that it had been real, and not a dream!

I returned home on Wednesday to the contrast of a noisy and exciting fund-raising quiz night at the church.  This engaged - for the first time for most, if not all, of us - an internet quizmaster, supported by a computer whiz and two charming young mums from our midst who acted as hostesses/ comperes for the evening.  The questions were presented, and our answers submitted, on our smart phones or tablets.  I was fortunate to be on the winning team, although considering the large proportion of questions that focussed on TV, sport, films, pop music and the celebrity culture, this was in very small part due to my own prowess!

Thursday was a day of admin. and I stayed indoors all day.  Being the start of a new month, most of a long morning was devoted to accounts and things financial, and after lunch I turned my attention to family history, preparing for a visit to the Suffolk Record Office yesterday.  Having been slightly more successful there than usual with the majority of my searches, I decided to abandon the quest for the few obscurities and came home mid-afternoon, instead of staying until closing time.  This enabled me to fit in my weekly shopping in advance of another busy day today.

The Printed Page ... and Beyond!

Well, it's been a good week for learning how to do retirement.  As a result, there are few eventful things to record, so they stand out just that much bolder, and command full attention here.  Someone commented that I've been more present this week on Facebook ... that's another consequence of having a non-work week with an almost blank diary.

Something I learned from Facebook was that this was International Book Week.  One was encouraged to "Grab the closest book to you; turn to page 52, and post the fifth sentence."  The post I had spotted then continued with a sentence containing a clue of its source, Dickens' Bleak House.  Another follower of this trend posted something from 'popular fiction' (not a genre with which I find any affinity).  Willing to take part, however, I reached for the end book on the shelf next to my desk, and followed the formula.  I do wonder what people made of a reference to King James issuing a religious declaration of not shedding blood 'so long as the Catholics remain quiet'! The book I had picked up was one of many that I've bought when the opportunity arose, but am yet to read, The Gunpowder Plot - Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser.

The literary theme continued later in the week, when I scoured the BBC's i-Player for something to watch over dinner, and discovered a film version of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between.  I watched the first half that night, and saw the rest of it yesterday evening.  I remembered the salient points of the plot from reading the book at school, where it was part of a lesson bearing the loose title 'General English'.  This was the headmaster's brainchild for the cultural development of all those in the sixth form who weren't taking English at A-level and, so far as I recall, consisted of nothing more than reading a 'modern classic' around the class.  Other books we tackled included The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, and A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.

Last night I dreamed about some of the characters in The Go-Between.  I suspect this might have been due to the conjunction of the origin of my knowledge of the book, and the single item in this week's diary, which has been executed this afternoon ... a class reunion of some of those with whom I passed through high school, including some who had suffered that same reading exercise.  Considering that a few of us hadn't seen each other 'in the flesh' (as opposed to seeing pictures on social media) for upwards of 45 years, it was quite remarkable that more "Now, who are you?" wasn't expressed than was actually the case!

There had been such an event fifteen years ago, but on that occasion the organiser had been unable to track me down, so I wasn't present.  Apparently the talk then was of professional achievement; today there was more focus on the extent of life-threatening illnesses, and our plans for making the most of our retirement.  The once-active sportsmen among us were now talking of 'a seat in the stand' rather than 'being selected for the football team this week'; and golf has now taken the place of cricket in many lives.  Although the lady was never mentioned, I found my thoughts drawn to a comic sketch performed by Joyce Grenfell, the words of which were placed in the mouth of one 'Lumpy Latimer', who had been living in Kenya ... 'although you have to call it Ken-ya now'!

Other achievements this week have included some preliminary preparations for what may be this year's last 'serious' outing in the motor-caravan.  This will be to a site in Cambridgeshire, popular for anglers.  I hasten to add that this is not my own interest; I chose the venue for the prospect of tranquillity and maybe a little fenland walking.  I have a number of things to deal with that require a few less distractions than regularly present themselves at home.  I wonder how many will have been progressed significantly by the time I return!

The Smelly Side of Life

As autumn begins, a familiar smell is noticeable as I drive around the countryside.  No sooner has one crop been harvested than the farmer is preparing the fields for the next one, and preparation means one thing ... muck!  One of my earliest memories is of my mother grumbling about the smell when dad came home from work after muck-spreading, and her acknowledgement that it (i.e. pigs' or cows') wasn't so bad as chickens'.  In that vein, I recall a few years ago taking my camper-van to a farmyard site where they kept ducks, and how they instantly reminded me of a visit at the age of about four or five to a great-uncle who lived on a farm, where there were ducks in the orchard, and how we were told to mind where we walked!

Smell is the most powerful of man's senses, they say; it's certainly connected to the brain's power of recollection, and triggers all kinds of memories from the past.  Another early memory of mine is of the journey to school past the bakery, with the early-morning smell of fresh bread bringing some relief from the agonies of cycling up a steep hill.

The variety of places that my work takes me presents an equally varied selection of smells and memories, some of which I share - for good or ill - with the people I collect from or deliver to.  This week, for example, I collected from a small firm working with fibreglass, and I recounted the tale of the director of one of the companies I worked for, who had an interest in small boats.  He made an arrangement with a boat-builder to utilise part of the ground behind our factory, and we got involved with the administration of this new business as well as our own ... totally different in scale and attitude from the precision electronics that were our 'bread and butter'!

I often find myself at the door of a machine shop or fabrication business, and am reminded of a four-year spell working for a company that manufactured agricultural machinery.  I'd not been there long, when the finance director came into our office one day and genially asked how I was getting on.  After a few pleasant exchanges he looked over at my boss and, perhaps remembering what he had come in for, indicated by way of encouragement how far I might go if I were to apply myself. "Look at Snellin' there," he said.  (The cost accountant's name was Snelling, but this man had a pretentious, quasi-aristocratic habit of dropping his g's.)  "He's costin' a foundry."  My boss had been asked to spend some time introducing a costing system at a sister company a few miles away, which made castings for our machines.  One day I accompanied him on a visit and discovered - just as when, many years later, I visited Whitechapel Bell Foundry - that this is another industry that has a very distinctive smell.

Of course, when you are working in a particular environment all the while, you don't notice the smell.  Just as with the things I wrote about last week, the body - in this case the sense of smell - gets used to it.  Another recognisable 'fragrance', sometimes detected in the supermarket and many other places, is what I call an 'old people' smell.  It's really down to a simple lack of fresh air; if you live all week with the windows and doors always shut, the air gets stale, and this staleness transfers to the clothes you wear.  I sometimes notice it when I come home in the evening, but only for a minute or two.  The smell hasn't gone ... I've just got used to it again.  With a 'retirement' week ahead of me, I'm hoping for sunshine so that I can have my windows open a lot of the time!

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!

Neither One Thing, yet the Other!

As I announced last autumn here, and have mentioned in subsequent posts on this blog from time to time, I'm going through an indefinite period of 'phased retirement'.  In conversation after the church service last Sunday, I found myself explaining just what this actually means and, under a title that came to mind in an echo of how my father might have described it, I'll begin this blog by sharing my thoughts.

My plan began simply with a pattern, as I described it to my then boss, of 'working complete weeks, but not so many of them'.  So began a season, lasting up to a maximum of 21 months, when worker would be sandwiched with retiree, and during which I would be neither wholly one nor completely the other.

Early into this period I took a lump sum from my pension and purchased a motorhome ... more specifically a motor-caravan, although I haven't been able to decide just where the distinction between the two terms lies.  Either is a bit of a mouthful, so she is commonly referred to alliteratively as 'Mary'. Sunday's conversation began with the question, 'have you been far in your motorhome?'  As I mentally reviewed my travel diary to respond, I realised that the trips I've made so far don't in themselves really justify such a large financial outlay.  What's Mary all about, then?

I explained that some of the early months (alongside the continuing demands of work) had been occupied with the business of equipping the vehicle, filling up some of the many cupboards and lockers with those items that are indispensable to life on the road, on the one hand making me independent of hotel accommodation and restaurant meals, and on the other eliminating the need for a major packing and carting of 'stuff' from home to vehicle every time it's used.  In addition to this, has come an increasing experience of the routines involved in using the on-board equipment, such as making sure the gas is turned off, and the fridge turned over to electric operation before moving off ... quite apart from the significant differences in driving a larger and less manoeuvrable vehicle than the van I've been used to.

In thinking this through, I realise that in some ways the same can be said of this whole business of 'phased retirement'.  It's a case of learning how to live a different life.  Working life - especially in thirteen years of self-employ-ment - has been very largely one of discipline.  If you don't get up and go to work, you don't have money to live on.  With no holiday pay, or sickness benefits, there is no question of taking a day off, or 'throwing a sickie'.

As the business world has changed its dimensions over the years, so the demands on a courier's time have also changed.  At the outset, I was almost always home by teatime, and evening commitments I'd entered into during paid employment could continue unabated.  Slowly one after another had to be given up as I found myself unable to attend.  Soon, I now realise, there will be the opportunity to take these up again ... at least where my own interests haven't also changed over the years!  In the meantime, comes a time in which - during those weeks when I'm not working - I have to learn a new kind of normal life, rather looking on such weeks as just a lot more holiday.

This week began by spending the Bank Holiday - and a half-day either side of it - with my cousin, my 'second family'.  When I returned home, and life quietened down, I noticed that I had become out of touch with programmes I usually listen to on the radio, or by podcast, in the van.  My pattern has been to enjoy the silence of home after the constant buzz and activity of driving.  So another aspect of retirement that I have to get used to is listening to the radio at home.  They're all tiny things, but each requires a habit of years' standing to be consciously overturned.

Now, with the weather having taken a turn towards autumn, all the frenetic financial activity of starting a new month completed, and an air of boredom wafting around the flat, it's time to think about another few weeks on the road.  An apologetic call from the office yesterday has already hinted of a couple of early starts to look forward to.