The Defining Moments of 2007

I had just had three days of early starts and long journeys servicing ultrasound units at veterinary surgeries. On the Thursday, I had a 4 o’clock start and a difficult job 130 miles away at Hornsey, followed by an afternoon’s servicing work near Sidcup. Getting away from there just before six in the evening, I didn’t get home 150 miles later until midnight, due to horrendous conditions on the southern leg of the M25. It started raining heavily at Swindon …

... and continued for the best part of the next 24 hours. 20-Jul-07 was the day that the Great Floods came to Gloucestershire. The easy Friday I had been hoping for did not materialise as it was spent in the chaos of rescuing machines and pumping out water at work … followed by an hour bailing out with my bucket back at the flat (it was a basement flat, and how I was spared the flooding that others suffered, I will never know ... but I was lucky that day, for sure)!

This day of trauma was followed by power cuts and ten days without piped water (and having to use bowsers in the street) … but plenty of rain!

Not long afterwards, and following even more damage caused by heavy rain, the owner of the company decided to bring forward the planned move to new premises about four miles away. This meant a daily bus journey for me (plus the occasional jog home). All the disruption (and tensions) caused by the floods helped me to realise that working for someone else was not really for me, and I left the company at the end of August (after only two months). I had tried to be the "utility player", but the unpredictability of the work, the chaotic conditions in the workshop, and the long hours rushing about on the road did not suit me at all (especially as I had been hoping for ten years in a stable job ... it seems that fate had other plans in store)!