A strange kind of week

3 to 6 June 2015

Typically, after a windy, mostly wet weekend, it was bright and sunny on Wednesday morning. Not quite the heatwave from Spain the weatherman had promised but enough to make me wish I didn’t have to spend all day stuck in an office. All I could do was make the most of the sunny walk to work. The first thing to make me smile was the sight of a black swan on the river. They’ve been absent for a while now and I’ve missed them.

On the boardwalk the horned poppy I’ve been watching for over a week had yellow petals beginning to unfold from the spiny sepals. Nearby, the queen Anne’s lace was slowly opening, a foamy mass of pinkish flowers that will soon be brilliant white. Then it was up the slope and off to the office leaving the sun behind for the day.

It was another busy Wednesday, with a team leader meeting and the first staff off for their depot visits. Before I knew it, it was time to go out in the sun again and walk home. I decided to check out the road works that have had my Cobden Bridge route closed for the last week. They’re putting in traffic calming islands to stop huge lorries going towards the Scary Hill. Seems a waste of time to me as they can just go around The Loop by the library and back the other way but what do I Know?

It was sunny again on Thursday morning. the Desolate Park looked lovely in the morning light, if you half closed your eyes and ignored the rubbish drifting about in the gentle breeze. It seems a shame the local people don’t care a little more for their environment because it could be so much nicer for them if they did. Occasionally I think about taking a bin bag with me and picking it all up but I know it’d be back again the next day so I don’t.

The chain link fence around the demolished TV studios was turning into a wall of flowers. There were white and pink dog roses opening and little posies of blackberry flowers with crumpled, tissue paper petals. A while ago they announced new houses will be built there but, after some initial clearing, nothing much has happened. The flowers grow anyway.

The black swan was still hanging around with the mute swans near one of the wrecks on the river as I turned the corner. Last year there were three. I wondered where the other two had gone and whether there would be any black cygnets this year. The horned poppy had already lost its petals but, amongst the tumble of wildflowers lining the boardwalk, the plantain are flowering still, rings of tiny creamy petals around brown seed heads. The slope up to Horseshoe Bridge was a bower of green dappled with morning sun. It felt like something out of a fairy tale, as if it should lead to a little gingerbread house. What it actually led to was the bridge, the depot and a day of mad, frustrating calls.

It  was one of those days. Call after call saw stress levels rising for all of us. One woman couldn’t understand why she couldn’t use her Southampton City ticket in Portsmouth.
“It says Southampton on the front but it’s the same price,” she said, “I only wanted to go to Gunwharf.”
“Yes, but that’s in Portsmouth and your ticket is for Southampton.”
“So where can I use it then?”
“In Southampton.”
“Not in Portsmouth?”
“No.”
“So what ticket do I need for Gunwharf then?”
“A Portsmouth ticket.”
“But mine says Southampton City Zone weekly.”
“Exactly, it’s the wrong ticket.”

Mia apologised when she  transferred a manager escalation to me but the man insisted. “I want to complain about everyone I’ve spoken to so far and I’ve called four times. Then I want to complain about you because you’re not doing anything to help me either.”
As all I’d said was my name at this point this was a bit of a surprise. Ten minutes of shouting followed. I put my head set down on my desk after the first minute, partly because the shouting was hurting my ear and partly because I’d already worked out he wasn’t making any sense at all. When the noise stopped I picked it up again. I’d already read the complaint on the screen in front of me so, before he started again, I said I’d send him a free ticket as a gesture of goodwill. The driver had been right not to let him on the bus because he’d been abusive and refused to show his ticket but there was no point arguing. He didn’t want a free ticket though so he started shouting again. Another ten minutes and I asked him what he did want. Cue more shouting. He wanted the driver sacked, plus everyone he’d spoken to, including me. Eventually he agreed to a call from the RCSM. I expect he’ll want her sacked too.

A  elderly woman was moaning that it was raining, the bus smelled funny and she didn’t like the look of the driver. A man complained that students got off his bus every day during a ten minute wait for a driver change, smoked cigarettes and then got back on. He’s complained about the same thing five times now although we’ve already told him the students have weekly tickets so can get on and off as much as they like and they’re all old enough to smoke if they choose. Apparently one even went into a shop and bought a newspaper. And so it went on…all day…

What a relief to get out of the office and into the sun again. The first field poppy had opened on the boardwalk while I’d been at work. I’m hoping some of the ones I planted in my garden will have seeded but there’s no sign of them yet.  There were two black swans in the river by the big stones, leaving just one unaccounted for. When I stopped to take a photo the man who stands there drinking beer from a paper bag wrapped can wrapped said, “lovely, aren’t they?” He’s never spoken to me before, The mute swans were all gathered by the bridge. They’re rarely seen that far along although occasionally one will fly up onto the road and stop all the traffic.

The Friday walk to work was wet but at least it wasn’t cold and there were dog roses to make me smile. When I reached the river the tide was out and the bait digger was down on the mud with his bucket again. If I live to be a hundred I will never understand the lure of fishing. The air felt heavy with thunder and I thought I might be lucky enough to see some lightning but all I got was a hazy view over the mud and water, wet daisies and ragwort.

When I got to the office the alarm was beeping loudly. The engineers were trying to stop it with little success. Eventually they managed to get it from a constant din to an ear piercing wail once every twenty seconds. It carried on for one and a half hours. Our heads felt as if they might explode at any moment. People kept coming in, asking what it was and when it would stop. When  it finally did it took my ears a while to adjust. I swear I kept hearing the shadow of it for at least another hour.

Usually Friday is all about lost property and afternoon traffic jams. This Friday was different, the weird and annoying calls from the day before carried on. A woman complaining her bus hadn’t come refused to believe the route was cut at least six months ago and insisted she used it every week. A man who said he had learning difficulties screamed for ten whole minutes that his bus had left without him then suddenly said in a normal voice, “oh, it’s ok, it’s here now.”

Even social media wasn’t immune. A man posted a photo of one of our acknowledgment letters on Facebook with a message saying ‘why haven’t you answered my complaint?’
When I asked for his reference number so I could look into it, he posted ‘I haven’t got a reference number.’
‘It’s on the top of your letter.’
He came back with ‘I haven’t had a letter,’ which was a bit odd because he’d just posted a picture of it, Althought the top part with the reference number was missing.
‘The letter you posted a picture of,’ I typed.
‘Oh, right, it’s 12345.’
When I found it his complaint had been sent on Tuesday and the acknowledgent, saying we were investigating and would write back within ten days, had been sent on Wednesday night. Maybe we should just make the answers up. I was beginning to think there was an asylum somewhere that had let all its inmates out and given them our phone number.

The rain had gone by the time I went home and the sun was out again. It was so warm I had to take my Mac off and carry it. When I crossed Cobden Bridge, I looked down and one of the boat owners was painting his boat. What a life.

The Saturday morning walk to work was slightly hampered by a toe, Hoover incident that left my foot swollen and throbbing all day. It was more limp than walk really but this didn’t stop me enjoying the mauve roses in a house by Monks Walk, or the foxgloves in the same garden, all beautifully colour coordinated.

There was the usual stop on Cobden Bridge to indulge my houseboat envy and another to admire the sun sparkling on the mud by the slipway. The tide was so far out the boats by the Millennium Flats were high and dry. Close to the office toadflax carried on the purple theme. The tiny flowers always remind me of miniature snapdragons.

Quite  a large part of the day was spent dealing with a lost toy. Terri took the call, a little girl had left her toy pig on the bus, apparently the pig was wearing a dress and was missing part of its nose. The child was distraught. Her parents were frantic. The bus was still out on the route and the controllers weren’t able to get through on the radio but promised to call us if they found it.

Late in the afternoon Mia took a call from control to say the driver had the pig and would. take it to Lost Property but they couldn’t be sure when. She updated the parents. Dad was already out trawling the shops trying to find another pig, Mum was overjoyed. Her little girl would never be able to sleep without it. The next call from control came through to me. The pig was at the lost property office. When I rang Mum back she was worried she wouldn’t be able to get there before it closed. The controller said he’d see if he could get someone to collect it and bring it to his office as they would be there until late in the evening.

The final call came through to Skye. The controllers had the pig. If the lady knocked on their door in the bus station they’d come down with it. We all cheered wildly. Anyone who’d walked into the office at that point would have thought we’d all lost our minds. Skye called Mum back with instructions. Job done. One happy Mum, one relieved Dad and, pretty soon, one happy little girl. These are the things that make the job feel worthwhile.