A short week and an eclipse

18 to 20 March 2015

In all honesty I wasn’t looking forward to going back to work on Wednesday, but who is after a week off? Outside the weather was a repeat of Tuesday morning. Looking over Cobden Bridge the distant houses were half hidden by a touch of mist and a seagull sat huddled on the end of one of the jetties waiting for the sun to take the chill from the air. A pair of swans swam listlessly between the little boats on the lookout for bread no doubt.

When I got to the office I was greeted with a chorus of, “thank goodness you’re back, we’ve missed you.” For about two minutes I felt quite touched. Then I found it this was mostly down to the number of calls waiting in the queue. While I was off, one of our West Country competitors had gone out of business and we had taken over many of the services. Because this had all happened rather suddenly and there was a lot of confusion over which buses were still running the phones were going wild. After a very hasty briefing, I was thrown in at the deep end with a list of the services and the new bus numbers. 

It was a manic day with call after call about the changes. In the middle of all this I took a call from a serial complainer, Peter Tenant. I recognised his voice straight away because it has been my displeasure to speak to him on more than one occasion. This time he wasn’t complaining about a bus, but about one of our call centre staff being rude to his wife. It has been my misfortune to speak to his obnoxiously rude wife in the past  and, if anything, she is worse than her husband so I was pretty sure any rudeness was not coming from our staff. After listening to his shouted stream of invective and taking notes as best I could, I asked what exactly my colleague had said or done that his wife felt was rude. Of course he couldn’t tell me but it did set him off for another long, shouted rant.

When he’d finally run out of steam and gone, I downloaded the call and listened to it. Poor liitle Mia, who is probably the quietest and most polite of all of us, had hardly spoken while the horrible wife had screamed abuse at her and Mia repeatedly apologised for the car accident that had caused the woman’s bus to be late. The frightening thing is, this pair work in the NHS. Hopefully they treat their patients a little better they treat us on the phone.

On Thursday morning I decided to take the long route along the river to work, even though it was cold and dull. Passing the railway station where, just a week before, Commando Junior and I had been waiting for a train to Portsmouth, I couldn’t help wishing I could do the same again rather than face more West Country calls. Down by the slipway a seagull sat on one of the boats looking for all the world as if he was planning to go out for a spin in it. As I raised my phone to take a picture though, he flew off, spoiling my photo opportunity.

The West Country calls continued all day but, for most of it I was getting them at a distance because I was training our new girl, Skye, on the phones, listening in and helping out when needed. There are some benefits to being a team leader to offset taking over all the horrible calls and having to compile a million stats every day. With nothing but listening and the odd bit of pointing to do though, it did make the day drag a little.

The excitement on Friday morning was mainly eclipse related. The last solar eclipse was on a cloudy day in August 1999. Back then I was working part time and was lucky enough to be at home in my own back garden watching through welding goggles with Commando, Commando Junior, Bard and Philo. The clouds lifted at just the right moment and we watched, awestruck, in an silent, errie chill as it turned from day to night and back again.

There were clouds again this Friday morning and, as it was a work day, I didn’t hold out much hope of seeing the eclipse. Commando Junior said he’d try to get photos but he wasn’t hopeful either. There was a little blossom to offset the greyness as I made my way down towards the river and I did stop to look over the college fields just in case I caught he very beginning of the eclipse. Somewhere behind the thick grey clouds I knew the moon and sun were lining up but whatever was happening was well hidden.

When I reached the river I stopped again but there was still nothing to see although it did seem to be getting much colder. The gulls seemed to know something was going on and were beginning to line up on the railings. It was getting darker too, but more the dark before rain than the dark before night.

When I got to the office the show of the year was live on the big screen, filmed from somewhere in the country where the clouds were playing nicely. We could see the progress as the moon slowly moved across the face of the sun until there was just a sliver left like a crescent moon. This was not what we saw happening through the office window, however.

Back in 1999, the eclipse was total and we’d had a few moments of complete darkness. No wonder our ancient ancestors were afraid enough to break out the sacrificial knives to make the sun come back. On Friday though it was a partial eclipse and more twilight than darkness, or maybe that moment before the thunder clap and lightening bolt. Perhaps if we’d been able to see the spectacle rather than just the dark clouds we’d have been more impressed.

After all the warnings about not looking directly at the sun, the panic buying of eclipse glasses, predictions of rush hour pile ups as drivers were dazzled or distracted by the phenomenon, it was rather a non event. Oh well, just another fifteen years before the next one and maybe then it will be a sunny day. You never know.

As it happened there were two major accidents but neither were eclipse related. The first, in Bristol, happened in the early afternoon and caused total chaos in the city. Of course this translated into a manic afternoon for us as people called to find out why their bus hadn’t turned up. Most were understanding when we explained what had happened and that we were doing our best to get to them through the gridlock. One man I spoke to refused to believe there’d been an accident though.
“All the other buses have been going past so I know you’re lying to me,” he shouted. “I want a full refund on my monthly ticket because this is just not good enough. I’ve been at work all day and now, after waiting for half an hour for your f***ing bus, you tell me you can’t even say when it will get here.”
“I suggest you watch the news when you get home sir,” I said, “and you will see that I’m telling the truth.”
“F*** you, you are a lying bunch of s**ts,” he said, pleasing me imensley, by slamming down the phone. He’s going to feel rather silly when he sees the local news about the accident and the resulting chaos. One of the main roads in the city centre was closed all afternoon, three vehicles were involved and an air ambulance had to be called out.

We hardly had time to breathe between calls and, not long before we were due to close, another major accident in Portsmouth added to our problems. When we finally put the answer phone on at seven the team were exhausted. All in all it had been a tough week and we decided to round off the day by wandering up to the nearest pub for a drink and a debrief. Being an elderly lady, I left after one rum and diet coke while the younger team members stayed on and, according to Facebook, made a night of it. It was a slightly longer, later walk home than I’d planned but I was rewarded by twinkling lights on the river as I crossed and the relief of knowing I wouldn’t be getting out of bed at five fifteen for an early start on Saturday morning. My working week was over a day early but I’ll tell you a little more about that later.