Sun and storms

1 to 4 July 2015

Annoyingly, Wednesday was a beautiful day but I had to go to work. The sky was brilliant blue as I crossed Cobden Bridge and the river looked like it was made of deep cobalt glass. The little ships cast perfect reflections like an upside down, underwater world. The colours seemed especially bright and fresh in the morning light and I could see flowers blooming on the houseboat deck garden. When I reached the slipway two men were trying to get a boat in or out of the water, I couldn’t quite decide which. Their car was right at the bottom of the slipway, back wheels in the water. It looked like a precarious business and I was glad it wasn’t my car.

The new RCSM was visiting the office so the morning mostly consisted of mad tidying up. We even polished our desks! After all that effort she spent about five minutes actually in our office and the rest of the time talking to Maryanne the new CSM, who has yet to really work out what we do or how we work. From the little I saw of the new RCSM she seemed ok but I guess time will tell. Either way it left everyone feeling unsettled for the whole day and I was glad to leave at five.

The sun was still out so it was a pleasant, if rather hot, stroll across the boardwalk.  The tide was out and, as I turned the corner heading for the Big Bridge, I noticed two swans and two ducks. A closer look revealed four cygnets trailing a little behind mum and dad. Obviously a case of the phenomenon of see something once and you then see it everywhere you go. It was a pity the tide wasn’t in so all I got was a distant view but it was good to know there are cygnets this year on this stretch of river.

When I got home I was boiling hot and gasping for a drink. Commando was in the garden on the lounger spending the last few minutes before he had to go to work enjoying the evening sun. The hydrangea I planted last weekend looked like I felt, wilted and quite sorry for itself. Once I’d had a cool glass of water I gave it a little drink and it soon perked up. According to the weather man, it was the hottest July day on record. It certainly was hot but Commando and I both agreed it felt hotter on Tuesday.

In contrast, Thursday started out cool and misty. The first of the buddleia flowers had opened as I reached the beginning of the boardwalk but the cygnets were nowhere to be seen. Suki II was also still conspicuous in her absence and I’m beginning to think she’s gone for good.

The sky was very overcast, the river calm and flat, shadowed by the dark clouds above. As I walked up the slope towards Horseshoe Bridge the wind began to get up and I thought it might rain so I hurried along hoping to get to the office before it did. As it happened the rain held off until I was on my way to the shop at lunchtime. Luckily it wasn’t too hard and I manged to stay largely dry.

At three o’clock everyone gathered by the end window of the main office hoping to see the red arrows. It was the 175th anniversary of Cunard’s first scheduled transatlantic crossing and Queen Mary II was due to set sail to recreate the trip. The Red Arrows were supposed to be performing a full aerobatic display over the docks to commemorate this milestone. After a while we all gave up and went back to our desks. It turned out the display had been cancelled due to the low cloud that had hung over the city most of the day.

It ended up being a sultry, sticky night and Friday morning was hot and thundery. It was a slow walk to work but there was lavetera in a garden to make me smile and a chafer beetle on the path. On Horseshoe Bridge the first blackberries are beginning to form and huge white bindweed flowers have begun to come out. If they weren’t such a pest, twining up stems and strangling plants, I might stop pulling them up in my garden because the flowers are lovely.

 

The day was dominated by cyclists. Let me say right now, I don’t have a problem with cyclists as a rule, unless they try to run me off the pavement. What I do take issue with is the growing number of very vocal, militant cyclists who like to complain about every one else on the road or pavement in the strongest, most insistent terms. In honesty, I’m not all that keen on militant groups full stop, be they religious zealots, health nuts, political parties, whatever.

These nuts spend an inordinate amount of time moaning that buses get in their way, drive too close, go too slow and impede their progress, pull in at bus stops…. You name it, they complain about it. Many of them have new fangled helmet cameras and like to post film of buses doing things they consider to be dangerous. Mostly they seem to have a very odd view of what is dangerous and what isn’t. We were sent a video of a bus apparently overtaking a cyclist too close. As the film showed the bus at least a meter and a half away from the cyclist’s handlebar and our CCTV footage bore this out, we wrote to him to tell him we didn’t believe the driver had done anything wrong.

The letter resulted in a Twitter war. The cyclist posted a rant about it and how we were wrong, the driver should be sacked, he was going to go to the police etc, etc. When we ignored him he ranted some more. Then his friends joined in and before too long our whole Twitter feed was nothing but militant cyclists being threatening and nasty, some using some very unpleasant language. In the meantime we were missing important tweets from genuine customers. It made me want to get a helmet cam of my own and film all the cyclists who try to run me down, jump the lights or ride out in front of me when I’m driving.

Just before midday we turned our phones off and prepared for the minute’s silence for the victims of the Tunisian beach shootings. All the bus drivers were pulling over at their nearest stop and turning off their engines to do the same thing. On the radio the bells of Big Ben announced the start of the silence and we all sat in quiet contemplation. I thought of all my Tunisian friends and the White sand on the beautiful beach I used to walk along. Surprisingly, we didn’t get any complaints from anyone about the buses stopping or our phones being off.

The heat was oppressive on my walk home. It felt as if there was no air and every step was an effort. There was a definite feel of impending thunder but it still hadn’t come by the time I went to bed. Just after midnight I woke up with a dry mouth and went to the bathroom to get a drink. Outside the frosted window I could see blue flashes one after another but strangely, no sound of thunder. At first I thought it might be fireworks or the lights on an ambulance in the street but I looked outside and it really was lightning but, eerily, there was no rain or thunder claps.

Apparently the storm was centred over the New Forest and the lightning started off a heath fire at Picket Post, near Ringwood. More than fourteen thousand strikes were recorded across the country and hundreds of them were along the south coast. It was, apparently, classed as a mega storm, one of the largest on record, but, with no rain it didn’t feel like it cleared the air at all.

The thundery feel carried over into Saturday morning and the sky was dark and brooding as I made my way to work, sweltering in my mac. Walking along the boardwalk I expected the rain to fall and the thunder to roar at any moment but as I walked a solitary beam of sunlight broke through the black cloud. Slowly the shafts of light multiplied and, by the time I reached Horseshoe Bridge there was a hint of blue behind the clouds and rays beaming through a mass of holes in the cloud and lighting up the river. It felt like watching a battle between darkness and light where the light was slowly winning.

The call of the day came from a very angry young woman. She said she’d called a couple of days before because one of our buses had damaged her car and she’d been promised a cheque to pay for the damage but hadn’t recieved it. Straight away this sounded wrong. For a start we don’t get involved in insurance claims, it’s all dealt with by our insurers, and no one would have promised her anything within two days because we’d have to carry out an investigation which could take up to two weeks to complete, especially if we had to download CCTV.

She’d spoken to Lewis and pretty soon I found the case notes. There was nothing about any damage to her car at all but it made interesting reading.
“Could you just confirm what actually happened?” I asked, wondering if what she said would tally with what Lewis had written.
“Yes, I was parked outside the school and your bus came down the road. He didn’t look like he was going to stop and he beeped his horn at me so I had to bump my car up onto the pavement and I damaged my wheels on the kerb. The driver must have seen me parked there, he should have stopped if there wasn’t room for him to get through.”
“Where exactly were you parked?”
“Outside the school on the yellow zig zag lines. I had my hazard warning lights on and everything but he just beeped his horn and kept coming towards me. I’m sure he wouldn’t have stopped if I hadn’t moved. I want this looked at by your manager because your colleague lied to me and I want that bus driver sacked. If I don’t get a cheque to pay for my wheels in the next week I’m going to sue you.”
In the end I told her she’d have to contact our insurance company. As she was parked illegally I’d like to hear how she gets on with that.

Afterwards I found the original call and listened to it. She did mention in passing that she’d damaged her wheels but she didn’t ask for any compensation and Leiws didn’t offer her any. I could hear the surprise in Lewis’s voice when she told him she’d been parked on the yellow zig zags and I can imagine he was thinking what I’d been thinking. This is one lady who probably needs to revist the Highway Code. Those zig zags are there to warn people not to park outside the school for a very good reason. Parked cars right outside the school gates make it dangerous for small children to cross the road. It is going to be a very expensive lesson for this particular young lady.

By the time I finished work the sun had completely defeated the dark clouds and it was a glorious evening. Commando was waiting outside in his running gear. He’d been for a run and decided to meet me after work to walk home with me. It was a lovely way to end the week.