Wake me up when September ends

After the excitement of Monday and Tuesday it was a melancholy, miserable sort of week so I apologise in advance for what is to follow. It started off damp and dreary on Wednesday morning and I was tired from the mental exertions of the weekend. Not a single photo was taken on my way to work, partly because there wasn’t anything worth looking at and partly because I was feeling apprehensive about the new RCSM visit. Obviously I wasn’t going to be top of her Christmas list after trashing her standard letters.

As it happened, when she arrived just after nine, she was all sweetness and light although she showed her true colours a couple of times with some members of staff. A few feathers were ruffled but she left me well alone. There was a meeting of sorts and we ended it with a long list of things to do, mostly statistics and work plans. Some of it I agreed with some I didn’t, especially the things I felt were compromising the standards of service,  but any objections and concerns were brushed off dismissively.

It was pouring with rain when I left work, the streets running with water. Before I’d even got out of the depot I was wet through and, even though I caught the bus as far as I could, the walk left me soaked to the skin. As soon as I got in I stripped off my wet things and put my PJ’s on. It felt like a miserable day all round.

Thursday did at least bring a sky worth looking at with brooding french blue clouds over a golden sunrise glow. The lights from the waterside buildings shone shimmering beams over the river and I wished I could stay to wait for the sun to rise above the horizon. Of course I couldn’t.

Things in the office were difficult to say the least. The new RCSM was settled in for the week and, although she was sugary sweet most of the time it didn’t feel real. There were veiled criticisms of the old RCSM and the way the office was run. She wanted figures, schedules drawn up, targets set. She also wanted us to do our normal work while we did all these extras. It was an impossible task but we tried.

The call of the day was from a lady who sounded elderly and rather distraught.
“I’ve lost my husband,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, wondering what the point of the conversation was.
“No, not lost as in he’s died, I mean actually lost. He has Alzheimer’s and he’s gone out alone with his OAP bus pass and not come back.”
Of course I asked the depot to radio all the drivers with a description but no one ever came back to us. I do hope she found him.

It rained all night. It was still raining when I got up on Friday morning but, by the time I left home, it had calmed to a gentle drizzle. The sky was clearer, perhaps because the cloud had spent the whole night falling onto the ground, and I was surprised to see Venus still there, bright as ever, although the moon had disappeared. So I marched through the dark wet streets to the river. There the dawn glow looked like flames dancing on the water but, yet again, I had to leave before the main show.

So commenced another day of trying to make the unworkable work and biting my tongue because I didn’t feel like being a lone protesting voice to be brushed off and ignored. Everyone else was grumbling but no one but me would actually say anything. It wasn’t the most pleasant of days and the phones kept ringing. At least it all ended on a good note. The new RCSM left in the early afternoon and we had a team night out at the local pub. It was good to have a few drinks and a chat, even though I was drinking Coke and I had work first thing in the morning. Best of all the old RCSM turned up. We were all so pleased to see her she was in danger of being overwhelmed. Much as I’d have liked to have stayed I had to leave early with an eye on my five fifteen alarm clock.

The first of the real Autumn mists arrived on Saturday and I caught a leaf in the act of falling as I took a photo across the college playing fields on my way to work. By the time I reached the river it had cleared and a pale pink glow was beginning to lighten the sky. Over the bridge and along the streets of small terraced houses the horizon was hidden from view but I could tell it was getting lighter.

Just ten minutes later I was back looking over the river again from the slipway and so much had changed it might have been a completely different day. Sunrises are like that, the first hint of light grows so slowly you hardly notice and then, all of a sudden, the sky is aflame, boiling and burning for a few short minutes before the red ball appears over the horizon and gold turns back to blue. This was a particularly beautiful dawn, the colours especially bright, or so it seemed, but somehow calm and peaceful for all that.

Maybe it was the remnants of morning mist clinging to the distant trees but the scene had a hazy gentleness about it like a watercolour painting of the dawn. There were gulls but they were eerily silent and the boats and their reflections stretched across the unrippled water were perfectly still, becalmed. Something about the scene put me in mind of Colleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

It was a tough Saturday shift on many levels. Sabrina on holiday, Mia sick, just three of us in the office and one of those was Riley filling in as an extra shift. Skye didn’t feel well but stayed and did her best. Riley tried but was distracted, it being his last day. He’s leaving to become a bus driver on the Isle of Wight and he was a combination of excitement and nerves. The phones weren’t exactly busy but with so few of us and only me firing on all cylinders, it seemed extrodinarily busy. When I got my first call asking about Christmas timetables I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I’m still clinging desperately to summer, I’d really rather not think about Chrsitams just yet,” I joked before explaining that it was probably going to be the same as usual, no buses on Christmas Day or Boxing Day and Sunday service for the rest of it.

Then it was all over for another week. There were last hugs with Riley, who reminds me so much of CJ when he was younger and less hairy it’s hard not to act like his office mum. Then it was out into the last of the day’s sun and Commando sitting outside in my little car. The very best part of the week.