It All Makes Work For The Working Man To Do...
My gas connection was re-established on Saturday, some forty-eight hours after it had been cut off. Initially three van loads of men from Cadent came, who made everything safe. Then, on Friday another two men came and dug a big hole in my garage floor, removed the meter, piled up rubble where the meter used to be, and failed to push a plastic pipe through the old metal pipe. Another man (called Gary) then came at teatime, who told me that he was an emergency crew, and so if he was to be notified of someone of higher priority than me, then he would have to leave my job and go to that one. I went out, expecting the worst. In fact, he called me later on to say that he had succeeded in reconnecting the pipework, and had booked the industrial/commercial team to come and purge and reconnect my meter between 8am and 10am on Saturday. I should say that each gas man looked at my meter and said, "Why've you got such a big meter? That's an industrial one, that is. You haven't got it heating a jacuzzi in the back garden, have you?" or variations on that theme. So, I got up for 8am on my day off. At 10am Gary phoned to ask how it was going. "They're not here!" I said. So he rang off, to chase them up. Meanwhile the site manager of our contractors was also chasing. The gas man who constituted the industrial/commercial team arrived at noon, complaining about the traffic; no-one had warned him about the road closures for RideLondon, the cycling festival. I didn't tell him that I'd have been doing that if I hadn't been waiting around for him. He grumbled about the rubble piled up where the meter should be, but he got everything sorted quite quickly, and was a perfectly pleasant man. He said another Cadent crew (perhaps one of the original ones) would be here on Monday to fill in the hole in my garage (and remove rubble). It is now Monday and there is no sign of them. Our own site manager is inclined to get our groundworkers to get on and do the work, which seems sensible.
Retail Blight
I've just realised what a dismal place the crossroads on which St Peter's stands has become. There is a row of seven shops under the flats on the north side of Elgin Avenue, which have been gradually closing; now every single one is empty. The Squirrel pub, on the south side, has just closed down. This is what used to be the Skiddaw, where Francis Thompson sat by the fire in the 1890s. Opposite that on Chippenham Road, the shop which replaced the dodgy cafe (where allegedly you used to be able to buy drugs) seems also to have shut. The current incarnation of the Indian restaurant seems to be okay, but they must have spent a lot on their refurbishment, and trade seems quiet, so perhaps I should go there more often. Meanwhile only William Hill seems unaffected. When I was looking at this job, eleven years ago, this was described as a busy street corner; no longer.
A Glorious Tour
It is a source of deep joy to me that Geraint Thomas ("G" as he is universally known) has won the Tour de France. I confess I cried when he won on La Rosiere, and found myself in floods of tears when his victory became assured this weekend. The thing is that Helen and I had followed his career closely since 2007, when we had seen him in his first Tour de France. That was the year of the London Grand Depart, and we went down to the Park to stand by the bridge over the Serpentine to watch the Prologue Time Trial. As usual with Helen, we were there in very good time, and so were in place to see the riders taking their practice laps, among them the skinny young Welshman in the red and yellow jersey of Barloworld. We were delighted to see G stop on our corner; he had spotted some friends in the crowd, and simply came across to chat to them. His naturalness (and simple ordinariness) was obvious then, and charmed us. Helen always made a big thing of her Welshness (she had a Welsh grandfather, so she was as Welsh as most of their football team) and so was particularly fond of G, and was especially delighted when he won the Commonwealth Games road race in Glasgow in Welsh colours. Her joy at his triumph would have been tremendous. As I had stood with my friends beside the road to La Rosiere ten days ago, one of the things thrown from the publicity caravan was a folded cardboard banner with attached marker, for you to write your message of support; I was given this task. Auriel said, "You're going to put 'Go on Froomey' aren't you?" but I wasn't sure. We knew G could be in the lead by the end of the stage, so I was in two minds. Eventually I wrote "Go on G", as big as I could, so that was the banner Rob waved in front of them as they toiled up our hairpins. Right decision. It was what Helen would have wanted.
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