Trip To Bedford

I've mentioned in a previous blog post that I went to get my hair cut on Saturday, preparatory to going to Bedford to have photographs done by my friend John. We arranged to meet at 10 o'clock and I knew that it wouldn't take much more than 30 minutes to drive over, with the newly-opened stretch of road between the M1 and Bedford. How wrong could I be. I left what I thought was far too early, but it's was just as well that I did, because the A421 out of Milton Keynes and going towards the M1 was nose-to-tail because of the duelling work that is currently going on. It was somewhat frustrating, but there was very little I could do to speed my journey up. Vast H.G.V.'s and other road-users, moving at barely walking pace is not going to help anyone's patience at the best of times. Great swathes of the countryside is being shifted to make way for a second carriageway and I'm really shocked to see so much building going on along the side of the road. On the Wavendon side a lot of new houses and on the opposite side a lot of new warehousing. At this rate Milton Keynes will join up with Bedford. By the time I reached the traffic lights near the M1 I was able to turn left onto the long stretch of dual carriage way which takes you directly to Bedford and if you carry on along the Bedford by-pass you eventually come to the A1 at the Black Cat roundabout and on to the north of England, Peterborough and Stamford and, if you go through St Neots you lead to the road going on to Cambridge and Newmarket. As it was today, I wasn't going that far and came off onto the newer section of bypass which leads towards Bromham and so drove along Bromham Road into the centre of Bedford. I was making for Greyfriars, a road well known to me as I used to live along that very street, not far from the police station and bus station. I haven't been into the centre of Bedford for at least 8-9 years and the town has changed a good deal in that time, not least around the bus station. A couple of large blocks of flats have been demolished to make way for redevelopment, but this never took place and the space where those blocks used to be is  now a ground level car park which is where I managed to park.

Then I had to find the building where we were to do the photo shoot. John gave me the number as 25 Greyfriars, but I wasn't sure exactly which door it was as the numbering along the street wasn't very clear. Some buildings have numbers and some don't, then you get the numbers out of sequence and 'A' or 'B' and other letters added which only adds to the confusion. I stood and waited because it wasn't 10 o'clock and the sent John a text. I'm never always sure that a text is sent of if it even reaches it's destination and if the mobile signal is poor whether it's doing anything.  All in the lap of the gods, as they say.

John soon turned up and it appeared that I was outside the wrong building, but never mind. We went in. I can't work out what the shop that the studio was in does. Was it printing, graphics, or things photographic? Anyway, the room upstairs was where the photographic studio was situated, all set up with lighting and the white background paper which is so vital if you're doing serious portrait photography which is what I wanted as I didn't want a confusing background, just myself against a white background. We chatted for a bit. A lot of things to catch up on and then I got ready for the 'shoot.' John did some test shots, just to see what I thought. This is where digital photography is so good, you can see the results immediately, unlike traditional photography, where you have to wait for photographs to be developed and printed. With digital it's so easy to upload them to websites (which is what I'm intending doing for walk-on/extra agencies.)

After the shoot we went to a café which is new to me in Allhallows and behind the bus station, called Hallows. I had a cheese and tomato sandwich and a latte and we went upstairs to chat. We have lots of things in common, not the least being keen on doing walk-on and extra work as well as art, design and film-making and watching and having an interest in Doctor Who, Star Wars and other things.

When we had finished I was concerned that the parking ticket, which was for 2 hours, was about to expire, so we walked through the bus station towards the carpark and we went our separate ways. John is going to put the photos on a memory stick and post it off to me and it should be with me in a couple of days. It's no use them being on a CD-ROM, because my MacBook doesn't have a drive for these so a memory stick makes sense.

I drove out of Bedford through Bromham and towards Milton Keynes. When I got to the roundabout and what would have normally have been a left turn and fairly straightforward drive towards Milton Keynes, past Stagsden and other villages, I found there was a sign up saying the emotive words, 'Road Closed,' which was a bit of an annoyance, no advance warning further back to say that this was the case, so I had to drive on towards Northampton, with the idea of eventually going through Olney and back home that way. So, my journey was going to be somewhat circuitous, and when I got into Milton Keynes, going towards Willen and eventually into the centre of Milton Keynes, I found even more roads closed off. This is becoming rather annoying but, after another detour around the centre of Milton Keynes, I eventually got to Sainsbury's as I needed one or two items for my evening meal. But the journey out of Milton Keynes earlier in the day had been somewhat frustrating and so had the return journey.

Working In Care- Part 4

From working at Macintyre (which wasn't the happiest of experiences, of which I am not going to discuss here.) I went off to join several temp agencies in Bedford and did industrial temping, working in such places as a factory making cook/chill meals, working on a production line packing flowers for some well-known supermarkets (an experience in itself. Whenever I go into a supermarket such as Tesco and I see the flowers which are generally on display near the entrance, I get a shiver down my spine as I recall the long hours standing packing similar blooms near Sandy, Bedfordshire.) packing Christmas cards and even sticking items inside magazines out on an industrial estate in the north of Bedfordshire at the dead of night, and returning home at around 6 a.m. Not nice.

Having done this type of work for around a year to eighteen months, during which time I had no car, I eventually saved up enough cash to eventually purchase a new car and then sign up with a care agency in Bedford called Care On Call. I reckoned that I would actually prefer that sort of work to being treated rather badly as an industrial temp.  I have to say I rather enjoyed the work, even though my experience of working for Macintyre wasn't exactly great. There were quite a few instances when, as a temp, I was expected to arrive at a particular office of one agency at some unearthly hour of the morning, for example 6.30, and be expected to then board a mini bus and be taken miles to some industrial estate in the middle of nowhere and start work on a production line, but on many cases then to be informed that your presence is no longer required and have to wait hours before you can expect to be transported back to central Bedford.  In some cases you have to pay the agency £10 for them to ferry you home at unexpected times of day. Just a clever way for them to make money out of you. Or to be taken somewhere you weren't expecting, not being informed and then working in another industrial unit without your knowledge until you arrive.

Anyway, having signed up with Care On Call, as with anything to do with care, you then have to go through the process of providing a great deal of paperwork to prove your identity, your bank statement, ultility bills, etc etc as well as paying a fee for a C.R.B. check to be made before you can work for them. Once that is done, which can take several weeks, you have to undertake the mandatory training which includes manual handling, fire safety, etc etc. I have done manual handling numerous times and can perhaps parrot the whole course off the top of my head I've done it so many times. One agency I signed up for, which will remain nameless, would give you a set of DVDs to watch for training purposes and a sheaf of paperwork to fill in, in the expectation that you will fill these in having viewed the DVDs, and this was very easy as all you had to do was stop and start the DVD to find the answers to the questions in the paperwork we were given. This on such subjects as fire safety, infection control and protection of vulnerable adults. Quite honestly, not a very good method of delivering this sort of information. Once you'd completed the paperwork satisfactorily you were then given a certificate. As someone said, Sam Goldwyn I think, not worth the paper it was printed on.And to cap it all I was expected to fork out something like £25 to this agency for the privilege. You might call it a total rip-off.

When I did eventually get out working for Care On Call I found the agency quite good to work for. You'd get a telephone call to ask if you could fill a shift, the next day, or even an hour or two hence. I did shift in many of the N.H.S. homes for learning disabilities that had opened up since Bromham Hospital closed at the end of the 1990's. Some of these are out in the out-lying villages, such as Oakley, Harrold, Carlton, Bromham,  Wilstead as well as several within Bedford town itself. I then did some shifts at one home at Everton, on the road to Potton. This was called Country Cottage, actually a bungalow, and it's residents were elderly people with learning disabilities. It was quite a pleasure driving the 12-or so miles out through Sandy and across the A1 and part of the drive went through a very attractive wooded area near Sandy Heath. During the spring there were bluebells in the woods and I even saw munkjack deer wandering across the road, which made the journey all the more interesting. What made this particular place good to work in was that the hours of work were from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., which meant I could get home in good time. By 7 p.m. most of the work was completed and so I was able to go home then, but staff remained until the usual time of around 9 p.m. when the night shift began.

Drive To Bedford

I took Carol to the Academy early this morning. I should really say that she drove and I drove back. There has been a fall of snow over-night. It seemed very fine and almost like granulated sugar. The surface of the road going through Crownhill was really slippery. We got to the bottom of Hendrix Drive and the intersection with Munro Drive, and Carol put her foot on the brakes and the car almost didn't stop. A rather nasty grinding noise which was the tyres on the surface of the road. There was a possibility that we were going to end up in the house opposite and join the family inside for breakfast! It was quite traumatic, to say the least. We managed the rest of the journey without further mishap.

I dropped Carol at the Academy, came home and had some breakfast and then drove over to the Registery Office in Bedford. I was somewhat reluctant, considering the snow and ice, but as it turned out there was very little snow or ice on the roads.  It seems that the estates within Milton Keynes are the worst hit by the night's snow, and I had no problems. Bedford's traffic system seems just as bad as it always was when I lived there, particularly going into Bedford from Bromham, and all along Shakespeare Road. I got to the Registry Office and could find nowhere to park the car, so had to find a space off-street in one of the roads off Brickhill Drive and then walk into the office. There seems to be no problem getting a full Birth Cirtificate , although it costs £7 and they will post it out to me 2nd Class and so it should get to me in a couple of day's time, so that is one less problem to worry about.