Um, nothing to report really...!

All a bit weird to be honest...

Everything ran to time
All the drivers were able to keep to their duties
All the buses stuck to their running lines all day (ok, I did the 0708 Botley - Eastleigh in the 02 reg just to help duty 1 ensure an on-time departure on the 0750, but that's pretty much the norm)

All the buses were fuelled and put to bed by 1850, which is quite a good thing really because Taz and I had to be on the football pitch at Parkway for a 1910 kick-off! (We lost by the way, roughly 4-0 or something like that, but that's nothing unusual and it was a good match!)

The Abba Story was good fun last night by the way!

Nickie's Big Birthday Bus

Yesterday was all about Steve's wife and Louise's mother Nickie, who celebrates her 50th birthday tomorrow.

The family had arranged for a party to be held at a venue in Eastleigh and, as a surprise, arranged for V12 to transport her and her family from their house to the venue.

So Jamie used V12 for the first part of duty 101 (0753 - 1135) then brought it off with him when he came off for his break ([geek] 02, which had been spare, went on in its place - actually for the 1120, with Matt keeping W558 for both parts of 101 [/geek])

We then met Steve and Louise (and also my mum who is down for a long weekend), took V12 round to the yard and washed and decorated it.

This meant that V12 had to stay off for the afternoon, so sod's law dictated that a car would now break down in the middle of Botley and cause traffic chaos.

[geek]This resulted in 309 making an appearance on the 1350 E-B-E, 384 dropping back to the 1420 E-B-E with Taz driving to allow Maria to take her break, and 02 dropping back an hour to take over from 309 on the 1520.[/geek]

I did the 1650 from Eastleigh to allow Jamie to get off early to help with the party preparations, and after fuelling the buses turned up at the appointed place to pick up the party-goers - having first run through the bus station to show off to all the waiting buses and passengers - only to find a grand total of zero buses and 2 members of the public sat on benches looking bored! (and pretty unimpressed by the big purple party bus!)

The evening was first class, huge fun! Well done to all the family and friends who put it all together, especially Louise who did a magnificent job as chief organiser!

The all-action weekend now continues with me and some others from work off to see Voulez-Vous - The Abba Story at the Mayflower Theatre in a bit, can't wait! :-)

Smooth afternoon

The world seemed a lot brighter this afternoon.

In fact, the whole day would have been smooth as silk operationally, but V12 had a problem with its door around 0930 this morning so Taz took 02 out to meet it at the White Swan, transferred the passengers (very sorry about that, passengers!) then took V12 off to Brenhaul, where they (as usual) sorted it in double quick time.

V12 went back on for the 1220 E-B-E and stayed out quite happily for the rest of the day.

Managed to do some work on the website this afternoon for the first time in ages - it's in serious danger of being updated this weekend :-)

Bills, bills, more bills and traffic lights

The post arrived about an hour ago. The first envelope contained a cheque for £50, a deposit for a private hire booking. I got briefly excited. The remaining envelopes contained invoices adding up to a total of more than £3,000! Joy!

On a brighter note Esso have confirmed we should finally be receiving our fuel cards in the next few days so I won't have to loiter on Bishopstoke Road every evening waiting to fuel buses for much longer!

Meanwhile, just when we thought the end might be in sight for the roadworks at Southampton Road, Southampton City Council have told us that there will be temporary traffic lights in the vicinity of Haskins for around a month from 8th April!

It all goes with the weather really!

Just another eventful day

So I went home last night thinking that we'd had quite a good run with the M27 the last week or two.

First sign of trouble this morning was a phone call from Maria at 0545 to say that she and Trevor were stationary on the M27 due to the closure of the M3 just before the Eastleigh turn off.

So, as usual when that kind of thing happens, the schedules go out the window, I forget any thoughts of getting any normal work done and we go into improvising mode.

Happily, both Jamie and Matt arrived at work with no trouble at all, coming from the east, and Taz managed the 200 yard walk from his house without encountering any deadly perils

So everything left the yard on time, with me starting Maria's duty (she was still stationary 1 hour 40 mins after that first phone call). After that, we made it up as we went along:

Matt did the first trip on his own duty (duty 1 0708 Botley - Eastleigh, arriving about 30 late) then dropped back on to the 0850 E - B - E, then back on his own duty at 1150

Jamie managed to stick to his duty, but was about 25 late on the 0855 arrival in Eastleigh, just in time to go back out on time on the 0920.

Maria arrived just in time to take the double decker (309) and pick up Matt's scheduled second trip at 0750 E - B - E, leaving about 10 late, getting back to Eastleigh about 20 late and going back on to her own duty at 1020.

I did the 0738 Botley - Eastleigh in the V reg, arriving about 30 late, then did the 0950 E - B - E to enable everyone else to get back on to their duties.

With all the above underway and starting to look too easy, what we needed was a fresh challenge, cue a phone call from Alison's partner to say she was unwell and wouldn't be in for duty 4. So out come the scrap paper and the familiar sight of me recutting duties on the fly to get the trips covered.

Matt agreed to come off his scheduled afternoon Wildern School dupe to do the 1450 and 1620 E-B-E instead from duty 4, finishing at 1740, with Taz doing Wildern School and then the last trip on duty 4 at 1750 E-B.

Steve agreed to come in on his rest day - his second in a row - to do the first two trips on duty 4 at 1120 and 1250 E-B-E and hey presto - everything covered! And Steve still got to go home to do his painting in the afternoon!

Now unless you are seriously into this kind of stuff, most of this will have passed you by, but it gives me some satisfaction when I'm doing it and I guarantee there will be some readers who will actually be interested to see how it all comes together when things go pear shaped.

Cutting a long story short, every trip operated despite the motorway chaos and one out of four drivers going sick, albeit that the 0750 from Eastleigh was about 10 minutes late, so with enormous thanks to our drivers for their flexibility our customers will hopefully have experienced the minimum possible inconvenience.

With all this sorted, Taz and I were able to escape to MC Truck & Bus at Nursling at lunchtime, where the first DAF - V12 GMT - had been on holiday since Tuesday morning having its speedo replaced. Having brought the now fixed V12 back to Eastleigh, we were able to put it on for Jamie's 1520 and 1650 E-B-E and should now be in regular service on an ongoing basis.

We also managed to get both the DAFs that we have with us - V12 and V14 - booked in for a deep clean and valet on Thursday next week, which should lift the interiors considerably!

All the above shenanigans left me with five buses to fuel and three to sweep this evening, so didn't get away from the depot until about 1945, a late finish by my standards. Skulked back to the office, pushed some paper around for a while, snaffled the rest of the Fruit & Nut bar that was given to one of the drivers by a passenger yesterday, snaffled the Caramel Dairy Milk that a passenger gave me this morning, then came home!

This is going to be tempting fate big time, but as I left it tonight we actually have a spare low floor tomorrow - a very rare luxury - so if all goes to plan, the V- and W-reg Darts will be out in service (running cards S2 and S3 respectively), DAF V12 will be out in service as S1 so we should be able to park the 02 reg Dart spare in the bus station along with 309, until the latter does its afternoon stint on Wildern School.

Meanwhile, I see it's past my bedtime, so that'll do for tonight!

Jump aboard the purple bus blog!

So I've been toying with the idea for ages and it's finally time to welcome you to the Velvet Bus Blog. This is where, if I manage to keep up my enthusiasm, you get to find out all kinds of stuff about daily life in the world of Black Velvet Travel, and probably a fair amount of stuff about my personal life mixed in.

Logically this would be the first post, but I got a bit carried away when I was setting this up last night and imported a story about my pigeon rescuing exploits that I'd posted on the gricernet to make sure it all worked.

So hello, anyway.

This could all be quite random - let's see if it works!

Black Velvet Travel - your first choice for pigeon rescue

Today was an uneventful day - everything ran like clockwork and there would have been nothing interesting to report, until I left the office at 1740 to see the last bus go and head off to do the fuelling!

Clustered round a shop front just a few doors up from BVT Worldwide HQ was a growing gaggle of passers by, looking and pointing upwards. As I drew near, doing my best to keep a low profile in my lurid orange jacket, one of them remarked, "what we need is a tall person", and 20 or so pairs of eyes turned to confront me!

Turns out that a pigeon had slipped off a ledge and was now stuck fast in a narrow gap between the shop facia board and the building itself, wedged so firmly it could not move its wings, and legs paddling frantically in thin air, with nothing to grip.

Luckily I was just about able to reach the stranded bird, and with some coercion (and at the cost of a few scratches) managed to push it up clear of the narrow gap in which it was wedged, until its feet could once again grip on the ledge and the day was duly saved!

I left the scene to murmurs of approval (but possibly not the wild applause and devoted media attention that such a brave rescue attempt should surely have warranted!) reflecting with satisfaction on another challenge met and overcome and another string in BVT's bow!

So now you know, if you need any birds rescuing, please don't think of us!