Friday 13th

I think I might take up superstition as my new hobby! I have never believed in all that Friday 13^th rubbish, but after this week I think I might have to reconsider!

Last Friday was one of the smoothest days we have had. This Friday couldn’t have been more different if the sun had come up at midnight and the sea turned purple.

As usual the early warning system was the text going at 5.30, just as I was hauling myself into work (normally Taz opens up first thing, but today it was my turn!) According to our local gricer friend Kev, the A31 was shut eastbound east of Ringwood, and this was going to stuff up the Ringwood services. Sure enough, Matt turned up for the 0615 start (which does the first 35 off Ringwood at 0715) with the same information and the same forecast!

Armed with just a few vague thoughts about possible diversionary routes – at that stage we weren’t even 100% sure where the A31 was closed – Matt set off on an expedition into the unknown in V12.

The rest of the run out proceeded smoothly enough - V7, V14 and 384 heading out on the A, with V11 off the road awaiting a new indicator stalk (oh, the exciting world of bus maintenance!). But whereas we normally take one double decker over to the Bus Station – it does two driver transfers into Southampton to enable reliefs on the 35/300, and then the Wildern School run in the afternoon but is otherwise spare – I took both 303 and 309 today in the belief that there may be trouble ahead.

Not knowing what had happened to Matt once he disappeared into the great unknown, but guessing he would probably be marooned in a huge traffic jam somewhere, I started to think through the next few hours. What follows is a serious geekfest!

Ant was on the 1100 start, and would almost certainly be up for coming in early, but given that he lived the other side of the closure could take him all morning to get in. But I texted him anyway to give him due warning and get him moving!

Karl was on the 1000 start, but by 0800 frankly there’s not a lot anyone’s going to do to get in much earlier than they were going to anyway, but with only three A’s on his duty (it’s only a modest little number, 1000 – 1500 doing three trips on service A, a duty designed for a part-timer who decided not to join us in the end so now I give it away as overtime!) there’d be scope to move him around.

Other than that, I had what I had in terms of drivers and buses available.

The first problem would be that with Matt running late on the inbound 35, this would knock on to the 0840 300 to Ringwood and the 0930 round trip from there to Lyndhurst on the 35, and then the 1045 Ringwood to Southampton, which would be Matt’s last trip before coming off for a break. In fact, the delays would probably get worse as the morning wore on. I couldn’t bear the thought of all those journeys running late, and besides which Matt would probably run out of legal driving time eventually.

So, plan A: get Taz to cover Jamie’s service A at 0850 to Botley and back, and send Jamie off after his 0825 arrival to pick up Matt’s duty wherever he could – probably at Poulner on the 300 down to Ringwood – and then once I knew where and when Matt was, sort something out to get them back on track.

Bonus – traffic around Eastleigh was very light so Jamie didn’t need the recovery time built into the schedule and rolled in early at 0815. He was up for plan A, but even better with an extra 10 minutes to play with and light traffic, could probably get to Southampton to run the entire 300 journey – even if a few minutes late.

So off he went roaring out of the Bus Station just after 0815. Ten minutes later, the phone goes, it’s Matt! He’s in Southampton on time!!! Turns out a helpful lady passenger got on at the second stop in Ringwood and proposed a diversion that proved highly effective, and with traffic levels not having built up to any great degree yet, Matt was only 13 minutes late at Lyndhurst and got most of that back with a clear run into town.

So I cancelled plan A, messaged Jamie and got him to come back to Eastleigh and he went back out on his scheduled trip at 0850 to Botley, and Taz got to go to the office for a bit!

In fact, at that point I wondered if the whole thing might turn out to not amount to very much. The Highways Agency was estimating 0915 for the road to reopen, so Matt’s arrival in Ringwood should be just in time to allow him to follow the correct route on the 35 and it would all be fine from there on! Or so I thought.

Then two things happened. The Highways Agency delayed the estimated time for reopening to 1000 and Ant started sending me increasingly worrying texts about traffic conditions in the New Forest as he attempted to battle his way into work.

So I figured that Matt would be ok for the 0930 round trip on 35 but would almost certainly be back in Ringwood too late for the 1045 300. Apart from being the key commercial trip of the day, on arrival in Southampton there is a driver change with the early shift driver coming back to Eastleigh to do some A’s, so any problems with this trip could have nasty consequences for the schedule.

Trouble is, the only driver I could realistically get down there in time to do the 1045 was Jamie, who was supposed to be Matt’s relief at 1140 having had a break after his early A’s, but since he didn’t get back to Eastleigh until 1005 couldn’t get to Ringwood for 1045 AND do all his scheduled trips between 1140 and 1425 as he would have had no break at all since the start of the day.

Meanwhile, Ant was getting ever closer to Eastleigh and his duty had a relatively easy start, 1120 Eastleigh – Botley – Eastleigh on the A then a break and down to Southampton to take over the Ringwoods at 1430. Lots of potential to muck about with that then!

So, plan B – Jamie came in at 1005 expecting a break, but willingly allowed me to send him straight to Ringwood to do the 1045 300 on the basis that he would get a break when he got back to Southampton. That meant covering him from 1140 onwards so instead of doing his A Ant agreed to go to Southampton.

However, this would cause a problem later on in the day as if Ant did the whole stint from 1140 – 1430, he would be unable to carry on to do his own scheduled trips from 1440 onwards without a break.

In the middle of pondering all this, the A31 reopened at around 1030 which at least eliminated the need to cope with further delays as the day went on.

So, in the end, the simplest solution was to get Ant to take 303 into Southampton to relieve Jamie at 1130, do all the remaining trips on the Ringwoods apart from the 1345 round trip to Southampton on the 300s, and get Matt to stay in Ringwood when he got back from Lyndhurst, have his break, do the 1345 round trip then come back dead from Ringwood to Eastleigh at 1520.

This left me with Ant’s scheduled round trip on the A at 1120 and the afternoon Wildern School run to cover, and Taz willingly stepped in for both of those.

This also led to the unusual sight of two of our buses in Ringwood at the same time – Matt with V12 and Ant with V14 that he had taken over from Jamie, though the downside of that was that we had to run one of the A workings with a double decker for several hours until Matt got back just after 1600.

All that sorted, we settled in for a quiet afternoon. And that’s largely what we got until the very end.

Jamie’s duty finished with the 1750 from Eastleigh, which is due back at the yard at 1857, and I knew he needed to get away for a family engagement. Friday evening traffic is usually ok by then, but I had fixed up with Taz and Paul that if the traffic was bad, Taz would do the 1720 and Paul would drop back on to the 1750 to allow Jamie to get away, but if traffic was light everyone would do their scheduled trips.

With everything running on time and no traffic problems reported, I told Taz he wasn’t needed and he left just before 1700.

Then, just before 1730, phone call from Jamie – there had been an accident at Haskins and all the traffic was backing up!

So after wrestling briefly with my conscience, I figured that the only thing I could reasonably do was to cover Jamie’s last trip for him, and he in turn agreed to fuel the first couple of buses in before heading off to his family meal.

I left Eastleigh on time at 1750, joined the queue at the Ford factory, passed the Mansbridge timing point just about on time at 1804, and it then took 40 minutes to cover the mile or so up to Haskins!

Fair play to the ambulance driver coming the other way though, who – in a repeat of the Steve and the policewoman story a few days previously – pulled up alongside my bus to let me know what was happening and how long I could expect before the road was clear! Nice one! Passengers certainly seemed impressed.

So I figured that apart from me getting back to the yard late, nothing else could possibly go wrong on Friday 13^th. Then – just as I’m near the head of the queue, a message from Jamie... the petrol station had run out of diesel! He’d managed to fill the two buses I’d left him with, but there were only around 70 litres left in the tank so the station was closing!

This was either a minor problem as has happened before – the station closes for a while, a new delivery arrives and everything returns to normal – or, with the Shell tanker strike all over the news, could this possibly be something more serious? Horrible thoughts filled my head of driving all over Hampshire in my bus trying to find an open petrol station! However, my rational side figured that I hadn’t seen panic buying at any of the petrol stations I’d passed all day, so everything must be normal really, but I still had to get mine and Ant’s buses fuelled!

Pulled in and sent a quick message to Ant to meet me at Rownhams motorway services which he would soon be passing anyway, and after dropping off round Hedge End and Botley got over there within 30 minutes or so. Luckily everything was calm, we fuelled the two buses with no problem and got back to the yard around 1945.

So that was it then.... except that unfortunately a tree branch had smashed one of Ant’s mirrors, so I couldn’t quite make my escape until I had sorted that out ready for Saturday morning.

I got away at 2030 in the end, crazy day!

(Photos courtesy of Ant and Kev)