The Steaming Rants of Ernie Wight

The Wight sort of Luck

We all need to be lucky sometimes. We all need to feel that we have been visited by one of the Gods and given a little bit more than our fellow men. But could you take the fruits of luck if you had to face the other man who had to be unlucky in order to keep the balance? Luck cannot come from nothing, it ebbs and flows from person to person. It also doesn't flow in single units, one man's amazing fortune could require a thousand men to give up their dreams to keep the balance.

I had backed the Transit down to the side door of the nursing home in a small Wiltshire town, switched off the rattling diesel, and carried four large pergals of green white stuff to the crates outside the door. I initialed the delivery sheet, climbed back into the cab, and was driving out onto the road when a figure walked out into the glare of the headlights. It was four in the morning, and I wasn't expecting visitors, especially ones dressed in track suits and slippers. I wound down the cab window.

"Could you possibly come at a different time ? It's waking me up whenever you back into the drive here. It never used to be like this, but you've changed the round".
I said I would see what I could do for him.
"It wouldn't be so bad if it was a milk float you were driving", he said as I wound up the window. I know what he meant, the transit sounded like a man in the last throes with his false teeth rattling with each spasm. The Mercedes Sprinter I was promised when I first applied for the job has still to be unlocked and the key given to me.

I had, over the past three weeks, re-arranged the order in which I visited the customers so that no-one had their milk too late, no-one had their milk too early, I didn't have to slog through the early morning rush-hour in Chippenham or Devises, and I was able to get the round done in six hours. I was able to get back to the station in time to have a hot bath and breakfast just before the phone started to ring with orders from Scimitar owners wanting parts for their cars. Life was beginning to look rosy again. My luck, it seems, was just beginning to change again.

I told them back at the dairy that someone living close to the nursing home was unhappy at being woken so early in the morning.
"SO ?" they said. Ours is a caring-sharing society. We don't care, and you're welcome to as big a share of that as you want.

Ernie Wight is a free man, with time on his mind to speculate about the stranger points of life while his hands are on the steering wheel. He is free to arrange his world to suit himself and others. Others, however, are not so free to re-arrange their lives. This unlucky man, for instance, could not move away, or change his sleeping hours.

I have every sympathy with those whose rest is disturbed by unwanted noise. I was a victim for several years, and unfortunately for me, had to deal with a man who didn't care. Directly opposite to the station is a collection of Nissan huts, and in one of them is a business which restores classic cars. They had a burglar alarm installed in their premises, which would dial in to a central control centre whenever an alarm was raised. The control centre would inform the Police, who would send the nearest available car to attend whilst the control centre also phoned a nominated keyholder to come out, unlock the premises, and reset the alarm. So far, this all sounds reasonable.

I, at the time, was having to get up at 5 each morning and drive 80 miles to a client site where I was maintaining software, or 50 miles to a different client site where I was resting software. Once a month, it seemed, the alarm in the premises opposite would activate between midnight and 2 in the morning. For twenty minutes a siren would sound, then it would cease (as is required by law), but the siren inside the buildings would still be going off and could be heard. I regularly would go out to speak to the Police attending the call to see what had happened. It was always a false alarm. I spoke to the manager of the business several times about the disturbance. He took the view that it was not his fault, it was the fault of the alarm company, with whom he had a contract.

My next door neighbours were also disturbed by the noises, and had on several occasions rung this gentleman at the time when the alarm had gone off and woken us all up, to advise him that the alarm was going off again. "It's not my fault", he would reply, "I'll be having words with the alarm company in the morning".

I made a point of dialling 999 to ensure that the police were advised each time the alarm sounded. If there was a break-in, the thieves might well have cut the phone line to prevent the modem from dialling the control centre. I hoped that, should my own alarm in the stores nearby ever go off and I was not there to hear it, someone would do the same for me.

After more than three years of these irregular interruptions, I was getting very tired of the attitude of the manager of the premises. The Police were also getting very tired, and had down-graded the response code against that particular alarm, since it had occurred more than a certain number of times, without ever being a justifiable event. They now would not respond within the 20 minute period that most alarms were attended in, but would only send a car once any more important business had been dealt with. My neighbours, and several other people living in the area I spoke too, said that they paid no attention at all to any alarms, just tried to sleep through them. I was too near to be able to do this, and was annoyed that the value of the alarm, (and therefore of any other alarm sounding in the nearby industrial estate), had been downgraded as a result of this one man's refusal to take any effective action. It was very ironic that a break-in did occur once within the period in question, but the thieves did not enter the buildings and set the alarm off, they stole a car trailer belonging to the company instead.

When the alarm sounded for the second time in the afternoon of a May bank holiday, I dialed 999 and advised the Devises control centre that the alarm was sounding (again), in the particular building opposite me. The lady at the control centre then criticised me for using a 999 line to report the event.
"What am I supposed to do, then? The local police have told us to use 999 to report all incidents, not to phone the Tisbury number, because it is rarely manned."
She said that although she could sympathise with me about the noise, I shouldn't be ringing 999, I should perhaps have a word with the owner of the premises.

I didn't blow my top, snarl down the line at her, or bang the receiver down. I explained that the owner was oblivious to the problems caused by his faulty alarm. I explained that I was concerned that the value of an alarm siren was now zero in the area in which I lived. I told her that although I had been a keen supporter of the neighbourhood watch system ever since the siphoning incidents, I was now worried that the whole attitude of people living around me had degenerated to the "who cares" level, and that her efforts at customer relations made me feel like taking the same approach myself.

She suggested I contact the Environmental Health department of the local council. I did so, received a log sheet on which I was to record all dates and durations of any alarm soundings. The accompanying letter also said that the offending company had been advised that a complaint had been made against them. In fact, the company had also been advised of exactly who had made the complaint, as I found when I chanced upon the manager. I am on his list, that I know.

I re-thought the round, re-scheduled over half of the drops, and worked hard for three days until I was once more getting the round completed in six hours.

On the Friday morning, as I had just unloaded the pergals at the nursing home, a figure walked out and tapped on the cab window. "Thanks", he said, and gave me a folded note, "I really appreciate that. Have a drink on me"

I wish I could have done. As it happens, this is another of those strange-luck stories that can make you believe in Gods who take a personal interest in you, or guardian angels that try to make sure the balance of luck is kept even.

I cannot believe in the one god that the main religions would have us worship. There is just too much going on for one deity to handle. And how could one of these deities balance the flow of luck, knowing that the event that would make one man jump for joy and hug his wife could make another man howl with anguish beside the body of his dead wife? He would either have to be mad, or to be completely oblivious to what life was really like down here. I find it easier to believe in the multiplicity of Greek deities in Homer's works, or in the Norse myths that Wagner set to music. These tricky creatures are constantly scheming, meddling in each others plots, siding with or against one another according to whim, wish, or plain old wickedness.

One of these gods had seen that another god had set up a small event, that was going to make life hell for many of us. That god had also seen my good deed, and had thought that I should not be set back in my battle to survive just because of deity one's plans for the traffic in Westbury that morning.

I left the diary to drive home, headed into Westbury, managed to cross the roundabout, and saw stationary traffic with a fire-engine dealing with a house blaze. I doubled back and headed for the only other secondary route through Westbury, to find that too was solid with stationary cars. For the next forty minutes I tried back streets and side streets trying to find a way to get five miles west of the town in order to then get back onto the road to Warminster and go home. I saw one route on the map that seemed to lead out of the town into the marshes, but it had been blocked by bollards to ensure that nothing wider than a motorcycle could escape from Westbury in that direction.

I finally had to leave the twon and head eastwards, back past the village where the diary was, and travel a further ten miles before I could then head back westwards again. I got home having taken one hour and forty minutes, instead of the normal forty. And, of course, at no better than about twenty to the gallon, was almost dry. I had in fact used up that five pounds the man had so generously given me.

But, Ernie Wight's luck that day had decreed that he should not lose unduly as a result of Loki playing games in Westbury. Although the fiver had gone up in smoke, and I had lost an hour, I had not actually lost overall. I don't know which god decided that I had suffered enough, or had been kindly enough to others to merit leniency, but I do thank them.