Avoiding the Holiday Traffic

I mentioned in previous posts about our company being very busy at the moment, especially this past week leading up to the easter holiday where we had two deadlines to meet on large jobs - a major refurb of a tourist attraction and a new install on a holiday lodge - both of which were successfully completed on time leaving satisfied customers behind as our sparks headed off for a well deserved Easter break.

Now I'm not the one to take holidays at this time of year, preferring to take time away from the business in autumn or over the winter, so I volunteered to be the one minding the tools over the next few days.

I had planned to start a job at 10am this morning wiring and installing an electrical supply to a garden shed and kit it out with sockets and lights, but a call late yesterday from one of our main customers, who urgently required a visit first thing this morning to one of their locations to investigate loss of power in a kitchen, got me up bright and early and off to Aberfoyle, about 20 miles away.

I was only on site in Aberfoyle for 30 minutes before I headed back to Stirling and already I knew my decision to choose work over pleasure this Easter weekend was the right one.

The road from Stirling to Aberfoyle is a very popular tourist route and even just before 10am in the morning, traffic was building up as families or more to the point husbands were being dragged out by their wives (or vice versa), to do what everybody else was doing - getting in a car and driving somewhere just for the sake of it being Easter. The point of a holiday is to do something to relax you away from the rigors of your work but all they were doing were getting more stressed as they took to the roads in their cars, what with more cars taking to the road - then caravans joining in which make the queues worse as motorbikes whiz pass at a hundred miles an hour, darting between traffic with death defying maneuvers.

Where were these people going?, some just like to drive which is fine as I like the same thing on occasions as well, but not on a bank holiday weekend - some like to go to the local safari park, fine again if you have a family, I like a safari as well, but the Kenyan variety - but where do most of these annoying people on the roads go at this tine of year? - yes, the garden and DIY stores - why? well i aint a clue. Give me a shed to wire any day rather than buy a plant or some paint ( and don't get me started about Mr Public having easy access to electrical accessories at these stores )

So I crawled through the traffic and eventually got to my job of wiring up the shed - 4 hours later it was all done - yes it was work, yes it was a Saturday - but was it stressful? No it wasnt, now go and ask that to the people in the long bank holiday traffic queues, or trying to shop in these awful Garden and DIY stores.

Bank Holiday Monday's coming up and I will be hiding well away from the roads in our office working on the business as I listen to the sounds of very stressful people outside on the roads - people who are supposed to be having a relaxing short holiday.