My Year 2019

              

My Year 2019

            The year just ending has been quite eventful for me with the passing of my sixtieth birthday and starting off my time as a pensioner, courtesy of The Railway Pensions Company.

 Work has gone from being just a single job description to being a triple job description, giving me more chance of work basically whenever I want it. (more to follow soon)

Family life has seen an addition to the Hoad Clan and visits from Kathleen, Max and Mr B for period visits. At home I’ve had improvements done to my property with two big jobs done this year and two more to do, possibly one before the end of the year and one in the new year.

             Church life has been a bit up and down, with changes in Sunday meetings, making meetings difficult for me to attend. As I’ve been helping run a small Café Church at a local school on a Sunday morning I’ve not been able to make the Sunday meeting at Central Hall. Back in the autumn of last year we started an evening meeting especially with students in mind called ‘The Six’. This started off with a large number attending, until Holy Trinity Brompton (London) put a church plant into our parish church across the road from Central Hall and subsequently all the students  moved over to St Marys and left us with a very few attending. As a result the church  leadership decided it was not worth continuing ‘The Six’ and so shut the meeting down. For the second half of the year, New Community Church has, in con  junction with The Big Church Day Out organisation run a monthly Citywide Worship meeting, inviting people from all the churches in Southampton to meet together for a Celebration once a month. The two we’ve had so far have been well attended, with numbers increasing each time, with out of towners coming from as far afield as Weymouth, and Essex (when Kathleen came and visited),but the word is getting out and people are willing to travel to worship God. We have a resident band that leads the time and a guest who brings a short word towards the end. At  the time of writing  I don’t know if these meetings will continue into the new year, but we will see. How God guides us.

Work has been quite busy this year with me doing a number of different things that I’d not thought about this time last year, or was in the early days of operation.

RORO car operations has seen me expand my ability and, now as well as driving the cars and vans I now ramp marshal (controlling the flow of traffic on the ships ramps) and Crew Bus Driving (taking the drivers too and from the cargo). These abilities give me more scope for work ahead of others when the need is there.

Cruise Ship Operations  has been a fairly new set of jobs that has kept me busy right through the summer and even up to the 16^th November 2019. I have a number of jobs I can do, that include, Mooring, Quayside Marshaling, Baggage Handling, Ships Stores, Car driving (for meet and greet customers). The baggage handling and ships stores test the body’s flexibility, and quite often I go home at the end of a shift with muscles aching like mad. It gets even worse when you get the jobs two or more days on the trot. There is an up side that if you are involved directly with the customers, carrying their bags for them, then sometimes you can get a financial reward for helping them.

Mooring can be quite a strenuous job and, depending on which ship it is I’m booked on. Different types of mooring lines are different weights and when they get wet they’re even heavier to lift onto the quayside bollards. When there are at least five lines on each end of the ship it makes for quite a long haul.

Quayside Marshaling is the easiest job to do and ultimately wields the  most power. When fulfilling this roll, it’s my responsibility, along with others to keep staff safe while fulfilling their quayside rolls ,making sure they don’t walk into the path of forklift trucks and other quayside machinery, also making sure the disembarking and embarking crew stay safe while on the quayside and use the correct route too and from the ship. 

Car driving involves me working with ABParking, this outfit controls all the carparks within the docks complex and for certain cruise ships we have to park the customers cars for them. 

Ships Stores, means lots of manual handling, restacking pallet loads of  food and drink from wooden to metal pallets, due to fire safety. When you get to transfer at least ninety twenty-five kilogram bags of potatoes, the same number of bags of onions and hosts of other large quantities of fruit and vegetables, you know all about it, then you start on the groceries, all have to be re-palleted. Sometimes you go from doing this to loading the baggage if you get to be on the ship all shift. The advantage is that you get to have two meals, breakfast and lunch in the crews mess hall and you get it free, you need feeding when doing such manual work.

Bulks Terminal Operations This work involves vehicle marshalling when we have 29 ton grain lorries turning up to go on the weighbridge, then either emptying or loading depending on the operation concerned. Bulk loads can be either Grain, Animal Feed, Fertilizer or scrap metal coming and going. The thing with bulk ships is that if it rains, the job stops until the rain stops, so if it rains all day the job does not run and you sit around and get paid for anything up to twelve hours. The other job I can do is grain elevator operator. This is a very dusty job and involves reversing a full 29 ton lorry load of grain up against the bottom hopper of a conveyor system  that takes the grain and deposits it into the ships hold. The hatch on the back of the lorry is opened and off it goes onto the ship as the lorry back is raised into the air. Due to the dust mixed up with the grain the need for respirators and eye protectors is always a requirement and for me is the most uncomfortable.

Home Life has seen a sum of money become available for me to do refurbishment and improvements on my property. When I first moved in I found out that all the windows in the property were defective, letting in draughts and not able to be cleaned from inside. As a result, I’ve had new windows and front door installed, making them easier to clean with tilt and turn openers and a lot more draughtproof. The next job I’ve had done is having the roof re-felted. Due to the life of a felt roof only being on average  ten years, I omitted to find out how long I had before it was likely to need doing when  I bought the property, so I decided to have it done to give myself a date to work on for the future. Fencing, and front is still to be done, this will be done in the early New Year when the weather will hopefully be better. Holidays are always a bit difficult due to Cruise Ship work taking up the summer months. Next year I have a trip to France to book as nephew Matthew is getting married in August, and I want to be there for this special event. I’m considering a trip out to the USA, to visit Derek, Rebecca and the other family members. At the moment I’m still sorting out when I’ll go but it’s going to happen during the coming year.

For those that hadn’t heard Esther and Clement have a son Nathan, Eliott, born back in the spring (sorry I can’t find the exact details at the time of writing). This makes me feel really old and I look forward to see him for the first time at the wedding in August. During the time in France I am looking forward to visit Kalid Mansour and Mussa Ismael, my two friends I met in the Jungle Migrant camp back in 2015/16 and have settled in France. I keep in touch with them and talk to them by phone and messenger from time to time. They have quite a story about their life as a migrant and I must try and get another copy of the video story that Kalid made about his journey to Calais from the Sudan. I don’t know if I can still find it, but if I do, I’ll post it for all to read.

Kathleen is keeping well considering she’s the other member of the family on her own. Again she’s been in the position to refurbish her property making her home life a whole better, having been left a sum of money in her late boyfriends will. 

So as you can see God’s looked after me during the past year and to him I’m forever grateful. I finish up now by leaving you with some photos taken to portray the highlites of the year, and I take leave of you now and wish you all a very happy Christmas and a fun filled family 2020 with father God right at the center of each and every life                                                 

                                                              Love to you all

                                      Alistaire  

72 Hawkhurst Close Southampton Front door marked rjght and the top two floors above

Grain running out of a lorry onto a conveyor to go onto a ship

03:00 one morning and day breaking in a meadow near home 

A day trip to Portland Bill Lighthouse

The Optics of Portland Bill Lighthouse

Tug pulling a huge container ship towards its berth.

Do You Recognize these two people? If you don't ask me in the comment box below 

Snowdrops on the green outside my home

Looking over Southampton Water from Western Shore

One of Kathleen's portraits with suitable bible reference

 

Memorial to the United Nations from the American Army Servicemen
who passed through Southampton Docks on their way to D.Day

The Plaque reads:                                                                           1939 - 1945                                                                                                                          This tablet was presented to the Southern Railway by The
                                              14th Major Port, United States Army, in proud and glorious
                                             memory of the men and women of the forces of
                                                  the United Nations who sailed from this port during the great
                                                 war against aggression to secure the freedom of mankind. 

                                            Leo J Meyer Colonel TC                     Sherman L. Kiser Colonel TC   
                                  Deputy Port Commander                              Port Commander   

                                     

Western Parish Church taken over the estate

The Bargate, the largest remaining part of the old city of Southampton