They took a van out earlier than scheduled for a delivery. They also took it out incompletely loaded. This is happening too often. And it changed my day totally. I thought I would be able to make sense of consumables for the future. As is I had to get up and run to buy some bolts, box them up and chuck them in a crate, get the crate lifted down from the mezzanine and loaded onto our Luton and then work out where the hell MPC is. MPC. is the main press centre. The official address we have all been given is very much not where it is for the purposes of driving there in a great big van. They’ve cordoned off a bit of road disconnected from the venue where they can check your accreditation and it is nearby, but you need to be told about it really. Then you have to go back round once you’ve been safety checked, and get past another layer of security. All is as it should be in terms of it being difficult to get into places, but people who are supposed to get in should be able to. I asked the head of transport if, after however many weeks he’s worked here, he has a pin or any helpful info. No. What a silly question. So I work it out and add it to my list of pins. I am gonna try to use some spare time to write up an English guide to some of the more complicated venues, for any non-francophone drivers. I ended up in a long french conversation with a french logistics guy and Curtis, where the logistics guy and I were both feeding back exactly the same issues. The info we have isn’t helpful. We need to share info as the closer we get to “go!” the more fraught everything will get and the more important it will be to have people get stuff quickly.
Edward works at MPC and he’s bilingual English French and the contact I get from Grace. We have been alternating languages messaging one another as we haven’t worked out what the other one speaks. Head of Transport can’t get me a van pass, but Edward gets me one in less than an hour from me messaging him to tell him I’m coming with forgotten stuff. I’ve saved his number now. He saved my bacon. I’d never have gotten close without a pass – it would have taken even longer than it needed. I would have had to walk a pallet across one of the busiest roundabouts in Paris and then have persuaded the concierge of a posh hotel to let me put it in the goods lift. You can get away with a lot in hi Vis. but not everything.
All hail Edward. He’s lovely on pick-up although I’m shortly going to Google “Best way of getting a pallet truck onto a tail lift,” because if there’s a knack, I haven’t got it yet. I can get it down but it ain’t pretty.
Still, I don’t drop the pallet or break my foot or the van. And on to the golf. The golf course is way out of town. They want 8000 80mm screws. I have a suspicion, from what I’ve observed, that they will all stand around simultaneously looking at an empty pallet for however many hours or days it takes for someone to bring them the screws. I don’t stop at multiple hardware stores to make them universal as every hour I delay is a wasted hour by everyone who has decided it is impossible to buy screws for themselves. They are getting all sorts of different heads and sizes. 80mm by everything from 3.6 up to 6.
They don’t like the 6 but they will work better than everyone running out of screws and Guyancourt is miles away. I’m not gonna come back with more screws. They can fucking source their own now if they’re fussy about the size. They’re all the right length.
Long drive home. Another stop at a hardware store, topping up consumables that we have never had enough of. By the time I’m back at the warehouse, Ali has left the building. He’s off on other events. He’ll be back in a week or two. He and I balance well together. We both have big memories but our priorities are very different. I’ll miss his very well understood brand of OCD. I’ll maintain the systems we made. I’ve even bought a digital scales so next time someone asks me to count 300 bolts I can weigh one and do maths. Expedience sometimes trumps precision.
When I arrive, someone is adjusting the number and type of cable ties in the orders Ali and Darren have been laying out while I’ve been away. I restrain myself from worrying about what else might have been changed without our being told, as the someone knows these events better than anyone and is making a knowing change. I’ll make sense of it all on the weekend and make it all ready.
Tomorrow and Sunday will be hopefully a little less runny roundy. I can literally take stock. So I will.
AlBarclay 