THE GOOD BUCK

Some good news today. Of all the many jobs for which I applied, the second best one has got back to me. Ideally I would have landed the yard shunter job. It said you could apply with just a car licence. I have many, many, years lorry driving experience (and a car licence still). Nope. Ah well.

The second best was my preferred job when I was working at Iceland, working in de-kit. I’ve applied for a bunch of jobs, most of them were order picking, which is fine, but you’ve got people on your back so you have to be both fast and accurate. Two competing goals. De-kit is just throwing cardboard and plastic into the baler and, at this place, feeding trays into a wash and stacking them when they come out. Simple, easy, jobs. It’s for Sainsbury’s, for whom I used to drive, so I know where it is, at least. And it’s through an agency, so they don’t care that my CV for the last decade-plus all is all lorry driving jobs.

I have my induction on Friday, then either start on the Saturday (last of the 4 days) or on Sunday (first of 4 days on the other shift). For this week I’d really prefer it to be the Saturday. I am supposed to be running Lisa and Patrick to Luton airport at stupid o’clock on Sunday morning. It was my idea, I put myself forward as the driver, and then today (after they rang) I had to call her and say that that it’s now only a 50/50 chance I can take them. I’ll find out on Friday.

Bloody hell, it’s been a year for Lisa. Mother was hale and hearty when she came over. She went into hospital on the first of January and never came out. Dead in February.

Dad was in a terrible state, skin and bones, slowly starving to death because his nerves were so bad that he couldn’t swallow food. He spent 4 years getting all of his calories from one drink of protein powder a day and beer. And that was it. As soon as Lisa and I left him to come home he was falling over and was unable to right himself. Lisa managed to find a care home for him. He finally admitted he was incapable of looking after himself and was willing to go into the home. He’s been in there less than a week and he’s died this morning.

Lisa still hasn’t finished finalising mother’s bank account and pensions, now this. It’s the last flight of the season from Manchester to the nearest airport (Burgas) on Friday so she looked stuck, but Luton keeps flying to Burgas all year by the look of it, so I’m running her and Patrick to Luton a week Sunday. She’s got to finalise mother’s account and transfer it to dad’s account then inform that bank that dad is dead and have it transferred to her account. Then arrange someone to value the house and put it on the market. All while she’s grieving, poor sausage. I offered to go with her, but there’s nothing I can actually add to the proceedings.

I’m starting my (hopefully) temporary new life. I had a meeting with the lorry job HR manager today. She said they have no non-driving jobs. She’s agreed to terminate my contract (I don’t fancy resigning in case I have to get benefits or whatever), and said that she’s counting the week since I got back off holiday as the notice period, so I’m officially sacked today. The good news is that she said they’d have me back at the drop of a hat as soon as I’m cleared to drive. She’s going to send everything in writing and is including the name and direct contact details for recruitment, in case they aren’t advertising jobs at the time.

I had a busy day today, doctors over the diarrhea, then over to HR, back to the doctors to drop off a stool sample, home, then out for an interview for a local warehouse job, home, then out for a blood sample, rang the insurance to take the MT09 Tracer off my insurance and up the mileage allowance on the VFR (£14 refund, robbing bastards!) then register the tracer sold, to get my road tax refunded.

I got the warehouse job. It’s minimum wage plus 10p per hour. *sigh* But it’s local, 4 x 10.5 hours, paid breaks, and not in the freezer. I should be taking home about £420 a week. That’s well enough to keep us going. Plus, with selling the bike and the money I’m due from work, we should have about £8.5k in the bank should we need anything expensive. We’ve not long since got both of our vehicle insurances, we’ve paid for the holiday to Wendy’s parents next month, and we still have about 350 Euros in cash. I can’t think of any big things we need to buy. We should be fine without breaking into the savings.

Everything was looking peachy, bikes, money, good job, etc.

Then I got a call off Lisa, saying dad had been found, presumed dead. He managed to shrug the whole death thing off, then the report was he was paralysed. Luckily nobody told my dad so he kept on shuffling along. The upshot was he was hospitalised. Lisa flew over to be with him as he died. But then he refused to die and she was stuck over there. She had a holiday booked so I said I’d cover looking after dad for a week. It wasn’t something to which I looked forward with any joy. He has a lot wrong with him and he’s literally just skin and bone.

Anyway, I got home from work on the last day before my emergency holiday and the postie had delivered this week’s mail. Amongst them were several from the DVLA. Yup. They’ve suspended my vocational licences. Incredible. The other letter was my new licence with just car and bike entitlement. I had to ring work straight away and tell them I couldn’t work any more.

I’ve been trying to sell my VFR750. I listed it twice on eBay, on Gumtree and on Autotrader. I had a fair bit of interest with people asking about it and favourite-ing it, but it didn’t sell. I’d already cancelled my insurance on it before I realised the MOT runs out in 2 weeks. When you list a bike with that short of an MOT people naturally assume it’s a wreck that won’t pass. But to get it MOT-ed I need to get insurance. My multi-bike insurance wanted £1,100 just for the Tracer. I noticed the new insurance company said they did multi-bike so I gave them a call to cost my options. See what it would be to add the VFR, if that was ridiculous, see if I could get a day pass to get it MOT-ed, if not I’d have to cancel the Tracer insurance when the weather got icy and get a 4 months policy for the VFR, then re-insure the Tracer in the Spring. I was braced for a lot of faff. And it’s £30 every time you amend a policy in any way.

I was on hold for 40 minutes before they answered, but when they did I hit the jackpot first time out. I’ve added the VFR to my policy, for nearly a year, with 1000 miles coverage (it’s 6 miles a day to work, and I’ll only need the VFR for when there is salt on the roads) for £68! Sixty Eight Pounds. Hahahaha! And £30 of that is admin fees!

I’ve booked it in for an MOT on the 15th. I fired the bike up and checked the tyres, lights, brakes and horn. It’s all peachy. There’s nothing obvious for which it will fail. I forgot to check the chain for tension, but I’ll do that, and check the tyre pressures, before the MOT.