THE GOOD BUCK

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.

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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.

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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.

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I’ve been working at my new job for long enough to have accrued some holidays, so I’ve taken a week off. Which is to say, 4 day’s rest, 4 day’s holiday, 4 day’s rest. 12 days off! Oh yes, I do like this job. I did another 2 days overtime before my hols. So that’s 3 days this month. I think I will get that in my next wages. The driver I did my induction with said 3 days was the optimum, if you do more they take most all of it off you in tax. I’m looking forward to seeing what that’s worth. I think I might do 3 weeks of 5 on, 3 off, per month. Leave the last week of the month as 4 on, 4 off. That would be nearly £55k pa! Bloody hell! Ball park figures of £800 per week take home, so roughly £500 per week spare. Yeah, I think I’ll totally do it, if my wages reflect my estimation. I’m not sure what we need that much for, but retirement is rushing towards us, we will need all we can get.

Talking of, I finally beat the Pru. I battered down all the online obstacles and made the claim. That took forever so I had to do it all again, but this time the Pru said I was locked out of accessing the policy online. A cunning ploy to take me out of my native environment, but to no avail. I rang up and they are sending me the cash. Should be in the bank tomorrow or the next day. Also I managed to sell the SV650 for £700 this week. I paid for our new picture to be framed with it, and the rest I’ll deposit tomorrow. With that and the pension money we can pay off the bike loan in one go.

Here is the new picture. I wouldn’t have got it if I’d have known how the bill would keep on going up (import duties, framing) but we’ve got it now. And It’s stunning.

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I’ve been obsessing over a Japanese ‘potato potato’ (Harley sound) cruiser for a while. I finally settled on a Kawasaki Meanstreak, 72hp, relatively good ground clearance, mag wheels, and less of a Harley clone than the others. I inquired about a few, and got a £4k loan to buy one, but it had sold. But not to worry, I finally got my new bike.

A Yamaha MT09 Tracer. An 115hp, trials bike style, performance sports/ tourer triple. Obviously.

I had a bit of an ordeal buying it. For once the seller was right on my doorstep, under 2 miles away. I had been looking at bikes in Southampton and Scotland, so that was a minor miracle. I went around on Saturday morning to look at it, (bloody lovely) came home to do the online checks, (all good) and rang the guy to say I’d have it. Then I rang my multibike insurance company and told them to cancel my two bikes and just insure the new one. They quoted me £1,100!

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