Hi again, this really is to be a quick one (Heroes is on in 25 minutes!). Had to commit this to pseudo paper though. Of late I’ve been struggling with the Taekwondo. If I’m on 2-10 shift I can’t go because I’m working, and 6-2 I’m so tired I just can’t drag myself to go. Then there was missing the grading due to my HGV lesson , and I didn’t go to one lesson I could have made last week as it was the final one before grading and we’d have just been going through the stuff we needed for it. Which I do every time I exercise (most days on 2-10). So all in all I was losing it. I had to force myself to go tonight or I felt I might just quit. And then there was tonight’s lesson. I am buzzing off it. Sure I’m tired now, and will be worse tomorrow (I am too wired to go straight to bed now even if I didn’t want to watch Heroes), but for the first time in what seems like ages I am invigorated, chipper to the point of cheerful and focused again. I want to learn, to strive, to master the damn painful discipline. I have been down. Low of mood and spirit. If the simple expedient of sweating blood and stretching till you cry keeps me charged and breaks the cycle of work/ sleep/ work, I’ll have to force myself to go to lessons. Another point in the class’s detriment on 6-2 is this, you come in at 9.15 or so, have a shower, want to talk about it for ages, and are buzzing for ages afterwards. Not conducive to a good nights sleep. Well, Wendy’s going to bed and watching Heroes later, so I’ll try and get some extra kip. By the by, went out to the mighty Micra this morning at 5.30 and because of the rain yesterday, and it freezing overnight, it was like a little Micra-shaped ice-cube. An igloo, indeed. I hit the central locking button, the doors unlocked but were frozen into position! I ended up forcing the key into the hatchback lock, heaving that open, then clambering in the back and knocking the door open from the inside! I was late. Overnight we are forecast tons of snow, the roads are already iced over, so it’s going to be fun. Later, Buck.
Continue readingMonth: December 2008
My struggle (mein kampf, as some would say.)
Well, guess what? I failed. Again. 🙁 I had to get up at ungodly o’clock on my days holiday to get to the training place for 7am, and could not get to sleep last night through thinking about my test and worrying. I made a few mistakes on the way to the test centre, nothing major, but not what you want to be doing on the way to a test. When we pulled up at the centre an instructor from a different school shouted to my instructor to tell him some hot news, the content of which I missed by going to the loo. Then when another instructor from my place pulled in my instructor was straight up to him to tell him the gossip. Apparently someone called M*** B****** was there at the test centre. I wasn’t really paying attention as they discussed it amongst themselves, saying he was a menace, that they had no regard for him, that he was here now because they had got rid of him somewhere else, etc. Then some chap walked in and shouted my name, shook my hand and said he’d be examining me, pleased to meet me, his name was M*** B*****! Oh the delicious irony. How I laughed. So I set off thinking I was going to fail no matter what. I did my first exercise, a very simple manoeuvre, just a reverse into a coned area with the arse end snug at the simulated dock. To do this they have fitted a bulldog clip to one of the mudguards, you just line that up with a pre-selected spot on the pre-dock area and you know you are spot-on. I can do this every time. I was out in one truck on Saturday, a different one today, and the bulldog clip is in a different place! Lined it up spot-on, inches short. Failed (though I didn’t know it) on the first exercise, before I’d even got on the road for my test! If that had of been all I’d have failed on I would have been having very serious words with my trainers. A frank exchange of views, and possibly feet. However, I managed to fail on my own (de) merit. The valuable and unforgettable lesson I learnt today is traffic lights come in two kinds. Round red, orange, green, and round red and orange but arrowed green. This I was previously aware of, on some level. What I am fully horrifically conscious of now is the fact that if it is the latter, arrowed green, it means there is more than one set of lights in play. I was travelling along a road, he said take the next turn on the right, I indicated, changed lane, saw the light was green (arrow) and proceeded. He said "Stop! It’s a red light" I said "where?" Looking straight at a green light, and then he pointed out the other set of lights next to it, which were indeed on red! FAIL! […]
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