Jam tomorrow

I remember!

I sat down to update my blog yesterday with the intention of setting down the running tally for this bleeding driving malarkey. To get my class C (rigid/ class 2) license it cost me £2,163! Two thousand, one hundred and sixty three of Her Majesty’s pounds!

The original course (20 hours driving and a test, with medical, theory test and paperwork) was £849.

I’ve just paid out another £99 for this IAM course. So the running tally is £2,262.

I think I’ll wait until I’ve finished and passed my Advanced Motorist course before I go in for the C+E (artic/ class 1) course. If I could pass that first time it would ‘only’ be about another £850. Then I might need a digital tachometer course, a mere £35, and I would like an ADR course (hazardous materials handling course) which is about £500.

So, best case would be about £3,500. The word from the drivers at work is that Eddie Stobbarts pay their artic drivers less than £8 per hour!

However, get my C+E, get any driving job for the experience, then look (with the ADR certificate, which is valid for five years) for a job as a petrol tanker driver. This is the game plan.

I have printed off an advert from jobcentre plus. It’s for C+E driver, experience not essential, with ADR certificate for tankers. Agency work for six months, but it is £14.80 – £15.93 an hour!

I’ll have a slice of that pie, thank you very much.

I’m keeping the advert, and when I have the licenses, the ADR, and preferably a bit of experience with any artic I’ll be pestering them. Even if it is only a temporary contract with an agency, once I’ve got tanker experience on my CV, I’ll be pestering all the firms. I’m fair sure that at the end of that strike last year the government caved in and made it possible for the drivers to have big pay rises. I think the unions were saying it would put their members on £38,000 p.a., but the employers were saying it was more like £45,000. There are a bunch of oil refineries dotted all around here. Ellesmere port and Liverpool are both within commuting distance. For that kind of cash the Scottish off-shore oil fields are commutable.

Then maybe get my license for helicopters. How hard can it be? Bike, car, truck. Damn, missed a trick there, if only I’d have taken my cycling proficiency.

So that was one thing; setting up a running tally, and desperately hoping I can get a job that will pay for all the debt into which the training is putting us.

What else?

Well, I’ve been off for my long weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). It comes around every three weeks, but with the six day working it is the first I’ve had in ages. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

We nipped around Wendy’s brothers’ yesterday (Addo, on ‘my friends’). Wendy was talking to the Beth (Black Rose, ‘my friends’) who is a gothy like us, and Beth was saying she was glad she had gothy people around her when she was growing up to inform her taste. Wendy pointed out that Beths sister (Loretta, ‘my friends’) had us and her mum around her as well, but she’d grown up into playboy pink outfits. To which Beth sagely replied "Yes, but she went over to the light side." Lol!

That’s about it really. I must admit that in putting it down on ‘paper’ that stuff about how much this is all costing has me a little nervous. However, as I consoled myself in my nervous doubt about ever passing my class 2 with the thought of the driver at work’s lad taking five attempts to pass his test, I have to think that I tried a few years back to become an I.T. trained geezer.  I couldn’t get a career development loan so I couldn’t do it, but that was for about £3,000. Then last year at my Karate club one of the chaps who was a career I.T. geezer said he’d lost his job and couldn’t get another in the economic climate so was training to be a plumber.

This must be about my fourth (at least) attempt to better my job prospects (abortive I.T. training, ditto electrician, as above plumber, training to be a C.A.B. advisor with a view to a career, joining Asda as they were going to put me on management training, and now the driving) but having gained the class 2 license I have already succeeded in this one. Now I just need to keep going.

I’m going to ask that driver at work to get his lad to get me an application form for the class 2 job, I’ll keep my eye on the t’interweb for driving jobs to pay the bills and get experience, but in the meantime just stay at work, do my advanced driving, and take the artic when I can. I’m not looking forward to this year. It’s going to be more expense, the stress of the test (s) -an hour and a half test for artics-, then the hassle of interviews and blagging why they should give me the job when I have no experience, then the actually sitting in the cab, on my own, and setting off for the first time! Not looking forward to that with any sense of joy. But hopefully this time next year all of the above stress will be behind me, I’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about, and I’ll be raking in a decent wage.

Right, bed-time. Back to the toil tomorrow.

Live long and prosper,

Buck.