Bloody Hell.

I had that unexpected week off work, then asked to work my days off to get some overtime. My first day back was on Saturday. As usual it was too early in the morning. I tweeted thus:

A few hours later I added:

So that kind of bummed my weekend out.

I was off until today, (Tuesday) so nothing could progress. I went in today to give my statement. They’ve taken my swipe card and locker key and suspended me. That is standard. It’s going to a hearing for gross misconduct.

I asked the manager on the ‘phone yesterday, “Am I sacked?” and he surprised me by saying that they’d go through the procedure, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

Today though I got the impression he just didn’t want to be the one to tell me. We’ll see. As he was being so evasive, I asked a shunter. They are based in the yard and talk to all the drivers and know everybody’s business. He said, as I thought, the last load of drivers have all been sacked.

I have some mitigating factors. The bay at this particular drop is tight against a jutting out concrete wall on one side, so you park as far to the other side as possible. With the trailer doors open this means you can’t see the traffic light. The guy tipping me is very deaf, and his speech is very hard to understand. I parked, there was only 5 bags to take off, I saw one go past in my mirror, heard him shouting, thought he was saying I was done, so went and got my keys and pulled forward 15 foot to close my doors.

Oh very dear.

I think I’m sacked. But as someone said “There are two things in life about which you should never worry. That which you can change, and that which you can’t.” I’m currently destruct testing the latter part of that maxim.

It’s really inconvenient timing to be sacked though, with the plague destroying the economy. A year ago I could have walked out into another job. Now I’m looking at agency work until the new year, but that is very thin on the ground after that. I’ve applied for another job, and I’m looking at several others, but I’m expecting long shifts and probably nights.

Life is change. Better to be here, with a HGV licence and not drinking, than the state I was in most of my life. I can make money and have options, even if I’m sacked. For many years all I worked for was to pay for beer and such. And thinking about it, I’m not loony. The agency is bad. There’s no getting away from that. But when I think about what I’ve been through, most of it self-inflicted, life is still a shedload better than it has been.

Anyway, not to fret. Right here, right now, I’m on paid holiday until they send me a letter (a snailmail physical letter!) with my hearing date.

I’ve started a kitchen sink training plan with The Sufferfest. It’s supposed to train me to be fit enough to do a hundred miles, 5,000 feet elevation pushbike race. I say ‘kitchen sink’, as it’s the full package. Turbo training sessions, real life bike rides, yoga (for stretching, injury prevention and deep breathing), strength training (injury prevention) and mental toughness training (setting goals, overcoming doubt, failure of will, pushing through the pain, etc). Spending my sacked time wisely, then.

Which brings me to Twitter.

The outrage over Tory MPs, themselves recipients of lavish food allowances, stealing food from the mouths of starving kids over the holidays rumbled on.

There was a Maggie/ Cummings-Bozo “Starved miners/ starved minors” joke, but I thought that was a bit obvious.

Some optical trickery.

What is mindblowingly weird about that is blocks A and B are exactly the same colour. Apparently your brain see the shadow and compensates. Somebody didn’t believe it enough to cut the image and compare it.