Well, I’ve given up on my old hat. It has served me well, if tightly, for these last few years. I ordered it from Canada so when it arrived, and was too tight, I didn’t fancy the return postage for a bigger size. To make matters worse, the hat-band seems to have been forged from titanium. No amount of squeezing it onto my head would make it stretch. Then there was the problem with the brim. Although on my profile picture it is doing as I wanted, usually if you bent the front down to shape it the sides would all go to cock.
Nice hat, served me faithfully, but faded badly and now it’s time to move on.
Here is the new improved hat. I started window shopping a week or two ago and came across this style. It is shaped into a dipped brim at the front and back, and though I didn’t know it, soft as gloves on your head. (Not that that is where I usually wear my gloves, you understand.) I tracked down the style, then a U.K. stockist (for about £40 plus P&P) then found someone selling them for £17.95 inclusive of P&P but they wanted me to set up a new payment system (Worldpay. Never heard of it.) Then I realised they were selling the same hat on ebay! Bleeding typical.
When it arrived it was too big, but I boxed it up again, sent it back and had the smaller size in three days! Good service!
Enough of the words and such, check out this baby:
Yeah verily, I rock!
Whilst I’m here I suppose I’d better clarify a point in my previous entry. The talking snake was a biblical reference alluding to the hilarious story of a talking phallic symbol that tempted the first woman, thereby damning the first man. Which seems to indicate that misogyny is not new and that the bible was written by men. Freud must have pissed himself laughing when he read that one.
I only mention it to rule out any misunderstanding involving a certain Mr Harold Potter and his abilities as pertaining to the field of parseltongue.
You would think such elucidation unnecessary, indeed patronising. I would have agreed had it not been for an incident of late.
My niece, Robyn, posted something jolly on her MySpace jobby to the effect of ‘ Five years from now we could be walking in the zoo, with the sun shining down on me and you.’
In the spirit of balance I replied ‘ Or lying, dying, bleeding and in pain, under a bus in the pouring rain.’
Which she said was horrible. I replied ‘ A poet, like a prophet, is without honour in his own town.’ Which she simply didn’t understand.
Apparently the youth of today are unaware of the ridiculous fiction they should be despising. Go the yoof!
Meanwhile, back at the Buck-cave…
I have made good my resolution to get push-biking. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. All the way to work and back.
The prospective benefits are manifold; No more points on my license, increased stamina and stronger cardio-vascular system, supposedly stretched tendons, saving money on petrol, and saving the planet (you can thank me by form of hard cash).
To be honest, although it is a bit over six miles each way and at the present that’s half an hour of hard pedalling, it’s not too bad. I don’t really get breathless and I could keep up that level of exertion for a lot longer than that. The down sides are; I’m arriving at work lathered like a grand national winner, or, as yesterday, soaked in rain, the bike is stuck in tenth gear which is challenging when setting off on any degree of incline and has already started to knacker the set-in-rust old bike, and MY ARSE!
Oh my sweet lordy the pain! I have formed a nasty ridge twixt my nethers (you’ll be pleased to here I have no intention of posting pictures of that particular sight for sore eyes) and every day when I throw my leg over the saddle I have to do ‘it’s only pain. work through it.’ mantras. Also it is kind of defeating the object, or at least one of them. I expend so much time and energy in the damn push-biking that I haven’t had enough of either to train at my TKD all week!
I am on a long weekend now, Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. I still haven’t worked out. I was supposed to be going down to my sisters to sort out a download system for her youngest (in my new-found, unwarranted, and externally imposed role as I.T. tech) so didn’t get stuck in to a work-out first thing. When I got there there was no one in, so I’ve come back and dicked about on the computer.
I’ve been looking for a second hand push-bike. Something that has gears that work. Ideally a racer. I’m sure in the old days, when we would cycle sixty miles in an afternoon just for something to do, that we zipped along. I’m blaming my current lack of zip on the stupid fat mountain bike tyres. I was so convinced that it was the tools (as opposed to the bad -read: ‘fat and lazy’- workman) that I counted the teeth on the cogs. I was pedalling and getting nowhere, so it must be that the ratio was wrong. Nope. Fifty two teeth on the front cog, twelve on the back, just like tenth gear on my racer used to be. So now it is the contact patch and the un-aerodynamic riding position of said mountain bike.
Of course I will get a racer and discover that it is actually (as Christian fundamentalists claim to explain the millions of years old planet that the bible states is but four, or possibly six, -I forget-, thousand years old) that time has slowed down. It’s nothing to do with me being twenty plus years older, a stone or so heavier, and as lazy as a sloth on valium.
Wendy has got her job at bleeding long last. She did one day as a wages slave and they were ringing her at home asking her to come in on her day off (she’s salaried, so unpaid) to pull them out of the shit. Then she said that because as a volunteer she went in Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and now she’s employed she will be working Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, they’ve allotted her appointments for Thursday but not moved or cancelled her Monday ones. She will have to work four days for the next fortnight for three days pay. They are taking the piss if you ask me. They all knew what the shifts were, and what she worked, it’s not rocket science to move them into alignment.
Anyway, she’s still happy with it. She is being paid to learn what is for her the best aspect of the best job, thus ensuring she will always be employed in that field.
Personally I feel like going down to the office and laying down the law, and a few of her bosses.
Keep taking the ‘get over yourself’ pills Bucky.
I was looking on t’interweb, window shopping for prospective jobs for when my license returns if my works won’t take me on, and there was one there: Mon-Fri, poss Sat morning, occasional overnighters sleeping in your cab, class 1 driver, with bonus, £15k!
Larf!
All the rest seem to be agency, and require lots of experience (even if the job actually exists, bloody agencies). I’ve started to complete the online application form for Stobbarts, but have had to pause as they need driving license details and my license is still in darkest Wales. I’ve also asked the Royal Mail to email me when any driving jobs occur. I will get there, even if I have to take a really crap job just to get the experience. Once in work I can apply for any jobs that arise demanding experience.
Right, I’m off,
later,
Buck.
PS, it’s now Sunday night, the long weekend has flown by, and I feel somewhat out of sorts. I don’t feel I’ve achieved anything this weekend, and I’m back at work in a few hours. I don’t know what I expected to achieve. Nothing on my to-do list really. I tried to sort out our Nathan’s computer, not my fault he wasn’t in. It was too soggy for me to be arsed gardening much. Taekwondo was cancelled when I got there today, but I’ve done two good work-outs while I’ve been off.
I can’t pass a test every time I have a day off, and if I keep self-medicating with retail therapy I’ll just be replacing ennui with money worries. Focusing and diverting, but not really in a good way. I’m probably just tired and bored. And I don’t want to go back to work, and I’m in a state of limbo whilst I wait for my license to return.
Ennui is such a decadently self-indulgent affliction. If someone is trying to kill you, or you are desperate for food or water, or in intense pain you just don’t have the energy to expend on it. I suppose I should thank the Army for providing me with that knowledge, but I don’t.
Positive Bucky: I’ve been using my ankle weights whilst training and they are good. They are velcro-ed strap on jobbies, you can start with one half kilo weight, then keep adding them up to two and a half kilos. Nearly five and a half pounds in English. I’ve started off with a kilo on each ankle. Then I was struck by a flash of genius! Whilst doing head kicks, or as I was trying for, throat kicks, I was worried I might be kicking diagonally. You want to kick up to the height then turn the whole body, flicking your foot horizontally. Diagonally would be bad as it would mean you would impact with your targets body before reaching the head/ neck. Then it struck me; stand a brush up at the side of the target. If I was hitting that before the target, well that would have been bad. However, even wearing my kilo weights I was clearing it and making the kick! Go me!
Well anyway, it’s been better than working. And I’ve been enjoying ‘Chuck’. Just tired I reckon. Later,
Buck.