Author: Buck

I’ve properly started my new job now. I had 7 days of training first. I had a 2 hours driving assessment to start with. Then I started the training 7 days. I was supposed to do a day’s classroom, a day out with a driver (just watching) a day’s classroom then a whole day out actually doing the job with an assessor watching me. That was the big stress day. Then a day out with another driver watching me, then two days out with another new starter, to watch each other. I was in an artic the whole time, and I’m quickly getting used to the manual gearbox so it wasn’t too bad. I was worried on my assessment day but I passed. The next day, when I thought I could relax there mustn’t have been any spare drivers ‘cos they sent me out with another assessor! D’oh! I got through that, did my two days (one driving, one observing) with the other new driver and started my shifts on Thursday. I had an easy start, an artic with an auto gearbox, full size trailer and one drop. Bread and butter to me. Dropped it off, back with 2½ hours to spare, sat in the canteen until home time! The second day was when it got a bit worse. They gave me a rigid. Only a dinky little 18 tonner but buggered if I could remember how to drive one. Any fool can drive one forwards, but I’ve completely forgotten what room you need to turn one around, and I was bollocksed as soon as I had to reverse. I’ve five years of experience with artics. For that you pull over near to where you want to reverse into, then screw the cab around which pivots the trailer over the back wheels, get it pointing in the right direction then straighten up. I was lining the truck up in the wrong place to start, expecting it to turn when it wouldn’t, and turning the wheel the wrong way be reflex. It was a nightmare. On Sunday they sent me out in a 26 tonne rigid. These are bastards for two reasons; the rear wheels are a good 6-8 feet in from the end of the box, so they have a vicious swing, and they have a semi-auto clutch. You rev it and let the clutch out and it cuts your revs and slowly lets the clutch engage. I stalled it the first time. It’s a nightmare, especially on hill starts as you can’t over rev to put some power into it. Anyway, I was coping with the overswing and I was getting on top of the fecking stupid clutch, but the reverse was still a nightmare. The main trouble with this job, is Co-Op shops are little convenience stores, parked in the middle of housing estates and such. So virtually every drop is an absolute nightmare to get to. Here’s one in Manchester: As you can see there is enough […]

Pig-shagger Dave has done it. Years back I said, with chilling prescience, of the EU referendum: “It’ll never happen. Thick people would vote out. They’ll never allow it.” So wrong.  Along came Dave. I think he set the EU ref as a trap for the next government, never thinking it would be his. Others have said it was an attempt to woo back all the racist votes leaking to UKIP. Either way it was supposed to be a sop, a token. We were never supposed to leave. Well done Dave, you have finally ensured the history books don’t list “shagging a dead pig’s head”, as your most notorious deed. The Tories and the right wing press have been drip feeding the lies for years. Foreigners on benefits are taking your jobs, (a good trick to start with) they are all Muslim terrorist paedo rapists. No wonder Johnny Knee-jerk abandoned all reason and voted out of fear. Fucking good job. They were promised £350 million a week of EU money would go into hospitals instead. That immigration would be stopped. That the ‘experts’, every fucking single one of them, were EU stooges paid to promote Project Fear. Someone summed it up nicely on Twitter: It’s 11.15 AM and so far… 1, Nigel Farage starts the morning by retracting the £350 million per week to the NHS claim. 2, Daniel Hannan the retract the claim  that leaving the EU will reduce immigration 3, £100 billion already wiped off the pensions, ISAs etc, invested in the FTSE. 4, The pound suffers the largest currency depreciation of any currency ever. 5, The Prime Minister resigns without mapping out a plan for implementing the results of the referendum.   The pound is now worth less than the Euro. Devalued by 11%. The UK is now no longer the fifth richest country in the world. Project Fear was wildly optimistic.   Worse than all of this, it’s given a mandate to the far right. The neo-nazi Britain First (DON’T SHARE THEIR SHITE ON FACEBOOK!) murdered a young woman MP who was for remain. UKIP/ Britain First/ Brexiters think they’ve won the argument. They won the EU ref, the trouble is, we were voting to stay in the EU, they were voting for “send them back”.  Already reports of Muslims being harassed and people shouting “send them back!” We have sacked Cameron and brought in an even further right wing government, backed by neo-nazis. Also, this signals the end of the Union. All the Scottish voted to stay in. And the Irish. This leaves England calling for action neither of them want, voted for, or will support. The split seems inevitable now.   My final straw, at which I’m desperately clutching, is this is not a binding decision. Parliament has to approve it, and Boris didn’t want out either. He spoke at length about it in the past. Now he has cleared Cameron out of office hopefully he will find an excuse to call a second referendum. […]

Just remember my favourite bit from an Alan Moore comic, Rorschach explaining how he became Rorschach to the shrink. He’d found a house of a kidnapper who’d murdered a little girl. Handcuffed him then set the house on fire. “Stood in street. Watched it burn. Imagined limbless felt torsos inside; breasts blackening; bellies smouldering, bursting into flame one by one. Watched for an hour. Nobody got out. Stood in firelight, sweltering, blood stain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke, heavy with human fat and god was not there. The cold suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world in not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It in not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turnings it’s illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach.”

Finally, 7 years after getting my licenses, I’ve got a real job! Huzzah! It’s working for Wincanton for the Co-op at Lea Green, St Helens. It’s further away than Hermes, but still only 20 minutes in rush hour in a car. Being St Helens it’s the right way down the M62 of a morning. Manchester bound is bollocksed from Warrington every day. I have been looking for a real job for ages but what there are always have drawbacks. Nights, tramping, or Stobarts. £84.50 a shift for Stobarts. Not even an hourly rate. So if you do a 15 hour day you’re on £5.70 p/h. I don’t know how they can even advertise that, it’s below minimum wage, the piss-taking bastards. Then I saw this job advertised for the Co-op. 4x 10 hr shifts. Interesting straight away. £12.93 p/h (I’m on a basic of £12.50 now but that’s as a limited company, no holiday pay, sick pay, have to pay my own accountant, never know what hours I’m getting from one week to the next.) I’ll get 21 days holiday (paid at 12.5 hrs per day, more for being on holiday than working!) which on a 4 day week is just over 5 weeks holiday a year. There is the option to work fifth or sixth shifts if I ask for it. The downside is the shift pattern is Thursday to Sunday (not really arsed, so long as I’ve got fixed days off) it’s manual gearbox trucks (sweating on an hour and a half assessment today, not driven one in years) but you soon get used to that, and it’s poxy little stores to which you deliver. So, very tricky reversing. Just take my time and check everything twice. Bank holidays are paid at double time and a day in lieu. Even if you don’t work them. So bank holiday Monday, my next shift (Thursday) would count as a bank holiday.  Plus there’s £100 a quarter attendance bonus (hardly ever off since I stopped drinking) and best of all, it’s fixed shifts with a fixed start time of 08.30! Unheard of in lorry driving jobs. I asked if that was a guideline start time. Nope, 08.30 is my shift. Thursday to Sunday. I start my (7 day!) paid, induction on the 27th. 12 weeks probation period. I’ll not know until I do the job, but the assessor was saying it’s really relaxed atmosphere, no cab ‘phones, no hassling you over delays or whatever. He said you get about a 7 hour or so run, spend the rest of the time in the canteen. I’m still trying to take it in. You know when something seems too good to be true and you’re waiting to see the catch?   In less glorious news the bike renovation has turned into a nightmare. As you might expect. I stripped it down apart from one bolt that got jammed half out. Wouldn’t tighten or loosen. In the end a mechanic chum on twitter said […]

This is the start of my week off. I’m going to blog my attempts at bike restoration. The engine has had two winters of English rain and salt and is starting to look tatty. First the other things that have been occurring. I’ve just found out that Igloo, the primary agency for Hermes drivers, has lost the contract. As of the 3rd of July they are off site. This means all of us who are Limited Company drivers have to register with a new agency, Extra Personnel. Change is always a gamble. At the moment I’ve got my own truck (a 64 plate DAF) when they remember to save it for me, I’m getting regular work and at a decent start time. A sort of 08.00- 11.00 window. Mostly about 09.30. I’m going to have to see if this new lot will stick with it. I’m not doing nights for a start.   My flute head finally arrived back, it is splendid. Should prevent my allergic reaction. Seems to blow free-er as well. Bonus.   I’ve gone back to calligraphy as well. Copperplate, which is *so* hard, and Gothic Blackletter which is hard but in a different way.   Copperplate is weird as you have to do ovals, at a 40 degree slant with hairlines up and squash the nib to make fat lines down. As you can see from my first attempts, bloody solid. Early attempt at Blackletter.   What else? Ooh, finally sorted a bit of my garden into a a permanent feature that I like. I moved my acer last winter, carrying a back breaking amount of dirt in the roots, to try to minimise the stress and sulking. Seems to have worked. I’m not so sure about everything else, especially the box hedge running alongside it, but the box circle with the acer sitting atop it is spot on. Now just got to wait for it to fill in. I’ve found a bit of box blight since the picture, when I was trimming it. Monty Don says you can grow through it just by giving a weekly feed of seaweed compost. I’ve got a new T-shirt. Today I went out to get a speaker for my ‘phone for the long hours I’m going to be spending in the shed. I put the washing on before I went out, came back to this: Totally wasn’t expecting that.   I was caught up in an altercation on my run on Sunday, between some cyclists and a herd, 20 at least, of dog walkers. It made me think of martial arts again. And Lettie, my niece, was asking about weight loss martial arts. I’m thinking of doing Muay Thai (kickboxing). It’s not pretty but it is practical. The main selling point is that the traditional grading is by fighting people of other clubs. It’s like traditional boxing in so much as there’s a huge emphasis on fitness and lots of time in the ring, actually fighting. That is the […]