Author: Buck

So much for the easy life! I thought after losing my regular run I would at least have a week off. Maybe struggle for a bit getting work until I found a new job. Nope. On Monday at about 1430hrs, as I was driving to Wales, the agency rang and asked if I could work at 1600 hrs. No. I didn’t get any work Tuesday. On Wednesday I had gone out for a run, more of which in a minute, when Ceva called me direct (as opposed to ringing the agency) and asked if I could work from 2100hrs. I did. I was about an hour from finishing (about 0730hrs) when the agency rang and asked if I could start at Ceva from 10 o’clock. They had already got me a shift for 0600 hrs Friday so I said I couldn’t do it if they wanted me to do that one. They said ‘but that’s in the morning’. I thought they wanted me to work from 2200hrs, turns out they were asking me to work from 1000hrs! No again. They got me an 1800hrs shift that day, so I ended up having less than 6 hours kip after a 24 hour day the day before. I got a bit of a lie in on Friday, then back in for 2100hrs. I turned up for the Friday shift to be told I was doing multiple drops, not my nice and easy trunking. On a time-sensitive job (getting newspapers moved) to addresses I’d never been. Ace. I got my keys and paperwork and asked if I was taking an empty trailer. They looked at my reg and said ‘no, that’s a rigid.’ Double ace. I hate rigids. It had a tail lift (the operation of which is a mystery to me) and when I got in I realised it was a manual gearbox. My joy was boundless. It turned out to be not too bad, but it was a hell of a shock to the system. The thing being, my supposed easy life week was way more stressful and knackering than a ‘normal’ week. Good in a way though, as I was looking on the jobcentre site and there was bugger all decent work. If it doesn’t get better I’ll be looking again. This is too much like hard, knackering, work.   That run I mentioned didn’t help. It was my first one since that nasty cold I had. I seemed to remember that running from our house, to Sankey Valley park and along the canal to the Widnes/ Runcorn bridge and back was about 12 miles. I hated it. You’ll remember my last run was the Bolton Hill Marathon which was as tough as old boots and I managed that comfortably. This time I just wanted to stop the whole time. Not slow down or turn back early, stop. That was right from the start. Bad, bad, bad. I gritted my teeth and made it to the end of the canal […]

All was ticking along nicely. I booked Friday off as Wendy’s mam was coming over on the Wednesday to stay with us so I thought I’d take a long weekend. I had that low-ness a few weeks ago where I felt washed out but I’ve not really had a cold all of this interminable Winter. I woke up on Tuesday morning with a massively dry throat and a blocked nose and thought nothing of it. Woke up on Wednesday after three hours sleep with my nose running and eyes streaming, and couldn’t get back to sleep so I had to ‘phone in sick. You can’t drive until stupid o’clock in the morning if you’ve only had three hours sleep, it would be too dangerous. Then the cold really hit and I felt lousy with it as well, so I was glad I ‘phoned in. Just in time for Wendy’s mam to get here. So that was a great way to say “Welcome to England!” I was just starting to feel like I might survive the cold on Friday when I got a call from the agency. I’ve been sacked off. The run I’ve been doing (out of the Irlam base) has been moved to Crewe so there’s no job for me. Bugger. Not a great week, all in all. Still not done any training, poorly ill, and now unemployed. Skiving not Striving, according to Cameron. Not that I can skive, apparently I’m not entitled to dole as I was self-employed. Ace. It’s not as bad as it sounds. There are plenty of agency jobs out there, it’s just I was settled into that one. It was well within my comfort zone. Now I have to be nervous again. Bah!   I’ll try for that Hermes job again. Some agency were advertising it but only for three days a week. If I get in at that I’ll see what happens. They might bump me up to full time quickly or I could work the odd day here and there for other agencies. I’m still snuffly. I had a text from one agency on Friday saying they had a shift going but I’m going to wait until Monday when hopefully I’ll be better.   In other news, the moggy pulled through. *ambivalent face* She’s like a different cat. (Hmm, I wonder if Wendy checked?) The poor bugger must have been really suffering before. She’s had all of her manky teeth yanked out and bit’s chopped out of her gob. She no longer smells, she’s started piling into her food and is grooming herself again. We thought she’d given up on the latter because she was old and too stiff, it must have been because her mouth was hurting her too much. Poor thing.  She’s all active and friendly now. She even seems to think I like her. Fool of a cat. Can’t be doing with her but I don’t like to think of her suffering all that time. She stank when Wendy […]

I’m sat here replete with Chinese and pants undone. Sorry for that mental image. My guts are actually uncomfortable I’m getting that fat again. Sounds like someone is firing off a shotgun. That’s outside, not my guts. Just thought I’d live blog it in case it turns out to be a bunch of murders. Anyway, assuming some mofo doesn’t pop a cap in my ass in the badass ghetto that is Great Sankey, I’ll carry on moaning about my fatitude. Not good. After the diesel drenching and consequent clothes binning last week I went and bought some more trousers. I’d lost a lot of weight so I bought 32”, thinking that would be comfortably slack for the driving. They were well tight, and that’s the “Of course you’re a 32, and a svelte one at that” lying-to-your-face Asda size 32. Oh dear. So that means I’m bulging out of a pair of 34” trousers. Like the Stay-Puff dough boy in Ghostbusters. If he’d been wearing trousers. That were too small for his doughy lardarse. Not the best of similes. About the diesel thing, a chum on twitter said I should have dried them out and seen how they burned instead of binning them, she said it was her first thought. I replied my first thoughts were “Gosh darn it!” and “Hmm, what’s that heady perfume so redolent of carcinogens?” But back to the lard; Must. Stop. Pigging! To add to the dilemma, that running backpack/ water bottle/bladder holder is a designed to be a snug fit. It has to be as movement is what causes friction and thus webbing burns. Nobody wants webbing burns. Your skin gets rubbed off at the same time as you get bruised from the bouncing action. The worst part is getting it on the small of your back. You think you are just stiff and bruised because you can’t see it. And then you get in the shower. That is an experience you never forget. Anyway, snug. So they have a fitting chart of height and weight. If I’m going to be running the distances I’m after I’ll be quite lean, so I want a medium pack for my height. Unfortunately I’m currently lardy (nearly a stone and a half overweight) which puts me firmly in the large category. If I buy a large it won’t fit me by the time it comes to the race, if I wait until it fits me I won’t be used to running in a pack. Also, the (Outlaw) race is 13 weeks tomorrow (Sunday 07.04.) so again with the ‘no pressure’.   In other news, Little Cat has been turning her smelly little nose up at her food lately. Then she started trying to eat then making whining sounds and leaving it. Wendy got worried so she took her to the vets. You’ll remember this is a stray that used to sit on our windowsill and beg food. Not a cat we got. One that imposed its rank, […]

Work has sorted itself out in no time. I’ve done two weeks without being cancelled and the hours are plenty long enough. I was running up to Aspatria, top of the Lake District, doing an awkward trailer swap then running back to Crewe, trailer swap, back to Irlam. Now Aspatria have set aside a really easy drop point for my trailer. No reversing, nothing in the way, just drive in, stop and drop. Cool. Obviously the karmic balance is upset by that so to compensate Crewe are getting rid of the night shunter. This means there will be no empty trailers for me to swap with, so I have to wait an hour or so while they live tip me. Ace. The consequence of that is I’m on a regular 50+ hour week. Ho hum. It pays the bills. I thought I was getting the long weekend end off. The security guard said the (Sealy beds) factory was shut for the Bank Holidays. Yay! Then work told me they were leaving two trailers loaded for me to pick up, the security guard would let me in.   🙁 Bummer. Pays the bills, pays the bills. Screw the bills, I wanted a long weekend. Grrrr. Also I had fun times at work. They wanted me to run one pallet to a drop in the centre of Manchester, in an artic, “on your way”. Ace. I got ten minutes down the road, pulled up the slip road to the M60 (the Manchester ring road) in rush hour and broke down. Oops. So not good. I was stranded there an hour with no drive. If I tried to put it in gear it just rolled backwards. In the end they had to send a huge tow truck to tow the unit and trailer back to base. Then on Thursday morning I was filling up with diesel, as you do at the end of every shift. The thing with truck diesel pumps is they have a catch on the trigger so you can click it on and leave it to fill up. You don’t have to keep pressing the trigger, it just cuts out when it’s full. Usually you wait until it clicks off, then lift the nozzle to fill the last bit pressing the trigger. On this occasion I could tell it was nearly full so I lifted the nozzle before it had clicked off. Which caused it to spray back all over me. I stunk. Not to mention the carcinogenic qualities of diesel. I put all my clothes in a bag outside the back door when I got in. I tried to soak them for an hour today and have just put them through the longest boil wash on the machine. They still stink. The whole lot has gone in the bin. Ace. Now having to boil wash an empty machine to try to get rid of the smell.   The mixed blessing continue with my ‘phone. The new, twice as powerful, battery […]

You know the running battle I’ve been having with ‘phone and it’s dying on me? It has been instructive in many things. I’ve upgraded the O.S., ironed out a glitch with my Gmail, and worked out how to ‘sideload’ Adblocker again. The latter not being as impressive as it sounds. Apparently to sideload is just to enable downloading and installing from the original site, not from the approved google apps store. Anyway, before I went in and wiped everything, again, I tried googling the problem. The first hit, top of the page, said “if you’ve used a non-standard charger swelling may have occurred in the battery”. I had a look, my battery is no longer flat, it’s now sort of elliptical. Oh. Oops. It could be as simple as that. I hope so as I ordered a new battery on the 4th, (still not arrived).   In other news work seems to have sorted itself out. The new/ old run to Aspatria is as I thought. It’s about 9 hours 15 minutes, to 9½ hours (paid, that is. Another 45 minutes for break). I wasn’t cancelled on any days this week. That’s a good sign. Perhaps that’s the way it will stay.  The run through Cumbria on Friday was a white knuckle affair. It was blowing a gale, so going up with an empty trailer I was worried I was going to get blown over. Then the snow started really coming down. It wasn’t so much that it was landing on the motorway, that was getting crushed by the traffic, it was the wind was so strong it was blowing whole layers off the embankments. That chucked thick blankets of snow across two lanes and blew up a snow storm. I got down from the hills and back into Cheshire and relaxed, only to pass an artic that had somehow turned around and was driven up the embankment at a 20 to 2 position. I don’t know how. it wasn’t jacknifed or pointing forward, it was straight as though it had driven head on to the traffic then pulled off. That was a nasty surprise. I didn’t want to be that guy.     Also this week I’ve had a dose of man flu. It started on Wednesday night, I just came over all weak. I’ve been dosing myself up with paracetamol and ibuprofen and I seem to be alright with it. Each morning I wake up and think it’s gone, then after an hour or so I feel lousy again. Buggery bugger. So I’ve still not started my training in earnest. Not that this weather helps.   That diet of which I spoke a few weeks back lasted all of four days. Then, in a moment of weakness I had a Mars bar. More accurately, I had three Mars bars. The first was so good I couldn’t help myself. The only reason I didn’t eat more was because that was all the money I had on me. #fail Which […]