Author: Buck

Sorry, that’s a Twitter joke. Apparently two years ago today, at 1620 hrs, Ed Balls did a vanity search. ie, typed his name to see who was talking about him, but being a noob he sent it as a tweet instead of searching it. The tweet was therefore just: “Ed Balls” For some reason this has gained massive traction as a meme and today is now Ed Balls day. My Twitter timeline was just a mass of Ed Balls today. He even tweeted it again. Bless. Sorry, that was utterly pointless. A topical subject for my blog post title with no relevance or merit outside of it’s ‘in joke’ milieu. So, a neat metaphor for the internet. You’re welcome.   Work is mad as a carrot at the minute. I had three days in, a night shift and two day shifts. I’m so far out of my comfort zone I might as well wear cactus underpants. I had a run to Bristol with an absolute bitch of a reverse. The bays had inches between them and restricted area to the front to line it up. Luckily when I went there were several empty bays so I had room to swing the trailer wide. I’d have still been there now if, as sometimes happens there, there was an extra row of trucks parked to the front and a trailer either side, and having to blind side it in.  That’s how tight it is, you can’t even go in on the drivers side, leaning out of the window, you sometimes have to go in using your offside mirror and getting out and checking every few inches. Like I say, I was lucky. Then they sent me out on a multidrop. The fun thing about that was they gave me a sheet with my drops on, a company name (for some of them) a general area (Deeside industrial park) and a postcode. That meant I had no idea where I was going and just had to blindly follow my satnav. Except they gave me the wrong postcode for the Deeside one so I ended up driving around a little housing estate in Mold.  I had to spin a bloody great artic around in the street, go along B roads and when I’d got to the wrong location ask for the right place. It was a nightmare. Then they sent me back to Bristol again, in the daytime so the yard was empty (yay!) but Bristol then sent me to a further two drops around the area. One in Bristol town centre. Tight little corners with stupid roads and every dickhead with a car out to have me kill them. If you’ve got a tight corner that means the arse end is going to swing wide, I was convinced I was going to wipe some of the dickheads out who were trying to come past me. I meant to check my trailer when I got back to see if I had hit anyone. When […]

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 […]