Author: Buck

Finally it’s arrived! One day from China to Coventry, two weeks sat at customs, another couple of days being sent to London then Liverpool, then being held there until I paid the import tax (£18, plus £13 handling fee to Parcel Force, robbing bastards.) Finally got it on Friday. It’s ace. It looks titchy, but it’s surprisingly loud and the keys feel natural, just the same as playing the tenor. Here it is, the tenor and my new soprano saxophone:   Honestly, how cool is that? It’s like Dr Evil and Mini-Me of the sax world. Of course, looking at it now I am seeing the want of an alto sax (the middle sized one) in the picture. Maybe some other birthday. Yes, 46. It’s a bit of ‘meh’ birthday. 45 seems a biggie, 50 seems monumental but 46 is just…’whatever’.   All my news is good, really this week. Sax finally made it and it’s awesome. My leg was feeling iffy after doing my first ride-to-run session for ages. I pulled up short and walked it back home. I gave it a week and did a ten miler yesterday and my leg was fine. Apart from the blisters, obviously. So I did another run today (Sunday). Both times nearly killed me though, due to the phenomenal heat. Unbelievable.  After yesterdays near-death-experience I bought some factor 50+ sun cream. Stable door and horses with Lord Lucan.   Ho hum. Also this week I’ve found out about a non calorie-controlled diet. You are allowed to eat as much as you like, so you are never  hungry, but only of real food. No processed, sugar and salt added food or drink and you have to keep your carb meals separate from your fat ones. That’s about it. It’s about working with the body to diet, not starving it so it tries to turn all food into fat and eats your lean muscle tissue. Sounds too good to be true. I’ll tell you how it goes next week. Work is fine. Wendy is all recovered from her bad patch. Luke is being royally screwed by some letting agency, but I’ll have to go into that in some detail and this is just a quick one, Wendy needs to get to sleep. I’ll update that later. Better sign off in point of fact. Got to go and roast like a potato in a microwave in my sunburnt skin. Later, Buck.

I am in a bit of a dilemma with work. The job I have is steady, Mon-Fri on the same run. I know the route, I know the job, I can find the places and reverse safely into them. I’m not fantastic on that blind-side reverse still, but adequate. On Friday I was running out of driving hours, down to my last two minutes, so I surprised myself by slamming it on really well. Can’t guarantee I won’t make a total hash of it again on Monday, though. The thing is, I am doing it. However much I faff about, I’m getting it done. On Friday they also sent me to another drop, the first time I’d had to pick up from there. The yard was quite small and had obstructions along the fence so it was a tight reverse without room to pull forward to straighten up first. I had two warehouse lads leaning out to watch me, and I did it first go. I’m not boasting, this is my job after all. But I have come a long way and am actually settling down and confidently doing things. I remember the nervous wreck I was at Stobbarts. I had no idea what was going on half of the time I was reversing. My dilemma is this; do I stick with this job (steady, do-able, but short, inconvenient hours, not massive pay) or do I risk re-applying for that Igloo job? (To which I referred a few months back.) It’s better hourly pay, a lot more hours, sealed trailers (you don’t have to do anything with them to unload them, just drive them and swap them at the depots) and the shift start times are what you want (4am-6am, I would choose.) Everything about Igloo is better, except I don’t know where all their depots are. I have a map, satnav and google maps/ navigation on my ‘phone. Once I’ve found each one once I should be alright. What I’ve been doing is getting a print off of the instructions to each site and writing notes on them. Sorted for next time then. It’s really a matter of when, not if I re-apply. The thing that is holding me back is lack of confidence. I’m scared of assessments for a start, even though I sailed through my last one. Then there’s the fear of the unknown. What if it’s loads of tiny yards you have to blind-side into? What if I have another bump? You see, while I’m at this works I am getting better, and if I do have a bump can go and get a better job. If I have a bump at Igloo I’ve thrown away a steady job and buggered my chances with the good job. The idea is in my head now though.   One thing I should say, being a driver is so much better than my previous jobs. Whenever I see the warehouse lads now I’m reminded. No chilling, always rushing with […]

Yes, even I have them. The last couple of days have been pretty good. I started off shaky on Friday. The blind side reverse has been eating away at my confidence so that even when I’ve finally got it into position I’ve been having to take a few shunts to get it squarely on the bay. It’s a knock-on effect, so I’d started flapping even at my other depots where I am comfortably competent. Friday started badly, I lost position in the yard at Irlam and in my haste (and to be fair, due to a really shit truck. I know; a bad workman always blames his tools. This was shit though. Brakes that do nothing until you ram the pedal into the floor and a different automatic gearbox, which shifts down a gear when you put it into reverse, not straight into reverse gear.) I ended up bumping into another trucks wing mirror. Luckily it was mirror to mirror, and no harm was done but my confidence was shot. Again. From that nadir it started picking up. Some arsehole in a rigid truck parked across my bay so I had to do some fancy reversing around him to get on the bay. I did it OK.  My first drop was the place that had loaded me with the infamous ‘wobbly’ pallet. This time was worse. I check every load me after that, and this time they’d loaded boxes that were two pallets long (on two pallets). The boxes were stacked high, but not that wide, so were balanced in the middle of the pallets, and because they’d had to put it in length ways (Oo-er, mrs!) were on their own at the back of the trailer. So; boxes balanced on pallets, with nothing around them to support them. Ideal. If they could have packed them in sweating dynamite on egg shells it would have been perfect. I looked at it and despaired. I put two straps on the load to try and hold it in place but I wasn’t optimistic. I tried to drive as smoothly as possible. Not easy when your brakes routine is: stamp, nothing, nothing, stamp harder, nothing, HOLY SHIT! STAMP! *thrown forward* To my surprise when I opened the back doors at Northampton the load was still upright! Go me! Then I tried that manoeuvre the guy had suggested, screw the truck around as though I was going back out of the yard, pull forward until the back of my trailer was pointing in the right general direction (and here’s the thing, I could still see it! When you can see it you can steer it.) then just reverse in as normal. Through your blind side mirror, obviously, but if you are lined up it’s straight forward. I cracked it! I don’t know if there is enough room to screw it around when there are trailers with units on them, but when the yard is open like that it’s do-able. That made me very happy.   […]

First things first; go the tories. They announce a drought and it’s not stopped pissing it down ever since. As with their genius notion of kick-starting the economy by sacking everyone. I know it wasn’t the tories who announced the drought, but I’m blaming them. Tories announce a drought, build an ark. Wettest. Drought. EVER. I’ve been chugging up and down the M6 in it every day. Total monsoon. The spray makes it hellish difficult to see. I commented the other day that after that day’s driving I was going to have to get the barnacles scraped off the keel on my truck.   The ‘plan’ of the heading refers to my new short-term master-plan. I’m on 11.30- 23.00-ish shifts at the minute, so saxophony is out of the question. The neighbours wouldn’t like an early morning rendition and I’m be blowing a tune every time I farted if I played it when Wendy was in bed. I did try to take the clarinet in to work with me, as lots of the job is just sitting around waiting. But I felt a bit embarrassed because I’m so bad at it. Then it struck me, a soprano saxophone! They are tiny little things (they look about 18 inches tall, the curved ones) but share the same keys as all sax’s. I didn’t want to go lashing out on another instrument though. Gawd knows we have enough to spend our cash on. Then I struck upon it, sell the clarinet and buy the soprano! Genius! That way I could concentrate on one instrument, not trying to learn two lots of keys, fingerings, and bloody embouchure. It would pass the many, many, boring hours and it would be easily portable. Plus, as it is the same, but smaller, I should be able to play it sufficiently to avoid embarrassment. I’ve acted upon it. I’ve listed the clarinet on ebay. And the satnav holder thing I bought (then had the original returned to me). Also, it has given me motivation to start actions to get the Micra scrapped.  As soon as someone calls back with a quote that will be gone. Then it’s soprano city, baby!   Last week we finally got rid of our old, moribund cooker. I’ve had the replacement cooker selected and bookmarked for about a year on my favourites. There is never going to be a time when we say, ‘ we’ve got this spare £500, what the hell can we spend it on?’ So necessity was the mother of investment. The old cooker had lost it’s joie de vivre, and most of the heat. Very inconsistent temperatures. The new one is groovy. Two electric ovens. Fan assisted. Gas rings. Self cleaning. Well, I say self cleaning, part of buying a tory cooker is that they send a working class serf around weekly to clean it out. If not I’m sending it back.   The first night we got it I went and got us a Chinese so we […]

You know how in my last  but one blog, of but a few days ago, I was waxing triumphant of my mastery in my chosen trade? To whit, I felt I’d cracked the driving gig? Wednesday I was doing my the same run I’ve been on for the last couple of weeks. My last drop being in Northampton. It’s a nice big yard, but the bay you have to reverse on is the to the far left of the yard. This means, when they leave trailers parked in front of it, you have to reverse in blind side. It’s exactly the same principle, except you can’t lean out of your cab window and see where you are going. You have to do it all in your offside mirror. The problem with that, of course, it that it leaves you without any depth perception. You are reduced from binocular vision to a flat, reflected field. When your arse end is over forty foot away this is less than ideal. So I was blind siding into this bay, the last one in the yard, trying not to run too far and park it over the pavement running next to my bay. I went tight around a parked unit and trailer (it would have been too easy if they hadn’t parked that there as well. Grrr.) I bottled it, thinking I’d gone too tight, so pulled forward again. As I did so I clipped the parked unit’s wing mirror with my trailer. Bollocks. I didn’t break it, or even scuff it, but I turned the mirror around on it’s post. This loosened it so it had to be fixed. The yard manager saw it and made me fill in an accident form. I think he was pulling a fast one, to be honest. One of the lads took the back off the mirror and fixed it while I was there. Then the repair guy came out, had a long talk with the manager and buggered off. I think it was a conversation on the lines of ‘lets bill the agency guy’s lot for a none existent repair and split the cash’. Probably not, but I was miffed.   I went into work on Thursday (my lot had gone home by the time of the accident so I didn’t get to tell them on Wednesday) and the boss was so concerned about me being a potentially dangerous driver he said I’d have to do a driving assessment on Friday. Meanwhile, here’s the keys, do the same run again today. Go figure, as the colonials would have it. This is why I am an agency driver; because I flap terribly on assessments. If I can carry on driving without ever having to take one I am not going to put myself through it. As soon as he said that I was gutted. I started planning what jobs I could apply for next. I had to go in early yesterday (Friday) to take the assessment. I […]