Author: Buck

You know how you set yourself a goal (my first of note was to run a half marathon) then when you’ve done it you see that far from being impossible it’s common-place? So you raise your game ( full marathon, Ironman) but that’s not good enough because it’s not the brand name Ironman, just the distance. The Rola-Cola of endurance triathlons. Drunks shun you when they realize it wasn’t a branded event. Well, as I mentioned last time I’m going to put that to rights next year. So how’s about this for training for it;  a Lands End to John O’Groats ride! I’m going to do it the other way around (apparently we happy few call it an ‘end to end’, anyway) as Scotland’s up North so it should be all downhill to Cornwall. Genius. You can tell I’ve been studiously researching it. I’m looking at 120 – 140 miles a day at the minute, so I can do it in a week. The chap who’s very witty book on the subject I’ve been reading did 150 m/d to do it in six days. It would appear the record is something like one day, seventeen hours! I’ll not be going for that. I’ll see how the training goes. I did 112 miles in a bit under seven hours for the Outlaw, perhaps 150 miles a day is not too much of an ask. We’ll see.   My thinking is that cycling is the longest discipline in the tri so if I batter the training with an end to end I’ll blitz that part of it, bringing my time right down. I am also going to take swimming lessons as soon as I get the new job (after the hols) and I have the odd evening free. My time for the 2.4 miles was one hour forty minutes, I could probably get that down to an hour (and suffer a lot less) with proper training.   The other reason is; because it’s there. Lands End to John O’Groats. To cycle the length of this scepter’d isle. It’s one of those things. Like swimming with dolphins or goosing the Queen. I’m thinking I’m going to die soon and my body will probably give out before then, if I’m going to do anything extraordinary then it had better be now. The trouble with that statement is; it’s not extraordinary. As soon as you decide to do something you see some arse has done it in in a day and a half. As the chap who’s online book I’ve been reading so wittily yet accurately says: “You’ve worked hard, endured exhaustion, battled lactic acid burn and probably have a boil or two in uncomfortable places. What’s kept you going for the last two days is getting back to your loved ones, friends and colleagues. More specifically basking a little in the awe and admiration everyone is bound to hold you in. If you’ve made your effort for charity (even if only as an excuse) […]

You know how I’ve said before that the parking space for trailers at work used to fit eleven trailers and now they’ve decided we have to squeeze fourteen in the same space? I moaned that it was a tight fit, but because of the time I was getting back it was always too dark dark to take a decent picture on my ‘phone. Now I have the snaps. It would have been bad enough if it had been a straight reverse, but there was a car parked in the way that I had to swing around and then try and straighten it up. Anywho, here’s the view from the cab. Drivers side: (Look at the gap in the mirror! You’ll note it’s that tight the unit next to me had to have it’s mirror tucked in) Look (in the mirror) at the view I have of the amount of space on the blind side: That sliver between red and blue is the totality of the gap. Try doing that at night when your job depends on it. And finally the view from outside the cab, not quite as tight, but look between those trailers. I couldn’t squeeze between them, and like I said the wing mirror had to be tucked in or I’d have hit it. To put it in perspective, I couldn’t open the drivers door, I had to climb out of the passenger side. Anyway, that is what I have to look forward to on a nightly basis. I took these photo’s because I’d got back early and it was broad daylight. Almost too easy when you can actually see where you’re going. Feels like cheating.   I have totally mastered the blind side reverse now. Not just on that one specific bay, but I’ve had to apply the same technique in other situations and it works as well. Sorted.   Which leads me to my next announcement; as soon as we get back from our week at Craggy Island I’m re-applying for that Igloo-Hermes job. I can do the driving well enough, I’ve learned the value of slowing down for junctions due to the crap stacking of my loads and now know to turn the cab to the left on blind junctions so I can see both sets of traffic. Also I’ve had quite a few shifts driving units with manual gearboxes. The only other things he picked me up was being nervous (I was a wreck! I’m fairly confident now. I’d still be a bit nervous on an assessment, but only normal nerves.) and not knowing where anywhere is. That hasn’t changed, unfortunately. I have maps, a satnav, and navigation and googlemaps on my ‘phone. I can get there. They have been advertising for drivers but I don’t want to apply until after our week away. Partly because I’m a big girl’s blouse and am scared, but also because it seems daft just before holidays. And they said they’d start me at three days a week […]

That has been our situation with debt. Achilles is a faster runner than the tortoise, but, if time is divisible, by the time he gets to where the tortoise was it will have moved. He moves forward, the tortoise moves forward. Achilles can never catch the slow but indefatigable tortoise.  Unlike philosophers we put a rock on the tortoise and watch it flail helplessly in the sun. Hmm, tortoise soup. Where was I? Obviously still dieting, if a philosophical paradox/ debt metaphor can be turned into a soup reverie. Anyway, the debt thing. We are finally getting on top! Huzzah! Wendy used to save, then she met me and we drank our way into constant debt. It’s only since we gave up that it started to come down. I mean, I put £5K on a credit card to do all my truck licenses. The thing is, like that over-used tortoise metaphor, as soon as we raced toward it the wily bugger would move away. Before xmas we’d got it down from about £10K to a grand or so, then there was the clarinet (fail) and the piano. (There was a solid reason for buying them, not just ‘cos we could. Mostly not just ‘cos we could.) We started to pay that back then I had no work for two months. I get work again and the car dies. Had to get a different car. Then the cooker kiffed it. You know how it is. Also there’s my laissez faire attitude to cash. That doesn’t help. (My soprano sax was a steal at the price. It more or less paid for itself. Somehow. Don’t look at me like that!) As I was saying, before all the accusations, we are getting there. Last month, seeing as we won’t be lending Luke his bond money on flat any time soon, we stuck £666 (I just liked the number) on the card. This means we have finally broken the grand barrier! Were it not for the fact we have a week’s holiday booked at sunny Craggy Island next month we could conceivably have been debt free this month. Oh wily tortoise, you tease us with your slow sprint. Of course, this is never the case. I have a year’s worth of tax to pay yet. I don’t get a bill for that until next March or April, but it’s still out there, undefined but ominous.   In diet news: a pox on the house of Oliver! Yes, you, Jamie, you mockney scamp. That veggie curry I made, and the equally delicious veggie chilli the day after, put a pound on me that didn’t move for three days. Gutted. DAMN YOU OLIVER! *shakes fist*   Luke and I (OK, mainly Luke) have spent the weekend ‘rooting’ my ‘phone. Which is to say, breaking into the locked base code for the ‘phone to gain control. Once you have control you can install a fancy-pants new software package and delete all the crap. Done. Yeah, I’m so […]

That is my main news for the week. Bloody diet. It’s a two phase thing. The first five days you flush out all the old crap from your body, then start on phase two. The good thing is you can eat as much as you like of the allowed items, so you are never really hungry. The bad bit is you are really restricted on carbs the first week. No spuds, pasta, small amounts of parsnip and carrot, no milk (apparently a surprising amount of carbs in milk, who new?) 50g of brown rice a day, or porridge but no bread. And no sugar, or prepared food. Worst of all no caffeine! Cue the three day splitting headache and milder ones since. You can have eggs and bacon by the bucketful for breakfast, cooked in butter and still lose weight. But no bread, or beans. It’s called the Harcombe diet. It diets with the body rather than fighting it. So instead of starving yourself so your body tries to turn every calorie it gets hold off into fat for the famine it thinks it’s in, it just makes your body use your stored fat whilst not storing any. Anyway, six days, not hungry (eating like a pig most of the time) and I’ve lost seven pounds. Mustn’t grumble. I can eat stuff now. I just can’t mix carbs (root veg, bread, pasta) with fat’s (“if it’s got a face, or comes from something that’s got a face it’s a fat”). Protein is in everything so you can forget about that category.  So today I made me and Wendy a lush vegetarian curry (Jamie Oliver’s recipe here: http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/recipe.php?title=thai-green-vegetable-curry ) for dinner and Wendy made us roast chicken for tea (I had broccoli and mange tout with mine). You’ve got to say, apart from the headaches, it’s an awesome diet. By the way, I really do recommend that curry. I’ve gone right off them the last couple of years. The Pattaks paste curry you can make is just wrong. And this one has coconut milk in. I hate coconut milk curries, all creamy and sickly. Not a bit of it. It really was a surprise how nice it was. Not mad hot, or sickly, or dry and paste-y, just really tasty and light. Kudos to the Jamester.   You can tell I’m on a diet, babbling on, extolling the virtues of food.   In other news I’ve been a bit concerned about my soprano sax. I was having real trouble with a few of the notes and I was getting nervous the bastards had sold me a dud. Turns out our wonderful Chinese comrades-in-arms had done a sterling job on a tight budget and it was just the bad workman blaming his tools. I found this out after I heard an old 80’s power ballad on the radio the other day. I quite liked it in it’s pop/rock way; Hazel O’Connor, ‘Will You’ (http://youtu.be/NJSqcvAQ8l8) what blew me away was the sax in […]

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.