Author: Buck

I said that I’d got Wendy that surprise gift of a clarinet and joked  that she liked it, so no bonus gift for me. The joke was on me. She couldn’t take to it. Bugger. On the bright side, I now have the only two instruments that use a reed. Interesting fact. Or not. Please yourselves. You got in here for free, you know. As a consequence, I’ve been alternating my blowing between the sax and clarinet. The clarinet is a bugger. If you think about putting your fingers near a key, or are not 100% on the one you should be on, or you don’t clamp down on the reed like a pit-bull on a postman it makes a horrible squawking noise. I went on to a sax forum to see if there was a more sax-like mouthpiece and it is a common complaint of sax players. Because the sax was designed as an adaptation of the clarinet, by a clarinet player, sax players (and me) think they can just pick it up and play it. Not even. One guy on there called it ‘the misery-stick’. The consensus view was that it was a fair description. I picked up some tips. Still, I can now say I am crap at two instruments not just one. That’s multi-talented, that is.   Anyhow, that left Wendy bereft of a hobby again. She needs one. She used (20 years ago) to play the organ (huh huh) but always fancied the piano. (Which it would have been super to have known before I got the clarinet. Still, I’m enjoying/ hating it.) I looked at the options for renting this time, as little miss changeable might not have took to the amount of hours you need to put in. They were all crap deals. ‘Rent this crappy learner keyboard and if you want you can buy it later with the rent knocked off’. Why would you want to buy a piece of crap? The rental money would just have been a waste and the kit was such low-end rubbish it just wasn’t worth it. Yamaha, who are a byword for musical quality (and rather nice bikes, if Mr Yamaha wants to reward me for plugging his kit) have launched a weighted keys (so it sounds louder if you bang the keys rather than tap them, just like a real piano) budget electric piano. It seems to save the money by not including whistles and bells gimmickry. Most of the electronic pianos have a shit-load of sound effects and a monster computer to dick about with. This is just an electric piano. It has four ‘voices’ ie, you can play it as a grand piano, an organ, and two others. Which, truth be told, is three too many, but that’s about it. There are other features, such as programmable downloaded tunes. Don’t even know what that is. Anyway, the point is it does what it says on the tin, for a (relatively) modest price. It’s […]

Just a quick one. My last entry was all doom and gloom. Back on top now. Too much time sat around waiting for the agency to get me work.   I got the call to action yesterday. Back in, straight back on the road (in awful conditions) and I did fine. I settled into it and was a happy Bucky again. This is good. Part of my worry was that as we are almost into the New Year there will be no work, thus I’ll have to start applying for other jobs. A daunting prospect, all those assessments. Now I’m going to go and kick trucking arse. It’s just a matter of being careful. I can do the tricky bits, but I have to be slow and careful. 99.9% of the time I’m fine. So I just have to be triple sure of everything I’m doing in that .1% when it’s gets really difficult.   Positive Bucky.   To prove I’m all chipper, here are a couple of funny pictures people have just posted on Twitter. A Northern pina colada:   And, Jihad dog disapproves of your extravagant New Year celebrations:   And a random one that makes me laugh, (‘cos I’m a bastard!)   See? Happy Bucky. Have a super New Year and enjoy it all the way up to the Mayan apocalypse. Buck.

  Wendy was looking for a hobby so I bought her a surprise present of a clarinet. It’s well cool and looks like this: And breaks down into a natty little case like this; Unfortunately she likes it, so there goes another bonus present. She only mentioned it because she loves the decrescendo, (glissando, they are calling it on youtube) from Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXrwIHcNB5o ) That is our task for tomorrow. It has got me back to my sax. I’ve not had time enough to sleep, never mind anything else these last few months, so sax practice has taken a serious hit. The longer you leave it the more daunting it becomes. When the clarinet arrived though I thought I’d have to have a go. Just kept making a horrible squeaking sound. Wendy could get it to blow notes, I got squeaks. (Think it might be broken!) In frustration I broke out my sax. So, all for the good. I’ve since realised the embouchure is totally different. You hold your mouth the same, but apply next to no pressure. On the sax it’s a firm bite from the top teeth, taught bottom lip over bottom teeth. The clarinet you just rest on your taught bottom lip. Still have some way to go before either of us are knocking off the tune above.   I got myself some new ‘natural running’ trainers. They say that modern trainers encourage injuries by placing all that padding in the heel, encouraging a heel-strike running technique. Apparently this jars unnaturally and causes shin-splints and knee injuries. The latest thinking is by removing the heel padding, having more or less a flat running shoe, that you run as your body wants to naturally, landing on the balls of the feet and absorbing the impact. They said on the website that because you are removing an inch or so off your heel that until your muscles strengthen and adjust you should do no more than a half a mile run. Increasing by no more than 10% per week. Naturally I scorned all such mamby-pamby, sissy-boy, nonsense.  I wore them around the house for a few days then as soon as the gym was open (today) went for a good run. I thought 5 miles was a girly enough distance to try them out. To spice it up I ran half a mile at a stupid gradient then for good measure just kept putting the last quarter mile faster and faster. Ended up running at a sub 5 minute/ mile speed. Fine and dandy. So I hopped on the push-bike machine and blasted out half an hour on that. The last five minutes of which were at killer pace as I wanted to get it to 8 miles. (I don’t know how I’d been so slow at to need to blast it, must have been the run.) I staggered off the bike and back on to the running machine, thinking to do another 5 […]

OK, I’m more or less a truck driver now. I still struggle with the more difficult reverses, but have the standard one cracked. A few things have come to my attention though. To whit; car drivers. Not all, obviously. The two main categories are coffin-dodgers and women. Again, not all, but when I’m screaming at some moron I’m about to plough forty tonnes of truck through, it always seems to be one or the other. All the competent women and oldsters want to form vigilante gangs and eradicate those who besmirch your record. For instance, my mother is a woman and an excellent driver, my dad is due for retirement later this year (which, by an arbitrary judgement could have him nudging the ‘oldster’ bracket)  but is a professional driver. So it’s not a sexist or ageist remark. As we know, sweeping generalisations are always wrong, but it just so happens that the conspicuous dickheads are almost without exception from those two categories. With half the country being female, and a growing percentage being elderly it is perhaps not to be remarked upon. But I have. Then, in justification have laboured the point to death. Ho hum.   Anyway, that was but a throw-away remark as pre-amble to my main point; ie, Things That Piss Me Off,(Driving Subsection) Volume III, Chapter 134. 1, People entering a motorway off the slip road. You are in a car. The merest dab of the pedal on the right will send you hurtling to the dizzying speed of 57 mph. This is faster than any truck is supposed to be able to go. Therefore, do not tootle down the lane at 45mph and expect to join the motorway. There is a damn good chance there is a car beside, or speeding towards the truck you are suicidaly trying to bully, preventing it from moving out a lane. This leave the trucker with the option of trying to pull up with the momentum of said forty tonnes pushing him (/her) on, or crushing your tiny little car like a beer can and laughing about it all the way home. (OK, that might just be me.)   2, If you felt the need to stop on the hard shoulder, illegally, then having resolved the emergency for which you had no choice but to pull over (say, having found little Johnny’s next DVD) and your car then miraculously works fine again, DO NOT sit there, static, with your indicator on. You don’t try and join a motorway at zero mph. Use that lovely hard shoulder that everyone else has left clear for real emergencies, to get up to speed, then merge. You moronic twat!   3, People who drive at less than 55mph. Anywhere, really, but particularly on a motorway. Give me your keys and go and stand against that wall. Yes, the one with big posts before it and the pock-marked brickwork.  As for those who drive at 53mph until you are almost on top of […]

Oh dear. What a day.   I’ve been working for Stobarts off and on for the last few weeks. I had one bad night with them. I dropped my digital tachograph card (digi-card, the chipped card that records all your driving data) somewhere between the truck and the office. A distance of a hundred yards or less. I spent ages looking for it, back and forth. It was dark and I couldn’t see it. I gave up, saying to the the guy who had been helping me “It must have fallen under one of the trucks. No worries, the lads will hand it in when it gets light.” I had to tell them in the office that  I couldn’t work that night, as you can’t drive without a digi-card.One driver had already gone home that night after losing his. As I was walking out, the chap who’d been helping me said “let’s just have a look in this bin”. I humoured him, as he tipped it out. There was a digi-card in it, but it was the other lad’s. We went to a bin on the yard and there was mine! Some bastard (s) had seen a card on the floor, knew the consequences for the driver who’d lost it, and deliberately binned it. I was gob-smacked. I would never have looked in a bin because it would never of occurred to me that someone would be such a wanker! And to have possibly two such wankers is beyond my comprehension. On that same night though, the guy who had been helping me look really went out of his way to help me out. There are some outstandingly good people there, but…. well, I’m speechless. The job itself is as easy as you are going to get for lorry driving. Pick up your keys and a job sheet (with one or two destinations on it).Do your checks on your unit, pick up a trailer then off you trot. Quick nip to, say, Surrey, off the motorway for a few miles, into a big yard. Either get unloaded or swap trailers, then it’s to your next destination and repeat or home. That’s it.   They had no work for Stobarts today so they rang me at 10.45 and asked if I could start a job in the next hour. I said I could so they sent me a text saying ‘DHL, Risley, start at 1130’. Shit! I grabbed my stuff and set off.   My first obstacle was there was no DHL at the address they gave me. I went up and down the street twice before asking a lorry driver. He said it had been renamed Yodel. Ah. Thanks for that. Then there was the unit. It was an old heap. It had a paper tachograph, which I couldn’t understand (so god knows how many hours I drove. I’m only allowed to drive four and a half before taking a forty five minute break, by law.) The automatic gear box […]