Author: Buck

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.

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.

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:

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.)

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.