Author: Buck

Things were just about becoming serious. I was getting a bit stir crazy being at home all the time. I was getting more and more nervous about the thought of driving. I needed work to get over it, but just applying for it was freaking me out with nerves.The money was running out, the car needed M.O.T.–ing, Wendy was starting to get worried.

Things were, as I say, getting serious. I’d only had one day’s work in about five weeks. No other income. So not good. I had started looking at warehouse work, advertised at £6.08 per hour for shift work! Robbing bastards. I applied to about six or seven agencies for driving work without getting any work.

Wendy got me to ring up about signing on the dole on Wednesday. I wasn’t keen for lots of reasons; the hassle, the contempt in which they hold you, the bullying to take a minimum wage job or lose benefits, etc. (*looks at Beth, accusingly*) (By the way, Beth is a relative who the dole made work for them.) I rang them Wednesday afternoon and arranged an interview for Friday morning, and booked the car in for an MOT Thursday morning.

Bleeding typical. The job I didn’t want I passed the assessment, the job I desperately wanted they said I was ‘borderline’ and needed to get another month’s experience and try again. He said it was not a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ sort of deal, and that he wanted me to come back and drive for them, just with a little more experience.

*sigh*

Stuff like me not knowing where anywhere was, being rusty with a manual gearbox (I think that was my second go of a truck that wasn’t automatic since I passed my test, 2½ years ago! I’d have soon got fluid at it again.) and being ‘nervous’ (on an assessment for a job I was desperate to get, FFS!) particularly on the reverse. Bloody right I was. They said the assessment was all about safety. I thought it would be better to be slow and sure. That is too nervous. Screw that! I’m not risking crashing. 

I am hesitant to even mention this, it’s so perfect for me. Even though I’m not superstitious I still don’t want to jinx it.

First off let me relate how I got here.

As you know I’ve not been applying  for  full time jobs because of nerves about the driving assessment.

OMG! This is wonderful. If you know the Pink Floyd track it is infinitely better, but I expect it stands alone. On the backing track you hear the snippets of the geezer trailing the black stuff (death?). The other friend is making it work as a conversation. Anyway, that’s just a condiment of extra appreciation. The banquet of taste and style doesn’t need it.

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” Edvard Munch, 1893

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.