Today is my first of five whole, glorious, non-working days! Big yay! I’ve sorted out a bunch of videos, (all the TKD poomse -required patterns- for all of the grades to black belt) numbered them, put them in sequence, chucked them into a file with the photo’ of my badge on the front, (you still wish you had one) and now have written about it. Sad, sad, sad. I have also been making the most of the non-torrential moments to do a bit about the garden. Many’s the suspected weed that has felt the pitiless brutality of the dark side of my gardening. Also I collected a nosegay of sweetpeas and roses, an eye-candy of crocosmia and dahlia, and a touch of hosta and butterfly bush to make an arrangement. I call it ‘Summer in a glass’. Nice, don’t you think? Also I decided to try an idea I’ve been mulling over. For a while now I’ve fancied putting some plants out the front of the house, but we have no garden and the local pre-convict youth would have trashed any plant pots with their relentless football. Now however, the darling youth have mostly moved their delinquency to some other poor bugger’s domain. Mostly. It would only take one hit to knock a plant over, possibly to break the pot. Then I noticed I’ve had to start weeding in the 10" gap between the house and the pavement. It is covered in large stones, with more of the same and sandy gravel below. I thought it would be too inhospitable a terrain to support plant life. But if weeds can do it, why not try some of the hardier plants? So today I’ve been excavating small holes in the stones/ gravel, filling them full of compost and heavy soil, then planting lavender. I had one small lavender growing independently, but the other two were just branches I’d pinned down to root (layered). They were still attached to the mother plant until today. I’ve just snipped them off, cut them right back (to encourage rooting and decrease water loss through the leaves) and stuck them in the front. Watered them in, obviously. Now we wait. If anything can take it it will be lavender. Hot, dry, and poor (to the point of non-existent) soil. Nothing lost, I’m layering another bunch of branches now. While I was at it I potted up one of my dwarf firs and buried the pot in a whole I made in the stones. It’s a nice fir, but I can’t really find a home for it in my garden, so it’s an ideal experimental candidate. Talking of firs, whilst we were in Scotland we were surrounded by the buggers. One particular flavour caught my eye. I went rooting around for pine cones, trying to find one bearing seeds, but they were all wide-open, dried husks (due to it being totally the wrong season). Not to be put off I ripped a few cones apart to try […]
Continue readingAuthor: Buck
Same ol’, same ol’…
Do I need to say that I failed again? Well, I did. This time it was two even more incredibly silly things than usual. I did all the hard stuff, the stupidly tight turns, the impossibly small gaps between parked and oncoming cars, etc. Then, when he asked me to pull over on the left (to test my ability to pull out into traffic safely) I blew it! Normally they say things like "don’t worry about parking over someone’s drive, we are not stopping for long", so I checked the road ahead, spotted a gap between parked cars on the opposite side (to allow traffic to pass) cleared the bus stop, got between two roads that were joining the one I was on, so as not to obstruct vision or block access, and pulled over. On a single yellow line. Fuck. Fail. I didn’t even notice it I was that busy looking for everything else, and I wasn’t looking for it, as I thought the same "we are not stopping" rule would apply. Nope. The other one was an aberration, I was crawling up hill, between cars, went to change from fourth to fifth (by flicking a switch up, which puts you into high range gears, making the first gear position your fifth gear) but in flicking, pausing while the box changes ranges, then putting it into fifth, I think I pushed it too far to the left (into the reverse area of the box) and couldn’t find a gear. I tried dropping it back down to fourth, then third, but was stuck in a false neutral. I had to stop for a second, put the handbrake on, release and depress the clutch then start again. Fail! Ho hum. Six minor faults. Failed again. Still those are things that have never happened to me on test before and should never happen again. If I can pass everything else it is just a matter of time. And money. And indomitable spirit. Bollocks. Buck.
Continue readingHot. Damn hot!
Hi there. This beastly weather we are suffering is killing me. Work, though better than being in de-kit, is still a non-stop sweat-fest. I put in four hours overtime on Monday. The manager asked me if I could do any overtime quite early on in the shift. I’d just had the weekend off and was feeling fresh and lively, so I said I would. By 1pm I was done-in, soaked in sweat, had no food, and another five hours in front of me. That was fun. Sweatier yet is Taekwondo. Sah bum nimh reckons she’s joined flab-fighters, so were are all getting exercised to death (as misery loves company). The last two nights have been so humid, then on top of that having Sah bum nim cracking the whip. You could literally wring my dobok (gi, fighting suit) out. She had us all lined up doing one kick, step, one kick. Then one kick, foot down, straight into second kick. Then three kicks, then five, then ten. This wasn’t three kicks, rest. It was kick, kick, kick, again! Kick, kick, kick, faster! etc. Then doing mad kicks backwards across the hall. Then we were split into groups (I was with the black belts/ one below black belts, and me! Yeah, see my trumpet. Observe me blowing.) Doing turning kick, into 360 degree kick, into spinning back kick. Not easy, but I was 80% there. One chick who was the grade below black belt (red belt with black tag) and was obviously surprised at my attempts, said I shouldn’t worry about not getting it dead right as this was an advanced exercise for her grade and that I was excellent. Yeah, she wants me. In other news the Warrington coppers show an alarming alacrity in dealing with motoring offences. An indecent haste some might say, given their response time to real crimes. Anywho, Wendy posted that confirmation of details thingy back to them on Sunday, I had the reply on Tuesday! £60 fine and three points. Bastards. The Wendster is moaning about me typing so I’d better sign off while I dig a shallow grave in the garden. Later, Buck.
Continue readingYin and yang
I once heard a simple description of the yin and yang that said that even in the heart of darkness there is a little light (as a metaphor. I would suggest a sealed box in a coal mine would be pretty dark, but without observation who can tell? Discuss.) Well that’s how today has been. I was knackered before I started work yesterday due to poor sleeping, then I had a sweaty 2-10 shift, home, shower, wind-down, then bed for midnight. Back up at ungodly O’ clock, (six am) quick brew, then to Manchester to start my pre-test drive at seven. Did all right on my drive to the test centre, and all apart from one hideous and frankly impossible, turn had a good drive. I wasn’t stressed, just focused. However that one turn was enough. It was impossible. There was no way you could make it round and stay in your own lane. You had to hog two lanes into the corner (which I didn’t do, it looked deceptively easy) and then sit half around the bend and wait for the oncoming traffic to stop and let you have their lane as well. I ran over the pavement with my trailer trying to make it. Balls. That was it, my one serious mistake. Fail! I came home and had to go straight out to do the big shop, have a quick dinner, then charge in to work. I was knackered as I said, it was boiling hot, and my heart just wasn’t in it. Then I overheard the manager asking if one of the lads wanted to have half a day’s holiday, so I said "I will!" That cheered me up, coming home early, only to find the letter off Cheshire Constabulary had arrived. Cheshire coppers have kindly asked me to fund their next Freemasons piss-up (under the pretence of a speeding ticket). I felt it my civic duty to oblige. So I was down again. That’s almost certainly going to be three points. Seven attempts at my license, probably won’t be able to get a job if I ever do pass if I do pick up six points. Pretty damn miffed. At the last minute I decided to go to my TKD club (as Wendy was watching Wimbledon) and that has cheered me up again. I had a good lesson, but more importantly, got my grading results: ‘A’ grade pass, certificate, yellow belt, (and Bully’s star prize) a T.K. Loh (the name of the grandmaster) Tae Kwon Do badge! I don’t know of anyone else who has one. I shall wear it with pride. I may have to buy some pyjama’s so I can wear it to bed! That is the spot of light in the pitch blackness of today. Soldier on, all things must pass. Later, Buck.
Continue readingIrony. Bitter ain’t it?
Goddamn it! I have a grading at Taekwondo tomorrow so I went to my club last night to get in some much needed practise. I found, by chance, something of a short cut on the way there. On the return journey I was knackered (it’s a 6-2 week and it was about ten at night), stressing about my grading tomorrow, looking for the new found short cut, and though I saw the speed camera I just didn’t register it until I suddenly had FLASH! FLASH! in my mirror. Bloody, bloody hell! I was reading that new drivers now have a probationary period of two years on their license, within which time amassing six points or above automatically leads to disqualification. From what I can gather it is new drivers per se. I became a driver (well, rider) back in ’85, and passed my car test in ’05, so I’m hoping one of those will be the one that it is reckoned from. I only passed my class II in January though (gulp) and am still striving for my artic license. If I can’t get a job for the three years that (I think) the points stay on my license I am going to be gutted. If they take away my HGV license (and I’ve wasted the worst part of five grand) I am going to be suicidal. This time tomorrow the grading will be over and I’ll be a lot less stressed. Then I can work up to a new fever of stresed-ness for my next test, then sit around waiting to see if I have picked up the points and the fines and how that will bugger my job prospects. I have no idea how long the fines take to come through, so I’ll be on tender hooks whenever the post arrives, for as long as it takes. Balls! Buck. 🙁 PS, Day after, done my grading. I made one embarrassing mistake. Grand Master Loh (the head of the whole of the U.K., eighth dan, so, no pressure) told me to go into sitting stance with a punch. Those were not his exact words (his accent makes understanding him difficult, and I flap under pressure so I’m not sure exactly what he did say) but instead of widening my stance and dropping down a little, I stepped back into a fighting stance. I knew I’d done something wrong but couldn’t think what I should be doing. Sah bum nim Caroline (who was standing next to Grand master Loh at the front of the hall) had to say it again and do it herself before I got over my flap and carried on. Also I went down onto my knuckles for press-ups, but had my hands in a vertical plane not the horizontal. Like my knuckles cared. Hey ho, done now for another few months. Seventeenth of October to be precise. Hopefully I will have passed. My poomse (kata in Karate; a sequence of set moves) was right, and showed […]
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