THE GOOD BUCK

Category: Life

  • Not a ‘no’

    Just a quick a update before I trot off to work. I went into the office four times yesterday to try and see Tony (the site manager) and each time he was in a meeting or doing other important stuff. On the fourth attempt I saw a middle manager I know (Murray) and he said he’d go into the meeting and ask Tony what the news was. Tony came straight out and saw me in person.

    He said that we are getting new rigid (class II) trucks next month so, subject to them being able to sort out the insurance (which he saw no reason why they couldn’t as they’d run warehouse-to-wheels on other sites with the same insurance) his plan was to send me out in an old rigid to do deliveries. His reasoning being it would get me used to driving a laden truck (up to eighteen tons on the back, as opposed to the empty ones you learn to drive in), get used to the stores and doing the job, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I put the odd scratch on an old truck whilst getting the hang of it.

    This is brilliant in several ways; it says that they have been thinking about me and how best to get me trained up, not just saying ‘we don’t know yet, come back again next week’, they are not expecting me to start off perfect, so I don’t have to think that one scrape and I’m sacked, and it would be days! This would be fantastic news for Wendy.

    Also the pay is the same whatever I’m driving.

    He said that they’d see how I went on, then upgrade me to artic’s in January if I was OK. At which point Murray chipped in that where he was they had w-t-w, and to get the new drivers good at reversing they put them on shunting for a week. That is just picking up trailers from one place in the yard then reversing on to a dock at some other point. Then repeat. For twelve hours a day!

    All in all I found his immediate response, and credible plan quite encouraging. I wasn’t just being told what I wanted to hear or being kept in suspense. Hope springs.

    In other news here are the promised photo’s:

    The suit, twenty or so quid off eBay, perfect fit, natty as a spiv’s ‘tache.

    The hand made to order winklepickers! Words cannot express the coolness.

    The rented sax (so she thinks! It shall be mine!)

    the ensemble! Tres Bleeding chic! Oh yes! Cooler than a penguins chilly bits!

    What with being able to blow a C already (apparently that is the note you produce if you blow down it without depressing any of the keys) I only have seven more notes to learn and I’m fluent! End of the week I’m predicting.

    Gotta go,

    Buck.

  • It’s all about now.

    Hi. I’m nervous now. Today is supposed to be the day. I have to go in and see the site manager, my bezzie mate/ total bastard, Tony Simpson today. This is it. My future hangs in the balance. If he says I can go driving then I’ll be ecstatic but terrified, if he says I can’t I’ll start applying for jobs in earnest. The third, and worst, option is that he says ‘I’ll get back to you’ (again).

    So far this has been a happening week; Wendy and I compromised on the sax, I’m initially renting it for four months to see if I can take to it and stick to it, but I now have a sax! (Pictures to follow, got to go to work in a bit.)

    I even got a noise out of it! I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it was a note, but it was better than the breathless wheeze I seem to remember achieving the last time I owned one.

    My shoes finally arrived today, six days too late for the do to which I intended to wear them, but stunning none the less. Hand made to order, which explains the delay, but not the claim of a ten day turn around made by the website.

    My 0% interest credit card came yesterday, I’ve transferred that huge debt I ran up for my driving lessons (for which they had recently upped the interest repayment to ninety pounds a month!) and we will easily be able to settle that before we start incurring interest again.

    So now it’s just the job. I’m scared if he says ‘yes’, as when I said I would like to go out with a driver for a week to build up my experience safely, he changed it to ‘an assessor, yes’. If that is the case I’d feel like I was on my driving test for a whole week!

    If he says ‘no’, then the panic subsides until such times as I can actually get someone to give me an interview, never mind a job.

    If, as I’m expecting, he says ‘I’ll get back to you’, I’ll be miffed, but I have no choice but to hang in there.

    Well, good, bad or indifferent, I’ll let you know tomorrow. Also I’ll post pictures of my eBay bargain suit, so-cool shoes, and unspeakably cool sax. 

    Fingers crossed,

    Buck.

  • Hurry up and wait

    I’ve calmed down after my last impotent rant. When I returned to the Independent’s story later on the problem had been cleared and there were several cynical and informed replies posted. The story is getting out, and people are aware that want to be aware. If one chooses to subscribe to the evil Murdoch’s promulgation pawns that is a choice. Less of a choice when you consider how many local radio stations all cut to Sky for their news updates, and the unadulterated propaganda that is Sky telly. Enough!

    Was it one of those ‘use this word in a sentence’ deliberate misunderstandings on the word ‘horticulture’ that ran: you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.

    Not independently valid on any level when you break it down, but if you accept that reality is objective, its interpretation subjective, and its reporting selective, it follows that a person who fails to question probably just wants a simple answer.

    As they say of being a biker ‘if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.’

    Not you, imagined and implicitly clever reader, but the Sun reading herd. Not even that broad a category, Sun believing herd.

    Anywho, believe it or not I have actually calmed down. All the above was just a way of saying that I probably won’t be writing up my manifesto piecemeal, defining myself by what I oppose. People believe what they want. The evidence that informs my views is equally available to all. To think that only I can extrapolate the truth is verging on megalomania, and is at best patronising. You are all spared. Do your own thinking and don’t blame me when you get it wrong! (Joke!)

    Over myself now.

    Now we’ve thrashed that one out lets move on.

    Potentially good news about my driving, I went in to see the HR chick yet again on Friday (the latest date when everything would be resolved, obviously it wasn’t, again!) but this time the main woman wasn’t there so her minion said she’d go and see her. I waited a few minutes then out came the site manager. I ignored him, thinking he was about his business and it wouldn’t relate to mine. He came up to me, sat me down, and had a five minute chat with me. Perhaps I should mention in passing that the perception is that he is more than just the site manager (although that is at the top of the food chain as far as everyone on site is concerned), the feeling is that he is a troubleshooter. Sent to sort out sites, then move on. He is, it’s felt, a company hit-man.

    Since he took over there have been lots of changes (such as we de-kit lads being chucked out of our department and Eastern European agency lads being given our jobs). So when I say he was talking to me, I mean a chap with some clout.

    He said he was still looking into it, trying to find out why, if Warehouse-to-wheels was a success, it wasn’t an ongoing concern. If it was not a success what was wrong with it, etc.

    He explained that Iceland own the fleet of trucks, but DHL (for whom we work) insure them. That because they are high street stores to which we deliver, the access is often torturous, across car-parks, and into tight yards. He asked how I saw it proceeding. I said that I would like to go out with a driver, me driving, him watching, for a week until I got my confidence up and learned the job.

    He said he would get back to me on Wednesday, with an answer, but in principle how would I feel about night trunking? (Working nights, obviously, picking up a trailer from our big, wagon-friendly yard, driving along one or two major roads, with hardly any traffic on them, straight onto the motorway then the same again at the destination. Drop that trailer off, pick up another, then drive home.) I said that would be ideal.

    All of which implies that he has been taking an interest, no just stringing me along. He’s talked to the transport manager, got an assessment of the difficulties a new driver would face and how to minimise them. This could be for real. He also said that as he would be sending me out with a driver for a week that would cost him £400 wages, how would I feel about staying on my current pay rate until I’d made that back? YES, goddammit! Give me the truck keys and lets go!

    So now we wait, again. Hopefully Wednesday will be the day.

    I’ll be sure to post whatever the outcome, for now I have to get ready for work.

    Later,

    Buck.

  • In the land of the blind…

    …the one-eyed Buck is king.

    I was angered into nearly changing the direction of my blog this week.

    I never used to watch the news when I was young out of rampant apathy, then I became political as I grew older and watched with a critical, analytic eye. Recently, however I have become so disillusioned that I have been too saddened to watch. Everything is either too trivial and inane to be of any but the most superficial of interest or too predictably cynical and evil.

    Everything I watch or read just confirms my world view. Even the knee-jerk idiot-fodder only shows what those in influence want the great (!) unwashed to think. In other words, they confirm my world view by denying it.

    Which is pre-amble to my point, that out of boredom the other day I clicked on the ‘news; heading on my Firefox browser jobby. There upon I saw an article about ‘NATO’ bombing two of it’s own petrol tankers in Afghanistan, killing 90 people. There was no immediate link to The Independent (the quality paper for the tree-hugging, free-thinking, Lib-Dem voting, yoghurt-knitting, sandal-wearing, elbow-patched, be-blazered, beardy-weirdy) so I clicked on The Times article.

    According to their trite propaganda piece the evil Johnny Foreigner scum had stolen two tankers, one of which got stuck. They were then spotted by a ‘NATO’ ‘plane that radioed back to base confirming that all ninety people surrounding the tankers were terrorists, so was given the green light to bomb the hell out of them. The local villagers who claimed to have spotted the stuck tanker and had their relatives rush to get free hand-outs off the hi-jackers were all seriously bereaved, but patently liars and terrorists to man, woman and child. And even if there were a few civilians present, the hi-jackers had started a fire-fight amongst themselves (at the exact moment the got the shit blown out of them by that ‘NATO’ ‘plane presumably) and probably caused the explosion themselves, an official ‘source’ claimed.

    Not being completely stupid, I filled in the comments page. I urged an enquiring mind. I noted that the first rule of authority in cases of error is obfuscation. That in the instance of the police murder of Charles De Menezes, the media was immediately informed that the suspect was wearing a heavy winter coat in summer, that he had wires protruding from it, that uniformed armed police officers shouted ‘Stop! Police!’

    This was allowed to sink into the herd consciousness, only to be found out to be total lies years later.

    (As it turns out eye witnesses saw him stroll onto a tube in normal attire when a bunch of men in civvies ran on to the train, threw him to the floor and put eight rounds through his head. The jury wasn’t even allowed to return a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ and had to leave it as an open verdict. Justice in a country without the death penalty.)The bit in brackets is my rage filled digression, I didn’t put that in my comment.

    Then I questioned the statement that there were ninety insurgents around the tankers. How many men can they fit in those cabs? I also questioned the validity of their alleged ‘official’ source. I picked up recently that the election could only be held in some of the regions of Afghanistan because the other areas were in insurgents’ control. So the people were allowed to have free and open elections anywhere where they would vote for the puppet government. Kind of takes a shine off the concept of democracy, and therefore the merit of any ‘elected’ official. Then there’s the matter of the small- arms firefight. A military unit, capable of planning and executing a hi-jacking of two military intended tankers that then breaks with discipline and starts shooting at each other. And the clincher, at the exact moment the NATO ‘plane bombs them!  I concluded by saying that it is a sad old world, but try not to make it sadder by believing everything you’re told unquestioningly.

    I clicked the ‘post’ button and it said "your comment will go to a moderator for consideration before posting."

    Did they post it, whole or edited? They did not! Every comment was saying things like "our enemy is stupid, starting a firefight, bet we get blamed for it".

    Then I remembered the evil swine Murdoch owns the Times now. I thought somehow the noble newsmen of the Times would rise above such a partisan owner and continue to make sure the truth set us free. No, in a word.

    I wrote another comment, just for the attention of the moderator really, saying ‘do you only post comments from idiots? I know this is just the Sun with pretensions, but I thought you still had standards.’

    That was not posted either.

    *wipes froth from mouth, takes deep breath*

    I then had an issue trying to post on the thrice blessed Independents’ page! I was not a happy bunny.

    My thinking was, to maybe start applying my cynical and questioning mind to the stories that caught my attention and starting to write up on those.

    I do seem to spot a subtext quicker than the average bear (he says immodestly). For instance, I was well ahead of the game when it came to Maggie making deals with the (Provisional) IRA to end the war/ conflict. Nobody else seemed to think it odd that bombers who had been found guilty because they had semtex traces on their hands were released on technicalities, or that those they couldn’t release were caught on video breaking out of jail while the prison guards held back eager German Shepherd dogs to allow them to escape. Or indeed that Maggie, the career politician, recognised them as ‘soldiers’ or an ‘army’ instead of terrorists in a speech. I added all these facts together and saw the bigger picture. A year or two later, under the leadership of John Major, a ceasefire was announced. The preconditions had been met.

    I may start writing the truth as I see it, or at least questioning the lies. If I do, I’ll preface each one with (News) in the subject/ title box. This will allow any who are as jaded as I to avoid them.

    It would give me more to write about though. Endlessly fascinating as my life is () I feel there must be more I could write about!

    ‘Nuff for now,

    Buck.

  • Killing time

    Hi again, it’s been a funny old week and no mistake. I’ve hardly done anything really, just been off, got back in to my Taekwondo, read books and waited on the thrice damned postman.

    A week off work is not to be sniffed at. It’s been nice just relaxing. The weather has been consistently appalling, so I’ve not been out doing stuff, but it’s been lovely not working, dossing around and sharpening my ninja skills by outwitting the postman.

    I was off last weekend, in Monday, and then off until next Tuesday. On Monday I went into HR to see where my warehouse to wheels thing was up to, as they said they’d have an answer for me this week. I wasn’t expecting an answer on Monday, and in that respect I wasn’t disappointed. I went in prepared for such an eventuality. I had a piece of paper with my name, what it was about (warehouse to wheels) my landline and mobile numbers and my email address, which I handed in. I said I was off this week, but if they wanted me to go out with the drivers as part of my training I would be happy to come in.

    Not a word. Not a sausage. Jack.

    I’ve been ringing around some of the jobs advertised on jobcentre plus, but in a half-hearted way. They are mostly agency, and those that don’t turn me down flat are saying it wouldn’t be worth me leaving a full time job. It would still be best if I could get trained at my works then work for them, but failing that a ‘no’ would be better than this.

    At least then I could throw myself into getting some work. I was told yesterday that although as a new driver the agency wouldn’t be able to insure me as an artic driver they could get me work on rigids. But not enough to make it worth my while leaving a full time job. The good news there being them willing to give me a class II job, in principle.

    Tomorrow I have somehow agreed to go to Manchester, to see a fight, I think. I was at my TKD class last night and Sah bum nim asked me if I was doing anything on Saturday. I thought she had arranged an extra lesson, or a fitness session, as I’m on 2-10 next week so might not be able to make class I jumped at the chance. Said I wasn’t doing anything, she said something about do you want to come, I said OK, so she said ‘right, you can get a lift with Jim, it’s £10 for the ticket, we’ll split the petrol money.’

    What?

    I asked Jim what we were going to see (he’s a black belt, and second in command) he didn’t know. I asked when, again he didn’t know.

    So we had both agreed to do something, for some money, at some point, somewhere.

    I managed to find out that we are going to see a fight in Manchester. It had better at least be a TKD fight. If it’s boxing I’m going to be a bit miffed. A bit more miffed that is. Not how I wanted to spend my weekend off. I will ask questions in future, and await comprehensible replies but committing to anything.

    The other theme running through this week off has been my battle of wits with the postman. I wait around for ages then the minute I nip the shop he strikes. I get back to find a note saying ‘pick up your own parcel, fatboy! PS, LOSER!’ Then the other day I went up town to do the damned postman’s job for him, got there at 9.30 and he told me I would have to come back at 10.00! Just too long to make hanging around up town a viable option, and just about long enough to drive home, not quite have a brew, then drive back. So I did my shopping then went back at about 10.30. They’d closed off Cromwell Ave for roadworks! I was sat for over ten minutes in one spot, a few hundred yards off my turning. Then I had to double my distance and treble my time on the way back to get home another way. That was all for a parcel that he couldn’t get through my letter box. It didn’t have to be signed for, he could have just left it in the blue bin, but then I wouldn’t have had to traipse to town and back, and again, and tour all around Warrington. Bastard!

    The last parcel I missed was at 11.20, this one was 1.20, today I had to wait in until 2.45 before I fooled him into thinking I’d gone out so he attempted to post it. Any later and it will be the next day. I am thinking of hiding in the freezer like Kato (in The Pink Panther) to fool him into coming earlier. I tell you, standards have dropped since I left the Royal Mail. I thought at the time that it was only me keeping the place going!

    The good news being that I did outwit him today and now have a rather natty pinstripe suit! When my funky shoes arrive (after I’ve been up town to pick them up, doubtless) I’ll put a picture up of the ensemble. Tres bloody chic, I trust you’ll agree.

    Toodles,

    Buck.

    PS, it turns out the event was something on the lines of a qualifying event, or ranking event, for the Olympics. To sort out how good everyone was to see how they would be ranked for the Olympics. Hmm, now I try and write it down I realise I’m still not exactly sure what it was. Six fighting areas, loads of judges, electronic body armour to score powerful contacts in target areas, and teams from all over the world. Korea, France, Netherlands, Poland, Canada, even Scotland! All black belts, on their national teams I think, and pretty damned good. Those guys were fast as lighting, to quote from Shakespeare (or some such). The chicks too. A bit too fast; trying to watch two or three fights at once, nothing happening, nothing happening, glance at the next door fight and bang! Someone’s just got a head kick right in the chops. I enjoyed it, but it would have been better if it was on telly, so I could have watched the good bits in the replay. Human eyes are crap; no zoom, slo-mo or replay.

    Apparently Warrington won in the rugby final as well. Big up those rugger chaps, or whatever it is they shout on the terraces.

    Whilst I was out the postman failed to come with my shoes. Damn his eyes. Bank Holiday Monday so now it’s going to be Tuesday before I get them. Luckily Wendy is off on Tuesday (she only works Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Alright for some!) so I shouldn’t have to go and pick them up. Unless the wily posty hangs on to them until Wednesday of course. I can’t get too mad at the shoe shop, they said they make have to make them, which could take up to ten days. The way they are shaping up I think they are currently waiting for a cow to die of old age.

    Two more glorious days off. Tomorrow I am going to have to start training in earnest. The one thing I noticed today was that everyone started each three minute round full of fight, then after a minute they were knackered and catching their breath. I’ll have to set up some training scheme where I do three minutes of constant kicking, (whilst moving forwards and back) rest for a minute, then repeat. There are three, three minute rounds in a fight, with a minute’s rest between each. Even those potential Olympiads were knackered doing it!  It’s one of the many prerequisites for black belt grading that you have to have competed. I don’t want to make an arse of myself when I do. The people who were going in and launching a massive attack of kicks were scoring heavily, the ones who were just trying to land a single kick then catch their breath were not doing so well. Every time they scored a point it seemed their opponent was scoring one back. So, fitness and practise stringing together lots of combinations of kicks. Ideally, I want another martial art as well.

    Well, that’s for later.

    For right now, another drink of lime, and chill with one of my new books, then sleep. Simple pleasures.

    Toodles again,

    Buck.