THE GOOD BUCK

Category: Life

  • Over myself

    Cancel last, as the command went from the artillery. Turns out that feeling of malaise and ennui has gone again, as it did the next day the last time. Which leads me to suspect it may actually be nothing more than a dread of going back to work. This is strange, as although I don’t wake up and leap out of bed shouting "whoopee, it’s time for work!", I certainly don’t (consciously) dread it. I said it was probably nothing, being all brave and stoical, turns out it was nothing and I was being a mard-arse. Less than laudable.

    Moving on, head hung low in shame, I forgot to mention yesterday that whilst practising my head kicks I had yet another super idea. I am so full of them (or it!). I had the brush propped up to make sure I was kicking horizontally at the right height, but I still couldn’t be sure I was doing the technique right, as it happens too quick to watch and do at the same time. My cunning idea then was to film it. O.K., not quite the master-stroke of genius that I may have previously implied, but a good idea none-the-less. That way I could transfer it to the computer and play it at a slower speed to observe the kick.

    So there I was, in just my sweat pants (whatever they are called) doing these kicks.

    There was a triple whammy of badness though; I had positioned the camera on the top of the cooker facing across the kitchen (to get the height right) but that had it pointing toward the sunny window, so it was a really dark picture, my kick is wrong in a way I can’t put my finger on until I get better footage, and, worst of all, I looked like a flabby, sweaty, un-cool porker!

    That was not my self-image. Words like ‘buff’, ‘toned’, or ‘ripped’ did not cross my mind, for fear of being run over by the herd of words like ‘bloater’, ‘porker’, ‘fat-boy’ and ‘lard-arse’, presumably.

    ‘Diet, chunky’ were the thoughts that quickly followed. However I still had my banana in cereal before I went to work, a cooked breakfast at work, then a pack of biscuits when I got home. And I mean a pack. A whole pack. They are so dunky-licious. Quick dunk in your brew, soft, sweat mouthful, then quickly on to the next. I eat them that fast that I don’t have chance to get full before I’ve eaten the lot.

    That was excessive, a whole pack, but I can eat half a pack when I’m not even hungry, just as something nice to have. I have no beer or other drugs to reward me for a hard days toil, so I have a nice biccy or several.

    Then Wendy went and spoiled it all by finding how many calories there are in a pack. 1,150! One thousand, one  hundred and fifty calories. A whole day’s calories in a less-than snack.

    That would seem to explain why I work like a Trojan, sweat for an hour a day on my push-bike and/ or work out for an hour and still am not losing weight.

    So ends another good thing. If I just cut out my sweet treats I should be able to slim down to lean in no-time. Have to at least go into trucking with a waistline!

    Anyway, I’m not any more loony, and now I have a plan.

    Later,

    Buck.

    PS I later had my tea with garlic bread, and thanks to the draconian nature of the day’s dieting I have lost a pound today! Wendy is less than amused! The biscuits alone were more calories than she eats in a day. Larf!

  • Ennui time again

    I’ve had a day off today and rather than that miserable feeling I had the last time, I’ve deliberately done lots today. I went to B&Q to pick up the last bits I need for my self-torture/ tendon stretching device. Whilst there I picked up a cute three-pack of cactus, then re-potted my cactus bowl when I got home. I made a display of flowers from the garden (in a large glass. It challenged the contemporary aesthetic. So much so, Wendy immediately re-arranged it into a vase. Luddite! I represent the bleeding edge of the avant garde!)

    Anyway, then I deep cleaned the house. I started by doing the toilets (the downstairs one gets particularly clarted in crap due to the excessive amount of industrial grade hairspray Wendy applies on a daily basis. If that’s what it’s doing to the floor, I really do wonder about her lungs. It’s a good job she doesn’t smoke. Quite aside from making it a double whammy of damage on her lungs, there would be the very real danger of her exploding.)

    Then I thought I might as well hoover upstairs, then I carried on and did the stairs, then the front room rug. Then I finished off with one off those floor wipe jobbies doing the kitchen and around the front room rug.

    Then I worked out for an hour, practising my kicks with the one kilo ankle weights on.

    I also managed to fit in an end to the first part of my latest stab at a story, go the chippy (Friday, law and all) have a shower, watch Gardeners World and two episodes of Chuck.

    So it’s been quite a busy, and fairly productive day.

     

    Have to be up in five and a half hours so I’d better get to bed.

    At least I don’t have to take any more driving tests! Yay!

    Buck.

  • Breaking News!

    Just a quick one. Whilst being dicked about something fierce in work this morning, I was walking across the yard from one department to another. I met up with Nick, the union rep for the drivers, (he who said he would clear it with the management for me to get some practise in at my reverse in one of the works trucks. Which, after some arsing around he duly did.)

    Well, I was minding my own business, and was in a fairly foul mood due to the aforementioned dicking- about- ness, when he pulled up alongside me and congratulated me on passing. I thanked him and said it was about time. He then said, unbidden, that he been in to the transport office on my behalf, and they (the transport management) were on about setting up a training scheme for me!

    Happy days! Frown upside down.

    As I say, it was unbidden so he had no need to invent it, so I’m hoping it is genuine, and that the deed follows the intent.

    That would be perfect. Whatever they have in mind, and however long it takes, I have my foot in the door.

    I have been on professional drivers websites where newly qualified drivers were offering to work for free to get experience. That’s how tough it can be. If they come good on this, it would be ideal. Work to their standard, get known, then when they need me I’m there. The drivers all reckon our place is the best paid driving job in the area, and they don’t ask for nights out, sleeping in your cab. Most of the jobs on the interweb expect it.

    This is before my license has come back from darkest Wales, and therefore before I’ve stepped into the office to present my case.

    There is hope for me. Yay!

    I’m going to leave it there, just a quick but really hopeful entry.

    Later,

    Buck.

  • Hat and this and that

    Well, I’ve given up on my old hat. It has served me well, if tightly, for these last few years. I ordered it from Canada so when it arrived, and was too tight, I didn’t fancy the return postage for a bigger size. To make matters worse, the hat-band seems to have been forged from titanium. No amount of squeezing it onto my head would make it stretch. Then there was the problem with the brim. Although on my profile picture it is doing as I wanted, usually if you bent the front down to shape it the sides would all go to cock.

    Nice hat, served me faithfully, but faded badly and now it’s time to move on.

    Here is the new improved hat. I started window shopping a week or two ago and came across this style. It is shaped into a dipped brim at the front and back, and though I didn’t know it, soft as gloves on your head. (Not that that is where I usually wear my gloves, you understand.) I tracked down the style, then a U.K. stockist (for about £40 plus P&P) then found someone selling them for £17.95 inclusive of P&P but they wanted me to set up a new payment system (Worldpay. Never heard of it.) Then I realised they were selling the same hat on ebay! Bleeding typical.

    When it arrived it was too big, but I boxed it up again, sent it back and had the smaller size in three days! Good service!

    Enough of the words and such, check out this baby:

    Yeah verily, I rock!

    Whilst I’m here I suppose I’d better clarify a point in my previous entry. The talking snake was a biblical reference alluding to the hilarious story of a talking phallic symbol that tempted the first woman, thereby damning the first man. Which seems to indicate that misogyny is not new and that the bible was written by men. Freud must have pissed himself laughing when he read that one.

    I only mention it to rule out any misunderstanding involving a certain Mr Harold Potter and his abilities as pertaining to the field of parseltongue.

    You would think such elucidation unnecessary, indeed patronising. I would have agreed had it not been for an incident of late.

    My niece, Robyn, posted something jolly on her MySpace jobby to the effect of ‘ Five years from now we could be walking in the zoo, with the sun shining down on me and you.’

    In the spirit of balance I replied ‘ Or lying, dying, bleeding and in pain, under a bus in the pouring rain.’

    Which she said was horrible. I replied ‘ A poet, like a prophet, is without honour in his own town.’ Which she simply didn’t understand.

    Apparently the youth of today are unaware of the ridiculous fiction they should be despising. Go the yoof!

    Meanwhile, back at the Buck-cave…

    I have made good my resolution to get push-biking. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. All the way to work and back.

    The prospective benefits are manifold; No more points on my license, increased stamina and stronger cardio-vascular system, supposedly stretched tendons, saving money on petrol, and saving the planet (you can thank me by form of hard cash).

    To be honest, although it is a bit over six miles each way and at the present that’s half an hour of hard pedalling, it’s not too bad. I don’t really get breathless and I could keep up that level of exertion for a lot longer than that. The down sides are; I’m arriving at work lathered like a grand national winner, or, as yesterday, soaked in rain, the bike is stuck in tenth gear which is challenging when setting off on any degree of incline and has already started to knacker the set-in-rust old bike, and MY ARSE!

    Oh my sweet lordy the pain! I have formed a nasty ridge twixt my nethers (you’ll be pleased to here I have no intention of posting pictures of that particular sight for sore eyes) and every day when I throw my leg over the saddle I have to do ‘it’s only pain. work through it.’ mantras. Also it is kind of defeating the object, or at least one of them. I expend so much time and energy in the damn push-biking that I haven’t had enough of either to train at my TKD all week!

    I am on a long weekend now, Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. I still haven’t worked out. I was supposed to be going down to my sisters to sort out a download system for her youngest (in my new-found, unwarranted, and externally imposed role as I.T. tech) so didn’t get stuck in to a work-out first thing. When I got there there was no one in, so I’ve come back and dicked about on the computer.

    I’ve been looking for a second hand push-bike. Something that has gears that work. Ideally a racer. I’m sure in the old days, when we would cycle sixty miles in an afternoon just for something to do, that we zipped along. I’m blaming my current lack of zip on the stupid fat mountain bike tyres. I was so convinced that it was the tools (as opposed to the bad -read: ‘fat and lazy’- workman) that I counted the teeth on the cogs. I was pedalling and getting nowhere, so it must be that the ratio was wrong. Nope. Fifty two teeth on the front cog, twelve on the back, just like tenth gear on my racer used to be. So now it is the contact patch and the un-aerodynamic riding position of said mountain bike.

    Of course I will get a racer and discover that it is actually (as Christian fundamentalists claim to explain the millions of years old planet that the bible states is but four, or possibly six, -I forget-, thousand years old) that time has slowed down. It’s nothing to do with me being twenty plus years older, a stone or so heavier, and as lazy as a sloth on valium. 

    Wendy has got her job at bleeding long last. She did one day as a wages slave and they were ringing her at home asking her to come in on her day off (she’s salaried, so unpaid) to pull them out of the shit. Then she said that because as a volunteer she went in Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and now she’s employed she will be working Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, they’ve allotted her appointments for Thursday but not moved or cancelled her Monday ones. She will have to work four days for the next fortnight for three days pay. They are taking the piss if you ask me. They all knew what the shifts were, and what she worked, it’s not rocket science to move them into alignment.

    Anyway, she’s still happy with it. She is being paid to learn what is for her the best aspect of the best job, thus ensuring she will always be employed in that field.

    Personally I feel like going down to the office and laying down the law, and a few of her bosses.

    Keep taking the ‘get over yourself’ pills Bucky.

    I was looking on t’interweb, window shopping for prospective jobs for when my license returns if my works won’t take me on, and there was one there: Mon-Fri, poss Sat morning, occasional overnighters sleeping in your cab, class 1 driver, with bonus, £15k!

    Larf!

    All the rest seem to be agency, and require lots of experience (even if the job actually exists, bloody agencies). I’ve started to complete the online application form for Stobbarts, but have had to pause as they need driving license details and my license is still in darkest Wales. I’ve also asked the Royal Mail to email me when any driving jobs occur. I will get there, even if I have to take a really crap job just to get the experience. Once in work I can apply for any jobs that arise demanding experience.

    Right, I’m off,

    later,

    Buck.

    PS, it’s now Sunday night, the long weekend has flown by, and I feel somewhat out of sorts. I don’t feel I’ve achieved anything this weekend, and I’m back at work in a few hours. I don’t know what I expected to achieve. Nothing on my to-do list really. I tried to sort out our Nathan’s computer, not my fault he wasn’t in. It was too soggy for me to be arsed gardening much. Taekwondo was cancelled when I got there today, but I’ve done two good work-outs while I’ve been off.

    I can’t pass a test every time I have a day off, and if I keep self-medicating with  retail therapy I’ll just be replacing ennui with money worries. Focusing and diverting, but not really in a good way. I’m probably just tired and bored. And I don’t want to go back to work, and I’m in a state of limbo whilst I wait for my license to return.

    Ennui is such a decadently self-indulgent affliction. If someone is trying to kill you, or you are desperate for food or water, or in intense pain you just don’t have the energy to expend on it. I suppose I should thank the Army for providing me with that knowledge, but I don’t.

    Positive Bucky: I’ve been using my ankle weights whilst training and they are good. They are velcro-ed strap on jobbies, you can start with one half kilo weight, then keep adding them up to two and a half kilos. Nearly five and a half pounds in English. I’ve started off with a kilo on each ankle. Then I was struck by a flash of genius! Whilst doing head kicks, or as I was trying for, throat kicks, I was worried I might be kicking diagonally. You want to kick up to the height then turn the whole body, flicking your foot horizontally. Diagonally would be bad as it would mean you would impact with your targets body before reaching the head/ neck. Then it struck me; stand a brush up at the side of the target. If I was hitting that before the target, well that would have been bad. However, even wearing my kilo weights I was clearing it and making the kick! Go me!

    Well anyway, it’s been better than working. And I’ve been enjoying ‘Chuck’. Just tired I reckon. Later,

    Buck.

  • Evil Lisa!

    I forgot to say, we went around to my sisters house last Sunday. She is a bit of an evil genius at the making of puddings. If you think of the artistry of Gary Rhodes, the relish of Nigella Lawson, and the to-hell-with-the-calories of the Two Fat Ladies, you are in the right area. Add a soupcon of talking snake and you’ve got it.

    With one pudding she managed to break two diets. I love my sweet stuff so I piled straight in, but Wendy was saying ‘perhaps I’ll have a spoonful out of one’. Lisa, gave her a bowl (they were already made up into little bowls) and after the first spoonful, even though she was full, Wendy was eating the lot.

    I was half way through my bowl, in an ecstasy of creamy goodness, when our Lisa started talking about the problem she’d had with the jelly.

    Bugger!

    Jelly =gelatine =animal product.

    I’m a veggie.

    I paused, spoon laden with calorific sublimity, then thought ‘well I’ve already eaten some. Screw the animals’, and troughed the lot.

    Bad Bucky! Buddha demerits.

    Which is a recurring ethical problem. I have leather goods, I use slug pellets and pesticides, yet I want to be a veggie. At what point does a life inherit value? Buddha says not to take any life, as we are all indistinguishably one. But would he not have boiled dirty water?

    It’s a dilemma, but it’s bedtime.

    Later,

    Buck.