THE GOOD BUCK

Merry bah humbug to one and all. Well, on the bright side it’s fifty one and a half weeks to xmas. Another one out of the way. Damn this six day working lark. OK, so I’ve not done as much as some, what with the driving test and time off sick, but it’s buggered my days off over this (not so) festive period. I should have been on my long weekend now, so it would have fallen: Thursday off for xmas Friday, Saturday, Sunday days off, then off Thursday for New Year’s day. As it is I had Thursday and Friday off, worked Saturday, off today, working Thursday and all the way through until next Tuesday or Wednesday. Big bum. As it happens I do need the overtime, well the money, to make up for being off sick and the general impoverishment of the season. But at this time of year you can’t help but think ‘ I shouldn’t be in here grafting, I should be at home watching Wallace and Gromit, and The Great Escape’. I’m getting cheesed off in that department already. I have to keep reminding myself I’m not in the freezer therefore I should be smiling. I have a definite feeling that I my face doesn’t fit in de-kit though. Not with the boss, so far he has been fine and dandy with me, but his lads (who think they are bosses because their dad is) are still thinking like the school bullies they so obviously recently were. If you are not a teenager who kisses their arse they don’t like you. One particularly.The other seems to try to make an effort. But they don’t get me at all, and I think they find the fact of my practising martial arts a challenge to their ego’s. Big shrug. Anyway, it doesn’t make for a good working atmosphere. I really am thinking of looking for a driving job as soon as I get my class two license. I was going to go straight in to training for my artic license, keeping a relatively well paid and secure job, but it would not be a bad thing to get some driving experience in a rigid. We’ll see how the American biscuit crumbles. on the one hand, staying where I am I have the luxury of being able to take holidays when I need them (for further training and test -s-) and it is a safe, paying job. On the other hand, nothing would prepare me for a driving job like a driving job! And it has the potential to be better paid. See how it goes. Safer where I am, but if it’s going to become stressful…, well, time will tell. Got to pass the bloody test to have an option! Still, I seem to be over that nasty cold, as is Wendy, we’ve got xmas out of the way and we’ve done all the socialising (not that we are anti-social. Hell, who am I trying to kid? […]

Bummer. I’m coming down with the lurgy. I’ve been dodging that particular bullet for weeks now as all around me people have been dropping like flies. No longer I fear. Sah bum nim was ghastly with it the weekend before last, didn’t catch it, the lads at work have been getting ill and I remained impervious, the boss succumbed and has been off for several days, but I thought I might just hang in there until after xmas, but no. I’m ill and getting iller. Bum, bum bum! Yesterday I came home from 6-2 and had an hour in the afternoon, got up had my tea, then felt too bad to go to, TKD (even though it was the last lesson until about the 6th of January) moped for a bit, then ended up going back to bed for 9pm. Normally I have to force myself into bed before 12. It wasn’t that I was tired, I just wanted the day to be over. I made it through work today by dosing myself up with paracetamol (although I was late for work, even after all that sleep, as I’d forgotten to change the alarm back to my time of 5am, and it was still on Wendy’s time of 7! Bum, again.) but it was hard going, by the end I was weak and sweaty, and just wanted it over. Then I had to attend a family gathering tonight, as my uncle had come up from ‘darn sarf’ for a flying visit to exchange xmas prezzies, and have a quick get-together. It was in a pub (Wendy and I don’t drink) with predominantly omnivorous fare (I’m a veggie) and everything was to the standard of oven chips. I bravely and resignedly plumpled for a veggie lasagne. Dear god, how do these people sleep at night? It was a best edible, at a push tolerable. Obviously whilst there I smiled and said it was not bad, but here in the privacy of my own rantings let me own it was bad. Deeply bad. It didn’t even pretend to be making the effort to be adequate. It was fare aimed at people who had drunk so much they would have rolled up the beer mats and complimented the chef on the tortilla’s. To add insult to injury, they charge about the same as a pub we found in the lake district where every mouthful was a celebration of the culinary art, where epicures could be seen swooning in their rapture, and oven chip salesmen were regularly burnt at the stake. Still we got through it, nobles oblige -ed, and now I just have to worry about the fact that I have until xmas day before I have a day off. If it doesn’t get any worse this is controllably unpleasant. Alas I fear this is just the prelude. Right, enough whinging, time for bed. Later, Buck.