THE GOOD BUCK

I think it’s time to be upbeat again. It’s been a bit of weird time, but it looks like I’m moving on, at last.

I’ve done all the agency messing about. Registering one day, driving assessment another, site induction (for 2½ hours!) another, them checking my driver card, references, and criminal record. All done.

I start work on Monday.

Well, I hung on until the end in the hope that I was wrong, but no, I’m sacked. As that was what I was expecting I got on with the jobs I’d already considered. I won’t be able to afford to continue paying in to the share/save schemes so I cancelled the one that matures next year, and the one after that.

I’d read in the terms and conditions that you can carry on paying into the scheme if you no longer work for the company, and I have one that only has 3 more monthly payments until it matures. That one was looking at making a £1,700 profit, so I was keen to keep it going. I rang up to see how I could pay the final payments myself. I finally got an answer (cut off from the ‘phone after 20 minutes, twice from online chat after 30 minutes).

No.

I’m still in limbo at work. I’ve faced the music, and danced, three or four times now. It’s getting irksome.

Tomorrow, I should get my official sacking. Again. I just wish they would hurry up about it. If I was to keep my job that would obviously be the best outcome, but that is a vanishingly remote chance. Unless they’ve decided to change the company policy, and I’m the first driver to whom it has been applied, I’m sacked. Sad, but let’s get on with it.

My training has been up and down. As I’ve been off work I’ve managed to stick to my Sufferfest training programme. Yoga, strength training, mental toughness, and the bike.

Things have taken a turn for the pear shaped.

I’ve managed to keep up all my Sufferfest training. Mental toughness, yoga and the actual bike training. But my weight loss stalled. The plague weakness is making it impossible for me to stop shoving food in my gob.

I’m trying to take a revised view of my plans. Try not to eat too much on weak days, (tons of fruit and veg to try to bulk out) then make gains (or rather, losses) on the better days.

I started so full of beans last week. I had goals, I had a plan to get them and the will to achieve. I lost 5lb in my first week, I was battering the Sufferfest and all was going great.

Then a day later I started coming down with the plague weakness in the evenings. It smashes you. You just have to eat. Well, I just have to eat. Wendy manages to woman-up and tough it out. I put on 2lb which, with more weakness, took me all week to lose again.

Then I had a bit of a debacle with the swimming. They said my card was declined over the ‘phone, and that I’d have to pay at the door. I went to Sainsbury’s straight away and my card was fine in the cash machine and contactless, so I don’t know what the issue was. Anyway, seeing as they wouldn’t accept my card I pedaled to the baths for my booked swim with the money. They don’t accept cash. What? So that didn’t happen. I couldn’t be bothered doing it again the next day as that was the final one before it was shut for at least a month. I was thinking I’d commit to training and get a membership when it re-opens. It was only about £19 a month last time, and it’s £4.20 a swim so it’s the way to go.