THE GOOD BUCK

You remember those glorious, debt free moments we enjoyed?  *sighs wistfully* Totally over that now. It’s been an eventful week. Cast your minds back. Remember me waxing lyrical about the KA when I got it a year ago, how it had no ‘advisories’ on the MOT, a new exhaust system, etc, etc? I took it for it’s MOT, and got laughed out of the garage. Two shocks snapped (£200 minimum) and three big rust areas, (minimum of £300 repair) they’d have to drop the axle (I think they said) to get at it, they suspected they were going to find a lot more when they did.  “The curse of the KA” The guy said. Apparently they are know for being shitty little rustbuckets. Not by me, obviously. As I was taking in the bad news a girl walked in behind me and said hers had died of rust. She’d had a 20mph crash and it had folded. Written off. The two shocks thing (both on the same side) could have been a contributory factor to my graceful spin on that island. Anyway, that left me three days to get new wheels before the KA was illegal. At the same time I was being stressed out by my accountant.  I went at the beginning of the month and he said to contact him again if he’d not got back to me by the 22-23rd. 24th I called him. Nothing. I sent him an email on the Monday morning. He replied he’s have it to me the next day. Nothing. More emails. Finally sent him one saying “I have 45 hours until I get fined. No pressure.” He finally got his arse in gear and did my return. The good news on that being that when I tried to do it I had £1,200 left to pay, he’s got it to £600.20. Nice. Then I could switch my stressing back to getting a car.  After the KA debacle I asked around. I only got it because our next door neighbour had one for years and never had a day it didn’t start, oh and Clarkson said they handled really well, as I recall. I had no idea they were infamously shite. Some guy who works in Cowley is a bit of car wheeler dealer it transpires. He knows loads about cars and engines.   I wanted something reliable. Something with a good build quality and a bulletproof engine. In my limited experience I thought of Volkswagen.   I remember the works van my dad used to drive sometimes. It was awesome. It was so airtight that to slam the door properly you had to open the window a crack. Little things like that stick in the memory. So I was thinking VW with a diesel engine. Not a Golf. I was looking at the Polo. Then there was the choice of engine size. And did I want a SDI or TDI? After lots of googling it turns out SDI doesn’t have a turbo, […]

Last night was bloody focusing. All that bollocks about “the weight of the truck melts the snow”.  Which is why every episode of Ice Road Truckers is 30 seconds long. They start the truck then plunge straight through the melted ice and snow to a watery grave. Clearly I didn’t think that through. Around Stoke the third lane was snowbound, the middle lane had an inch of compacted snow/ice and the slow lane had two mostly clear tyre tracks. Then all it takes is one want-to-live-forever numpty to slow down to 30 mph and everyone is stuck behind them. Until you’ve had enough and pull out into the middle lane. Then it’s a matter of holding your nerve. Artics are just a ‘unit’ (the cab and 2 or 3 sets of wheels) and a separate trailer. The only thing making it one truck is a ‘pin’ (a 2” round post) on the trailer slotting into the ‘fifth wheel’ (a mechanism to secure the pin) on the unit. So everything rotates around the pin. This means on ice if you accelerate a little too hard the tyres spin and the unit pivots around the pin. That wakes you up. Worse, when you are going down hill you are scared to brake hard in case the trailer pushes the unit into a jack-knife. One of our trucks was stranded last night as it hit a hill and lost all traction. I was having real issues getting the bloody thing moving in the snow. I had to reverse a trailer into a parking spot in a snowbound yard. It must have took me 8 shunts back and forward to get enough speed up to reverse all the way in. That was only on a slight incline. The other truck was up in the wilds past Bolton. In Lymn services the snow came down that hard and fast that some wag built a snowman in front of someone’s truck whilst they were on their break. Fun, fun, fun. I survived and made it home in one piece at ungodly o’clock, then had to get up 5 hours 20 minutes later to go for a recce run of the Bolton Hill Marathon. I got up after struggling with the alarm on my ‘phone, turned on the PC to check the address and saw a ‘CANCELLED’ email. Ace. It took me an hour to get back to sleep. Grrrr.   In other news, I finally made it to the other Wing Chun class (in the same Kung Fu umbrella group) in Manchester last Sunday. You know how I was saying the class I go to on Thursdays only has about 8 people, all newbies, so it’s good for almost personal tuition? I was worried about starting a big new established class.  The Sunday class had 4 including me! 2 experienced and me and a young lad. Excellent. The not so great news is the head of the umbrella group likes loud colours. And apparently has a […]

To paraphrase the DM Reporter, WHITE BLANKET OF DEATH as ten snowflakes fall! We have been reduced to cannibalism and wearing the skins of the fallen. Society has fallen. But at least Twitter is still going.   It’s been a hectic week at work and I’ve got some non-specific malaise. I went for a run on Monday morning, all unsuspecting. I did a slow/ steep 6 minutes then put it to 6 m/m / 1%. Usually that has me gritting my teeth by two miles, and a heart rate of about 154 bpm. I was dying within half a mile. I tried to ignore it thinking I was being a lazy lardarse, but I just couldn’t breathe. My bpm was 170+ and rising. (160 is marginally in the red for me.) I managed 8/10ths of a mile then had to slow it right down. I still hadn’t realised there must be something wrong (I was feeling fine before I went in to the gym) so I forced out the rest of the half hour slower but on a steeper incline. Then I tried the bike. I lasted about 8 minutes before quitting. I was wheezing and dying.  I quit the gym in disgust. Then, as I was opening the door to the changing room, thought ‘bollocks!’ and went back. I set the treadmill at the fastest/ steepest pre-set programme and forced myself to do another half hour run. It was hellish. It wasn’t until I got home and still couldn’t breathe that I realised something was amiss. I’ve had a couple of days of feeling done-in. Oddly with a day between them feeling fine. Today it feels like I’m breathing through a thick damp cloth. And I just feel tired and useless. I was a bit worried about how I was going to do the Helsby half marathon tomorrow, but I’ve just found out it has been cancelled due to the snow. I was planning on dosing myself up and just doing a slow run. I can’t say I’m disappointed, though. I really am not up to it.   Work has been mad busy. Last week I only got two days this week it’s back to five days/ 55 hours. On Thursday I was sat waiting for a specific trailer from 1430 until 1830, then the truck they gave me was knackered so I had to swap, I didn’t leave the yard until 1915. Then I had to drive to Crewe. Some selfish crashy bastards had blocked the M6 because there was a flake of snow so I didn’t get there until 2030, ended up setting off for Cowley (nearly 3 hours drive) at 2100. They want me there for 1830. So not pleased. That was a 14 hour day by the time I got back. An hour commute. Six hours sleep. Which left me with a decadent three whole hours to fritter on making food and showering and such. In a way it’s good, now is definitely the time […]

Bloody sinuses are playing up again. Totally ruined my weekend. Not that it wasn’t off to a bad start anyway. I had no work until Thursday. Then they rang me up and said they wanted me in at 2100 to do a run to Chester. I thought that was probably bullshit. Why would they call someone in to do a 32 mile run? It was bullshit. *surprised face*   I had to run down to some place (still don’t know the town) and follow a hastily drawn map. OK. The starting point for said was to come off the M6 at junction 33A. Fine. I set off in the fog, having no idea where I was going. I got to junction 33, peachy. 34… WHAT? I pulled off at 34 and was driving down the exit slip road when suddenly a bunch of those sharp turn chevrons leapt out of the fog! SHIT! I stood on the brakes and nearly crapped myself. I thought I was going through the barriers. It turned out they’d posted the signs in plenty of time and I was fine. Apart from the heart attack. I pulled up on an industrial estate (you’d be amazed at how few convenient parking spots there are for an artic and trailer) and checked the maps on my ‘phone. There is no junction 33A. Ace. I rang work, they were insistent it was 33A. I worked out it was 31A, primarily as that actually existed. I got to the first drop and the guy said I had to wait while they assembled my order of newspapers. Then I was to do two more drops, no stopping for breaks, on a timed schedule. To places I didn’t know. So ace. I pulled the curtains back on my trailer, got loaded eventually, hopped back in my cab, turned the key…. nothing. The bastard battery had died (it turned out). I rang work, they said “It does that. Give it ten minutes and try again.”  If they knew, why wasn’t it sorted? Anyway, due to the timed nature of the drops I had to open my curtains again and they put my load onto someone else’s truck. Then I had to wait for an hour for the recovery geezer to come and give me a jump. No-one wanted to give me a push.  Back home and in bed for 0515, back in work for 1400. Bah. At least I was doing ‘my’ usual run on Friday. Crewe, Cowley. Coming back I got to Brum and they’d closed the motorway! Ah! I was cursing them roundly as if I’d have known I could have used the M5 route and joined the M6 after the roadworks. Thanks for letting me know, you bastards! Then I got up to the roadworks and the warning sign was up, it’s just I hadn’t been that way all week so I hadn’t seen it. Oh. Still annoyed. I finally got back to Warrington, off the motorway with just […]

You know how I’d been putting things off for months, I am on fire with the getting things done! I was as good as my plan and sorted my allotment the very next day. I posted the key and notice of termination the same morning. As well as my Canadian Visa application. This last weekend I spent ages trying to do my self assessment tax return online.First off I had to collect all my old wage payments, distance travelled to work (to claim for petrol) and such. Then I filled in the bits I could, blagged the bits I had no idea about (tax deductions from previous year? Wha..?) and got to the end of the seemingly interminable form. I have a P45 from my  last job, that said I’d earned £8k in 6 months and paid £1k or so of it in tax. I worked out my total earnings for the remaining 6 months, about £8.7K, deducted a £1K for petrol (that stuff really adds up! 45p per mile allowance ~petrol, wear and tear, tax, insurance~ times 20+ miles a day, times 121 days, worked out as £1,230!) take off the money for my satnav £355, and ‘phone (£90 for 3 months). So that’s £8,700- £1,230- £90 – £355 (= £7,025). So, about £900 tax, right?  The final page said tax due: £2,600+ ! What the very hell? Time to get an accountant. So all that hassle filling in the form was a waste of time. Other than that I no longer begrudge paying an accountant. And it made me collect all the relevant data the accountant needed. It may have been that that was my total tax liability for the year, from which the £1k I’d already paid would have been deducted. I wasn’t about to press ‘submit’ to find out. Anyway, there’s not a whole lot of point in submitting a tax claim that’s wrong. Might as well not declare it all. So today I coughed up £255 for an accountant (which is tax deductible!) and he’s on the case now. He’s already picked up on nights out, meals, and using my home as an office. Because I fill in my timesheets here and email them to the agency, obviously.  He thinks the £2k thing was the total, so probably about a grand owed. Not to worry if I can’t get it in by the end of month deadline though, he said they only charge 3% annual interest on outstanding debts which, he worked out of the top of his head, for a grand for a month is about £2.50. That impressed me.   So, allotment, visa, tax, all in hand.   The only things left are getting out of the TA and MOT-ing and taxing my car. I’ve already re-bagged all my kit. I just need to arrange for the free pick up, get billed for whatever items are missing, then hand in my resignation form. (Whatever it’s called.) I think I’ll go through it again […]