Well I’m pissed off. I went for my test today. In practise I actually managed to do the reverse manoeuvre first time, no shunts. I was well made up thinking I had cracked it, my second go I totally ballsed it up, but with shunts made it in. At the test centre I totally lost it. It was going too near the barrier again so I took a shunt, but left it in a really weird position. Started to reverse and ended up in exactly the same place. So I took my final shunt, but then I was everywhere chasing the damned trailer. In the end he stopped me, said ‘you’re not going to get it in from there’ and again I’d failed before I left the test centre. This time I only accrued four driver (minor) faults, as opposed to the eleven I had last time, but picked up two serious/ fail points. I clipped a kerb whilst trying to squeeze down the left hand lane of a two lane road (stupid, stupid, stupid) and mistook a line of waiting cars for parked, so tried to overtake them all! Incredibly stupid! So, four minor errors, two stupid mistakes I shouldn’t repeat, but still not got the hang of that reverse. I can’t afford to take any more lessons (not that I show any signs of getting the hang of reversing anyway) so I’ve just put in for four more hours and a test. Which is to say you pay for four hours, in which time you have a few reverses, an hour and a half run out, then your test for an hour and then your instructor drives you back, immeasurably gutted. If I don’t pass next time (April the sixteenth) I reckon we can afford one more test, then that’s it. Until such times as Wendy gets a paid job, or I leave DHL/Iceland and risk getting a class two/ rigid driving job with more money. The downer is I’m alright at the actual driving (two silly mistakes aside). My instructor said on the first day ‘ a lot of people worry about the reverse. That’s what? Thirty five yards? It’s the other twenty one miles on the road you have to worry about.’ I beg to differ. And he was still enthusing after this fail, saying how I could throw a good reverse in, and how well I’d done on the road, etc. I can’t throw a good reverse in because I don’t know what I’m doing, and whilst instilling confidence is all good and well, without competence it is at best misplaced, at worst lethal. One bit of advice I’ve heard off several drivers is to go and get a toy artic and play with it until I get my head around the concepts involved. I’ll nip Asda in a bit see if they’ve got any, if not Toys r us. I’m tired, sweaty, and incredibly pissed off. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t take […]
Continue readingDeja vu
It’s that time again. Test tomorrow. I went for another four hours training today; I spent two hours practising my reverse, still only about 60/40, maybe 70/30. I got it in a quite a few times without him having to stop me, but I also had to have him stop me twice or three times, and had to take three shunts on one go. If you consider all the times he had to stop and correct me, the once I had to stop and start from scratch, and the three shunt fail, it’s probably more like 50/50. I have an hour tomorrow to try again before driving to the test centre. The other two hours were spent with me driving around without any real need for instruction. I brushed one kerb (not a fail) then pulling into the last street (the one which my training placed is based on!) mounted the pavement (fail). Bugger. Still, unless they actually take me to that street I think I should be alright on the road. The first few minutes were a bit hairy; it’s a massively tight turn onto the street from the yard and some clown had parked a van just where you have to drive the cab to make the turn, which was focusing. Then I fumbled a gear change but after that I was chatting away whilst doing the business. I was a lot nervous again. I was all buoyed up after my fail, knowing that I had it in me to pass on the road, but three weeks off and it had grown into a big scary monster again. Two minutes in the cab and I was a happy bunny again. Well, two minutes on the road anyway, pissed off with myself in the yard trying to suss that reverse out. It’s a bigger course tomorrow, if I keep my head and make tiny corrections I think I could do it. Not will, but could. That is another issue I have with my reversing, I want to swing the trailer around, so I put loads of turn on the unit, get it in the right position and straighten up to come straight back, but because I had so much turn on by the time I’ve got the cab back behind the trailer, the trailer has carried on turning and gone too far. I really have not got my head around it. It will be the luck of the draw tomorrow. I could do it, but I only get one go at it (well, you could consider it three goes as I get two shunts, but it’s been taking me those and more in practise). If I understood what I was doing and how to do it I would be laughing. As it is I just keep steering one way and then another, then give up and take a shunt, and hope for the best. Still, I feel reassured about my driving ability on the road part of the test. […]
Continue readingKicking arse!
I’m back! Back blogging, but more importantly back at Taekwondo. I missed the grading weeks back, had a week off sulking, then I was working or in pain from a headache or being inconvenienced by marriages. The longer I left it the harder it was to go back. There is my obsessive but transient interest in things, the fact that it is so much easier to say ‘Nah, I can’t be bothered tonight’ than go and sweat and suffer pain, and my worrying. The longer I left it the more nervous I was about returning. I was all uptight thinking they were going to say ‘What are you doing here? You quit’. Stupid I know, I am paying good money to be put through such trials, but a real concern none the less. I was thinking the night before going ‘This time tomorrow I’ll be going TKD’ and getting stressed out. Not as worry free as I keep trying to tell myself. Anywho, I went and all was well. Nobody even commented on my absence. To get us used to moving with the blow Sah bum nim had us shove one of the target pads up the front of our chest protector/ body armour jobby. Then we were to take turns kicking each other with enough force to teach our bodies not to stand still when a blow was coming. You can be told, and indeed understand and agree with, something without implementing it in the heat of the moment. Once you’ve had your solar plexus knocked through the small of your back once or twice your body reacts to what your brain has already accepted. Incoming kick = pain and injury. Therefore, if you can’t dodge it, move with it to absorb the impact. To be honest I think the training pad made it worse. The chest protector covers the whole of your chest (hence the name) therefore would have spread the blow over the whole of your stomach/ chest. With the ‘P’ shaped pad under it the blow was solidly on your solars. Well, the first guy I had was determined to do his worst. He was letting it rip with all he had. His right leg kicks were really hurting and battering my solars. Then he swapped to his left, which is his gay leg, and I could actually breath. Then it was my turn. He wasn’t loving my right leg kicks, then I swapped over to my left, which due to my right being the stiffer of the two is actually my better leg. Oh yes, he knew suffering! Still it did what it was supposed to; trained our bodies to move to avoid the pain. If I’d have been with the guy I had when we swapped partners I probably wouldn’t have got it. He was tapping me in a way that didn’t instil pain, fear, or reaction. Also it made me realise that what I know is enough to seriously ruin someone’s day. As […]
Continue readingDay off, huzzah!
Finally got a weekend off. It’s been six weeks since my last proper one. (My last actual one, three weeks ago, I was dying with that cold and had the sinus pain issues. I would have preferred to have been working and well, than off and in that state.) I had lots of vague plans about what I was going to do, i.e. gardening and generally pottery about having a good time. Not a bleeding bit of it. I had a few chores to do; shopping, nipping to town to the bank (while I was there I wanted to nip to Wilkinson’s to spend my £10 voucher that I got off Iceland for Xmas on lovely plants), and nip my sisters to drop off a (day late) card for her youngest. I went to do the shopping at about half past ten. Half past ten, mind you. Not dinner time, not after work on a Friday, not Saturday or Sunday. Half past ten on a week day. It was chocker. Every doddering idiot, coffin dodger, and work-shy chav was in Asda. Why? They were out in force, all determined to stroll around and stop and chat in the middle of the narrowest isles, blocking my passage (ooer, Mrs.!). Don’t let my attempts to shop interrupt your conversation you bovine, slack-jawed, ignorant, embodiment of the argument for compulsory euthanasia. So that went well. Then there was the ‘nip’ to town. Some fool in the council has decided it would be a fun idea to block of one of the main roads through Warrington. The joy just keeps coming. It had a knock-on effect of stopping dead all the roads that stray vaguely near the closed one. So I aborted the card dropping off mission. I got home to find a letter on my mat from some debt collection agency saying I owe them £80. Apparently the DVLA had passed them the bill for collection after I had repeatedly ignored their letters about registering my Bandit. The last time I did the paperwork for the Bandit I informed them that it was SORN, and that I had moved address. Sorn declarations are free, but only when the DVLA send the damn reminder to the right address. Oh yes indeed, that lifted my mood still further. I ran upstairs, went online to the thrice damned DVLA, and their website says ‘when changing address you have to send your registration document back to have the address changed.’ I changed my license details (with the DVLA. A pox on them) and assumed that all my driving details would be updated. Or at least that they would have the wit to check if my license details had changed before hitting me with an £80 bill and handing it over to a debt recovery agency. Especially as SORN is free. A curse on the DVLA and all who sail on her. When the rage had subsided, after I’d had time to realise they had me and all […]
Continue readingDoctor. Result!
I finally had had enough and decided, in desperation to see the doctor. I had another shitty headache yesterday and thought enough was enough. Given my track record with doctors (i.e. I crawl in, ask for help, get fobbed off) it was a last ditch thing. I had tried the alternatives; painkillers, doing nothing, and whining like a bitch, to no noticeable avail. So without any real hope of resolution I trotted off to the doc’s this morning. At least I could comfort myself that I had exhausted my options. Big surprise. All change down the doctors. It looks nicer, more professional. It’s still a pre-fab, but it has a look of solidity and roomy-ness. Previously it was like sitting in a bus shelter with sick people. Anywho, cosmetics aside, when I got to see her (the doctor) she gave me a thorough service. Prodded my head, took my blood pressure, checked ears, nose and throat, and most importantly of all, actually seemed like she had an interest in resolving my issue! Hoo-bleeding-rah! She reckoned it was either migraine or a problem with my snotter. She said the lining on my nose was thick, and it could be that that is preventing the mucus from draining, hence sinus pain. (Doctors, they have no fear of being disgustingly biological.) She had prescribed a sinus spray, with any luck that will be that. If not, I’m to trot back lickety-split (to quote Arnold Judas Rimmer off Red Dwarf) and we’ll go down the ‘tough tits, it’s a migraine, deal with it’ route. I am hopeful the spray will do it. That is way better than a brain tumour or something else that could have buggered my driving. The only down side is the spray goes up your nose, then a few minutes later dribbles down the back of your throat. Eugh! While I’m here and touching on driving, I met a chap I used to know from the night shift yesterday. We got to talking about where I was up to on my driving and he asked where I was hoping to find work. I said at ours (Iceland/ DHL). I said that they will take you for an assessment drive, maybe get in that way. He said he’s put his license in five times in the last thirteen months and heard nothing. Turns out he has a class one license (has held it for the last six years). That was worrying. However, he said he has points on his license. Hopefully that is why. A lot of the adverts state no more than six points, no drink driving. Mine is now clean. I didn’t think to ask, but it’s to be hoped that he has at least six and that is the reason they have shown no interest. Well, if not ours, I’ll get a job somewhere. I am going to have to work really hard not to pick up any points though. When I am driving that won’t be a […]
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