Here we are again. Another new year. Everything changes but stays the same. "Change is the only constant." "Have you always thought that?" To quote from the genius of Iain M. Banks. 2009! It only seems like yesterday that Prince was anticipating the millennium and saying "tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1999." *looks around the internet, sighs. Remembers when all of this was fields* And,… we’re back in the room! Sorry, senior moment there. So, first of the new year. "How did the last year rate in the grand scheme of things Bucky?" I hear you cry. Not so bad actually. ’07 was a hideous year, anus horrible-us, so to speak. Everything was poor, Wendy had all those accidents and was in and out of hospital then lost her job, I had to quit my training for CAB, leave my job and start nights, then was laid off. I was then working nights for an agency at not much more than my hourly rate at Asda, and without the security of a real job. All in all the only upside was that I gave up the beer. And stuck to the martial arts. I am not at the original club I joined, but I went straight to a different flavour of martial arts and have maintained the training. I didn’t do so well with the meditation. The interest in Buddhism that it sparked has remained though. Also I was taken-on full-time at work which, after the debacle of the freezer, has proved a boon. It has given me security, a wage that pays the bills, and the incentive to train to become a HGV driver. Whilst not rushing unduly I am making progress towards that goal. The other ‘onward and upward’ theme of ’08 was Wendy’s. She has given up the beer with me, sorted out her medication (and not had a seizure all year! It had got to be every week or so in the nadir of ’07) and has returned to the Citizens Advice Bureau. Only as a volunteer, but in a proving-herself-hale-and-hearty capacity. So, to summarise, ’07 sucked bottom, but large. ’08 has been a slow but steady progression. We are not in the same league as we were this time last year, not even the same sport (to steal from ‘Pulp Fiction’). As for ’09; I’ll pass my driving test (s) and get a massively well paid job, (then hopefully be able to pay off the debt accumulated in paying for the unending lessons) Wendy will be back at CAB as a paid advisor ,(which won’t harm our finances any) I will be getting another four belts at Taekwondo, at least three in Wing Chun Kung Fu and I really need to start going to the Buddhist temple in Manchester. Right here, right now my job’s OK (I was overly sensitive last time I posted. Now the boss is back at work it’s all reasonable.) I have finally got over that tendon/ muscle issue […]
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I owe, I owe, so off to work I go
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? […]
Continue readingWhat doesn’t kill you…(delays the inevitable.)
I think I’m going to live. Not forever you understand, just through this cold. I am thinking of risking going back to work tomorrow even though they have said if I go in, am too ill to work and come home again, that will be counted as two absences. Three absences in six months qualifies you for an investigatory hearing. I really can’t see who that particular rule serves. I dare not go back until I am absolutely sure I am peachy (and this cold seems to be getting better only to return with a vengeance) which means they are going to lose at least one shift when I could have soldiered on through the fag end of the bug. Whatever. I’ll try to go back tomorrow, even if I can’t work very fast and am a bit weakened it’s only for two days, then off for two. Wendy’s got it also (with the cough component, from which I seem to have been spared, so far!) I am also suffering from a creaking tendon/ buggered leg. It’s over my right shin. When I move my foot up it creaks, like tendonitis. It is going better now as I looked the symptoms up on t’interweb and the it was something I can’t remember. However the cure was; rest, ibuprofen and ice packs. Work seems to exacerbate it, but hopefully I’ve been off long enough for the healing to have taken effect. I think I caused it by actually tearing my muscle/ tendon a bit in my stretching exercises! Go me! OK, I’ve not been able to stretch (and barely been able to walk) since, so will actually be a step backwards by the time I’ve healed, but there’s no knocking the commitment. The amount of pain stretching puts you in, it takes a fair degree of determination to actually physically damage yourself. Determination without common sense. A recipe for greatness. I think I’ll make it my motto, something like ‘no brain, no gain’. Anyway time to limp to my snuffly bed Later Buck.
Continue readingIf you’ve not got your health…
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.
Continue readingWork means freedom
Hi again, this really is to be a quick one (Heroes is on in 25 minutes!). Had to commit this to pseudo paper though. Of late I’ve been struggling with the Taekwondo. If I’m on 2-10 shift I can’t go because I’m working, and 6-2 I’m so tired I just can’t drag myself to go. Then there was missing the grading due to my HGV lesson , and I didn’t go to one lesson I could have made last week as it was the final one before grading and we’d have just been going through the stuff we needed for it. Which I do every time I exercise (most days on 2-10). So all in all I was losing it. I had to force myself to go tonight or I felt I might just quit. And then there was tonight’s lesson. I am buzzing off it. Sure I’m tired now, and will be worse tomorrow (I am too wired to go straight to bed now even if I didn’t want to watch Heroes), but for the first time in what seems like ages I am invigorated, chipper to the point of cheerful and focused again. I want to learn, to strive, to master the damn painful discipline. I have been down. Low of mood and spirit. If the simple expedient of sweating blood and stretching till you cry keeps me charged and breaks the cycle of work/ sleep/ work, I’ll have to force myself to go to lessons. Another point in the class’s detriment on 6-2 is this, you come in at 9.15 or so, have a shower, want to talk about it for ages, and are buzzing for ages afterwards. Not conducive to a good nights sleep. Well, Wendy’s going to bed and watching Heroes later, so I’ll try and get some extra kip. By the by, went out to the mighty Micra this morning at 5.30 and because of the rain yesterday, and it freezing overnight, it was like a little Micra-shaped ice-cube. An igloo, indeed. I hit the central locking button, the doors unlocked but were frozen into position! I ended up forcing the key into the hatchback lock, heaving that open, then clambering in the back and knocking the door open from the inside! I was late. Overnight we are forecast tons of snow, the roads are already iced over, so it’s going to be fun. Later, Buck.
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