Ah, sweet days off. Done loads of jobs today, all of them rewarding, a few of them fun. I trimmed my box hedge around the grassy knoll. Apparently that’s the last trim I can give it this year as it has to have time for any new growth to toughen off before the first frosts. It doesn’t look that much different, a bit tidier, but the main thing is in trimming the top branches it will make the growth below fill out. It’s so nearly there now. This time next year I will have to go around with my spirit level and level it all off (it strikes me now, too late, that is how I should have gone at it in the first place!). Also I trimmed all the grass with the same shears as the box. I had one of those strimmer jobbies but I couldn’t get the hang of it. I was chopping out lumps of earth and butchering plants left right and centre. So I sweat and it takes ages, but the majority of my plants survive. As today was actually summery I stripped all the covers off the sofa and gave them a wash, and did the bedding. Yes I really am that sad. I get bored very easily and even jobs that aren’t fun, once done, can be fulfilling. If nothing else they save Wendy having to do them and that’s got to count for something. Not that she showed any signs of actually doing them herself mind, but in principle she might one day have considered doing them. I did the shopping and got a new ‘phone this morning. Obviously the devious postman seized on that window of opportunity to claim he’d been around with a parcel. Left a note saying I can collect it from the main office in town in twenty one hours! How big is his walk? (Round, in non-posty talk) No wonder these posties are all minted if they are out for twenty one hours a day! Damn the Royal Mail! My new ‘phone has a camera! No film in it mind, to borrow from the excruciating Rob Brydon in Gavin and Stacey. I had some mad idea that that was what I needed to make my life complete, apparently not. It’s just another bloody mobile and you get a thousand texts pestering you about all the things you should be doing to be down with the kids. I don’t even know any gullible schoolgirls! (Topical joke, don’t put me on the register!) I’ve been on 2-10 this week so today was my first chance to go to TKD, bloody hell what a lesson! It was so hard that at the end, when we were doing spinning back kicks my pony- tail was so soaked in sweat it was whipping me in the face and spraying sweat everywhere. Unpleasant for all concerned. Good lesson though, showed me what I need to concentrate on (they have a name for the […]
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Over myself
Cancel last, as the command went from the artillery. Turns out that feeling of malaise and ennui has gone again, as it did the next day the last time. Which leads me to suspect it may actually be nothing more than a dread of going back to work. This is strange, as although I don’t wake up and leap out of bed shouting "whoopee, it’s time for work!", I certainly don’t (consciously) dread it. I said it was probably nothing, being all brave and stoical, turns out it was nothing and I was being a mard-arse. Less than laudable. Moving on, head hung low in shame, I forgot to mention yesterday that whilst practising my head kicks I had yet another super idea. I am so full of them (or it!). I had the brush propped up to make sure I was kicking horizontally at the right height, but I still couldn’t be sure I was doing the technique right, as it happens too quick to watch and do at the same time. My cunning idea then was to film it. O.K., not quite the master-stroke of genius that I may have previously implied, but a good idea none-the-less. That way I could transfer it to the computer and play it at a slower speed to observe the kick. So there I was, in just my sweat pants (whatever they are called) doing these kicks. There was a triple whammy of badness though; I had positioned the camera on the top of the cooker facing across the kitchen (to get the height right) but that had it pointing toward the sunny window, so it was a really dark picture, my kick is wrong in a way I can’t put my finger on until I get better footage, and, worst of all, I looked like a flabby, sweaty, un-cool porker! That was not my self-image. Words like ‘buff’, ‘toned’, or ‘ripped’ did not cross my mind, for fear of being run over by the herd of words like ‘bloater’, ‘porker’, ‘fat-boy’ and ‘lard-arse’, presumably. ‘Diet, chunky’ were the thoughts that quickly followed. However I still had my banana in cereal before I went to work, a cooked breakfast at work, then a pack of biscuits when I got home. And I mean a pack. A whole pack. They are so dunky-licious. Quick dunk in your brew, soft, sweat mouthful, then quickly on to the next. I eat them that fast that I don’t have chance to get full before I’ve eaten the lot. That was excessive, a whole pack, but I can eat half a pack when I’m not even hungry, just as something nice to have. I have no beer or other drugs to reward me for a hard days toil, so I have a nice biccy or several. Then Wendy went and spoiled it all by finding how many calories there are in a pack. 1,150! One thousand, one hundred and fifty calories. A whole day’s calories in a […]
Continue readingEnnui time again
I’ve had a day off today and rather than that miserable feeling I had the last time, I’ve deliberately done lots today. I went to B&Q to pick up the last bits I need for my self-torture/ tendon stretching device. Whilst there I picked up a cute three-pack of cactus, then re-potted my cactus bowl when I got home. I made a display of flowers from the garden (in a large glass. It challenged the contemporary aesthetic. So much so, Wendy immediately re-arranged it into a vase. Luddite! I represent the bleeding edge of the avant garde!) Anyway, then I deep cleaned the house. I started by doing the toilets (the downstairs one gets particularly clarted in crap due to the excessive amount of industrial grade hairspray Wendy applies on a daily basis. If that’s what it’s doing to the floor, I really do wonder about her lungs. It’s a good job she doesn’t smoke. Quite aside from making it a double whammy of damage on her lungs, there would be the very real danger of her exploding.) Then I thought I might as well hoover upstairs, then I carried on and did the stairs, then the front room rug. Then I finished off with one off those floor wipe jobbies doing the kitchen and around the front room rug. Then I worked out for an hour, practising my kicks with the one kilo ankle weights on. I also managed to fit in an end to the first part of my latest stab at a story, go the chippy (Friday, law and all) have a shower, watch Gardeners World and two episodes of Chuck. So it’s been quite a busy, and fairly productive day. Have to be up in five and a half hours so I’d better get to bed. At least I don’t have to take any more driving tests! Yay! Buck.
Continue readingBreaking News!
Just a quick one. Whilst being dicked about something fierce in work this morning, I was walking across the yard from one department to another. I met up with Nick, the union rep for the drivers, (he who said he would clear it with the management for me to get some practise in at my reverse in one of the works trucks. Which, after some arsing around he duly did.) Well, I was minding my own business, and was in a fairly foul mood due to the aforementioned dicking- about- ness, when he pulled up alongside me and congratulated me on passing. I thanked him and said it was about time. He then said, unbidden, that he been in to the transport office on my behalf, and they (the transport management) were on about setting up a training scheme for me! Happy days! Frown upside down. As I say, it was unbidden so he had no need to invent it, so I’m hoping it is genuine, and that the deed follows the intent. That would be perfect. Whatever they have in mind, and however long it takes, I have my foot in the door. I have been on professional drivers websites where newly qualified drivers were offering to work for free to get experience. That’s how tough it can be. If they come good on this, it would be ideal. Work to their standard, get known, then when they need me I’m there. The drivers all reckon our place is the best paid driving job in the area, and they don’t ask for nights out, sleeping in your cab. Most of the jobs on the interweb expect it. This is before my license has come back from darkest Wales, and therefore before I’ve stepped into the office to present my case. There is hope for me. Yay! I’m going to leave it there, just a quick but really hopeful entry. Later, Buck.
Continue readingHat and this and that
Well, I’ve given up on my old hat. It has served me well, if tightly, for these last few years. I ordered it from Canada so when it arrived, and was too tight, I didn’t fancy the return postage for a bigger size. To make matters worse, the hat-band seems to have been forged from titanium. No amount of squeezing it onto my head would make it stretch. Then there was the problem with the brim. Although on my profile picture it is doing as I wanted, usually if you bent the front down to shape it the sides would all go to cock. Nice hat, served me faithfully, but faded badly and now it’s time to move on. Here is the new improved hat. I started window shopping a week or two ago and came across this style. It is shaped into a dipped brim at the front and back, and though I didn’t know it, soft as gloves on your head. (Not that that is where I usually wear my gloves, you understand.) I tracked down the style, then a U.K. stockist (for about £40 plus P&P) then found someone selling them for £17.95 inclusive of P&P but they wanted me to set up a new payment system (Worldpay. Never heard of it.) Then I realised they were selling the same hat on ebay! Bleeding typical. When it arrived it was too big, but I boxed it up again, sent it back and had the smaller size in three days! Good service! Enough of the words and such, check out this baby: Yeah verily, I rock! Whilst I’m here I suppose I’d better clarify a point in my previous entry. The talking snake was a biblical reference alluding to the hilarious story of a talking phallic symbol that tempted the first woman, thereby damning the first man. Which seems to indicate that misogyny is not new and that the bible was written by men. Freud must have pissed himself laughing when he read that one. I only mention it to rule out any misunderstanding involving a certain Mr Harold Potter and his abilities as pertaining to the field of parseltongue. You would think such elucidation unnecessary, indeed patronising. I would have agreed had it not been for an incident of late. My niece, Robyn, posted something jolly on her MySpace jobby to the effect of ‘ Five years from now we could be walking in the zoo, with the sun shining down on me and you.’ In the spirit of balance I replied ‘ Or lying, dying, bleeding and in pain, under a bus in the pouring rain.’ Which she said was horrible. I replied ‘ A poet, like a prophet, is without honour in his own town.’ Which she simply didn’t understand. Apparently the youth of today are unaware of the ridiculous fiction they should be despising. Go the yoof! Meanwhile, back at the Buck-cave… I have made good my resolution to get push-biking. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, […]
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