I’ve had enough of nights and the uncertainty of agency work. I’ve applied for the full time, days, job at Hermes. I have my induction on Monday. I did the maths, it’s been exactly half a year and I took home £11,856. If you take off the two weeks I would have had as holidays if I’d been PAYE it’s an average of £420 p/w take home. Hermes are promising a minimum of 45 hours per week, with thing like time and a third for anything over 8 hours, overtime more or less written into the job, extra for working weekend shifts, etc. I reckon on a 50 hour week I’ll be taking home at least the same. Plus it’s days. And I can take holidays. If you lose a week’s pay you just end up working and working. I think I’ve had two weeks holiday in the two and a half years I’ve been self employed/ Limited Company. I’ve had months, in total, sat around unpaid waiting for work, but that isn’t a holiday. You can’t relax, you can’t do anything, plan anything, or afford anything.
If I wanted serious big bucks they have the option of a pound an hour more for nights, plus another pound or so for Limited Company, so you earn more and get stopped less tax, but that’s the same shit I’m in now.
I’m willing to trade pound per hour for day shift and secure hours per week.
Plus, as my chum on Twitter asked, ‘why are they suddenly offering a real job?’
Is it because now you need to have a driver’s CPC card there are less qualified drivers? Are all the new warehouses being built around Burtonwood offering better jobs? Something has changed.
My point being, if this doesn’t work out as my ideal job I can look for other, full time, days, jobs. It is a pity about Walkers, mind. If there had been any prospect of me getting on to days or being taken on full time I’d have hung in there. It’s great money and an easy, no stress job. But there are lads there who’ve been on the agency for years and not got full time out of it. And I’ve found out they jacked me out on that nights out gig. Apparently it is running, with agency lads, but they wouldn’t give me a sniff because they have trouble filling the night shift, so they only let the day lads play. That was a blow.
Nights are killing me at the minute, I just can’t get the sleep. The neighbours noisy kids on school holidays, the heat and just generally not sleeping well in the day.
I forgot to mention in my last blog, what with the concussion and all, but since I have stopped trying to adjust my gait to avoid injury my injury has got a lot better. *sour face*
I did a 20 mile run last Sunday. The first 10 miles were my old, road, course. At the 4-5 point there is a slow incline then a bit of proper hill. I set off at a fair clip, by current standards, at about 8.20 m/m. Recently I’ve been starting at about 9 m/m and dropping off at the end of long runs. Also, on the occasions I’ve tried my 10 mile road course I’ve been dying on the hill. This time I dug in and went up it faster ! Then I kept it to below 9m/m. I averaged out at 8.36 over 20 miles. And I even had enough left to race the last half mile as some runner was chasing me.
I threw away the Cone of Shame and patted myself firmly on the back. I’m back in the game.
Ha! Just been out for another 20 miles run. Gawd bless the arse end of hurricane Bertha. I did two road laps of 10 miles, the first one I was about 3 miles in and suddenly the rain turned into a deluge. “A vertical sea with slots in” to quote Terry Pratchett. I was drenched to the bone, on the way back I was wringing my top out and my trainers were twice as heavy. But I was managing a slightly sub 8 m/m average! I came in and got totally changed, picked up a new water bottle loaded up with energy powder (the legal kind) and went back out. My GPS watch said the next mile took me 13 minutes, because of the 5 minute pit stop. I have to find out how you pause it. Anyway, sure that that wasn’t right I paid attention to my next mile speed. 7.55, then 8.02, then 7.55. This was on my second lap, into the teeth of Bertha blowing a gale. I was totally impressed with myself. Then on mile 14-15 I saw a runner ahead. PREY! I pounced. I picked up the speed and passed them before turning around. Somehow I managed to keep the pace going though. 7.44, 7.47, 7.41, 7.47, then for the last mile I still had enough left in the tank to open up the pace and do a 7.30! Overall average of 7.59 m/m. That’s quite a chunk to take out 8.36 m/m in a week.
It’s not marvellous but it’s hugely encouraging.. If I can do the last 5 miles at that speed I should really be able to do the first 15. At the very least it’s a massive personal improvement.
Btw, re the crash, I had another look and it was a perfect storm of shitiness. It was dark and bone dry, I was concentrating on the lights, only watching the road out of my peripheral vision, and the section before the lights changed from black tarmac to yellow high grip road, so the sand didn’t stand out. Ace.
I’m sure there are other things I should be mentioning, after my last blog I remembered I’d not mentioned the running get better. My head is a bit out of it now, post run.
I’ll do a brief one tomorrow probably to say how the induction went, can fill in any omissions then.
Later,
Buck.