Category: Life

Finally, 7 years after getting my licenses, I’ve got a real job! Huzzah! It’s working for Wincanton for the Co-op at Lea Green, St Helens. It’s further away than Hermes, but still only 20 minutes in rush hour in a car. Being St Helens it’s the right way down the M62 of a morning. Manchester bound is bollocksed from Warrington every day. I have been looking for a real job for ages but what there are always have drawbacks. Nights, tramping, or Stobarts. £84.50 a shift for Stobarts. Not even an hourly rate. So if you do a 15 hour day you’re on £5.70 p/h. I don’t know how they can even advertise that, it’s below minimum wage, the piss-taking bastards. Then I saw this job advertised for the Co-op. 4x 10 hr shifts. Interesting straight away. £12.93 p/h (I’m on a basic of £12.50 now but that’s as a limited company, no holiday pay, sick pay, have to pay my own accountant, never know what hours I’m getting from one week to the next.) I’ll get 21 days holiday (paid at 12.5 hrs per day, more for being on holiday than working!) which on a 4 day week is just over 5 weeks holiday a year. There is the option to work fifth or sixth shifts if I ask for it. The downside is the shift pattern is Thursday to Sunday (not really arsed, so long as I’ve got fixed days off) it’s manual gearbox trucks (sweating on an hour and a half assessment today, not driven one in years) but you soon get used to that, and it’s poxy little stores to which you deliver. So, very tricky reversing. Just take my time and check everything twice. Bank holidays are paid at double time and a day in lieu. Even if you don’t work them. So bank holiday Monday, my next shift (Thursday) would count as a bank holiday.  Plus there’s £100 a quarter attendance bonus (hardly ever off since I stopped drinking) and best of all, it’s fixed shifts with a fixed start time of 08.30! Unheard of in lorry driving jobs. I asked if that was a guideline start time. Nope, 08.30 is my shift. Thursday to Sunday. I start my (7 day!) paid, induction on the 27th. 12 weeks probation period. I’ll not know until I do the job, but the assessor was saying it’s really relaxed atmosphere, no cab ‘phones, no hassling you over delays or whatever. He said you get about a 7 hour or so run, spend the rest of the time in the canteen. I’m still trying to take it in. You know when something seems too good to be true and you’re waiting to see the catch?   In less glorious news the bike renovation has turned into a nightmare. As you might expect. I stripped it down apart from one bolt that got jammed half out. Wouldn’t tighten or loosen. In the end a mechanic chum on twitter said […]

This is the start of my week off. I’m going to blog my attempts at bike restoration. The engine has had two winters of English rain and salt and is starting to look tatty. First the other things that have been occurring. I’ve just found out that Igloo, the primary agency for Hermes drivers, has lost the contract. As of the 3rd of July they are off site. This means all of us who are Limited Company drivers have to register with a new agency, Extra Personnel. Change is always a gamble. At the moment I’ve got my own truck (a 64 plate DAF) when they remember to save it for me, I’m getting regular work and at a decent start time. A sort of 08.00- 11.00 window. Mostly about 09.30. I’m going to have to see if this new lot will stick with it. I’m not doing nights for a start.   My flute head finally arrived back, it is splendid. Should prevent my allergic reaction. Seems to blow free-er as well. Bonus.   I’ve gone back to calligraphy as well. Copperplate, which is *so* hard, and Gothic Blackletter which is hard but in a different way.   Copperplate is weird as you have to do ovals, at a 40 degree slant with hairlines up and squash the nib to make fat lines down. As you can see from my first attempts, bloody solid. Early attempt at Blackletter.   What else? Ooh, finally sorted a bit of my garden into a a permanent feature that I like. I moved my acer last winter, carrying a back breaking amount of dirt in the roots, to try to minimise the stress and sulking. Seems to have worked. I’m not so sure about everything else, especially the box hedge running alongside it, but the box circle with the acer sitting atop it is spot on. Now just got to wait for it to fill in. I’ve found a bit of box blight since the picture, when I was trimming it. Monty Don says you can grow through it just by giving a weekly feed of seaweed compost. I’ve got a new T-shirt. Today I went out to get a speaker for my ‘phone for the long hours I’m going to be spending in the shed. I put the washing on before I went out, came back to this: Totally wasn’t expecting that.   I was caught up in an altercation on my run on Sunday, between some cyclists and a herd, 20 at least, of dog walkers. It made me think of martial arts again. And Lettie, my niece, was asking about weight loss martial arts. I’m thinking of doing Muay Thai (kickboxing). It’s not pretty but it is practical. The main selling point is that the traditional grading is by fighting people of other clubs. It’s like traditional boxing in so much as there’s a huge emphasis on fitness and lots of time in the ring, actually fighting. That is the […]

It’s been a while. I kind of stopped updating this because all I was doing was working and sleeping. However, things are changing. I’ve been back at my running for a month or two and not buggered myself up. I went at it too hard, too fast, as ever and got warning pains in my legs. I decided to go back to basics so I’ve downloaded a basic marathon training plan. It’s a stage 2 intermediate one. The utter noob ones are walk/ run ones so no good to me. This is pitched at getting a former marathoner back up to fitness. Perfect. I started at the end of week five, with 12 miles as the ‘long’ run. I’m a week and a half in and have achieved some good results already. I will be up to 20 mile long run in 7 weeks. That’s as long as this plan goes, but the logic of it is two weeks increase, one week step back, I can carry on in that style for another few weeks until I’m up to full race distance. Then, when I’m fit enough and hardened, I can go back and start speed training and pushing the distance. I’ve entered the Warrington half marathon and the Chester marathon, then I want to see where I am. If I could realistically get my speed up to a sub 3 hour marathon pace (a *huge* ask) I might enter next years Manchester marathon (flat as a pancake) if not I’ll do the Liverpool- Manchester ultra. 47 miles along the transpenine trail. Which is all old converted railway tracks and canals. Nice scenic day out. The big problem is the November/ December working stupid hours thing. If you are doing 12+ hours a day you can only sleep after it. Both of the runs are in April. So realistically I can only commit to one. If I’m running 40 miles as 10 m/m to conserve energy that;s the opposite of running 20 miles at flat out 6.30 m/m. I was just looking for the figures for that. 6.40 is a 2 hrs 55 min marathon. Yesterday the training plan called for 4 miles easy. (I know! 4 miles!) Anyway I went out against a strong wind and I was doing 8.30’s (it said to run 60-90 seconds off your race pace, which, pitifully is only 8 m/m’s for me at the moment.) I couldn’t force myself to run it at 9.30, which is my bad. I turned around and putting the same effort in but with the wind at my back I did a 7.55! I’d broke the 8 minute barrier! I put my back into it for the last mile (again, I shouldn’t have. The plan is to get there slowly but without breaking) and did a 7.22! In a few weeks I’ve gone from 8.30 being a tough pace to breaking 7.30. I’m looking at that 6.40. That is do-able. OK, I only did one mile, but I’m […]

..was to keep on keeping on. To quote Bob Dylan. I’m over my sulk about the bike. There’s always tomorrow. And now I’ve got my new exhaust and I’m back to riding again I love my bike again. One thing I have taken from that Triton, and a professional W650 chop, is to get ‘velocity stacks’ (bellmouth intakes) for the carbs. I’ve had to order them from the States to get the right size, I’ve also got some bigger jets for the carbs. When the bellmouths arrive I’ll fit them and sort out my my jetting once and for all. Bike’s looking like this at the mo: Or, back in the 60’s The change of intakes from cones to bellmouth won’t be that noticeable at first, as those black plastic side covers mostly hide them but I want to fabricate flat, polished aluminium, inserts to fill in the triangle made by the frame (under seat, down from shocks, up to back of tank). That will keep the battery nicely hidden and expose the carbs and intakes. Also ditch the plastic. I’ve a feeling that Sexy Bastard (the bike) is always going to be a work in progress.   Work has been my other obsession of late. Seems to be a week of crap, three short shifts, then get battered for a week. I’ve had enough. I was off for 3 days this week and I’ve spent them mostly trying to find a job. I’ve applied for two, not got an answer yet, registered with another agency (that was a bust) and I’ve bookmarked a local company. I keep checking to see if they are advertising for drivers as they won’t let you put in a speculative CV and application form. Some random guy I got talking to at work said he’s starting on the 23rd. £12.50 p/h, guaranteed 40 hours minimum, full time job, 06.00 start. It doesn’t get much better than that. My game plan, through want of option, is to stick at Herpes until I can get a real job. The agency with which I registered today were promising lots on the advert, but can only give me one day at a time, £11 p/h. Ideally I could take days with them when Herpes didn’t want me, but I never know in advance. Bugger. I’ve come over all knackered. Finish this anon.   ……………………………..   Right, weeks later. I got my bellmouths. They looked great. I tried many different jets (seat off, tank off, side panels off, disconnect wiring, intakes off, engine breather filter off, free carbs, flip them, take off bottom, unscrew jet, replace, put everything back together.) I have gone from a dread of messing with my jets to being able to strip and rebuild the whole bloody thing in about 25 minutes. All to no avail. Online it says if you are OK off the mark but lacking top end put in bigger jets. Poor bugger was getting to 5,000 revs then just strangling. Standard […]

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged with one thing and another. As usual it was “be careful what you wish for”. I wanted the Hermes job for some fast bucks (as it were) then ended up doing 70+ hour weeks. Two weeks my top line was over a grand. Yet we still owe as much. As soon as xmas rush was over, the very next week, I got 3 shifts. Then three shifts, then 16 hours in a week.  I thought I’d pissed the women off who runs the agency as I had 4 days off before xmas, when I was bedbound with some filthy malaise. I sent a text after the 16 hour week asking what was occurring, but thankfully they then shifted her upstairs and we got a new boss. Since then I’ve not been doing too bad. The downside is that the work starts in the afternoon now. So a 16.00 start can (and has on three occasions) turn into an all night shift. Glass half full, I did get 54 hours last week. Then they announced, post xmas peak, an arbitrary pay cut. The long term workers say that was the peak rate, September to January, but no one told me when I started. It’s a pound an hour less on days and nights, one pound fifty on Sunday, and a fiver an hour on Saturday! I raged and looked for a new job straight away, the trouble is, no one else is offering £12.50 p/h (day rate, £13.50 past 18.00) and definitely not £16 p/h on Sundays.   I swallowed my pride out of lack of option. I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face. I text them and said I don’t work Saturdays anymore. Sunday-Thurs/ Fri only. My pride can live with that.   I’ve not posted any pictures of my latest incarnation of the bike on here. She’s looking good. Actually that’s not quite the latest. I like the peashooter exhausts but I wanted the upswept megaphone style. I tried to do it on the cheap. You can buy just the silencers, and also some upswept pipe bits. You have to take your bravery by the scruff off the neck and actually saw off the peashooter bit, just leaving the downpipes. This I did, fitted the kick up pipes, slipped on the silencers,all in a few hours. Job’s a good ‘un. You can tell this story doesn’t end there, can’t you? Fired her up, roared like a wounded dragon!  Absolutely massive din. I took the silencers apart (as you are supposed to do) and the interior was basically a tube with holes in it. I should have took pictures. It totally took the piss. If you can imagine a bean tin drilled out all down the sides and all over the bottom, that was it. They said you could adjust the sound baffling (hence it being designed to be stripped down) but it was ridiculous. There was no way I could […]