Oh my! I’ve been sat at home now for a week, scared to do much online shopping because I don’t know if I have a job or not, and getting more and more bored. I have been window shopping for jobs the last couple of days, but I can’t really commit until I am definitely sacked, as they are all crap in one way or another. There is one advertising in Manchester, Trafford Park, which is just down the motorway. He’s willing to take on new drivers, but the traffic into Manchester is a nightmare, it would involve nights out, and the pay is £7.25 and hour! So, spend five and a half grand to take a twenty percent pay cut! Obviously if I am sacked I would have to apply. Just now I was looking again for jobs, and, through a link to another job site, came across an advert for drivers, 19-43 years old, to go and get blown up in some godforsaken corner of the globe. So I’ve applied! Military Driver, Royal Logistics Corps, Territorial Army. Larf! It says you have to be able to put in at least nineteen days a year, but as soon as they’ve got you doubtless you’ll be sent out on tours of duty. Wendy was OK with it until I suggested that it might involve active duty. I really do have a lethally low boredom threshold. We’ll see, I might not even get an answer. If I’m not sacked, work would have to be cool about it as well. My fitness is tolerable, I have the mental where-with-all to be able to take army life now, and it would be a sterling commendation on any driving CV. And if it was only for short bursts, and I don’t get blown up, could be quite fun. Things you do! Buck.
Continue readingTag: Driving
It’s all about now.
Hi. I’m nervous now. Today is supposed to be the day. I have to go in and see the site manager, my bezzie mate/ total bastard, Tony Simpson today. This is it. My future hangs in the balance. If he says I can go driving then I’ll be ecstatic but terrified, if he says I can’t I’ll start applying for jobs in earnest. The third, and worst, option is that he says ‘I’ll get back to you’ (again). So far this has been a happening week; Wendy and I compromised on the sax, I’m initially renting it for four months to see if I can take to it and stick to it, but I now have a sax! (Pictures to follow, got to go to work in a bit.) I even got a noise out of it! I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it was a note, but it was better than the breathless wheeze I seem to remember achieving the last time I owned one. My shoes finally arrived today, six days too late for the do to which I intended to wear them, but stunning none the less. Hand made to order, which explains the delay, but not the claim of a ten day turn around made by the website. My 0% interest credit card came yesterday, I’ve transferred that huge debt I ran up for my driving lessons (for which they had recently upped the interest repayment to ninety pounds a month!) and we will easily be able to settle that before we start incurring interest again. So now it’s just the job. I’m scared if he says ‘yes’, as when I said I would like to go out with a driver for a week to build up my experience safely, he changed it to ‘an assessor, yes’. If that is the case I’d feel like I was on my driving test for a whole week! If he says ‘no’, then the panic subsides until such times as I can actually get someone to give me an interview, never mind a job. If, as I’m expecting, he says ‘I’ll get back to you’, I’ll be miffed, but I have no choice but to hang in there. Well, good, bad or indifferent, I’ll let you know tomorrow. Also I’ll post pictures of my eBay bargain suit, so-cool shoes, and unspeakably cool sax. Fingers crossed, Buck.
Continue readingHurry up and wait
I’ve calmed down after my last impotent rant. When I returned to the Independent’s story later on the problem had been cleared and there were several cynical and informed replies posted. The story is getting out, and people are aware that want to be aware. If one chooses to subscribe to the evil Murdoch’s promulgation pawns that is a choice. Less of a choice when you consider how many local radio stations all cut to Sky for their news updates, and the unadulterated propaganda that is Sky telly. Enough! Was it one of those ‘use this word in a sentence’ deliberate misunderstandings on the word ‘horticulture’ that ran: you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think. Not independently valid on any level when you break it down, but if you accept that reality is objective, its interpretation subjective, and its reporting selective, it follows that a person who fails to question probably just wants a simple answer. As they say of being a biker ‘if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.’ Not you, imagined and implicitly clever reader, but the Sun reading herd. Not even that broad a category, Sun believing herd. Anywho, believe it or not I have actually calmed down. All the above was just a way of saying that I probably won’t be writing up my manifesto piecemeal, defining myself by what I oppose. People believe what they want. The evidence that informs my views is equally available to all. To think that only I can extrapolate the truth is verging on megalomania, and is at best patronising. You are all spared. Do your own thinking and don’t blame me when you get it wrong! (Joke!) Over myself now. Now we’ve thrashed that one out lets move on. Potentially good news about my driving, I went in to see the HR chick yet again on Friday (the latest date when everything would be resolved, obviously it wasn’t, again!) but this time the main woman wasn’t there so her minion said she’d go and see her. I waited a few minutes then out came the site manager. I ignored him, thinking he was about his business and it wouldn’t relate to mine. He came up to me, sat me down, and had a five minute chat with me. Perhaps I should mention in passing that the perception is that he is more than just the site manager (although that is at the top of the food chain as far as everyone on site is concerned), the feeling is that he is a troubleshooter. Sent to sort out sites, then move on. He is, it’s felt, a company hit-man. Since he took over there have been lots of changes (such as we de-kit lads being chucked out of our department and Eastern European agency lads being given our jobs). So when I say he was talking to me, I mean a chap with some clout. He said he was still looking into it, […]
Continue readingTurn and about.
Well, it’s all change again. I went into Human Resources again today, but the HR chick I spoke to a few days ago had been off for two days and by all appearance had forgotten about me. She took my name and number and said she would see the main manager then contact me. This was in relation to my request to have a bit of help in my driving progression. The company boasts of it’s initiatives for its employees, one of which being the ‘warehouse to wheels’ scheme. It’s on a big board as you walk into the main building, yet when I’ve asked the transport hierarchy all they’ve done is provide excuses why our site doesn’t run the scheme. So I asked the HR bint the other day if, now I’ve paid for the expensive bit out of my own pocket (getting the training and licenses) if the company could put me on the final part of the scheme. I wasn’t placing any great hopes on getting a reply, but as I was having a shower (typically!) she rang me. She said she’d talked to the MD of the site and he’d told her to contact the site that does run the W-T-W scheme to find out if it was practical for it to be implemented on our site for me! Apparently the person responsible at the other site is on holiday until Monday, but my new best-mate has sent them an email and has told me to get back to her Monday dinner time, when she can tell me more. That’s not a no. Hope springs eternal. We have qualified driver assessors on site, a whole fleet of trucks and the truckers to man them, what more do they need to get me up to scratch? I’ve passed the bloody test, all that’s left is experience. Yesterday at work, at 13.50 hrs, ten minutes before my shift ended and I was due to speed home with a glad heart and start making ‘phone calls about the jobs advertised on the interweb, a siren went off at work. As is common practise, everyone ignored it. However this time it was for real. We had a major ammonia leak from the cooling system in the freezer. Apparently that’s bad in a terminal way. The fire service and police were on site in minutes, they closed off main roads around the site and banned us from returning to the building until we weren’t going to die. 17.54 they finally let me go back inside to get my keys out of my locker so I could go home. My sinuses had kicked in again so I was suffering from a progressively worsening headache, I was sat outside for the four hours, with no idea when I was going to be allowed to go home. Less than fun. Today, as soon as I got home (without headache, hurray!) I set to ‘phoning around. One of the jobs was a flat out ‘no’ […]
Continue readingThe Device and other achievements.
I’ve been trying out my purchases whilst I’ve been off. I went for a run (my first run in months, prior to that, years) and decided to try out my ankle weights! Can anybody guess how that went? First run in ages, with a kilo strapped to each ankle. Not well is the answer, in case you were wondering. I managed to miss the road I was aiming for so went on a much longer circuit, I completely outpaced myself and by the time I got back (only twenty minutes or so later) I thought I was going to throw up. Not an unqualified success then. We are supposed to be starting training sessions on Sundays now the TKD classes have been cancelled so I thought I’d get a head start. Apparently you need to be able to run a mile in under twelve minutes (OK, stroll a mile in under twelve minutes) before you can qualify for black belt. I could do that now. But to do it with élan I really need the practise. So I got back, tried to get my breath back, then carried on with the rest of my work-out. When I’d finished I tried out my latest invention: The Device! As you can see it’s just two home-made ankle loops attached to a length of rope that passes between two eyed screws. The pulley does the rest. Pop your feet in those loops, pull the cord on the pulley, then weep like a little girl. It’s a home-made substitute for a £150 device you can buy. Mine cost about £20 or so, and I have enough rope and screws to build another. That’s the crowing over, the question was: will it work? Oh my sweet lord, yes. I tried it out yesterday after my work-out, when theoretically I’m as stretched as I get, and it stretched me further. Today I was so stiff, with the leg weights and the stretching, that I had to do a quick work-out. This promptly turned into another run in weights (much better this time, thanks for your concern) a work-out and back to The Device! This time I managed to pull another nine inches or so through the pulley. (I marked the pulley cord to give me a record of my progress.) This is not as impressive as it sounds, my feet did not go nine inches further back, there is a 6:1 ratio on the pulley. I’m here to tell you that when you feel at full stretch, then pull another nine inches of cord through, it feels like you are being torn in half, however insignificant the actual improvement is in inches. I have placed it behind where my kick/punch bag usually hangs (I only took it down for the sake of clarity on the photo’s) usually it looks like this: The benefits are many. It hides most of the mess, and more importantly my girly, sobbing face when it is in use and when I […]
Continue reading