Hi! I’ve just noticed that I’ve had 1,000 views of my blog! I’m a celebrity! However, this will be my 103rd post, so I’m an unknown. 🙁 If you don’t follow me on Twitter let me tell you I’m loving my Kung Fu class. I’ve got my kit and I’m not afraid to pose in it! It’s a pity the Beth couldn’t keep it up, it’s really spiffy. Don’t know that she’d have loved the last class though, swapping punches so your arm collides in defence/attack with your partner’s. It soon starts hurting and doesn’t stop! Grin and bear it, it’s good for practice and it toughens you up. I’m aching still though. And I’ve got bloody friction burns on my arse from all the sit ups! Again! All good though. My sax lesson has had a positive turn around as well. When I went this week I had a few of the things that I have been struggling with come together. Then he turned the page to a new chapter and it was a checkpoint. Instead of learning something new it is three set pieces supposed to consolidate your learning to date. As usual sax-sensei Pete pointed me at the new stuff and told me to have a go. It was for a complete change, a lot easier than the previous exercises. I didn’t do it perfectly, but for a first time, sight reading as I went along, it wasn’t too shabby. I was quite pleased with myself, then he told me that the pieces were from a grade 4 exam! (Or level 4, I forget.) The point being, these are pieces on which the student would train for months before an exam and I did a reasonable attempt first time out of the bag! Not trying to blow my own trumpet here (if anything, my own sax) just saying how surprised and delighted I was. Then he said now we’re at chapter 17 you can move on to ‘100 best tunes book’ or some such. Learning by playing songs, some of which I will already know, rather than by bending my mind around hideous exercises. If you recall, that was what I said I was going to leave my lessons to do in my last blog. So that it going swimmingly. Here is something I found that seemed to be begging for the title ‘Ships Of The Desert’ Also on the pictures front, here is that Sisters of Mercy/ Merciful Release logo that I want as a tattoo Groovy, or what? Perhaps you have to love the band. I’m currently enjoying a long weekend. I was off Thursday, in Friday, now off Saturday, Sunday and Monday! Bloody lovely. On the subject of work, I have been moaning lately about being sent into the freezer all of the time. The place at which I work has the contract picking and delivering to the Iceland stores, so it’s not too unexpected that I would work in the freezer now and […]
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The resolutions are go!
Finally I’m getting my resolutions going. I’ve bloated out in the two months I’ve not been working out at martial arts. I’ve only gone from ten stone six to eleven stone one, but I think I must have lost a lot of very heavy muscle and replaced it with acres of relatively light fat. I’m hanging over my trousers in a way that bears no resemblance to such a small increase in weight. It’s a distressing thought that I am going to have to spend the rest of my life sweating the flab off. Damn middle age! I used to be able to stay slim without trying when I was young.I had a bloater phase about five years age, but then I gave up drinking and dropped three stones so I thought I had it cracked. Apparently not. My work is no longer physically demanding enough and I have been on the road (now I’ve got a car license) for over three years. Previously, with the bikes, I either got banned or crashed them. The longest (by a long way) that I was on the road continuously was fifteen months. That was the only time I ever renewed an insurance policy on a bike! The upshot of that being that I spent most of my life on a push-bike. Long story slightly shorter than interminable, it turns out that it only the exercise of martial arts training that has stopped me looking like a space-hopper. Which is preamble to saying I have started my training again. I’ve given up on the Taekwondo as flash but impractical, and gone back to Wing Chun Kung Fu, famously the style of Bruce Lee. The lineage is impressive as well. The Sifu (Chinese for master) at the club was taught in Hong Kong by the sons of the legendary Yip Man (the guy who taught Bruce Lee, and about whom they made a film last year). I’ve got the money to do it this time and I have an abundance of desire. Also in the merits column, I am taking my niece who has been having a bit of trouble with her self confidence and has been avoiding going out of the house because of it. This will do her a power of good. Just getting out is a major step. She braved it last night and came with me. Kudos. She met a load of new people and found them all to be a laugh, encouraging and supportive. The exercise is it’s own reward (and punishment!) and, in time, she will be confident that she can handle herself if things should kick off. At the moment she seems to be in the worrying phase where she won’t go out because someone might see her, they then might make a comment, they then might give her abuse, they then might start a fight, they might, they might… It’s all worry feeding on itself. When you don’t feel threatened by people taking the piss out […]
Continue readingNew Year!
Momentous milestones! We’ve all made it into 2010, it’s my first blog entry of the year and my one hundredth entry on MySpace. Welcome to the new century! I thought I’d summarise 2009, as pertains to Wendy and me, but first let me tell about last night. Our neighbours, who, in fairness, rarely hold parties, told us they were having one on New Years Eve. Fair do’s again, if you can’t party in the new year, when can you? Then they said they’d hired a DJ! A feckin’ DJ! Ours is a block of three houses, this neighbour is the one in the middle, so to all intents and purposes is in a terraced house. And they were hiring a DJ. So we expected loud, and as they are into their cocaine, we expected it to go on a bit. Happily Wendy’s brother, Peter, invited us around to see in the new year. This was welcome as Wendy gets really stressed out about noise nowadays. We set off to Pete’s and Emma’s (his wife) at about eleven pm. (The ability to jump in the car whenever we feel like and the feeling of moral superiority are the best consolations for not drinking!) We came home at about half past three, and next door were still at it! We went to bed by four am, and the music was only quiet, but because they were all coked up they were unaware of how loud they were being every time they went outside for a fag. After a fitful sleep we got up at twelve noon and they were still going! Respect to the quality of the product, but shit! They started to disperse before one in the afternoon, now all is quiet. We are tired and a bit miffed with them, but in the small mercies column, it’s only the fact that my day off happened to fall today that stopped me from having to get up at ten to five this morning. OK, whinge over, back to the review. Let me paint a word picture of this time last year; I was working in the De-kit department, I was still paying for training towards my HGV class II license having already failed the test two or three times, I was training in Taekwondo and Kung Fu but was having to decide between them because we were so poor, Wendy was still a volunteer at the Citizens Advice Bureau and we were unmarried. Phew, how times change! In January I passed my class II, to the relief and surprise of many. Then over the year I set about the class I (articulated lorry) training and tests. Many tests. There was the moment of high drama when it looked like we had run out of credit and I still hadn’t passed, then miraculously the credit card doubled our limit unbidden. (God bless those unscrupulous bastards!) Finally, in July, I passed. The relief has never been so great! £ 5,615 to get both […]
Continue readingIt is what it is…
, well what the hell else could it be? Redundant? A tautology? A waste of two seconds of my life listening to inane drivel? Sorry, just carrying on the thought from the ‘subject’ box. I am very tired and a tad cranky in case you hadn’t noticed. Just to say after spending nearly a quarter of my annual take home pay on driver training and after all the prevarication and promises, when I again asked today if there was any sign of me ever getting on to the final bit of warehouse to wheels, a manager said to me "in a word, no." As I have long suspected. Bunch of bastards. Months they have been stringing me along, always with plausible plans, and finally, ‘no’. On the bright side, it’s not like I have turned any work down on the off chance they would come through. I’ve been applying for every job that’s advertised, and many that aren’t, and always it comes down to experience. Two jobs I’ve seen since passing my test that were OK, about not having experience, both agency. The last said he would ring me when he had something more definite, never got back to me, and one today. £7 per hour, class II driver, but only until Jan/Feb. I’m tempted, even so. There will be no work at all at the end of January though. It would be nice to drop my works in the shit for xmas and start building up experience, even if it would be a drop in hourly pay. Wendy’s out painting the town red tomorrow with her hell-raising crew from C.A.B.. Well, going for a meal, at any rate. I think I’ll do the maths then. Could we afford to take the pay cut, and how long could we last with me out of work. The army said they have received my application to ‘re-enlist’ (gulp) but it will take several weeks to process as I’m an ex soldier. Presumably they will have to track down my records from previous service. I will be a driver, I will, I will. Wendy’s still not happy about the thought of me being mobilised. She’s got me down as dead, wounded, or loony. A dude’s got to (try) to do what a dude’s got to do. I have grave doubts as to whether I’ll even get in. Got to keep as many irons in the fire as possible though. Right, well tired me, later, Buck.
Continue readingIt never rains…
but it pours. I’ve not been blogging much of late because nothing was happening, then, like the proverbial bus, three come along at once. I bought Wendy a skirt off eBay a few weeks ago from Lilith’s Gothic Crypt. Take note of the name and tell everyone you know of it. When it finally arrived I thought my troubles were over (getting any communication out of the seller was a problem, then the postal strikes- a pox on the Royal Mail!). A few days later I thought to ask Wendy about it and she admitted that she would never be able to wear it because it was so poorly made. The waistband had been sown twisted in several places, it looked cheap and tacky, and the seem didn’t hang right making the skirt look puckered at the bottom. I wrote to the thrice damned Lilith’s Gothic Crypt, enclosing photo’s and asking for a refund, and saying if I didn’t receive a reply within a week I would be leaving feedback. I did try to sort it through eBay’s resolution centre, but because the seller had put ‘no returns’ on the advert I got an automatic response saying that a refund wasn’t available. Which, by the by, is (as I understand it) illegal, anyway. The distance selling regulations say that I am entitled to a refund. Her stating that she doesn’t do refunds does not affect that. That would be a contractual right, which can be added to a statutory right but can never take away from one. I remember that much from my brief stint as a Citizens Advice volunteer. I was ignored, as I was kind of expecting given the previous level of communication. I left feedback saying ‘Crap comms, worse product, no refund. Waist sown twisted, seams off. DO NOT BUY FROM!’, and left it at that. I thought that was just £25 I’d have to put down to experience, and at least I’d left shitty feedback. Then I got an email off eBay saying they’d removed my feedback because of it’s offensive content! No sirree bob! Straight onto them and cancelled my account. Bastards! Tomorrow Wendy is going to print off the distance selling regulations, then I get to write a letter quoting the regulations and if I’m still ignored I’m then referring it to the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Ombudsman Service who automatically impose a £250 fine I’ve just found out. Justice will be mine! What other news, oh aye, they finally got the new rigid trucks in today at work. Big huzzah’s! Went into the office, said the new rigid’s are here, what about my driving? To no-one’s surprise they instantly moved the goalposts. Now they are waiting for the volume to pick up then they can send me for an assessment. An assessment! That is not Warehouse-to-wheels, there is no training in that. I’ve paid for my training, got my licenses, all I need is a day or two with a […]
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