End of February Haiku

It’s March tomorrow!
Let’s call it ‘onset of Spring’ 
and let’s all rejoice!

Turn down the heating
Get set for lighter evenings
Dust off the Barbie

March might be freezing
It could snow and have strong winds
But at least it’s March! 

RC 28-2-15

Checklist checked

It was a bit of a pain having to drive for an hour for a doctors appointment, but I guess it turned out to be worth it.
I hadn’t seen Dr Melton before, and she was very nice. Slightly overweight for a healthcare professional, and she looked like she had a problem with blood pressure, but maybe it’s not lifestyle related and is something menopausal. How do I know? She’s the doctor, not me.
Anyway she was very pleasant and we had a good chat and she looked in most of the openings in my head.
Then she said “It might be hay fever. Have you had it before?”
I said “No, and isn’t it a bit early for pollen?”
She said “Not at all. Tree pollen can cause the same symptoms and starts being released in mid-February. Have you noticed any nasal excretions? Or breathing problems?”
I said “No - it’s just the damn headaches.”
She said “The chances are it might be vision related. When did you last have your eyes tested?”
I said “I have to be honest, doc, I’m not sure I ever have…..”
So her recommendation is that I see an optician and have a full eye check and sight test, and see what the outcome of that is. 
Someone cynical about the NHS would say I have just been shunted from one sphere of the Service to another without achieving anything, but that someone won’t be me….

RC 27-2-15

Customer Service is dead

Philippa went to play bingo tonight so I decided to hammer the drums for a while!
It surprised me how much I remembered and how smoothly I was playing on a still unfamiliar kit, but I only lasted 15 minutes and then my headache was back. So I came back into the house and lay down for a while.  I looked for painkillers but we don’t seem to have any, and I couldn’t be bothered to drive somewhere to get some, so I called Philippa’s mobile to ask her to stop on the way home. She didn’t answer so I left a message.  The headache kept getting worse so I called the Bingo Hall to find out what time I could expect her home.  The grumpy guy on the phone said “The late session will finish no later than 10”
I said “Don’t you mean it will finish no later than…. ‘one-oh, the number ten’?”
There was silence, followed by a sigh, then he said “Anything else, sir?”
I am so unappreciated. Despite my pain I had made a funny, original joke and he cast me aside like an inconvenience.
I might call again tomorrow and complain about him.

RC 26-2-15

Reason to love being a manager, no 57

I took a chance today and called our doctors surgery back in Norfolk. The receptionist told me that my GP is booked for two weeks but if it was urgent I could see Dr Melton on Friday morning. So I’ve taken the appointment and arranged to go in late at work. Life is so much easier to organise when you’re the person in charge. 

RC 25-2-15

Bright? Not quite

I spoke to Sophie today and asked her why I keep having headaches. She didn’t seem too pleased to be asked. She said something about my GP being the person to call on instead of her, and how would I feel if she only phoned me up to ask the price of diesel?
I suppose she has a point. I’m just fed up with feeling giddy and I’d like some help from somewhere. We haven’t bothered finding a doctors surgery nearby just in case we end up going back to Norfolk, but maybe now is the time to get it sorted and then I can see why I seem to have a hangover even when I haven’t been drinking. 
I didn’t help myself tonight by trying to drive home from work without putting my car lights on. I don’t have to drive far and it would seem like such a big step towards Spring if I could do it, but I found myself having to strain my eyes to see, and I nearly ran over some college kids.  Is it my fault if they don’t wear reflective jackets while walking home from the bus stop? Judging by the volley of verbal abuse they threw at me as I passed - yes it is. 

RC 24-2-15

2 + 2 = ???

People’s stupidity, and their ability to link unconnected events and assume cause-and-effect, astounds me. 
The price of petrol has come down steadily over the past few months, because the price of crude oil has fallen dramatically. It’s nice for me that the time since I’ve taken over as filling station manager has coincided with this steady fall, but that’s all it is - coincidence. I don’t for one second think that my arrival here has somehow impacted on the amount that our company chooses to charge for fuel. But believe it or not there are people who think that’s the case. I am apparently getting credit for worldwide trends and decisions made at Head Office!
Several people have commented on my ‘positive improvements’ in the past few weeks, and today I had a chat with a guy who runs his own company with his wife. She makes lovely floral displays and bouquets and he travels around in a little van delivering them. He shook my hand today and insisted that my ‘determination to drive down petrol prices’ may have saved his business. I did TRY to explain to him that it was all down to forces beyond my control, but he told me to stop being modest and shook my hand again as he left.
So despite having to spend the afternoon locked alone in an office doing paperwork, I was buoyant, cheerful and relaxed.
I still ended up with a headache, though.

RC 23-2-15

Ways to spend a rainy Sunday

Today has been the first day in ages that I haven’t been distracted by a headache. Is this, as Philippa suggests, because I haven’t been at work today? Maybe. All I know is it made a very welcome change.  I had the idea of celebrating by going out for lunch and getting a bit leathered on real ale but Philippa said that would be ’stupid.’ I guess she’s right. Spending the only day this week without a headache behaving in a way that I know will guarantee me a headache wouldn’t be particularly sensible would it?
In the end we had a day of cleaning the house, doing a jigsaw together, and talking about holidays. It was nice. I refused to discuss the wedding as it’s ten months away and already driving me nuts (and may, I suspect, be contributing to my recent head pain…) but Philippa seems to want it to be the only thing we talk about all year, so we reached a kind of compromise and chatted about possible honeymoon destinations.  I’d quite like to go back to somewhere we’ve been together before - to be in familiar surroundings in a location we know we’ll enjoy, but this time as a married couple. I loved Tunisia and I loved Austria so I’d be more than happy to return to one of those. Philippa said she’d like to go somewhere completely different and suggested Mexico or the Bahamas.
Makes a change doesn’t it? Us disagreeing on something to do with this wedding? It all got a bit heated at one point so I quietly pointed out that it’s all still hypothetical and I haven’t yet confirmed that we’re doing it this year, and that seemed to alleviate the mood a little. Or maybe it made it worse without me realising it, how do I know?
Anyway it was a very pleasant day all round and we had a nice cuddle after tea. 

RC 22-2-15

Headache Haiku

I have a headache
It’s been with me for a week
Tablets are useless

Does it only hurt
Coz I am aware of it?
Or is something wrong?

‘Internet doctor’
Tells me it could be migraines
Or a brain tumour!

RC 21-2-15

Immature, and Important

As an ongoing project to fill boring moments at work, I’ve had a notepad in my pocket at all times, and when I think of a new euphemism for a woman’s booby-parts I make a note of it. My aim is to have a list of 250 by the end of the year.
Here’s what I have so far:
Fulcrums, hat rests, bazoomas, mungles, fellows, dungas, toppers, topplers, funkys, goodies, dirtys, bra busters, Hardys, fences, Fempecs, mammoos, Schluppers, yummies, yams, and Chums.

The answer to yesterdays question, by the way, was QUEASY.

RC 18-2-15

Woozy and weary

I had another headache today.
It came on late morning and I couldn’t shake the bloody thing. In a strange case of spending-money-where-you-get-it-from I ended up buying some paracetamol from my own garage. I felt better this afternoon but the short drive home, with headlights glaring at me from the opposite direction, meant I felt quite queasy by the time I got in and had to lie down for a bit.
Philippa is starting to worry and wants me to go to the doctor. She said maybe it’s related to work stress and is down to the extra pressure of management. I said maybe it’s down to marriage stress and we should stop talking about the wedding for a while. 
She left me alone after that.
In better news - I got to use one of my all-time favourite words in the body of this blog posting. See if you know me well enough to spot which one it is. (I’ll give you the answer tomorrow)

RC 17-2-15

Poory Rory

Yesterday was my only day off this week and I spend all day crippled with a blinding headache. I wouldn’t have minded if it was self-inflicted, but not one drop of alcohol has passed my lips since the weekend before. I don’t mind having a hangover as long as I get the enjoyment of drinking beforehand, but yesterday was just mean. It was a nice, bright day as well, which was painful on two counts - the sunlight made my headache worse and I was missing out on good cycling weather. 
Anyway - work beckons.

RC 16-2-15

Springing/Up

February seems to be drifting by without any great incident, but at least it is starting to feel a bit warmer. I topped up the birdfeeders in the garden this morning and it was lovely to hear so much birdsong. It hasn’t been a particularly bad Winter, but it’s still nice to put the de-icer and scrapers in the boot and think ‘hopefully won’t need those again.’
Driving home at 5.30 I could almost see across the fields. The nights, as they say in these parts of the Country, are definitely and noticeably ‘pulling out’
Hurrah!

RC 11-2-15

Some personal goals for 2015

1. Build up my stamina and fitness so I can do a 50-mile cycle ride by the end of Summer.
2. Stay in my job as a ‘Filling Station Manager’ at least until the end of the year.
3. Have a proper suit professionally made to my measurements, rather than just buying a cheap one from a charity shop and wearing it to every formal event for 5 years (again)
4. Have one day with Philippa where she doesn’t mention ‘our wedding’
5. Get better at drumming

RC 9-2-15

Obsessed

There was a time when my plan was to write a blog every day in February. As you may have noticed, that plan got pushed aside somewhat.
This is because I foolishly mentioned the possibility of Philippa and I getting married this coming Christmas and so it’s all I’ve been hearing about since my birthday. 
Jesus.
If you’re an unmarried man currently in a relationship and your girlfriend is keen on a wedding, then take my advice. DO NOT get drunk and jokingly suggest a date because if you do, it’ll be taken as a proper proposal as surely as if you went down on one knee and handed her a big ring. 
Now it seems imperative that we spend every available second panicking about imminent deadlines and researching venues and colour schemes. I’m looking forward to Spring so I can get my bike out and escape it all by cycling myself to death every evening. If Philippa wants to stay at home looking at various catalogues that‘s entirely up to her, but I have many other things I‘d like to commit my time to. 

RC 8-2-15

The watchword of the age is PANIC!!

We’ve had some proper Winter weather in Suffolk the past few days. Sleet showers, cold winds, ice everywhere. I’ve had to put in an extra delivery order at work because we’ve sold out of de-icer, salt, bread and those little bags of kindling we have outside. What is wrong with people? I’ve only ever been snowed in once in my life and that only lasted two days. It’s 2015 for Christ’s sake. We all have central heating and cars with computerised steering control - it’s not as if we’re likely to be stranded anywhere for very long. But try telling that to the middle-aged women who are stocking up on bread like there’s a nuclear winter on the way. 
Bloody idiots. Superstores and garages must make a fortune at this time of year from people who think they’re being clever. Buying shit you don’t need is NOT being resourceful and preparatory, it’s handing money over to companies who fuel your fear with bullshit and then cash in on your need to feel in control.
But then - I work for one of those companies so I’ll shut up now. 
Carry on spending, folks. I hear we MIGHT have a heat wave in August so you’d better rush out and buy expensive sunblock now, before the rush starts. 
See you at the till.

RC 3-2-15

Overtired is like a hangover

Having told you not to look through my previous SuperBowl predictions, I went ahead and did it myself.
I didn’t make a prediction in 2012 (disappointingly)
But since 2009 I’ve made 6 predictions, and got the winning team right just three times!
Do not ever listen to me if you want to bet on sporting events.

Don’t ever ask me to do anything for you the day after the SuperBowl, either. I went to bed at 3.45am and I’ve been a mess all day. I guess my days of all-night parties are well and truly behind me. 

Goodnight. 

RC 2-2-15

Rory Bowl

I have snacks, I have drinks, I have the morning off work. I am all set for Super Bowl XLIX!!
Just time for my annual prediction (and please don’t look back at previous blogs to see how well I’ve done with these in the past….)

Patriots 27
Seahawks 22

RC 1-2-15