end of month haiku

Felt lazy today
So worked as hard as a sloth
And wrote some haiku

With pencil in hand
I scribble thoughts upon page
And hope they make sense

‘Garage manager’
A job title which contains
the letter “A” lots

My job description
I guess can be summed us thus:
“I live to sell fuel”

Wanted to spin gold
And yet all I’ve written is
haikus about work

RC 30-6-15

Was I being helpful? Or just interfering?

I had a falling out with one of the other managers today. I popped over to the supermarket and noticed that the queue in the café was incredibly long, and looking unhappy. The girl on the till turned out to be a 17-year-old who had only worked there once before and she was really struggling to come to terms with the till. Everytime someone ordered it took her a couple of minutes to work out which buttons she had to press, and there was no-one around to support her. 
I stuck my head through the kitchen door and there was one person cooking the breakfasts. So between the two of them they had to take the orders, cook the orders, deliver the orders and keep everything clean and tidy, and stocked. 
I went up into the managers office and the head of the café was sitting there with a mug of coffee, having a look at the betting odds in The Sun.
I said “I think your staff could do with a bit of help downstairs”
He said “Nah, they’ll cope. How busy can it be at ten thirty on a Friday?”
“Pretty busy actually. How come there are only two of them running the whole show?”
“Benji called in sick. Got flu for the third time this year. Couldn’t find anyone to replace him.”
“Well I think you should try a bit harder, they’re drowning down there.”
He looked up from his newspaper and said “Why don’t you keep an eye on your own department, mate, and stop sticking your nose into mine?”
I said “I don’t need to keep an eye on them. They’re properly trained and there’s enough of them to cope and they know they’re always supported.”
“Well bully for you. Personally I haven’t got time to be holding the till girls hand every hour until she gets the hang of it.”
“No I can see that. You’re too busy planning who to back in the 3.15 at Kempton.”
Then he swore at me and stormed out. But I did notice when I went downstairs again that there were two extra staff in the café and the tearful teenager was back behind the scenes.
I have a feeling there might be a complaint coming my way, but I don’t care. What’s the point of being a manager if we’re not going to help look after all the staff?
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so grumpy about it if my ankle wasn’t sore, but I still think he deserved it. 

RC 29-6-15

The pleasure then the pain..

There was a disruption of a meteorological nature to our plans, but things still went well, up to a point.
Rain fell, so the beach gathering was postponed until later, giving Philippa and I a chance to pop and see Ted and Beryl on the way up to the coast.  That was delightful, and cake was intaken, before an eventual sand-based rendezvous mid-afternoon.
Not as many people as have attended previous soirees of this sort, but an enjoyable gathering nonetheless. I got so engrossed in the camaraderie that I foolishly agreed to join in and ‘make up the numbers’ for a game of volleyball. With the score at 14-11 in favour of my team I leapt up to smash a shot over the net and landed wrong and twisted my ankle. 
Will I never learn? Unsporty people should never try to be sporty, even if their confidence is boosted by alcohol. So now I am sitting with my foot up and a pack of frozen peas on my ankle, and I’ll probably have to miss cycling for a couple of weeks…
Sorry if this blog posting has been written like a court report from a facts-obsessed policeman, but I’m being rather distracted by pain (and the rather unusual, but enjoyable, effects of mixing alcohol and strong painkillers.)

RC 28-6-15

At last....

Finally, some Summer weather! And at the weekend too! We had a lovely walk, and a lovely cycle, and a barbecue, and a cuddle on a blanket in the garden.
Tomorrow we are joining Philippa’s old sporty club chums for a day on the beach in North Norfolk. It’s a bit of a drive, but these events are always fun and it’s been a while since we’ve had one (thank you, Great British climate) so I’m looking forward to it. We shall take some snacks, we shall take something drinkable, and we shall indulge in a day of leisurely loveliness. Everyone else will be displaying their athletic prowess, while I shall happily sit there doing nothing more energetic than opening a can of beer. 
What joy!

RC 27-6-15

intrusively reflective

I found myself thinking about my dad again today. I think it was a bit of self-pity fuelled by tiredness, but I couldn’t help reaching the conclusion that Hannah, Sophie and I got dealt a pretty rough hand when it came to parents.  I did call Sophie this evening to try and talk about it, but as soon as I said “I’ve been thinking about dad” she said “He was a prick. Forget about him.” and that was that.
Philippa, being the astute intelligent lady that she is, realised something has been bothering me and got me to chat about it, which was nice and actually helped a little. She said maybe I should consider seeing a counsellor about it, as it’s obviously playing on my mind a lot.
I might consider that.
Or I might do my usual trick of just ignoring it until it’s buried deep inside me somewhere, and just hope it doesn’t surface again any time soon.
Yes, that sounds like a much better idea.

RC 24-6-15

MCDII

In all my recent reflective wallowings I missed a bit of a milestone. The statistics section of ‘blogger’ tells me my Saturday posting was my 1400th blog since I started these Chronicles. If I had realised that before I wrote it I’d have made more of an effort instead of writing some shitty haiku.
It’s tempting to use this event as an excuse to look back and consider how my life has changed since I began writing, but I think I’ve done enough looking back this week already, don’t you?
So I shall just say I am amazed that I’ve stuck to this for so many years (bearing in mind how many times I’ve given up on houses and jobs in the same time frame) and that I am incredibly grateful to you, dear reader, for sticking with me. Call it psychology, call it catharsis, call it what you will; writing this blog has been incredibly helpful to me in dark times and confusions, and I thoroughly intend to keep on doing it.
Onward, then….

RC 23-6-15

reflections on Father's Day

Philippa said to me yesterday “this might be the last Fathers Day where you don’t get a card!”
I said “Yeah, you’ve said that before. I wouldn’t make any assumptions, love…”

It’s rare for me to buy into the sentimentality of these days, but I did find myself thinking about my own dad. It didn’t take long, obviously, as he wasn’t around long enough to make lots of memories.  But I couldn’t help drifting back to thoughts of my youth and how hard it was not to have my dad around much. I didn’t even realise it at the time, I just kind of got on with it, but it wasn’t great, and I look back now and feel really sorry for that little lad that I used to be. Growing up in a house with no other male presence, save for the social drop-outs my mum used to bring home drunk for a quick screw. 
I wonder now whether that isn’t the reason I’m apprehensive about fatherhood myself? Maybe I’m worried that I have no reference point for how to be a good dad so I’m scared I’ll mess it up. Or maybe I’m worried that I’ll do what my dad did and bail out of the family as soon as I can instead of sticking it out and trying and make it work.
Or maybe I’m just a coward. 

Either way, I feel unexpectedly emotional about it all. And as usual, I’m going to react to those emotions by burying them under some alcohol.
Excuse me….

RC 22-6-15

haiku inspired by a stroll

Walking on the beach
I espied a lonely sock
Did it’s owner drown?

RC 20-6-15

Teenage angst at 31

I woke up this morning with a horrible white-headed spot above my top lip. Am I 16 again? I remember being told you need to use heat to ‘draw spots out’ so I soaked a flannel in hot water and then held it on my face, and all I did was burn my lip. Then I remembered another old tip which is to put toothpaste on the spot, because as it dries out it pulls out the infected shite and heals it up quicker. So I tried that.
Trouble is I forgot to wash it off before I went to work, and it wasn’t until lunchtime that someone decided to point it out to me. So I’d spent all morning serving customers and talking to staff with a big dollop of Colgate stuck to my face.
Thanks everyone.

RC 19-6-15

Another day, another moronic encounter

I swear this is a genuine complaint that I had to deal with today:
“I bought some charcoal bricks from here last week for a barbecue”
“Right”
“My son ended up with food poisoning”
“I’m sorry to hear that”
“He was sick for two days”
“Right”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“With respect, sir, what exactly are you expecting me to do?”
“Something. Anything. You could start with saying sorry”
“What for, exactly?”
“He had food poisoning. He was sick for two days”
“Right”
“The doctor was adamant it was coz the food wasn’t cooked properly, and we bought the bricks from here.”
I gave him the number for Head Office.

RC 18-6-15

Have I nothing better to do with my time?

It rained all day today, that’s why I resorted to crap poetry, just to pass the time indoors. It was that or do the dusting, and I think I made the right choice. Rain is thoroughly disappointing in mid-June, but it makes a nice change from the high wind that we seem to have had for seventeen weeks or so. I’m wondering what’s likely to happen first - a decent Summer’s day so we can have a barbecue outside, or a return to the windy chillness we’ve been plagued with since early April. I know where my money is, and it’s not the same place as my hopes. 
What’s that you say? You’d like to read some haiku, just to round off this day of poems?
Go on then:

Friday thunderstorm
Promised, but never appeared
Just like my pay rise

RC 13-6-15

2320

2nd crapoem of the day

An Ode To The North Star:

You are my friend who shines so bright
You signal onset of the night
How I wish that I could visit
you - if only for a minute.

Oh, dear.

RC 13-6-15
1600

Until next year, adieu..

I’m depressed again
This years Springwatch has finished
And I’m missing it

RC 13-6-15

So, so childish...

Every time I overhear an innuendo at work I write it down in a little book. Then, in dark moments, I can look at a few of them and smile.
Here are some of my favourites from the first half of 2015:

“I went a bit too fast and shot my load on the roundabout”
“He was right up my arse all the way from the junction to the bypass”
“My axle can’t take another pounding”
“I had my boyfriend there up front and three of his mates in the back”
“He bounced me around so hard I cracked my head on the ceiling”

RC 10-6-15

And our Pedant Of The Day award goes to..

I fancied a change of scenery at lunchtime so I drove a couple of miles and sat at the edge of a large field. It was much more pleasant than seeing the inside of my office for another hour, and I’m sure my home-prepared ham salad with buttered rye bread tasted better for it.  I got lost in the world outside the window and sat for ages watching some birds swoop and whiz along the top of the crops. It was incredibly relaxing and I went back to work feeling super-chilled and peaceful.
This afternoon I had to pop over to the supermarket for a quick chat with one of the managers. I told him what I’d seen at lunchtime, saying “I think they were swifts and they were incredibly graceful. The crop was that kind of wheat that looks a bit tufty and fluffy, and it was almost like they were enjoying having it tickle their bellies as they flew over it.”
All he could say was “If they were skimming above the ground they’d be swallows not swifts. And they wouldn’t be ‘getting a tickle‘, they’d have been eating the insects that hover above the crop. And, just to be thorough, that ‘wheat’ that was looking tufty and fluffy would have been barley. BAR-LEY” and he walked off shaking his head.
Prick.

RC 9-6-15

On June 7th - a little list

Things I do, without thinking about, which are probably really dangerous:

Using the tip of my finger to find the holes in plug sockets when I need to plug in my phone charger and can’t be bothered to turn the light on.
Cycling with headphones in playing loud music.
Sending texts to Philippa while I’m driving to work.

There are probably more that I can’t think of right now, but I think those three are bad enough to be going on with, don’t you?
Assuming one of them doesn’t kill me today I’ll blog again tomorrow….

RC 7-6-15

Pleased

If ever there was a day to be glad I’m in a filling station now instead of a supermarket, this was it. The bloody place was going crazy. One sniff of sunshine and hot weather and the massed conformists of Suffolk were out in force. Anything with the initials B.B.Q. on it was torn off the shelves quicker than they could stack them up.  Yes, we had a lot of extra custom at the garage but the difference is - petrol can only come out of the pump for one person at a time. You can’t shove other customers out of the way to grab the last item available the way you can in the supermarket. You can’t bash them in the shins with your trolley if they spend too long deciding what to buy (as always used to happen in the pet food aisle when people wanted to get past.) All you can do is sit there in the queue and patiently wait for your turn. And thankfully, most people do that. 
What a day.
I’m predicting record takings for any Friday since I started. And I bet those above me in Head Office still won’t be satisfied and will find a way to moan.
Anyway, I’m off all weekend and it should be nice and sunny, so nothing could dampen my mood tonight. Even the weird fact that it’s gone ten o’clock and I can still see the furniture in the garden. And to think, this time six months ago, it would have been dark for six hours by now!
I’m so glad it’s only Winter for one season.

RC 5-6-15

Happy New Month, then...

A nice day today, but that bloody wind is still hanging around. 
Wind has now become my most hated style of weather. Rain is horrible, but at least when it’s raining you know it will eventually stop at some point - there just isn‘t enough moisture in existence in the water cycle to maintain a constant downpour. But this damn wind seems to have been blowing around forever.
Anyway…
It’s June! 
A new month brings new chances to shine and I’d like to start this new page of the calendar with some haiku:

I like hitting drums
You couldn’t call it playing
But I do my best

Sport is so boring
Testosterone-fuelled madness
But I like cycling

When it comes to drink
Red wine is my favourite
But I’m not fussy

RC 1-6-15