optimistic haiku?

Sick of wet weather 
So have chosen to ignore
Everything outside

Life is good in dreams
Reality can’t hurt you
With it’s shit climate

Year is flying by
So soon it will be New Year
And I’ll be married!

Life is better now
Since I became manager
Of a fuel station

Yes, I must admit
Fossil fuels destroy the Earth
But I get paid well

Love is like a peach
Sweet, tasty and nice for lips
But can break your teeth

Although I love songs
“Ebony and Ivory”
Makes me want to puke

Cycling and surfing
Things I absolutely love
WHEN IT’S NOT RAINING

The Summers of yore
Warmth and joy beneath blue skies
Now it just pisses

Maybe a heat wave
Or an Indian Summer
Is coming our way………

RC 31-7-15

relaxation imminent

I’ve booked another week off soon. All the staff holidays are in for the rest of the year so I can pick any of the other weeks to use up my time owing. Obviously I’ll have to save some time for The Big Event just before Christmas, but I still have three weeks to play with, so why not take them while the weather is likely to be good?
Only one of my team have children so we don’t have lots of people off in August, so I’m going to take advantage and have a week off. 
I have lots of ideas of how to spend it, but the way the weather’s going this Summer I’ll probably end up stuck indoors watching the wind drive the rain into the windows.

RC 30-7-15

Brass is a gastard

Do you remember that old joke that goes “Why did the lazy gardener water his lawn with whisky? - so the grass would grow half-cut!”?
Well in this age of digital superhighways and genetically engineered supercrops, why hasn’t someone made that come true? 
The more often I seem to get the mower out, the quicker the pissing grass seems to grow. I only cut the bloody stuff ten days ago and now the back garden’s like a jungle.
The first thing I’m doing when we buy this house outright is rip out the sod and the hedges and cover the entire property in gravel.
It might not look as pretty, but it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to keep tidy. 

RC 29-7-15

Surfz Up - the aftermath

I don’t think my body has ever ached as much as it did yesterday morning. Two hours surfing having never done it before in my life had the same effect on my muscles as a day in the gym after years of inactivity. I think the only parts of me that weren’t in absolute agony were my teeth. How can lying on a flat surface and letting a wave do all the work leave you so disabled and riddled with pain? Simply getting out of bed and walking into the bathroom left me exhausted and wanting to go straight back to bed. 
Thank God for ibuprofen and Lucozade.

RC 28-7-15

Surfz Up dudes!!

I may finally have found a sport I can get involved in besides cycling! 
I reached the beach this afternoon with the enthusiasm of a chicken at a fox convention, but by the end of a day they had me ‘riding a board’ as promised. Everyone else had already had a go, and I’d had a few drinks and thought ‘sod it, why not? - anything for a quiet life’ and let them talk me into it.
What a buzz!
I didn’t stand up on the board or any of that clever athletic shit, but I managed to ride a wave in and control it all the way and it was like being a turbo-charged dolphin! What a feeling!
I got lots of high-fives and comments like “you tamed that bitch, bro!” and “stellar control man” and suddenly it was like I was one of them. 
It must have looked funny - a group of chiselled, tanned beach-babes in three-quarter wetsuits, and this pot-bellied white-collar wimp in a pair of cheap shorts and a T-shirt, but I really didn’t care. Adrenaline is a great defeater of embarrassment. 
Every so often I find something I enjoy and I throw myself into it like a madman.
So obviously now I’m going to go online and buy a surfboard, wetsuit, flippers, and a Volvo estate to carry it all in.
And book us a trip to Hawaii.

RC 26-7-15

2015 - The Summer Of Wind

I honestly cannot remember a Spring and Summer that have been so dominated by strong, annoying, God-is-being-a-bastard-to-cyclists wind as they have this year. I took my bike out for a trip this afternoon and it was horrible. I think I ended up two miles behind where I started. Whichever direction I headed in it was like trying to bike uphill in a wind tunnel. My thighs feel like jelly that has set as hard as concrete. That may sound strangely paradoxical to most of you, but will make perfect sense to my fellow cyclists.
Tomorrow we are meeting some chums of Philippas who like surfing. They claim they will have me ’riding a board’ by the end of the day but I think they will be sadly disappointed. Sitting on a bit of polished wood while the power of the tide crashes into me and drives me on towards a stony shoreline is not my idea of Sunday fun… 

RC 25-7-15
2110 BST

My Saturday morning, in 10 words

Rain
Rain
Depression
Rain
Annoyance
Rain
Wind
Rain
Rain
Bollocks

RC 25-7-15

Friday haiku - it's back!

Rained all day today
So it seems Suffolk Summers
Are just like Norfolks

RC 24-7-15

Not the most attractive weather girl I've seen, but..

Apparently we’re in for an above-average August. That’s what I was told by one of our regular customers today. “I know someone at the Met Office and they say the jet stream will move on Monday,” he said, “Temperatures will climb mid-week and stay higher than usual for most of the Summer.”
I think he’s full of shit, but what he had to say was welcome.  

RC 23-7-15

Corn flakes and currants

Every so often you have a moment where you’re hungry and you know EXACTLY the right thing to eat to satisfy you. I have just returned home from a bit of a bike and felt peckish. While showering, I thought ‘crunchy nut corn flakes. That’s what I need’ and I was right.
Isn’t it wonderful to eat breakfast cereal late on a Summer’s evening? It feels somehow subversive and naughty because it should be eaten at breakfast time. But I had toast this morning and I fancied flakes tonight, so the world of conformity can kiss my arse.
There’s a beautiful crescent moon outside the window but a big, black cloud rolling rapidly over the field. I think we might be in for a storm. 

RC 20-7-15

global warming, my arse

Another week with no Summer. I spent most of yesterday with a waterproof jacket on over my workshirt. So much rain fell on Thursday night that we had to sweep the water off the forecourt on Friday morning before we could open. I got the phone call at ten past five and got to the garage at quarter to six. A shitty start to the day but it doesn’t happen often and I least I got to leave off early! It was quite good fun, borrowing a pair of wellies from the supermarket and getting outside with a mac and a broom! I felt like I was doing real, proper, manly work for a change instead of fannying about indoors with a computer and a telephone. Maybe I’ll consider another career change and train to be a plumber or something…
Then I could design better drainage for the garage forecourt.

RC 18-7-15

As thick as two short thickoes

I heard a story today that made me weep for humanity’s future, while simultaneously making me feel much, much better about myself as a person.
There’s a woman who comes in regularly called Heidi. She drives a Peugeot 206 and always buys milk from us rather than the supermarket because she says ‘that bloody stuff over there is always warm.’
She told me today that her son ended up in hospital at the weekend. He was helping a couple of mates dismantle a scrap car so they could sell the metal bits and engine parts (my guess would be so they could spend the money on grass) and they didn’t know what to do with the battery. One of them was convinced that it’s illegal to sell them second-hand, so they thought they’d have to dispose of it somewhere or destroy it. They were worried they’d be charged a fine if they took it to a tip so they tried to get rid of it by throwing it on a bonfire….
I won’t bore you with details but it didn’t end well.

RC 15-7-15

Unexpectedly pleasant

Today was nowhere near as bad as I was fearing it would be. There were no major issues for me to deal with on my return, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me back.

On another note - where the Hell have the first twelve days of July disappeared to?

RC 13-7-15

Tomorrow is going to hurt

I can’t believe I’m going back to work tomorrow. I’ve had such a wonderful break and it’s such a shame it has to be over. 
Still it reminds me how much better off I am now than I was in my last job with the supermarket. Back then I would have been feeling ill about going back even on the first day of my holiday, and the chances were I’d have been going back on a midday to ten p.m shift. At least tomorrow, and every day after, I’m only working 9 to 5. 
I’d still rather stay at home though….

RC 12-7-15

Good life

What a great few days it’s been.
I had a wonderful time with Sophie on Thursday, even though she hassled me about being more helpful with wedding planning. “But Philippa wanted me to keep out of it” I said, to which she replied “Yeah, but I think she’d like you to sound occasionally enthusiastic about it. It’s the biggest day of her life and you’re acting like it’s an inconvenience.”
Yesterday I did a barbecue for me and P and I managed not to burn anything! This is a huge accomplishment for me! It’s also nice that everything we ate and drank cost about a fiver because I pilfered it from the supermarket when it was short-dated and stuck it all in the freezer. Just call me Mr. Thrifty.
Today we are taking a drive to the coast to look at boats and tourists. Tomorrow It’s supposed to rain so we’re gonna hit the cinema to see ‘Jurassic World’ and then we’ll spend the afternoon watching tennis. Wimbledon final. Djokovic/Federer. I’ll have a few cold beers and some crispy snacks and hope it becomes a five-setter.
My money’s on Djokovic in four, but my talent for predicting sports is second only to my talent for actually playing them so I’m not expecting to win any money. 

RC 11-7-15

What happens next?

My first weekday off for ages…. I packed myself a nice lunch, cleaned and oiled my trusted bike, and set off into the Suffolk countryside.
And what happened?
It pissed down like a monsoon and the wind was howling like Winter.
What a complete shitbag.
I came home drenched and forlorn, and had to clean the bike again before I put it in the garage.
Thank God Martina Hingis was playing tennis on the telly or I’d have been angry all afternoon.
It’s got out nice now, so after a play on the drums and a glass of red wine I’m going to have a late evening walk and salvage something from this wash-out of a day.
Here’s hoping for better, brighter things tomorrow.

RC 8-7-15
2030

Now I REALLY need a break..

Why does the last day at work before you take time off always have to be a total bastard?
I had to have a meeting with the store manager yesterday afternoon about ‘opportunities for revenue growth’ and came close to diving out of the window. What a load of corporate box-ticking bullshit. And at short notice too, while I was trying to get things sorted for the rest of the week so I could start winding down for my ‘holiday.‘ Oooh, I was livid. Anyway it’s done now, so I can forget about it. Except that I’m overdue for a ‘performance review’ apparently so I’ve got that to look forward to in the next few weeks. Bosses can never just let you relax and get away, can they? They always have to send you off with some shite in your head to think about while you’re gone. Bastards. 
Right - now I’ve got that off my chest I can hopefully get on with enjoying my few days off! 
Cycling ahoy!

RC 8-7-15

Playing, and planning

Always a great day at Wimbledon, the second Monday.  All sixteen fourth-round matches get played and there’s never a shortage of excitement or shock. I found lots of things to do in the office so I could keep the radio on all day and keep up with the action online. God bless the BBC with their multi-layered coverage. A dozen matches available on their website and enough TV and radio going on to keep you satisfied. And Annabel Croft really does have the sexiest voice in existence. Apart from Garrison Keillor, maybe. That smooth-talking bastard could get me to commit genocide if he asked me the right way. 

In other news, I’m going to take the long drive up to Kings Lynn to see sister Sophie on Thursday. That’ll be nice. Haven’t had a good catch up with her for a while in person. Tamara will be at work so that’s a shame but it does mean Sophie and I can chat properly without our respective partners at the table! Who knows what might come out? Looking forward to it immensely. I can drop my beloved at work on the way up so we’re only using one car and we can have a good chat on the way.  Then I can have a nice lunch with Sophie and be back in time to collect Philippa after work. Marvellous. 

RC 6-7-15

Not one of my most inspired blogs, but..

It was one of those Summer days where it wasn’t really like Summer. Plenty of rain, a bit of a wind, and dull, overcast skies. I was quite glad in a way, it was nice to have a break from the oppressive heat we’ve been plagued by for the past week. Philippa and I had a lie-in and then cooked lunch together while drinking wine. Not an ideal Sunday in July but pretty close. Would have been nice to sit outside, rather than be in the kitchen watching the rain hit the patio, but you can’t have it all. The world must exist in balance, after all. For every beautiful baking Friday you need a soggy stuck-in Sunday or the equilibrium of nature would collapse. That doesn’t make me feel any better when I’m sitting morose on the sofa unable to venture outside, but it’s true.
The saving grace was that it got out beautiful in the evening, so I was able to take the Velociped for a spin after tea. It stayed lovely through until gone eight. That means we’ve had just enough sunshine today for people who work six days a week to get really pissed off. I’m preparing myself for hour upon hour of customers saying “Bloody Hell. I had to work Saturday and it was bloody gorgeous. I had Sunday off and it pissed down. Bloody typical.”
At least I’ve only got to put up with it for two days this week. I’m off from Wednesday to Sunday. Hurrah!

RC 5-7-15

Too hot to ride

For some stupid reason I thought it would be a good idea to get my bike out this afternoon. I was fooled by the way the trees were blowing and I thought there might be a cool breeze. Boy, was I wrong.
I ended up sweating like a horse in a sauna, and I’d only done about three miles. Maybe I’ll have to limit my cycling to days when the temperature is below 25C. Mind you, I don’t like riding in Winter so I’m already limited in how often I can hit the pedals. If I take out hot days I’ll end up only getting air and exercise in Spring and Autumn, and that seems a bit pointless really, doesn’t it?
Yeah, you’re right. I might as well sell the bike and spend the money on a sun-hat.

RC 4-7-15
2205 BST

Can't wait..

I’m having a few days off next week. With Summer holidays approaching, we won’t have a full collection of staff again for another three months or so, so I’m taking a break while I still can. I’m supposed to cover absences myself rather than have to pay someone else to come in, so I’ll be facing the public a lot more in the coming weeks. That will be about as welcome as a cactus in a wetsuit so I’m going to get away for a bit before I have to face the onslaught. 

RC 4-7-15

OMG, it's H!!

Christ, it’s been hot today.
As always with life in Britain, someone has to come up to you and say “Is it hot enough for you?”
I got so bored with facing that question that I started giving unexpected answers, just to see how people would react. Such as…
“No, I’m not really happy until my eyes are melting out of their sockets”
“Well I’m sitting in a pool of my own arse sweat so I guess it’s pretty hot, yeah. Here’s your change…”
“Call this hot, you poof?” 
Actually I didn’t risk the third one, but still…..

RC 2-7-15