New Job Eve!

And so the time has come. I’ve done my last day as a resident-at-one-site-only filling station manager and I now step forth into the realm of responsible-for-four-locations area sub-division supervisor (is it a bad sign that I’ve forgotten my own job title already?)

I actually feel a lot better than I thought I would. Now the change is finally official it means I can stop worrying about what might happen and just get on with the job of dealing with what does. Part of me is a bit disappointed that my employees at the current site didn’t have a whip-round and give me a big ceremony, but it’s not as if I’ll be leaving them. I’m still their boss, they’ll just see me less often, and I imagine they’re overjoyed about that.

Next week will be weird as I’ll be trying to keep my old tasks in hand while travelling around getting the hang of the new stuff, but at least I can start getting the hang of it. Nothing is worse than waiting, I’ve discovered. Anxiety comes from the pauses in between events and the time you have to build up to them, rather than from any occurrences themselves. The fear of doing something is always disproportionate to the pain of actually doing it.

Christ it’s not even Day 1 yet and I’m slipping into Higher Management Wankspeak.

Forgive me, and wish me well.

RC 31-8-18

Sept on the horizon

I’m not so nervous about the imminent job change now. I seem to have reached a point where I’ve been so worried for so long that my ability to process negative thoughts has overloaded itself and crashed. I don’t think I could induce work-related anxiety if I tried.

So now I’m not fretting about job stuff, I’ve gone back to fretting about parenthood.

Please allow me to distract myself with some pointless lists:

My 3 favourite Marvel films: (please bear in mind I haven’t seen all 20…)

1.    Dr Strange

2.    Guardians of the Galaxy

3.    Iron Man 3

My 3 favourite numbers:

1.    No. 8

2.    No. 24

3.    No. 42

(God that was confusing….)

My 3 favourite Sunday Roast meats:

1.    Pork

2.    Silverside (I’m very choosy with my beef cuts)

3.    Turkey

And now – a list of the main items of clothing that one would wear on any given day, ranked in order of importance of the necessity of getting the comfort right:

1.    Socks

2.    Trousers

3.    Coat

4.    Shirt

5.    Pants/boxers/briefs

That hasn’t really worked – I’m still shitting myself about dropping my newborn child on its head…..

RC 30-8-18

The Stressful Nature of Success

I have the Bank Holiday off, but I’m doing some work at home – getting ahead of myself in the battle to have everything close-to-ready before next weekend. I seem to be going through the same sort of internal trauma that Philippa went through earlier this year, when she turned her back on the family business to step forth into the world of local doctor’s surgeries. I seem to remember I found her difficult to live with while she was working through it all, so I imagine she’s finding me quite difficult to live with now, but don’t tell her I admitted that or I’ll feel obliged to try and make it up to her. I also seem to remember I thought of some good advice for her that I wrote up in a couple of blog postings, but I daren’t look at it now because I have a feeling that I’ll realise it was a load of old bollocks and no good to anyone, rather than the earth-splittingly brilliant advice that I remember it to be.

God - nerves are awful. They’re pointless too. I’m getting myself worked up about a change I’m looking forward to. I’m worried about starting a new job, even though it’s the same job I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, just on a slightly bigger scale. The garages are all running smoothly already, it’s not as if I’m tasked with starting them up from scratch and trying to make them profitable. The changes are only being made to save the company some money, so as long as I don’t make any monumental chuff-ups and cost them millions there really isn’t anything that can go wrong.

And yet still, every couple of hours or so, I get a churning feeling in my bowels as if my stomach has dissolved into acid and dropped into my lower intestine, and I have to rush to the loo or risk papping my undies.

I think it’s time for some alcohol….

RC 27-8-19

Never Again

A list of things I would genuinely rather do than ever have to sit through “The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King” again:

Burn my drums.

Push sharpened chopsticks slowly into my pupils.

Be used as a sex toy by all 53 members of last year’s Philadelphia Eagles squad.

Give up solid food for the rest of my life.

Ride a bicycle naked from my home in Suffolk all the way to Edinburgh, with no drinks allowed for the duration, and diverting my way deliberately through every hedge full of nettles I spot in the first 50 miles.

RC 26-8-18

6 days to go

A week today I take over as manager of four garages. DON’T PANIC!!!!!!

It seems strange that it all happens on a Friday, but everything with this company happens on set calendar dates, and the end of the month is the time they like to say goodbye to people. I’ve already had some unhappy responses from my new employees – some of them seem to think I’m a big, bad bastard who has swept in and ousted their previous boss. Nothing could be further from the truth, but try explaining that to a low-intelligence part-timer who is more scared of change than I am of clingfilm. I’m not letting it bother me, I’m just committing myself to being very nice to them all over the next few weeks so they can see I’m not such a bad old stick after all.

That almost makes it sound like I’m stepping forward confidently with a plan of attack. In reality I am absolutely shitting myself and feeling like someone on a luge course who has been pushed over the edge with no safety equipment and no training and is just hoping to somehow get to the bottom without dying.

I’m having doubts, sleepless nights and panic attacks and a big part of me would like to hand in my notice and run away somewhere. But I’m also looking forward to it.

I am, to say the least, weird.

RC 25-8-18

6 months gone

Philippa is really starting to get big now. Obviously I can’t tell her that. I have to say she’s ‘showing’, or ‘blooming’, or ‘blossoming.’ Nothing, in my limited experience, sets a pregnant woman off on an emotional tidal wave quite as much as making her think she’s unattractive. Personally I think she’s never looked better, but try telling her that when she’s knee deep in tissues and wailing about her altering waistline.

RC 24-8-18

Lord of the Flies

Insects are going to take us out, one way or another. It’s an evolutionary biologists dream, and it’s coming true at a garage near you…. Well – near me, at least.

Now the exorbitantly-priced wasp traps are having an effect, another buzzing bastard has flown its way into my workspace. Where there were wasps, now there are flies. Is this how nature works? As soon as one species is moved aside, another swoops in to fill the gap?  After days of yellowjackets polluting my life I now have bluebottles crawling over my food and hovering by my ear. All day long there’s an incessant noise as they whizz past on their way to lay eggs. Miserable little black/green bastards. I’ve done a bit of research today to find out more about them and how best to get rid of them, and the more I read the more I hate them. They mate frequently, they shit every two minutes and they vomit on your food to soften it before sucking it up and ingesting it. They spread germs and harbour bacteria, and pathogens they carry can include typhus, cholera and dysentery.

They’re vile and they’re everywhere, and they’re next on my list…….

RC 23-8-18

Cinematic challenge conclusions

Finally had a chance to sift through my own thoughts and write some little notelets about the OCD-induced Filmfest I went through last week:

Here’s my first thought – The World Of Entertainment Is Running Out Of Original Ideas Or Is Scared To Try New Things. Why do I say this? Because I went to our local multiplex on Friday night and EVERY FILM ON AT THE CINEMA WAS A SEQUEL!!!

Namely - Incredibles 2, MI:Fallout, Hotel Transylvania 3, Mamma Mia 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp.

I’m sure they are all worthy of a watch, but are we approaching a point where each and every new release will have a title that ends with a number?

My second conclusion: People look at you weirdly if you go to watch a film on your own…. Especially on a Friday night.  The ticket sellers look at you as if you might be a rapist. The concessions staff look at you as if you might be about to suck their eyes out of their head with a vacuum pump, and no-one (but no-one) wants to sit next to you in the screening.

And finally I would like to try and answer a question that has been bothering me ever since Philippa dragged me to watch a showing of a film I wasn’t interested in. That question is “Why has ‘The Greatest Showman’ been SO successful?” It’s the second musical film I’ve had to watch in the last month and it made me cringe and want to choke on my own nipple hairs. Yet other people were on their feet, weeping tears of joy, and unashamedly shouting about how many times they’d spent their hard-earned cash to watch the singalong tripefest on screen. WHY????

I think the answer is in the (admittedly admirable) message at the heart of the film – whoever you are, whatever you look like, you are a worthwhile person and you deserve to be as happy as you can be. But it’s layered on SO thick it’s being weighed down by its own optimism. Instead of taking the opportunity of being an inspiring, feelgood movie it drowns itself in oversentimentality and UNBELIEVABLE plotting.

Me being me, I found it very hard not to explode with cynicism and the need to spread my intellectually-aloof realisations. There were lots of young girls dancing around happily and I wanted to stand up and shout “THIS FILM IS GIVING YOU FALSE HOPE!! YOUR LIFE WILL BE MOSTLY PAINFUL AND EVERYONE WILL MOCK YOUR DIFFERENCES NOT APPLAUD THEM!!” But I didn’t. I sat and watched, and felt my soul being crushed into a tiny speck of nothingness that it will probably never evolve from.

The film made me want to vomit until I was dry-retching nothing but air.

It should have been called “The Greatest Shitpile”

RC 22-8-18

Insect obsession?

My hatred for wasps grows deeper….

We’ve had so much hassle with them at work – dive-bombing customers, crawling around the shelves, etc – that I’ve had to invest in some proper traps to attract and then drown them. They’re a very impressive design, I must admit, but they’re ridiculously expensive. They’re also, according to the information you get AFTER they’ve got your money, non-reusable. Once there are a certain number of wasps in them, the chemicals inside lose their potency and it’s recommended that you get a new one. From the same website, obviously. Where it’s £90 for three of them, and you have to order a minimum of three. Money-grabbing bastards.

My goal for the rest of this week is to figure out a way to break them open, empty them, refill them and re-use them. I’m not gonna bankrupt this company just to line another one’s pockets.

RC 21-8-18

Challenge complete

Well – I did it!

14 films in 7 days – half of them previously unseen by Rory eyes; the others old favourites. It got a bit closer to failure than I’d hoped, but Philippa kindly let me go to an evening cinema screening on Friday so I could nail number 14 before midnight.

A couple of things came to my mind during this which I’ve noted down, but I might save those for a separate blog where I review a few of the films and reflect on what happened around them. I’ll do that after I’ve had a bit of time to gather my thoughts and get back into normal-life mode rather than flat-out-viewing/obsessed-by-movies mode.

It’s been a wonderful distraction from work thoughts, that’s the important thing. I’m a week closer to taking over the new position but I haven’t had time to get worried about it. Everything is still on track for the takeover, nothing horrendous has happened at any of the sites; taking my eye off the ball for a few days hasn’t sent it skewing off into a ditch somewhere. So – if I had spent a week fretting and laying awake at nights finding things to think about, instead of losing myself in the world of movies – I would have been stressed out and tired, but nothing bad would have happened, because nothing bad has happened. So worrying would have been a waste of time and an unnecessary build up of negative energy. Instead I feel refreshed, enthused and entertained, and everything is still ok. There’s a lesson to learn here, if I can let myself learn it: Worry is pointless. Nothing bad happens when I stop worrying. So why should I worry? Just take care of the things I can take care of and let the rest take care of itself…. And watch a film in the meantime if I start to feel uneasy.

RC 20-8-18

Karma ?

The wicked world of wasps got its revenge on me for my nasty comments about it the other day. I was helping move a delivery of soft drinks today and a wasp had crept along the bottom of the box. As soon as I grabbed it to pick it up, the little bastard stung me right at the base of my thumb. I now have a throbbing swelling and a very raised level of pissed-off-ishness.

Next time I see a wasp wandering around on the inside of my office window (see Monday’s blog for details,) instead of leaving the window open for it to make its way outside, I’m going to crush the little bastard with a coffee mug.

RC 17-8-18

'Passing' - (a poem)

Rain

Dripping incessantly again

Grey above

A veil of cloud

Where did Summer go?

What happened to 30 degrees?

Sweating like a builder?

Panting

like an out-of-shape panther

Only a week has gone

But the heat has gone too

Replaced by TBW

(Typical British Weather)

Was Summer a dream?

Did I really burn?

It seems so long ago

So distant

An illusion

Will it return?

Unlikely

As likely as John Lennon

returning to Liverpool

Or Einstein

Serving me in McDonalds

Never gonna happen

But what a great tie-in that could be…

…E=MC(Donalds)2

RC 16-8-18

Middle-aged movie musings

Mamma Mia 2 made me want to pull my eyes out and stuff them into my ears so I didn’t have to watch or hear any more of it. And that was after the first 15 minutes…

ABBA must stand for Absolutely, Balls-Bustingly Awful.

RC 15-8-18

Stripey tosser

I hate wasps.

I had one trapped in the office today. I opened the window to let it out and the stupid thing seemed baffled by the simple task of finding which bit of the window was providing access to the outside world. It kept crawling along the pane of glass, but then when it reached the edge and felt the uPVC surround, it would turn round and walk back along the same path it had just been. After about 20 minutes of this painful, tiring slog it finally worked out that it could crawl over the edge and thus found itself near the open part of the window. At which point, instead of heading outside, it flew into the centre of the room, where it buzzed around for a while like a confused pilot, before flying straight back onto the window pane and starting its incessant crawling all over again. I watched it for ages, willing it to see sense and actually learn from what it was doing, but it was still there re-treading the same steps when I left the room to get some lunch.

So I’ve come to this conclusion: wasps are as thick as shit.

RC 14-8-18

Challenge update

I decided to alter my challenge and start it on Saturday rather than Sunday. This meant I could squeeze three in on the first night without having to worry about getting up for work, and then I can do an all-nighter next Friday to finish off if I need to. (Don’t ever think I just chuck this stuff together willy-nilly, there is careful planning involved in everything I do!...)

So despite a busy Saturday of housey things with the missus, I managed to see a Star Wars film while we had our tea, then get in ‘Creed’ on ITV2 (previously unseen) and then a late-night viewing of ‘Midnight Run’, which is still ridiculously funny and moving despite being rather old now. Yesterday I banged out three movies during the course of the day to put me slightly ahead of schedule. Tonight we’re off to the cinema because Philippa is very keen to see ‘Mamma Mia 2.’ Normally I’d rather stab myself in the scrotum with cocktail sticks than see this sort of shite so I’d be persuading her to have a night out with the girls to see this one, but it’s a film I haven’t seen before, so by taking her I get to tick another box on my challenge sheet and gain some ‘good husband’ points at the same time. Everyone’s a winner, baby.

RC 13-8-18

Celluloid Challenge - w/c 12.8.18

In a moment of insomnia-inspired decision-making, I have set myself (as of 3.04am this morning) the task of watching 14 films over the next 7 days. It doesn’t matter when I get them in, so I can watch 4 in one day if I like rather than space it out to 2 every 24 hours, but 7 of them have to be re-visited classics from my ‘All-Time Favourites’ list, while the other 7 have to be movies I have not yet seen.

This is very exciting!

I’ve even planned ahead and chosen my ‘oldies to watch again’ list (completed at 3.51am this morning):

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Midnight Run

Back to the Future

On the Waterfront

The Sting

Woody Allen’s “Bananas”

All The Presidents Men

Any suggestions for ‘newies’ would be welcome…..

RC 11-8-18

Feels almost Autumn...

Do you ever have a week in which you struggle to know what day it is? Well this week I’ve struggled to know what decade it is. Seriously, I’ve been doubting my own sanity and wondering whether I’ve been abducted by aliens and subjected to some horrid experimentation that has left me mentally altered and eternally baffled.

The change in weather hasn’t helped. Yesterday was TWENTY DEGREES cooler than it was two days before. What the Hell kind of country has a climate that can plummet that far that quickly? No wonder I’ve felt as lost as a Muslim polar bear in a Sahara desert church. In a strange way, though, part of me is delighted that it’s gone back to typical British weather. We’re so not used to basking in the high 20s Celsius for weeks at a time, I think it confuses us and messes with our melons, man. Now it’s back to shitty August drizzle and cool winds I feel more at home and all settled again. So it’s an evening of clear-the-head-drumming and losing-myself-in-lager and then sitting down for a late film. I’ve been watching Mark Kermode’s excellent ‘Secrets of Cinema’ series and the latest episode reminded me of that old sci-fi classic ‘Silent Running’. Haven’t seen that since I was about 15 so I’m going to find it and watch it and see if it’s as impressive as I remember it to be.

Then it’ll be some sleeping (possible again now the temperature’s dropped) followed by whatever chores and random-parent-preparation Philippa has dreamt up for the weekend. 

RC 10-8-18

What the Hell?

I’ve been sent some HR files of the members of staff that will be under my control when I take over the extra garages in September (which I’m still refusing to accept is NEXT MONTH.)

One of them is a part-timer who seems to attend work with more reluctance than a haemophiliac attends a knife-sharpening session. We all have days where we loathe the act of getting out of the house for paid employment, but his attitude seems to be that ‘not fancying it’ is enough of a reason to stay away. He has a mark on his record from about a month ago. He turned up a day late for an 8am start, having ignored several phone calls from colleagues and his manager, and then said “Right, sorry, I got confused – Season 5 was released on Fortnite and I sat up all night gaming. Lost track of what day it was….”

Then when he got a bollocking from his boss he complained to the Area Manager saying he had been unfairly treated and that his absence was completely understandable!

Man, I’m going to have a great time with him….

RC 8-8-18

Pluvia and Cyclorrhapha

We have rain!!!

I heard a few pittery-patters on the window, then popped out to find a small covering of dampness upon the path the likes of which we have not seen for ages. So I have actually celebrated by taking my socks off and dancing on the back lawn. Not sure I’ve ever done that before, certainly not while sober. It felt great. I love the Summer and I love the hot weather we’ve been having, but it has been a bit oppressive again this week. Doing absolutely anything is exhausting when the atmosphere is closer than a clingfilm wrapper on a cheap pack of Everyday bacon (currently available for 89p in our BBQ section….) so the relief at getting a bit of rain is immense.

To continue the middle-aged theme of that last sentence, may I just have a little moan about houseflies? I don’t know if it’s the same where you are, but the buzzing blue bastards are everywhere in our house. I’ve tried Raid, a rolled-up newspaper, toxic gel pens that you paint around the edge of your windows, fly paper, swatters and a badminton racquet and I still can’t get on top of them. The kitchen worktop is covered with all the dead ones I’ve massacred this evening and there’s still more in the air than there is on the pile.

I’m going online to find a solution. There’s bound to be a dodgy international website somewhere that will send me something illegal and dangerous that will wipe them all out with one spray….

RC 7-8-18

Week off completed

I assure you it wasn’t my intention to go another week without posting a blog; it just kind of happened. Life conspired against me and then I got lazy. The longer I go between postings the easier it is to not bother, and after Thursday I ended up not bothering. And then I got stuck in a ‘not bothering’ frame of mind and then it was suddenly Monday.

Anyway I’m here now – so here’s a little update:

(these won’t be chronological, I’ll just write them out as I think of them)

I picked up an embarrassing injury on Saturday. It was the coolest day we’d had for a while so I went for a long morning cycle. It was delicious and the countryside was distracting me with its beauty. While not paying attention to the road, my front wheel went in a pothole. I slipped off the seat and caught my gentleman’s gemstones on the crossbar. Jesus, it hurt. It felt like a pain-bomb had exploded in my scrotum and I was scared to look down my shorts in case my sack had burst. It took me a good ten minutes of laying in the hedge before I was able to breathe properly and move my legs without wincing. The ride home was the most uncomfortable journey I’ve ever had. Every tiny little pebble I biked over magnified the throbbing in my groin and I was sweating more from the stomachache than I was from the effort or the heat.

It’s still pretty painful even today.

Thank God Philippa is already pregnant coz I don’t think things will be working down there for months.

Having had about a fortnight of Head Office being up my arse constantly about the job change, they now seem to be ignoring me completely and just leaving me to sort it all out myself. I know I have until the end of the month but I’m well aware of how quickly time has been passing this Summer, so I’m hovering somewhere between a relaxed attitude of confident projection and the blind panic of an imminent deadline. I think I’m ahead of where I need to be, but I’m worried I might be forgetting something obvious that’ll cause me problems further down the line.

Philippa continues to switch moods with the regularity of a broken bus. Mostly she is the happiest I’ve ever seen her, but every so often she explodes with rage or fear or depression or whichever emotion happens to hit the surface quickest. It’s difficult to know what to expect from her, but things are helped by the fact that her cravings for the moment are based around monosodium glutamate, so we’re having a lot of Chinese takeaways and that’s fine with me. We’ve found a lovely new one called Dragon River which is a bit of a drive away, but worth it for their House Special Chow Mein alone.

And that, my friends, is a tidy blog post of 500 words exactly.

RC 6-8-18