May Eve

Philippa called my bluff and dragged me down the beach tonight, to see if I would dive into the waves or not. (SPOILER ALERT – I didn’t.)
There were lots of people walking dogs, but not much athletic activity going on. I thought we might see runners, surfers and swimmers but it was mostly old couples enjoying a walk, and a few groups of middle-aged women gathering and gossiping in that way that middle-aged women do.

To be fair to myself, and others, today hasn’t exactly been warm and sunny enough to warrant a head-first plunge into the North Sea. Having said that, we had a beautiful sunset as we drove home this evening. It’s been a hard week of work, and it’s been far too cold for the end of April, but I do find myself feeling as if we’re on the cusp of Spring and all things (even virus related) are steadily improving…..

RC 30-4-21

 

Subtext and Submerging

Most of my blogs this week seem to be a recanting of what I’d written the day before, but I must start today by saying that I hope my musings from yesterday didn’t give you the impression that I regret changing my job this year. I don’t. My situation now is infinitely better than it was just two months ago, when I languished painfully in a pit of repetitive firefighting and corporate unappreciatedness. Sometimes I struggle, sure, but most of my days are spent in an enjoyable bubble of learning, problem-solving and customer interaction. Most of those exchanges are happening virtually, but it’s still a nice way to pass the time, especially in comparison to what the last few years have held.

To go back even further (well – to Tuesday), I’m seriously considering swimming in the sea tomorrow after work. I know it’s not exactly Summer weather yet, and I know the water temperature will basically be the same as it was in January, but I’ve had this strange urge growing in me over the past 24 hours or so (probably since listening to that radio show on Tuesday) and I may just have to give in to it. I keep thinking that I might enjoy the warmer water in July and August more if I’ve suffered a little through the cold days of a British Spring, and there’s just this over-riding internal need to manage to do it before the end of April.
I know a few people who have been regularly plunging over the Winter, and they say its amazing how your body gets used to it, and its amazing how much it improves your mental health. They did suggest that I should train myself a little by taking some cold showers at home, so my body could get used to the ‘shock response’ from the cold, but I’ve always been an all-or-nothing ‘Sod It!’ kind of guy so I might just jump in and see what happens…

RC 29-4-21

Dunking and Doubting

Yesterday’s blog got hijacked by a phone call that I really couldn’t avoid answering. There was a point to the whole ‘cold water swimming’ line of thinking, but I forgot it completely while talking on the phone. I tried to find it again somewhere in my subconscious throughout last night, but it’s gone. So yesterday’s blog will have to remain as a scant, unfinished little nugget of incomplete wisdom; a snippet of Roryhood, if you will.

Work has been hard. Taxing. I still feel as if I need months of mentoring but things are so busy now that I just have to get on with the job and try to find my feet as I go. I’m stumbling along like a blind man in a changing maze but I’m doing my best and every so often something happens that makes me feel like I might eventually be a success at this.
In down moments, I find myself foolishly looking back to my previous employment with a longing sense of wistfulness, which is ludicrous because I couldn’t stand being there towards the end. But at least, I tell myself, I had been there for a few years so I knew what I was doing with the basics, so most of what I did was routine to me, and anytime something unusual happened I was well equipped to deal with it, whereas now I am drowning in unfamiliar waters.
One has to wonder, in those moments, why I went from an ultra-busy supermarket environment to an ultra-busy holiday centre, rather than finding something simple, calm and relaxing.

RC 28-4-21

Wet and wild and weird

I spent my lunch break today listening to an interesting radio programme about ‘cold water swimming’. It was more to do with the long-term mental health benefits, rather than the fitness aspect of the exercise. It was quite inspiring, but not in a way that makes me want to rush down to the beach and plunge into the waves.

RC 27-4-21

I am nothing if not inconsistent in my musings

I promise I won’t mention this again before the end of the month, as it is a well-worn path and a boring thing to revisit, but April seems to have pissed by alarmingly quickly. I wonder whether it’s the partial lifting of restrictions that has occurred – as we’re able to do more and go more places and see more people, the days are not dragging so much. Mind you, I remember commenting on the fact that the Winter months seemed to be disappearing at a phenomenal speed, despite the psychological effects of lockdown, so it might be wrong of me to now be sitting on the other side of the argument. I can’t say one thing in March and then say something that contradicts it completely in April, can I?
Yes, I can. It’s my blog and I can do what the Hell I like with it. So there.

I am, I must confess, a bit concerned about my new-job-caused lack-of-regular blogging. There have been several gaps in the April posting calendar and I am facing the very real prospect of breaking my long run of consecutive months containing 20+ blog postings.
How long a run is that you ask?
I’ve just checked, and the last time I didn’t post at least 20 times in a calendar month was December 2019. That’s 15 consecutive months. So it wasn’t as long a run as I had thought.
So I’ll shut up about it now and go and make a cup of nettle tea.

RC 25-4-21

No wonder people believe in God

A gorgeous sunset. That is my over-riding highlight of today. A beautiful, ceramic, cyan, heart-lifting sky of ultimate beauty. A still, cloudless, sky-bound palette of staggeringly beautiful simplicity. Spring at its grandest. Nature at its most grandeur. Suffolk at its purest and most potent. I sat outside as the light started to fade and I felt at one with the planet; at once insignificant and yet also connected to all. I am nothing without the Universe and the Universe is nothing without me. A long, dark, locked-down Winter of desperate despair fell away before the might of an onsetting Spring. Birdsong, swaying rapeseed and the smell of cut grass assaulting my senses with a dizzying balm of wonderment.

Yes, I’ve been drinking, in case you weren’t sure.

RC 24-4-21

Onslaught

It’s tempting to say that I have been lazy and simply not bothered blogging, but the truth is I have been incredibly busy at work, and as I’m still new and still finding my feet it means everything takes a long time and so busy hours seem busier than they would if it was a job I was used to. If you see what I mean….

It’s fair to say that the ‘staycation’ industry is booming. We are fully booked for the entire 2021 season, we have waiting lists of people hoping to snatch a holiday if someone cancels, and we’re still getting dozens of calls a day asking if we have anything available anytime at all; not to mention the hundreds of online enquiries.

It’s exhausting.

We barely have time to deal with the people onsite at the moment, because we’re swamped by questions from potential customers. Some guy in Nottingham even offered to pay us four times the usual costs, and allow me to spend a night with his wife, if we could only see fit to let them use one of our caravans for two weeks in August. He got very disturbed and very angry when I refused to dump some family from their Summer holiday just because he made us a better offer (in his opinion).

Are people really that desperate for a break away from their own homes? I suppose it’s been different for us as we live in a lovely little cottage in the middle of farmland, so ‘lockdown’ for us has been a quiet time surrounded by Nature. Maybe if I lived with three generations of my family in a two-roomed apartment in the middle of a built-up City, the last 12 months may have been a lot harder, and I too may have been giving out sexual favours for the chance of a weekend away.

RC 22-4-21

Culinary Chesworth Cornucopia

We have just had a rather splendiferous barbecue in the garden. I know I’m going very early and very regular with the cooking-and-eating outdoors malarkey, but I’m determined to enjoy every second I’m allowed to be in the open air this year, and with our ridiculous climate you just don’t know how many (if any) Summer days we’ll have over the next six months or so before we plunge back into the seemingly never-ending Hell of another Winter. So even if it’s barely in double figures and overcast, I’m going to fire up the old Chesworth Barbie and burn a few sausages and drumsticks.
To accompany the meat tonight, I made a rather enjoyable cold pasta salad. Iceberg lettuce, sweetcorn, mushrooms, peppers and cucumber tossed in with some olive oil and some dried mint, and mixed together with some pre-cooked fusilli pasta (which I had boiled in some weak vegetable stock, for a bit of extra flavour) then left in the fridge to chill.
Delicious, and a great way to start the weekend.
Even though I don’t get a weekend, really, as I’m back at work tomorrow.
But you see what I mean.

RC 16-4-21

Bright Blue Skies

I’ve cheered up a lot today. Maybe because the weather has been more Spring-like (my mood always lifts when the cloud cover buggers off for a while) and maybe because I slept really well last night.  No son-related disturbances, no insomnia-caused spells of wakefulness. Just a relaxed, quiet, contented seven-or-so hours of blissful sleep, interrupted only by a weird dream in which Nathan (my sister Hannah’s beau) was cleaning our windows with a sponge, dressed in his full vicar’s regalia, and fell off the ladder, landing on my car and breaking both he and it.

Workwise, I still feel like a fish out of water. I’m slowly learning what I need to learn, and I’m enjoying the process immensely, but it does sometimes feel like I’m climbing uphill through a pool full of wet sand while carrying a backpack full of Pepsi. Possibly with my feet tied together. For every moment where I think I’ve done something well, there are a dozen where I think I’ve done something incredibly daft or naïve. But I suppose that’s the nature of a new job, isn’t it? Takes a while to learn enough to feel comfortable, and while you wait to reach that point, you’re always going to feel a bit lost and indecisive and unsure of yourself. That means you’re constantly on edge and unrelaxed in case you make a mistake, and that is really tiring, mentally.

Maybe that’s why I slept so well last night….

RC 15-4-21

Back to my pessimistic self

Judging by the behaviour I’ve been seeing among most of my fellow Suffolk residents so far this week, I reckon it’ll be mid-May at the latest before we’re back up to 30,000 new cases of Covid per day and facing the fun of another lockdown.

People are congregating in groups, they’re not wearing masks, they’re not using hand sanitiser, they’re hugging, they’re nipping into each other’s houses. It’s like Covid has suddenly and miraculously become a minor inconvenience rather than a major pandemic that has crippled the world. I know I sound like a moody old bastard and I keep harping on about the same old things, but I’m enjoying the prospect of a Spring and Summer where I get to regularly see all my family and friends and I don’t want that scuppered by other people who are too stupid or too selfish to be careful.

RC 14-4-21

Ten(et)sion

Today, out of nowhere, Philippa brought up the topic of “A Second Child”.
I don’t want to write about it here, just as I didn’t want to talk about it earlier, so instead I shall give you my reaction to the Christopher Nolan film “TENET” which I watched at the weekend.
Back in the early 2010s, when the thought of a pandemic hitting our country was as distant as the thought of Halley’s Comet returning, I spent an enjoyable afternoon watching “Inception”. I remember thinking at the time – “Wow! Imagine if Mr Nolan ever made a Bond film! Wouldn’t that be incredible??”
Watching TENET as it slowly and painfully unwound itself across my viewing screen, the over-riding realisation was – “Okay. This absolutely IS Christopher Nolan trying to make a Bond film”. Unfortunately, I have to say, in my opinion, he didn’t make it very well.  His previous films have been so absorbing because they’ve been very, very clever. They’re all action films – granted – but they’re not meaningless beat-em-up CGI fests. There’s a good story with enjoyable characters. You get swept up in the action and enjoy it all the more because your brain has been stimulated by the intelligent concepts and writing.
But TENET just tries to be too clever for its own good. It doesn’t establish ground rules and then invite you along for the ride (as both ‘Inception’ and ‘Memento’ did), it baffles you with pseudoscience and twists its own version of reality to fit the direction they want it to go. The plot gets sunk by the confusing nature of the ‘time travel that isn’t really time travel’ stuff and consequently I couldn’t give a shit about the ‘tense’ ending and whether or not everyone survived. I also got shivers at the end when I realised – and I’m not giving anything away by saying this – that it was being set up as a possible series of movies. The last thing my future life needs is a TENET franchise that goes on for a decade or longer. Inception, I think, had scope for some interesting sequels, but this thing seems like it was a struggle to stretch it to ONE film.
Anyway – what do I know? Maybe other people enjoyed it immensely.
Now I must go and apologise to my wife for cutting her off while she was in mid-flow about babies on the excuse of needing a shower…..

RC 13-4-21

And so, a new phase begins

Well, isn’t it exciting to think that I can rush out of the house and go into ANY NON-ESSENTIAL SHOP I like and start buying away to my hearts content?

Actually, I don’t think it will make any difference to me, but it’s nice to know things are still moving along as planned, and that the re-opening of schools last month didn’t lead to an avalanche of new cases and a re-think of the ‘Life After Lockdown’ plan (or whatever it’s called).

I’m actually looking forward to having people bore me to death with tales of things they’ve bought and ‘guess who I saw in the pub last night?’ because it will make a welcome change from hearing people’s views on viruses and vaccines, and hearing them compare notes on which ITV drama is better than which Netflix documentary, and whether Disney+ is a sound long-term expense, or only worth paying for a month while you watch ‘WandaVision’.

I think I’ve been making the best of it while we’ve been in Lockdown Hell, but now it looks like it’s ending, I’m realising just how bored I’ve been at times and how much I’ve missed hearing mundane mutterings from people who have social lives, not social distancing.

And here I am wittering on about the bloody CorongaVirus when we’re all trying to move on with our lives and move on from it. I apologise, and I promise not to mention it tomorrow.

RC 12-4-21

Apprehension

It feels weird to say this, but I’m rather nervous about the fact that the next phase of lockdown-easing starts tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great that The Great Government RoadMap To Normality is going to plan – but it’s also another big change to the way we live our daily lives, and the fact that it’s a change back to old ways, rather than a change into something new and worrying, doesn’t seem to help. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. We’ve got used to being told to stay in and to not do anything social and to keep away from everyone, and now restrictions are being lifted and there’s more emphasis on individual responsibilities, rather than understandably-Draconian rules being forced on us from above. And maybe that’s what’s troubling me. If we’ve learned nothing else from this whole year-long Ride on The CoronaCoaster, we’ve learned that most of the General Public are Absolutely Shit at controlling themselves and thinking of the safety of others and helping to stop the spread and doing what the experts advise them to do. I hate to sound negative and cynical and snobbish and aloof, but the reality of the past 12 months is that we ended up in a far worse situation than we needed to because people simply didn’t follow instructions. And so, maybe, my fear is that this will happen all over again, and next thing you know we’ll be plunged into Lockdown 4.
I hope I’m proved wrong.
It also feels a bit weird to be opening up like a flower while most of Europe seems to be in the grip of rising Covid cases and shutting down again, but I guess the point there is that they are miles behind us when it comes to vaccinations, and so the Continental Third Wave shouldn’t crash too harshly over Britain because most of our vulnerable people are jabbed up, and therefore enjoying at least partial, if not perfect, protection.
I guess all we can do is wait and see. And not rush headlong into our old way of life. And step forward cautiously the way we’re supposed to. And follow the current guidance rather than act as if everything is all right now. And get the vaccine when it’s offered. And keep wearing masks. And wash our hands 90 times a day.
And so on.
And so forth.

RC 11-4-21

Tomorrow, I start on Sats

Today is the Eve of what will be the First of Many (I suspect) Saturdays that I spend a long day working at a Caravan Park.
Did that sentence make sense?
I’m quite looking forward to it. I’ve been used to working weekends in the past, and this should be a lot more enjoyable than dragging myself into a busy supermarket or dealing with complaining fuel-buyers. I also prefer working Saturdays than Sundays, so that’s a bonus as well. On Sunday, I’m taking Philippa and Mathew in to use the swimming pool! Gavin said we get free use of anything on the site, and it makes sense to have the pool to ourselves for a day before the hordes of residents and holidaymakers start descending on us in their droves. It means I’ll be onsite for a lot of days in a row, but again, it doesn’t feel like a place of work, it feels like a family home that happens to be in the grounds of a picturesque, pretty vacation park. Also, Sunday is purely for pleasure. We get to play in the pool, and I get to show Mathew off to some of the other employees who have been desperate to coo over him and to meet his mum (who also happens to be my wife). Plus – I’ve always loved swimming regularly, and with the old job it wasn’t so easy, and all public pools have been closed for most of the Winter, so I haven’t been getting that usual exercise, so this is needed physically, and is also really exciting.

RC 9-4-21

Trope

How is it April 8^th already?

Yet again, Life is proving to me that the time of year I most enjoy is the one that will fly by most quickly.

Maybe it’s my fault. I expect this to happen and so it does. Time is just doing what Time does; it’s my perception of its passing that alters as the months progress.

Anyway, one has covered this topic on a frequent basis and I imagine we’re all bored of it now, so let’s discuss other things.

 

Work is very busy, and I still feel as if I am learning the basics, so the reality of the position is sinking in and the stress levels are starting to rise. Again – it’s my perception and my reactions that are causing this, rather than anything specific to the job. But there’s lots happening, and we’re still all getting used to a new management structure and divvying out who is responsible for what exactly, so even the guys and gals with experience are finding it unusually unusual.

Basically, it’s all hands to the pumps and all noses to the grindstone as we get ready to start receiving our first visitors of 2021. Our ‘permanent’ residents will start drifting back in from Monday, and we’re allowed to have ‘same household’ bubbles visit for ‘self-contained’ holidays. This means we’ve had to adapt some of our services, sites and provisions to make sure we meet all the regulations and guidance while being allowed to accommodate people, which has been hard for me, because I didn’t even know the old system, so I don’t even know what we’re adapting. But that’s been helping in a way (Gavin says) because it means I’ve given it all a fresh eye and made some good suggestions, rather than being weighed down by previous experience and a certain, entrenched way of doing things. Which is (Gavin says) exactly why I was hired.

 

By the way – 2500-ish blogs posted over 14 years, and I think today was the first time I’ve used the phrase “Divvying up” on this blogsite.

Marvellous.

RC 8-4-21

April Is Messed Up

At different parts of today, we have had some hail, some snow, blue skies, black clouds and rainfall. The wind was so strong and so cold that it was hard to breathe while walking outside, but if you found shelter from it you could feel the warmth of the Sun. Now we have a lovely sunset but it's still bitterly cold, so it looks like Mid-Summer but feels like Mid-January.

I know climate change will inevitably mix up our seasons, but do we have to experience all four of them in the space of ten hours???

RC 6-4-21

The joys of an outside reunion

I am not ashamed to say that I had tears in my eyes when I first saw Ted and Beryl today. They are, to all intents and purposes, my relatives and it has been too long since I have been in their company. It felt like coming home after a long spell away. They both look so well. When we’ve had a few Zoom chats with them I was worrying about Ted looking old and haggard, but I think we can blame the internet and the lack of a decent webcam because I saw him in the flesh today and I can’t remember him looking this healthy in years.
Beryl, being Beryl, had baked enough cakes, biscuits and buns to keep the whole of Suffolk going until Hallowe’en. I’m not entirely sure whether we broke the law by eating them, as it’s hard to be motivated enough to check the government website for guidance when someone is holding a fruit scone with whipped cream and strawberry jam under your nose.
Needless to say, I left weighing two stones heavier than I was when we arrived.
Thankfully I have tomorrow off work so I can recover, then it’s all noses to the grindstone on Tuesday as we start to gear up for actual people actually arriving to actually use our caravans! Shit’s about to get real, baby!!!!

RC 4-4-21

Dull but not disheartened

Greetings, glad tidings, and the best of Easter wishes one and all.

I was planning to report on a visit to Ted and Beryl’s abode today, but we decided to postpone it until tomorrow, as the weather is due to be nicer, warmer and more conducive to sitting outside (and therefore abiding by the ongoing and current Covid regulations).

Beryl has bought in loads of mini chocolate eggs ‘so Mathew can do an Easter Egg Hunt in the garden’ even though Mathew is too young to understand the concept, and even though we try to be very limiting with him when it comes to sugary intake. Don’t call us killjoys – there are studies that show children’s teeth can be affected even before they’re fully through the gums, and he’ll have many, many years of being spoiled rotten with sweet stuff, we don’t see the need in rushing him into the world of confectionery before he’s barely able to pronounce it.

Anyway, that’s by the by. The point is, we’re there tomorrow instead of today, so today was an unexpectedly quiet and uncluttered time of relaxation, playing and watching the same childish videos over and over again because they make my son laugh even on the eleventh consecutive time of watching. And when he laughs, I am happy.

Tonight we ate more pizza than is probably healthy, and I am now about to settle down to watch a film called “The Mauritanian” about which I hear good things.

RC 3-4-21