I know, I know, I have been receiving all your complaints... So I have been busy, not had a lot of time to randomly type crap for you people to waste an afternoon reading.
I am sure your hoping for a scintillating review of my ecstatically exciting escapades over the last few weeks but I have bad news - its all pretty damn boring.
Firstly I had to stop working at the car and van rental place for political reasons - the agency employing me and the manager of the rental place fell our over staffing problems (not me) and left me without a job. Handily the rental manager told his new appointed agency (actually his old one, its damned complicated) to employ me so I could continue working for him. They did employ me, but only to find the previous agency had a legal hold on me working for the rental company with any other agency. Due to the good recommendation (see I do work hard) from the rental company guy though I was given an alternative job for a few days whilst they worked out how to employ me at the original place. Confused yet? Well I bloody well am.
Unfortunately for me the alternative work they had for me involved rather a lot more work than a born-to-slack work-shy bum like me is used to. They sent me to a place called Denes Countrywide stores, and told me I would be driving a van delivering store supplies. Denes it turns out would be quite a departure from my norm - I should have guessed when the address they gave me led to literally the square root of nowhere, deep in central Hampshire where people have two heads and eat their young.
I would as promised be driving a van, but also loading and unloading said van, and not to stores either - Denes caters mostly to the equine market, so I would be delivering to stables, studs, and polo yards. Delivering what you ask? Delivering upwards of 60 bags of varied feed or bedding weighing 20-30kgs each. Toss. Perhaps for you -the committed sofa expert- this sounds easy, or maybe your some kind of muscle-Mary sociopath who actively enjoys torturous labour for pennies an hour but for me that's a damned lot - especially when each run usually has 3-7 drop offs and there are time for three runs a day. Talking to one of the other drivers revealed that he reckoned he lifted upwards of nine tonnes a day by the time everything had got off and on his van. Nine tonnes??? I get tired when lifting my f**king fork, let alone one percent of that!
What's that you say? But I get a break driving in between drop offs? Well I enjoy a good drive as much as the next person but how about if you have an over-capacity Mercedes Sprinter LWB high-top van on roads no wider than an iPhone, with occasional lack of tarmac and 25%+ gradients? I know, it just wouldn't be quite right unless the van they gave you also had no discernible handbrake, smelled like a toilet and hadn't been cleaned since the 1800s (deeply impressive, given it was a 2009 van). Also every now and again the ESP and other assorted warning lights all flashed up on the dash, and something under the front sounded completely loose and or broken at every bump in the road.
After just three days I was broken, mind, body and soul - actually stuff the rest of it my spine felt like it had been run over by a tank then put in a blender.
Still its not all bad, the people I worked with were brilliant, they all had the correct amount of appendages and spoke English, albeit with a bit of a farm twang. Another unexpected benefit was the eye candy - stables generally only hire based on looks and dress size it seems, especially the posh ones.
In amongst this chaotic slave labour I also may have accidentally acquired a snowplough with Stevey... Yes a snowplough, attached to a Jeep Grand Cherokee we picked up for parts... Seemed a good idea at the time...
Apologies for the terrible pic, that's the best I got with the plow fitted. It was however an incredible bodge upon bodge, entirely homemade to a standard that made even I -a seasoned bodger of crappy things- could not believe!
Made using the worst welding since Stonehenge was built, out of a couple of old car ramps, some sheet metal, a small electric winch, bull bars off an evidently very rusty Landy Discovery and a couple of trailer wheels. It is now taken apart, we never got to use the plow side of things as the previous owner had removed it and placed it in the boot (how I don't know - it weighed so much I had to take it out in pieces). Anyway the whole chapter is closed, we have already stripped it and weighed it in.
So what else has happened? Well I write this latest missive from a cottage on a hillside in deepest rural Devon, where I am residing on a break with Vicky, her mother and her grandparents. Just a week long break so we will be heading home tomorrow, we were lucky with the weather for the most part with high winds but very little rain. Also lucky as fewer of the locals than expected have been strange backwards mutations.
Wilst on our travels of wildest Devonshire we even came across a little byway and a ford, both of which I have been allowed to venture down in the big lolvo, much to my amusement;
Another side benefit of this little getaway has been a lot of shopping - normally something I loathe but here in Devonshire clothes shopping is also mixed with a fair bit of random tool and outdoorsy items... Including a crossbow!!!
I can only imagine the fun that will ensue from using this £15 80lb crossbow... According to the guy at the weapons collection point (Apparently they won't just let you walk out with these things) it will go through a bale of hay! :):):) Happy days!
I was all set to try it out here before getting home -you know, get my monies worth and such- but Vicky took it away and said I am banned until I get home. Boo :(.
I will let you know how it goes... or if i don't then you'll know why.
I am sure your hoping for a scintillating review of my ecstatically exciting escapades over the last few weeks but I have bad news - its all pretty damn boring.
Firstly I had to stop working at the car and van rental place for political reasons - the agency employing me and the manager of the rental place fell our over staffing problems (not me) and left me without a job. Handily the rental manager told his new appointed agency (actually his old one, its damned complicated) to employ me so I could continue working for him. They did employ me, but only to find the previous agency had a legal hold on me working for the rental company with any other agency. Due to the good recommendation (see I do work hard) from the rental company guy though I was given an alternative job for a few days whilst they worked out how to employ me at the original place. Confused yet? Well I bloody well am.
Unfortunately for me the alternative work they had for me involved rather a lot more work than a born-to-slack work-shy bum like me is used to. They sent me to a place called Denes Countrywide stores, and told me I would be driving a van delivering store supplies. Denes it turns out would be quite a departure from my norm - I should have guessed when the address they gave me led to literally the square root of nowhere, deep in central Hampshire where people have two heads and eat their young.
I would as promised be driving a van, but also loading and unloading said van, and not to stores either - Denes caters mostly to the equine market, so I would be delivering to stables, studs, and polo yards. Delivering what you ask? Delivering upwards of 60 bags of varied feed or bedding weighing 20-30kgs each. Toss. Perhaps for you -the committed sofa expert- this sounds easy, or maybe your some kind of muscle-Mary sociopath who actively enjoys torturous labour for pennies an hour but for me that's a damned lot - especially when each run usually has 3-7 drop offs and there are time for three runs a day. Talking to one of the other drivers revealed that he reckoned he lifted upwards of nine tonnes a day by the time everything had got off and on his van. Nine tonnes??? I get tired when lifting my f**king fork, let alone one percent of that!
What's that you say? But I get a break driving in between drop offs? Well I enjoy a good drive as much as the next person but how about if you have an over-capacity Mercedes Sprinter LWB high-top van on roads no wider than an iPhone, with occasional lack of tarmac and 25%+ gradients? I know, it just wouldn't be quite right unless the van they gave you also had no discernible handbrake, smelled like a toilet and hadn't been cleaned since the 1800s (deeply impressive, given it was a 2009 van). Also every now and again the ESP and other assorted warning lights all flashed up on the dash, and something under the front sounded completely loose and or broken at every bump in the road.
After just three days I was broken, mind, body and soul - actually stuff the rest of it my spine felt like it had been run over by a tank then put in a blender.
Still its not all bad, the people I worked with were brilliant, they all had the correct amount of appendages and spoke English, albeit with a bit of a farm twang. Another unexpected benefit was the eye candy - stables generally only hire based on looks and dress size it seems, especially the posh ones.
In amongst this chaotic slave labour I also may have accidentally acquired a snowplough with Stevey... Yes a snowplough, attached to a Jeep Grand Cherokee we picked up for parts... Seemed a good idea at the time...
Apologies for the terrible pic, that's the best I got with the plow fitted. It was however an incredible bodge upon bodge, entirely homemade to a standard that made even I -a seasoned bodger of crappy things- could not believe!
Made using the worst welding since Stonehenge was built, out of a couple of old car ramps, some sheet metal, a small electric winch, bull bars off an evidently very rusty Landy Discovery and a couple of trailer wheels. It is now taken apart, we never got to use the plow side of things as the previous owner had removed it and placed it in the boot (how I don't know - it weighed so much I had to take it out in pieces). Anyway the whole chapter is closed, we have already stripped it and weighed it in.
So what else has happened? Well I write this latest missive from a cottage on a hillside in deepest rural Devon, where I am residing on a break with Vicky, her mother and her grandparents. Just a week long break so we will be heading home tomorrow, we were lucky with the weather for the most part with high winds but very little rain. Also lucky as fewer of the locals than expected have been strange backwards mutations.
Wilst on our travels of wildest Devonshire we even came across a little byway and a ford, both of which I have been allowed to venture down in the big lolvo, much to my amusement;
Another side benefit of this little getaway has been a lot of shopping - normally something I loathe but here in Devonshire clothes shopping is also mixed with a fair bit of random tool and outdoorsy items... Including a crossbow!!!
I can only imagine the fun that will ensue from using this £15 80lb crossbow... According to the guy at the weapons collection point (Apparently they won't just let you walk out with these things) it will go through a bale of hay! :):):) Happy days!
I was all set to try it out here before getting home -you know, get my monies worth and such- but Vicky took it away and said I am banned until I get home. Boo :(.
I will let you know how it goes... or if i don't then you'll know why.
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