Author: Smokehouse

Reports of my demise are greatly exagerated. I can state quite categorically I am in rude health however, this is much more than can be said for my service provider. My internet connection has now been down for a little over a week with my ISP promising to send me me new routers and modems. Sadly this has not happened yet. Normal service will be provided once my ISP get their arse into gear and stop fannying about with my phone line and blaming all and sundry when its their responsibility. Trust me I am alive and kicking!!

For weeks I have been telling everyone that the clocks are going forward this coming Sunday, March 11th. It made sense to me as the UK government is talking about not setting them back again this coming October. Nothing has been set in stone by the government but there is to be a discussion about it and there is a good possibility that they wont. The last time they tried this experiment was between 1969 and 1972. I personally thought it was great as I dont mind either going to work in the dark or coming home in the dark, but not both. Many people were against it and they went back to British Summer Time (BST) and Greenwhich Meantime (GMT). This time ROSPA and the save the planet mob are onto it saying that by moving the clocks forward one hour it will save a lot carbon emissions and it will cut down on road accidents. I have no idea how they came up with this conclusion but they have and it was published in a UK newspaper back in January. With the current Labour party desperate to show its green credentials this seems a goer.

So with a certain spring in my step I have been throwing back the curtains first thing every morning and thinking its not long before I can get into the garden and start tidying up, cutting lawns, hedges and cleaning the cobwebs out of the greenhouse ready to start planting for summer. It wont be dark when I get home and instead of turning on the telly I will put my wellies on and get out there. In fact I have been looking forward to it so much I have been boring the arse off so many of my friends with comments about it. Not even having to make a trip to the dentist, for a really painfull filling, could dampen my spirits over the last couple of weeks.

It was to my utter shock and complete horror that this morning, I received a couple of indignant emails telling that they were not going back at all until March 25th. I looked at the calendar again, a really special one I had been given for Christmas featuring 12 of the most rare and special Fender guitars ever built and there it was. March 11th, daylight saving begins. My mobile phone went and it was a text from the tiler crowing about how hot it was over in OZ and how he was struggling with the heat from his barbie and how he had frostbite on his hands from handling cold bottles of beer. The finishing line was "wish you were here". Green with jealousy I looked at my calendar again and the awful truth hit me. It was an American calendar with American dates in it. It was the wrong calendar………….

I have just come home from another scintilating day as a professional wage slave. If only I saw things like other people do. A close friend of mine is a real regular ray of sunshine. Nothing fazes her and as far as she is concerned the glass is always half full, never half empty. A few months ago a group of us were walking long the beach trying to keep the rain off our heads, the sand storm from stinging our eyeballs and the cold from freezing our genitals off , when up pipes little Miss Sunshine with “oh look at them clouds, arent they pretty”? It was open mouths for the rest of us. A few months earlier when I had been relating as to how the weather was affecting me she said “well never mind you have got work to look forward to in the morning”. I guess it was the sound of my jaw hitting the carpet that caused her to explain that I would seeing all my work colleagues and meeting new people and generally having a high old time and getting paid for it. I had never looked at work like that before and to be truthfull I have never met any one since, well maybe one.

Anyway this prompted me to think about my past working life. I have had numerous jobs from the age of 16 until I was 21 and from then I have been in work continuously with the exception of 6 weeks where I claimed unemployment benefit. All in all over 30 years of almost continuous employment and 36 in total.  I then decided to to try and remember which jobs I had enjoyed. I know some jobs are horrible until you get there and are then in the swing of things, but others just leave you feeling depressed, trapped and a  longing to be anywhere else other than in work. Some jobs have you waking up in a cold sweat about 30 minutes before the alarm goes off, praying that somehow it wont and its all a horrible dream.

In truth I did once have a job I enjoyed. I worked in a printers where I met some really good friends, enjoyed the work immensely and genuinely looked forward to going into work. Of the three other people I worked with I am still in touch with two of them almost 19 years later and they are what i would call good friends. The job lasted two years before we were all split up to go into other departments. I guess the management hated to see any one having a good time and figured it would demoralise the rest of the workforce if they knew a small group were actually happy to be there. I stuck it out another four years before I found something else I could actually do without coming close to a nervous breakdown.

I can think of loads of things I would rather do than work for a living, real important things like check the beer fridge is full, top up the tan, get in the garden, go for long walks and bike rides. Little Miss sunshine has said that she would hate to not be in work, she would be bored. I reckon being bored is a sign of a lack of imagination and the inability to organise time. All in all its a shock to realise that out of the last 30 years 28 of them have been spent in an industrial wilderness and wasteland being in places I did not want to be, doing things I did not want to do for people I didnt really like or care for that much. That last statement may be a tad harsh but its a fact that most of the people, but not all, that I have worked with over the years are not the sort of people I would have gone to the pub with or invited back to my place for a beer or two.

Bearing in mind I have another 15 years to go before I can “officially” retire its time to rethink life and figure how to get the best out of what is left. This will ineviteably mean selling up and leaving these shores for sunnier climes and a much less stressful lifestyle. In short get the hell out of the rat race!

Ok, after more than a few beers, I decided that a blog about a barbecue would just not be enough to interest a lot of readers. So after loads of reminiscing I decided to write about life in general, the highs and lows and the good and the bad and sometimes the downright ugly. For the past few months I have been struggling with SAD (seasonaly affected disorder) and life in general which is always harder for me during the months between mid November and the end of March. Its a shame really because 5 months of out 12 are affected by such mundane things like the weather and the lack of sunshine. Its especially difficult just after Xmas when there is not much to look forward to until the clocks go forward. So as i normally do to cheer myself up I went on a spree of retail therapy and battered my credit card. (This always works until the bills come in!) Bought a new HiFi system, lots of cookery books and a few bits and pieces such as walking boots with the view that it was time to get in shape and the most gentle way would be to go for long walks. It all worked for a while as it usually does…

On Saturday gone my beloved football team lost to our most hated opponents and I started getting texts off my mate. (I will call him the driver cos he is a long distance driver) he has recently moved to another part of the country and I dont see anywere near as much of him as I used to do. This got me thinking about how many of my friends have moved away over the last few years. Its quite a few. My mate the Tiler (yes he is a tiler) has gone to Australia with his family and it would seem he is having a whale of a time out there. The tiler tells me that Australia was made for me with constant barbies, lots of beer and endless sunshine. Another mate left to go the same way a few years ago. Unfortunately I cant emigrate, I am too old!! Anyway after recalling about a dozen or so mates who have left I opened a bottle of red wine and went out into the cold night to watch the my first lunar eclipse. It was fantastic if you like that sort of thing and yes I do. When it was over I rang a taxi and headed onto a club and bumped into some old friends. After more than enough beers I came home. I must have done because I woke up in my own bed, however I paid for it. My hangovers are becoming worse and it was sometime in the afternoon when I woke up.

It was almost dinner time and a frantic session in the kitchen produced a pork shoulder and after eating it was time to head back to bed, nursing a worsening headache. Its true I cant drink like I used to. I am out of practise………. but hello world.