Two days off

 

Tuesday February 22 2022 -

I got in from work at a quarter to ten in the morning because of flooding on the roads and other weather related shit. 

I had a sleep for about forty-five minutes from 11:45am to 12:30.

I came up with some ukulele music that I sent to fellow FAWM songwriting challenger Casey. We watched two episodes of Reacher on Amazon Prime, and an episode of Gogglebox from the past Friday. 

In the evening I noticed a phone call that I missed from work, and after listening to a voicemail they left I’m now worrying about calling them back.

I missed something on Friday night at work, because I didn’t do my job properly. 

I need to get another job soon, because everything is making me worse at the job.  However, I’m worried that I will then get a bad reference or no reference at all to be more honest, as employers can’t give a negative reference nowadays. 

I’m not looking forward to ringing them back to explain that, as explained in an earlier post, I decided to not get out at certain points because of the weather. What would people working in an office for up to eight hours a day know about our minimum of twelve and half hour shifts in the elements know about what we have to do?  The worst they would have is RSI perhaps? The manager works less than two hours a day when he shows up, and his Personal Assistant works for eight hours.  They have lives outside of work, even on days when they actually work. 

Wayne, the person who laughingly has the job title Operations Manager works from 5:30am to 4:30pm on Monday to Friday, and moans if we ring him when he’s not at work… He gets a life outside of work, with every single weekend off, and frequently has days off in the week as well.  On a Monday morning after his weekends off he moans about shit that’s happened over the weekend at home for him, not particularly caring about anything that’s happened over the weekend with work. 

I was in bed for half past eight in the evening. I kept dropping off while trying to do stuff on the Amazon Fire tablet in bed.

The work-life balance has messed me up. I can’t do much of anything anymore. 

In the evening I decided to go for milk from a local general store that I hadn’t been to in probably thirty years, back in ‘91 before me and Louise were dating, and I was in a relationship with someone else who lived in that area.

Between us and that store is an allotment, which has an alley way that goes around it, that is at the end of our street.

It’s me exploring the area that we live in, and online it says that the shop is open until 7pm.

It was already closed when I got there at five to six, which meant walking around to the further general store that I’ve been to recently anyway. It’s just further essentially.

Wednesday February 23 2022 -

Wednesday I woke up at 7am, getting myself some breakfast cereal, and getting both me and Louise a drink. Louise can’t eat as soon as she wakes up. 

We’ve got to go to Newark to fetch some bits that we left with a neighbour back when we moved in November. 

Warning on the radio news telling us that roads were closed for flooding for the route there. Let’s see how we do! 

While Louise was getting ready I continued work on a piece of music I had started on the previous week, that was to be a part of a challenge.

A couple of hours later Louise tapped me on the shoulder to say she was ready, at which point I closed the computer down without forgetting to save all of the work that I had done. 

We left to make our way to Newark to pick up some bits that were left at our ex-neighbour’s, having to go by diversions because of flooding around the Newark area.

We eventually got there for around 2pm, sorted the stuff out, put it in the car, and then met with Louise’s friend Jane, who was working at the Barnardo’s charity shop near to Asda.

We then had a coffee each and a sub at subway, and I bought a coffee there for a homeless man who was outside of Asda. 

I had a haircut in Newark as well, once again at the barbershop that was the children’s library that I went to as a kid.

Memories of the times when I was at that library made me smile, where I would be sat reading books that ranged from The Cat In The Hat by Dr Seuss to The Turbulent Term Of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp. 

I miss those days of just losing myself in a book, and I miss the ability to read for long periods of time that are longer than ten to fifteen minutes. 

The only time available for reading now or anything is in the times where we’re getting easy to go out, and I do stuff while Louise is doing those bits, or when she is cooking, etc.

Being out for around fifteen plus hours a day five days a week means that you have no time available.

After the haircut we made our way to the car and came back home, stopping off at Aldi on the way for a seafood selection, so that Louise could make her delicious Seafood Pasta.

While Louise was doing that I got on with the long job of re-recording what I had done earlier, mixing it, and then forwarding the file on for the person following me in the challenge to create a full piece made from five parts created by different people to make up a whole, with each person only having the final ten seconds of the previous creator’s section to base their part on. 

It’s called a corpse because it’s made of different parts like Frankenstein’s monster. 

We started to watch some more of Reacher on Amazon Plus, as well as a few episodes of Friends. I’m relatively new to that show, as opposed to Louise. 

A little before 11pm I started preparing the office previously known as the back bedroom so that I could record an episode of Pods Like Us with Jeff and Jason from Our Cynic Culture, sad that their third host Matt couldn’t make it. 

I said that Matt could always come on another time for a separate episode.

As a change I set up my SM-58 microphone through my four-track recorder, which was connected to my laptop by the Behringer U-Phono interface, and allowed me have more control of the microphone volume than my USB microphone. 

I find that so was able to have a higher volume with less background noise coming through, as the 58 is a dynamic close-quarters based microphone that you have to be almost touching with your mouth to be heard.

I was also able to hear myself for the first time ever on a show that I’ve recorded or been a part of! Up until this time I had headphones on unable to hear anything from myself. I could have been saying nothing at all and I wouldn’t know. 

The chat seemed to be very quick in comparison to other shows, but it didn’t seem as though I had rushed it. It actually seemed as though we had gone through without any problems or slow moments. I think we have a great show to put out there, and I look forward to hopefully having a separate show with Matt at some point. 

After the show fined at around twenty past twelve, fifty minutes after starting the show, I got myself and Louise another drink, and joined her in bed. 

We chatted, enjoyed our drinks, and somehow didn’t switch the light out for sleep until around 3am.  I have no idea how I had stayed awake until then, considering that I had woken up at 7am.

I had a fun day in Newark with my love. I just wished that the next five days would see us with little more than half an hour or little more each day together. A wish that could not be possibly anymore because of the move.