Time Off Part 1 - Day One

 

Tuesday July 25 2023 -

I was lucky enough to get a lift home from my work colleague Mark, who said on the way “bloody hell, you live a long way away.”

He did well to get me home just after 8am. 

If not for him, then I would have had a long 26 mile walk from work. 

I got ready and went straight to bed. Asleep before 9am is a rarity, and that was the only piece of  positivity for the day. 

We were supposed to be visiting our late friend Andy’s grave today, for what would have been his 55th birthday, but I didn’t wake up until 3pm, having not set an alarm. 

I felt bad about that, because it meant that no one had visited for his birthday. 

He died of pneumonia earlier this year, and it shook both myself and Louise when it happened, and it has continued to do so ever since.

Having the car stuck in the garage, as well as no money, meant that I was on a downer. So many people chasing me for money, including the podcast distributors who haven’t been paid yet either. I love how people remind you that you owe them money, even when you’ve already made an agreement of when to pay.

It went from bad to worse when I received an email at 6pm from the garage to tell me that the work needed on the car would cost just shy of £1400, thanks in part to people at work trying to move my car to free the brake drum from the back wheel, which has destroyed the tyre, and damaged the rear axle. As opposed to just leaving it until breakdown transported it to the garage. Will they accept responsibility? Probably not! 

There are so many things going around in my head at the moment…

Originally I had handed in a resignation letter where the Monday night shift would have been my last for them, but that job opportunity fell through due to misinformation issues. That would have been a job where I would have cycled to, so a car wouldn’t have been a necessity.

That is the biggest problem - I need the car for travelling to and from work, because around thirteen hours a night driving a work van around would be dangerous with a four hour round trip on the bus. Static security is easier because they nap at work if they get tired, but you can’t do that behind the wheel of a van, when you’re working constantly (for a shit hourly rate). 

So much for my original plan for this blogpost to be positive all of the time.

It’s one of those rock and a hard place situations… With inflation being what it is, buying a cheap runabout as a replacement would be more expensive these days, and even then I don’t have the money. Even when I get my fortnightly pay this Friday, that won’t be anywhere near that amount of money.

I wanted to get away of the grind of being out for around 75 hours for work including travel. If that was changed to using public transport, then that would make it about 85 hours, to work for 63 hours per week. 

The government would say that that is reasonable, and leaving work for those reasons would be seen as a bad decision by them, even though they wouldn’t do it themselves. 

I went out for a walk to get some fresh air, and tried to collect my thoughts. If I was on my own then I would have ended it all right there, because life just keeps shitting on me…

1 - Sexually abused as a child at school by the school principal. 2 - Tested for AIDS/HIV for a court case against him. 3 - Having difficulty getting employed because application forms asked if you had been tested for AIDS/HIV, not if you had it. 4 - falling into security work as a favour first through cash in hand, and then being told that they wouldn’t employ me because of that question if I hadn’t already been a good worker for them already for that cash in hand. 5 - I was guarantor for my mum and stepdad’s mortgage when my stepdad fell ill, and then when he died ended up going into debt because my mum wasn’t paying the mortgage. 6 - now people expect me to be the one making sure that my mum is okay with her Alzheimer’s care, even after placing me thousands of pounds into debt. 

There are many other things, but working in this job seems like a punishment a lot of the time for having been abused, it’s my life sentence. 

God, this is a long post!

I spoke with Ken from work on my phone while I was out getting some air, about the car trouble, trying to not just give up there and then. Chesterfield Road in Mansfield is a busy road after all - you’re only one jump in the road away from a lorry taking you out. 

When I got back we watched some more episodes from season 3 of New Amsterdam. I can see what this 16 days will be like. 

I went to sleep at about 2am surprisingly. I thought having got up at 3pm would have meant I couldn’t sleep, but I was mentally drained.

Life is a game, and I keep landing on snakes!