See you in 3 and a bit weeks

Is treating everybody equally the same as treating people fairly?

Imagine if you will, an employer with incredibly slack absence management policies, do you think people would abuse this system? Of course they would. They'll take sick days rather than holiday, they'll take 2 days when they only really needed one...heck some will take a year off on full pay...but that's another story

Obviously an organisation can't continue with a system that is being abused so the sensible thing would be to bring in a new system that doesn't penalise the innocent, but at the same time brings the less honest individuals into line

Unfortunately the 'imaginary' organisation of which I speak have gone one step further, favouring the 'treat everyone like a serial offender so we can't be accused of victimisation'

No one can argue now that everyone isn't being treated equally, but instead of harsher treatment on the worst people, it's harsh treatment all around

Now imagine if you will that you work for said company, and you've had 6 days sickness in over 12 months, half of which was a virus spread around where you work because people were afraid to take time off. How would you expect to be treated, I mean, it's only 6 days, some people will take that off in a week. But oh no, we have to be fair, and it's got nothing to do with trying to find an easy way to make people redundant, lets give everyone that's done that a 'formal written warning' and a 6 month probation that means if they're sick twice in 6 months then they'll be on a 'final written warning'

In the meantime, if you're off for over 21 days, it's long term sickness and doesn't go on your absence record

How can this not lead to 'sorry boss, I've got a bit of a cold, ill see you in 22 days time'

Treat people fairly not equally!




Bye bye for now

15 minutes of fame and sheared nuts

Today has been a little more interesting a day than normal, but started in a pretty routine fashion with a workout in the gym. I managed to get a twinge in my back last week with deadlifts so went very easy on those today, also still nursing a calf/hamstring injury.....I'm falling apart and I'm only 23......months past my 28th birthday

I did some twittering this morning, I've become a little more involved in the world of Twitter recently, with my famous friends Ami James from Miami Ink, Screech from Saved by the Bell and Phillip Schofield, from the broom cupboard

I follow a casting company on there and occasionally I actually read their tweets. They generally want extras for things in London or women needing makeovers etc, but one stood out today so I sent an email out

I had a telephone 'interview' around lunchtime and 'hopefully' a film crew will be visiting later in the week to do a bit of preliminary filming. I don't really want to say too much about it from fear of looking stupid if nothing comes of it, though i'll probably look more stupid if something does, but suffice to say it could be a great bit of fun and you never know you may get to see me on Channel 4 later in the year. (I wonder if I could get my blog mentioned on air ;-)

Work so far today has been busy, with a 3 car accident right outside the office, followed by a car that had lost its wheel on the A34

Unfortunately by attending the car without a wheel, we actually caused more traffic problems, but when a 3 wheeled car is marooned in lane 2, pushing up against the central reservation barrier, we have to do something. On this occasion we actually stopped the A34 for a few minutes whilst we towed the car backwards across 3 lanes and onto the verge so it could be safely recovered

Whilst the car was safely off road, this wasn't sufficient for the recovery driver so we returned later to close lane 1 so the car could be dragged away

All in all, in the first 4 hours of shift I didn't do much more than drive in circles around our Outstation, just with the occasional car attached to mine

Who knows that mysteries await over the next 4 hours, but rest assured if they are even remotely interesting then I'll blog about them tomorrow

In the meantime, lets end with some pictures. A finely sign written van, my 'tombstone of the week' and some pancake based 'facts'


Bye bye for now

Old man banana sex

It's Monday, it's been raining and snowing, it's a long time until the weekend, even hump day is 2 days away, i didn't sleep very well and I had a bacon and sausage baguette for breakfast....sounds boring, but I've saved you from having to check Facebook now....well unless you desperately need to know if anyone is bored .com

We didn't manage to find anyone crashed at work today, with our only real job being a Mini that had managed to find itself in the central reservation, broken down as opposed to crashed. So I guess I could apologise if you were held up when I stopped the m27 at junction 9 this morning...I'm not going to apologise though obviously as I actually probably increased the speed of your journey by a fair amount....I'm sure you've noticed how much people slow down when there's something 'interesting' to see

It would seem we missed the most interesting job of the day at 3am when a 'confused' elderly gentlemen decided, or didn't decide, that driving along the motorway in the usual direction didn't suit him and he would prefer to drive against oncoming traffic. This actually happens a lot more often than you would imagine, but fortunately there were no injuries...this time

We did have a contender for idiot of the afternoon toward the end of our shift when someone that had broken down on the hard shoulder was apparently being jump started by a friend that had performed a u-turn in lane 1 so that he could face the wrong way in order for the leads to reach. This also happens more often that you'd expect. Unfortunately we didn't get there in time to re educate this individual.

Although it does raise a question.....we think the old man at 3 am was confused, but maybe he was actually providing a breakdown service and was on his way to a car with a flat battery

To change the pace a little, I now have two 'interesting' banana based facts for you. Firstly, when storing bananas, you should separate them from the bunch, this will allow them to ripen more slowly and therefore, if you don't eat your bananas very quickly, your stocks will last longer.

The second fact will blow your mind. Convention would tell us to peel bananas from the top downward but, as you may have experienced, this can sometime be tricky, and can snap the banana etc. So next time you are peeling a banana, squeeze the black spot on the bottom between finger and thumb, this will split the skin easily and you can then peel from the bottom up....try it, it works

Apparently men think about sex once every six seconds, and this, is why I always eat bananas in 5 seconds or less

Tonight's television promises to be somewhere between bad and worse, so any film recommendations will be greatly received, otherwise it may be an evening learning more exciting fruit based techniques...read into that what you will

I will leave you today with two cocks and an ass, an ice cream man that may want to rethink his business plan, a floating boat (obviously they all float...except maybe the titanic but you know what I mean) and the real reason the pope was too embarrassed to stay in the job

Bye bye for now

Quite wet on the hole

Well today's blog will be a bit of a weekend summary, due to yesterday's early morning start it will be more of a bi-daily blog as opposed to the bi-daily blogs of the 3rd and the 6th...two meaning of Bi there, every other day as opposed to twice a day

Yesterday started at 3am, there's a bit of a cough going around in our house, so far I have managed to avoid contracting said cough due to the taking of preventative measures.....imagine Michael Jackson face mask, minus the hats....and kids :-/

I've been on early shifts this weekend which means 6am starts, and what a weekend of weather we've experienced, from sun, to snow, to rain. Actually that's a lie, the only Sun I've seen is 40p and available in all good newsagents and supermarkets. Obviously I'm really a Telegraph reader....

Yesterday's most interesting job was that of a swan on the motorway, it's not uncommon for them to land there as from the sky a wet road looks a lot like a lake or river. People always said a swan could break your arm with its wing, I believe this has been found to be incorrect, and being an expert on picking up birds, eh, eh, I have handled many swans without any problem. This one however had already found its way off of the road and over a verge, kindly chased by my colleague, who in turn was chased by the swan....I like to imagine the Benny Hill theme music playing at this point

The afternoon was a subdued one, followed by a pasta tea with Amelia and some Mister Maker before her bedtime.

In the evening I watched 'The Impossible' with a mate, we had intended to watch 'Zero Dark Thirty' but my 'back up' copy wouldn't play properly so The Impossible it was. It was a 'good' film, as much as a film about death and mass devastation can be, and certainly brought home the realities of the tragic event to us. Still we had popcorn and a magnum and that makes anything seem better

Today's main job at work was a road traffic collision or RTC, remember we don't call them accidents, between a car and a van with boat on trailer. The car had come off with just a flat tyre, the trailer came off a little worse with a wheel missing although looking at the state of the boat, I think the wheel made a run (roll) for it. So it was a lane closure in the pouring rain on the A3 near Portsmouth to get the trailer recovered and a long wait with wet long johns.......ok Y-fronts.....ok ok, pink boxer shorts

Still, I was wearing new boots today, not knee high, and these ones have an amazing new feature over my last ones, they only have a hole in the top, rather than in the heels...though this does mean I'm no longer musical when I walk

I'm still walking like an old man as still having problems with my hamstring, so I think I'm gonna have to find somewhere to get a sports massage to sort it out...or I could just give up walking and get a mobility scooter. Actually, I prefer that idea

I don't know what the rest of the day has in store, but I fear it'll be a wet one. Ill save the excitement for tomorrow's blog, unless I have an epiphany and choose to make today a bi daily blog day as opposed to this being a bi daily blog

I shall leave you with an extra picture to make up for yesterday, so we'll have some fantastic street art, a scared sink, a pub flow chart and a lost cat found

Bye bye for now

You may need some tissues

How would you choose to die?

I'm aware that this isn't a cheery topic, but it's what happens in a blog written at 4am, having already been awake an hour in the house of coughing. It may not make much sense, but to be honest most people won't make it as far as this sentence anyway.

Still, I have to be up for work soon......

It's a question that comes up from time to time, usually around the time that we lose someone. Of course no one really 'wants' to die, but, as I believe Benjamin Franklin said ''In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

As a family we have lost 2 people in recent years, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, a granddad, different people to everyone, but still 2 people

The circumstances could not have been more different, the first happened in the middle of the night, a phone call to say there'd been a tragic event and he and his friend had died. The next morning, a 5 year old would wake up without a father and we would be without a brother in law. It was a very public death, a lot of media coverage, which is still ongoing now, and a massive, well deserved, funeral service. One of my most vivid memories, which actually still brings tears to my eyes writing this is of a group of his colleagues, big, strong firefighters, people that run into burning buildings by choice, breaking down in tears together, heartbreaking.

He was 38

The second was very different, we had been given time to 'prepare' for the loss. But how can you possibly prepare for losing someone, given a month or a year, it's never going to be long enough. How do you prepare to lose your Dad. Yes we know everyone will die eventually, but we still convince ourselves it will never happen, that it's just something that happens to other people. This time it was cancer, an evil disease, that spreads before you even know it's there. I think it's true to say that you don't know how brave someone can be until they're faced with something they can't control. I am proud to say that my father in law was one of the bravest men I have known. To still smile and joke when all hope is lost, but continue to fight. To still worry about everyone else when you should be worrying about yourself. To never give up until you just can't give any more

He was 65

These two men taught me more in the very short time I knew them, than some people will teach you in a lifetime, and we could all learn so much from them

They will never be forgotten

Now people will say to you 'there are a lot of bad people in this world, they're the ones that should die early, get cancer etc' and I used to agree with that. Are there people less deserving of life, yes, but does that mean they deserve to die, I'm not so sure

The person least affected by your death is you, you're no longer here, you're not in any pain or suffering. The people affected are the ones that are left behind and the chances are, even the awful people in this world, leave behind some good people that have to suffer

However I am going to die, I personally think I'd like to be an old man, I think I'd like to know a date, with plenty of notice, but I don't want to know my killer, instead just to fall asleep and not wake up

We've had an awful few years in a lot of ways. Do I think we are the only people to go through this, no of course not. Does it make it any easier to know that other people have been, or are going through it, not at all. But we don't talk about it, we don't talk about death through fear of upsetting people, or bringing back bad memories. But memories work two ways, yes there are bad ones, but also very good ones

My biggest regret, especially with the two people we have lost, is not making enough memories. We spend too much time watching TV, on Facebook, writing blogs :-/ and not enough time enjoying people's company, doing things together, cherishing life. No one has ever, in their last few moments of life, said 'I'm so glad I never missed an episode of Eastenders'. We spend too much time watching other people's lives when we should be living our own

So tonight when you sit down to watch TV again, or play computer games, or anything else, don't do it at the expense of seeing someone you love

Of course we all need time on our own, but don't let that time take over.

Make some good memories every day


I know how much you love picture on my blogs, but I don't have any suitable for the subject matter except for this one so I'll leave you with this





Bye bye for now

I've got the moves like Jagger

A fine song released last year by popular music maestros 'Maroon 5' but this blog does not have a musical basis

Whilst I am a fine dancer, which anyone that witnessed me dancing in a sarong at a friends wedding recently will attest to, it is not those moves which I am today sharing with Mr Jagger. Today it is more the fact I am moving around like a man in his 70's, with aching back, legs and shoulder.

A friend posted on Facebook the other day a reference to Doms, as it turned out she was referring to the fine food establishment that is Dominos Pizza (2 for 1 on collection) and not DOMS which I mistook it for. Today I am experiencing Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness from training, does it ache, yes, is walking a bit harder, yes, but it's the best pain in the world as it is accompanied by the sense of achievement of knowing you are improving yourself

My next gripe today is dentists and I guess along with that doctors. My job doesn't involve set appointments, in fact the idea of booking a time slot to crash into the central reservation is a mildly humorous one, but I would expect that if someone had made an appointment that I would be ready and available at the given time

Doctors and dentists seem to be the only places where you can have the first appointment of the day and still be half an hour late being seen. These professionals will of course tell us that delays are unforeseen and are down to the customers/patients being late or having too many issues to discuss but I doubt I'm the only one that thinks this is unreasonable.

If you have a doctors appointment at 10am, get there for 10am, if you have more than one issue to discuss then book two appointments. If you turn up late then you should wait until the next available slot, not push everyone back to suit your time schedule

The dentist, as far as I can see, has even less excuse.
Patient: I've got toothache
Dentist: Yes, you need a filling,
please book a follow up
appointment

Of course if they have time, do the treatment there and then, but don't delay everyone to fit one person

As you may have guessed, today's blog is being written in the waiting room at the dentist, my appointment was 30 minutes ago and there's no sign of being seen yet, I'm not even the next one in line as far as I can tell. I'm here for a filling following a check up last week.....I booked a follow up appointment, so why am I being held up by others that are less considerate or differently accommodated

And this all by 10am. I would imagine anyone with a 5pm appointment will be waiting until sometime around July

Still, at least I have the thought of ironing and cleaning to get me through the rest of the day......no rest for the wicked, and I'm pretty wicked (do kids use that word anymore, or has it been forgotten like the wonderful 'chinny reckon')

Finally seen around 45 minutes late, I now can't feel most of my face, but hey, at least I can poke myself with stuff and not feel it, hee hee

So lets have some pictures, nothing dentistry related I'm afraid. A scared bath, a celebrating castle and a business card that I may just have printed, if only to look at myself ;-)



Bye bye for now

Let me give you a little tip

This could be a bit of a touchy subject depending on what your line of work is, I don't mean to cause any offence but apologise if I do

In my job, if I help someone out, change their flat tyre for instance (to any members of management reading, clearly I've never done this, it's against procedure) then I would expect a thank you, that's just polite, and generally speaking that is the response I receive, a thanks for a job well done

If a police officer catches a robber that has stolen an old ladies handbag, as in physically pins him down in the street catches him, then he may get a round of applause, he'll certainly be thanked by the lady who's handbag he has retrieved and it won't look to shabby to his superiors

When a fireman puts out a fire, saves lives, even saves a cat from a tree....I guess eventually that job comes up, however stereotypical, I would imagine they get a similar response to that received by the police officer

So, the question I ask, is why do we feel obliged, or guilty if we don't, leave a tip for the person that takes a food order and delivers and collects plates from our table. There's no denying they are the backbone of the food and beverage business, a lifeline if you will, but it's not saving lives, it's not stopping criminals, no kittens are rescued between the kitchen and the restaurant.

Now I'm sure we've all heard the standard response 'they don't earn a lot, it's nice to give them a little extra for good service' but why? They earn at least minimum wage, as much as say a supermarket checkout operator and we don't tip them. My bin man has never failed to leave my bin empty, that's as good a job as he can do, and I've never tipped him

I went for a meal once, breakfast (not at Tiffany's') and at the end of the meal I think the bill was around £15. Myself and my dining partner, not my wife, a man, but not my boyfriend (he doesn't like cooked breakfast ;-) but seriously, we each only had a £10 note. Upon taking the money from us, the waitress asked 'do I need to get any change?'. This put us both in an uncomfortable position, with us both alternating between saying yes and no. Eventually we got our change and left a small tip, but we shouldn't be made to feel we have to

On another occasion, I went for a meal with around 15 friends, I think the bill was something around £300, but then the restaurant added on a 15% 'service charge'. I believe this is a standard practice for large groups, but why? We took up less space than 4 groups of 4 people, we certainly ate as much, but didn't create any additional work than 4 individual tables, so why penalise us for having a larger social circle

By all means, if you feel your service has gone beyond expectation or beyond what is required, leave a tip, but if you're feeling obligated to tip, just think about the police officer, the firefighter or the checkout operator and then decide....just how good was the service?

And on that cheery note, let me leave you with some pictures. Is it a human faced dog or a hairy boy?, a meal for the more upper class student and a breakfast with the least pleasing plate size to mushroom portion ratio

Bye bye for now

Excuse me.....put some clothes on

Today in my travels I have made two observations. The first, I shall call 'excuse me'

'Excuse me'....two simple words, so why and when did we start substituting those words with 'sorry' or just plain ignorance

There was a time when if you wanted to pass someone, say on the escalator in ikea...man with cups and ignorant wife....you would say 'excuse me old bean, would you mind terribly moving aside for a tickety boo whilst myself and my dear lady pass by'....but oh no, not now. Now we huff and puff, and when that goes unnoticed we push past instead, because those extra 10 seconds make all the difference once you've joined the queue at the till, AND the lift, AND the car park exit

The alternative to the push past, is the 'push into and say sorry'. The 'I can't be bothered to be polite in advance, so I'll just push you out the way and make it all ok by saying sorry afterwards'. In a lot of ways these people are worse than the first group because their sorry is about as genuine as a 1990's Kappa track suit from Eastleigh market


My next observation is a strange one, well strange to me. I think subconsciously my thought process changes when I'm looking after Amelia as opposed to on my own or at work. Several times today I found myself, when observing young ladies walking along the road (that sounds properly dodgy) thinking and in fact saying 'they'll catch their death dressed like that' and 'they need to put some proper warm clothes on'. Now I know for a fact that my thought process would be very different when on my own. Basically the presence of my daughter makes me a far more respectable person, I must just switch in to protective 'dad' mode

Today was another day of two blogs and obviously I don't have an endless supply of pictures, it's not like I can just steal them from the Internet, so I've saved them for now.

I'll leave you with a sensible name for jet skis, Ryanair's honest website, how to draw a panda, and a motivational message for the day


Bye bye for now

A life without kids

I have this vague recollection, very vague, of waking up naturally in the morning, no alarm clock, no children screaming, no 'I need a tissue' or 'I need a wee', the days when if I had a day off or I was working a late shift, I could stay in bed past 10, then, save for a few chores, relax on the sofa

I don't think you can fully appreciate how relaxed life is until you have kids, not needing to arrange a babysitter for a night out, or go out for the day without 2 or 3 bags, eat at a restaurant that doesn't given colouring books with the meals or walk to a shop and back in less time than it would take to breed and raise the animals needed for the bacon you've gone to buy

Swimming actually involved swimming, watching TV meant watching something without animation (except The Simpsons), relaxing in the garden didn't mean pushing the swing and going for a bike ride didn't mean waking along behind a stabilised pink frame with tassles

Having a bath or a shower could be done at any time, for any length of time, using the toilet didn't have a running commentary and discussion about whether you were having a wee or a poo

Dressing up meant a suit as opposed to a pirate costume, a tie rather than fairy wings and cufflinks instead of beaded bracelets

If there were footprints or mud stains on the roof of your car, they weren't from size 8 wellies, the backseat was for cuddling, not cuddly toys, and going for a drive was a way to relax for you instead of to get someone to sleep

If clothes didn't fit you went and bought new ones, if they were dirty, you washed them, if a white t shirt was now pink, none of this mattered. It certainly didn't result in mass hysteria and a breakdown about how the whole world was against you

All of these things are what makes being a parent bloody hard work, but this is what makes it all completely worthwhile





Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off 'swimming'......I may even 'go for a bike ride there'

Oh and if you can't see me, I'll be the one in a pink tshirt and eye patch ;-)

Bye bye for now

Twiddly-diddly-dee, tweet tweet

Yesterday I received a huge compliment regarding my daily blog from someone I've only met once before and we'd both admit we don't really know each other. She commented that she wouldn't be surprised if my blog was picked up by the press. Now I don't think that's very likely, but the comment still made me smile and inspired me to try and promote it a little more.

Obviously with me being close personal friends with Phillip Schofield, I am one of only 11,397 people he follows on twitter, I figured twitter was a good place to start. I doubt that any major celebrities will retweet the link, but that doesn't matter, it's already gained me more followers and several retweets from people who's tweet I enjoy reading and I figure these are the people that will appreciate it and people that follow them will appreciate what I appreciate appreciating....I think

I have maintained from the start that I write the blog for my own benefit, but that's not true, really I want to be famous, maybe even more famous than Andrew Davidson....come on you know Andrew Davidson....9th place finisher on Big Brother Series 1, that's fame right there, I can only dream of that sort of celebrity status

In all seriousness, I just write down what I'm thinking about, and if that's interesting to anyone other than me, then happy days!

I must admit to feeling a little more pressure today though since I'd had over 100 hits by 7am, having not posted anything new today, but rest assured I will do my utmost to put no more effort in to today's blog than I did into yesterday's, and tomorrow I may even put in a little less effort

So on to business, today started at 5:30, after only 5.5 hours sleep I was woken by Amelia coughing and coughing. She barely seems to cough during the day, it just kicks in at night. We've tried cough medicine, calpol, lifting up the end of her bed (with books, not literally standing there lifting it up, though that does remind me of a funny story*) nothing seems to make a difference. The only positive is that despite being more tired during the day, it doesn't seem to bother her too much

*when I did my motorcycle licence training back in 2005, you had to compete a 'turn in the road'. It's very similar to a 3 point turn in a car, but it must be done whilst riding and on foot. My training partner for the week was a guy called Harley, I cannot comment on whether his dad was called David, but seriously his name was Harley. We had gotten to the stage of training where we had to perform the walking turn in the road. After a quick briefing we were instructed to walk to our bikes, pick them up and perform the turn. Harley may well have ended that day with a hernia since he attempted to actually lift the bike off of the ground and carry it around.....these bikes will have weighed somewhere near 200kg and at around 9 stone I don't think he'd have managed it, however it amused me then and it still amuses me now 8 years on

This morning I had the joy of waiting in for Virgin Media to come, sometime between 8 and 12 said the booking. That's fine, but with Amelia at nursery on a Tuesday and me on late shift today, I tend to like blasting out some loud music, and hitting the home gym, generally followed by falling asleep in the bath. I suppose I could have got the butler to answer the door......I'm only kidding of course.....it's his day off

I wouldn't mind, but they were coming round because our phone keeps ringing at 3am for no reason, it'll only do a single ring....every 30 minutes, but that's enough to make you think you're imagining it. By the morning you're so tired you're not even sure if it did ring....if you woke up....or some days, whether you imagined the existence of telecommunication completely

Now there are no prizes in this quiz, it's just for fun, but with an 8-12 appointment slot, what time do we think he turned up.....8....minutes to twelve. He assures me he has fixed the problem, and tells me it was due to some unruly copper, we do live near the police station and I can only assume he means our phone lines have been tapped....for the benefit of the tape, I didn't steal those, I didn't hide that there, where's your warrant? and 'no comment'

One final rant for today, motorways. I spend a lot of time on the motorway for work, but it didn't take me long to realise that there are 3 lanes, I believe I learnt his as a child, so why do people think you can only drive in the middle one. Join the motorway, into lane 2, move for nothing. Slow down if there's a car in front and speed up if there isn't, but under no circumstances can you change lanes. IDIOTS!! I even knew one person that believed lane 1 was only for joining and leaving the motorway, because obviously we'd build thousands of miles of road just to use as extra slip road. If, as people argue 'people don't feel comfortable changing lanes' 'they feel safer in lane 2'......then they shouldn't be driving!!

If I can only leave you with one piece of advice today, it would be, 'when wearing crocs, do not attempt to 'flick' a child's garden spade, full of water, with your foot....you will end up with soaking wet toes'

Some pictures to finish, lazy robots, a helpful elephant, a disgruntled dairy employee and a positive thought for the day

Bye bye for now