Moods, variableness of

This week I have been swerving between a pleasant relaxed "life is good, I love having the time to make marmalade and bake bread and have a cup of tea and a chat with my friends in the middle of a weekday afternoon" state of mind, and blind unreasoning panic which focusses entirely on finance:  "Gaaaaaah, I haven't got a job...there's no money coming in....we'll be out on the street by the summer, starving in the gutter...we're DOOOOOOOMED."

Yes, a strange and heady mixture of emotions.

I worked out why this has started happening again.  When I first stopped working, waaaay back in late May last year - yes, I have been Not Working for almost a twelvemonth now- I had a few weeks where it just felt like I was on leave.  Then a month or so of gloating about having the summer off work, helped by the fact that the weather was rather nice, and then a few weeks of panic.  It was probably around that panic-time that Mr WithaY decided that he too was going to give up his job, and follow his long-time ambition to become a bushcraft specialist.

So.  Two of us went from being long-term career Civil Servants in comparatively senior (and fairly well-paid) posts, to being two non-working middle-aged people intending to start up their own new businesses.

Mr WithaY is doing well.  He's now halfway through a year-long training course, at the end of which he will be a fully-qualified instructor, and has got himself onto a local apprenticeship scheme which will give him loads of useful and relevant experience.  Unfortunately, he is not getting paid for any of this.  Yet.

On the plus side, he is happier than he has been for a very long time, and is discovering he has a real skill in wood carving, making some fabulous pieces which I hope he will be able to sell in due course.

I'm feeling less positive - this week, at least - as my long-term business plan is grinding forward slowly and painfully.

I have tried to improve my mood by doing everything I can to facilitate progress:

• I took (and passed, yay me) an online food hygiene training course.  

• I drafted up a best-guess costs and liabilities account, trying to work out what we will need to do to turn a profit, when we finally go ahead with things.

• I spent a while researching the grants available to small businesses, trying to establish what - if anything - we would be able to apply for.

• I read several helpful blogs about setting up (and sometimes closing down) small retail businesses.

• I now have a better understanding of some of the many and varied pitfalls, and have been able to start pulling together contingency plans.   

As if in answer to this burst of focussed activity, this morning I received a long-awaited email reply which we have been waiting for, and this afternoon am having a chat with my future business partner to decide how we will respond.  I'm hoping that by the weekend I will be a fledgeling small business part-owner.

Fingers crossed, eh.

Anyhoo, I worked out why the blind panic has gripped me this week.  It's because as long as I am planning and preparing to start a business, I am effectively taking myself off the job market.  I have had a few minor forays into getting a job, none successful, but by setting up this business I am removing the possibility of going and working in a local supermarket to pay the bills.  It's that whole "make a decision and stick to it" thing, which kills off the comforting "Ah, anything might happen" state of semi-denial.

It's getting real.

In other news, I have been making stuff like a madwoman to sell at a charity cake and craft sale at the end of next month.   We're all making cakes so people can come and buy a cup of tea and a cupcake or whatever, in aid of Sport Relief, but a few of us are also setting up little craft tables. I have decided to bite the bullet, take the plunge, grasp the nettle and many other clichés, and see if anyone is interested in buying stuff I've made.

I'm also making some Medieval kit for Mr WithaY - he plans to do sword fighting demonstrations with a couple of other friends at events over the summer, and needs some hardwearing clothing to wear while he does it.  I've almost finished the pourpoint - a short sleeveless jacket, with lace holes around the waist to hold the hose (leggings) up.

Next on the "to make" list, a jacket with long sleeves, to wear over the top of the pourpoint and hose.  I'm not making hose. Too bloody difficult, matey.

And for those evening where the thought of sewing anything fills me with choking fury, I am knitting a scarf from a pattern pinched from Mrs Jones' blog.    If it works, I shall post a photo; if it doesn't, I shall unravel it and make something else with the wool.  It's looking rather pretty so far.

Oh, and I have reactivated my Twitter persona, but this time it's more about keeping tabs on local business and related stuff than broadcasting my own brand of trivia to the InterWeb.

Speed 2

The encountering odd people on public transport theme continues.  Allow me to share: 

Yesterday evening, as I was struggling into a seat on the bus to Waterloo, lugging my rucksack awkwardly into the luggage space and perching on the suspiciously clammy seat, I became aware of an Irritating Loud Woman. 

Irritating Loud Woman was on her phone, using a headset so that she had both hands free for Important Gesticulation And Shit.  Irritating Loud Woman was bellowing to her caller about all the travelling she had been doing.

ILW:  God I KNOW!  Yes...yes...I was there too recently.  Yes...booked a room on your recommendation actually.  Yes, loved it.  Amaaaaazing place! 

A short pause followed where she rolled her eyes and played with her handbag strap as the person on the other end of the phone had the temerity to play a speaking part in the conversation.  Her eyes narrowed and she threw in the trump hand grenade of bragging. 

ILW:  So...yeah...yeah...I was in China.  Yes.  (slightly louder) China.  Then Spain. Then Ireland.  *loud guffaw*  I know!  I've been home like 10 days in the last 2 months!  And I'm off to the Bahamas at the end of the month!  *guffaw*

It did occur to me to wonder why she was on the bus, albeit on the back seat, and not in a taxi, judging by the details of her jetset lifestyle.  As this uncharitable thought played through my jaded brain, a tall black girl with amazing dreadlocks marched down the aisle, dragging a selection of bags and a shopping trolley behind her.   

Tall black girl with amazing dreadlocks:  (In unexpected Yorkshire accent)  Scuse me!  Scuse me!  You.  Yeah you!  Can you stop being so loud on the bus please! 

ILW:  ......?

TBGWAD:  I can hear you right down the end!  Can you keep noise down please?

ILW:  .....?

I had to suppress a snort of delighted glee as the Irritating Loud Woman blushed deeply, then continued her conversation in a much quieter voice.  She moderated it down to normal speaking tones, I'd guess, rather than the show-off bellow she had previously deployed. 

The bus started pulling away from the stop we were at, throwing the girl with the dreads and bags into a panic.

TBGWAD:  (To the bus driver)  Scuse me!  Hey!  HEY!  Scuse me!  I need to gerroff here!  Stop bus!

The driver obliged, opening the doors.  There was a long and comical struggle as several people at the front of the bus jostled to help her with all her bags.  I think had we had more time, she would have been carried off in triumph on their shoulders, frankly.

I missed my train as a result but it was worth it.

I covertly watched the ILW for the remainder of the journey.  She was mortified.  I was glad.

Other news:  My car is fucked.  Gah. 

I was driving home from the railway station last night.  It was very dark.  It was very cold. So cold, in fact, that I had had to de-ice my car (inside and out) before I could leave the station car park.  It was getting late. 

I set off on the short but time-consuming trip through winding lanes and troll bridges, through the woods, through the little teeny villages, past the burned-down pub, up hill, down dale, over the river and back to Hobbiton. 

My thoughts were filled with the delicious roast chicken dinner* that I knew was waiting for me. 

I had just emerged from the bosky glades and hit the main road (Two lanes!  Some streetlights at the major junctions!) when I realised that my speedometer was stuck on 0.  Zero.  Nil. 

I knew that was wrong.  Well, I was moving, for a start. 

I was dopily looking at the speedo, then back at the icy road ahead, then back at the speedo, not sure if I was seeing things or not, and then the orange "Check Engine" warning light came on too. 

Ohhhh fuck noooooooo.

It may have been my imagination, but I would swear that I felt the car shudder, like a wounded beast about to roll over and die. 

There was a moment where I considered pulling over and phoning Mr WithaY to come and rescue me, but I bit my lip and ploughed on.  The car juddered again.  I stopped.  I switched off the engine, then restarted the car.  The "Check Engine" light went out.  I pulled away.  The speedo was still dead. There were several heavy seconds of anticipation, then the orange light came back on.

If you were driving towards Shaftesbury late yesterday evening, you may have heard what you thought was a siren, wailing eerily.  That was me.  Well, it was if the siren sounded like someone wailing "fucking hell nooooooooooo" for 5 miles non-stop. 

So, today I rang the chaps at the garage.  They told me take my car down there for them to look at.  There followed a couple of hours of traipsing back and forth to the garage, talking to the chaps, waiting for Chap 2 to return from a delivery to confer about technical stuff with Chap 1, Chap 1 making phone calls to Toyota, Chap 2 telling me horror stories about how badly things can go wrong with cars, and finally I was given a lift back home and told to Wait.

Later that same day, a call from the garage. 

Good news:  They know what's wrong.  I'd tell you, but my brain did that Star Trek thing of just hearing "tech...tech...tech....computer....tech....expensive....tech.....new part will be here on Friday....tech...£188 plus VAT.....tech."  I don't do it on purpose. 

It's like maths lessons used to be at school.  I started out every time with good intentions, but after 3 minutes my brain simply refused to acknowledge what was being said, and sent me pictures of Alex Lifeson and Bruce Dickinson, or composed endless bad poems I was going to write down as soon as I could find a nice enough poetry notebook. 

I swear, if I replayed every maths lesson I attended between 1977 and 1983, apart from the two weeks we did spatial geometry, which I understood and enjoyed**, it would just sound like white noise.

Bad news:  It wil cost £188 (plus VAT) for the part they need.  Plus labour.

Arse.

So.  I'm working at home tomorrow, as my car is not really safe to drive. 

And I might be selling my Rickenbacker.





*Mr WithaY is just great. 

**The maths teacher was flummoxed, and would ask me with irritation "If you can understand this, why can't you understand quadratic equations?"  I'm certain she thought I was doing it deliberately.  It never occurred to her that my failure to understand might in some way be linked to her unimpressive teaching skills.  Bah.

Austerity measures for Dummies

I went to the supermarket today.  That felt like a bit of an achievement, given that I can hardly breathe half the time, and the rest of the time has me coughing repulsively.  Anyhoo, I went in armed with too many re-usable bags and no shopping list, never a good combination.

I resisted the temptation to buy bargain hot pies, or huge 25-bag multipacks of crisps, or gallon vats of cheap ice cream (a decision I have been regretting on and off ever since, I might add) and stocked up with all manner of sensible meat-and-potato meal makings.  And vegetables.  And washing up liquid.  Yes, I am that sensible.

In my trolley were two tubes of Pringles (plain flavour) for Father-in-Law WithaY, who has recently developed a taste for them.  All seemed uneventful as the shopping was scanned and beeped and tagged and tracked* by the nice till lady. 

She scanned the two tubes of Pringles (plain flavour) then said "There's a Buy One, Get Two Free" offer on these.  Do you want another tube of the same flavour?"

Me:  No thanks, I only want the two tubes.

Till lady:  But there's an offer on!  You can have another one and get three but only pay for one!

Me: (packing potatoes and washing up liquid into a bag with grim efficiency)  But I only want these two.  Really.

There was a slightly accusing silence as she carried on scanning groceries and I packed bags, the two tubes of Pringles sitting folornly on the end of the conveyer belt like unwanted game show prizes.

Till lady:  Well then, I will take off one of these tubes from the bill so you get one free.  But you could have two free.  Do you want two free?

Me:  No.

I must admit that by this point I was interested to see what happened next, and prepared to argue cogently for my right to have just two tubes of Pringles if I wanted to.

This happened next:

Till lady:  Oh!  Gosh, that's strange.

Me:  What is?

Till lady:  It's taken both tubes off the bill.  So...um...you get them both free.  I think.

She fiddled about with the till for a bit, then slid both tubes down the counter to me as I continued cramming tins of beans and pots of probiotic yogurt** into the bags.  There was a queue forming behind me, which may have affected her decision making.

Till lady:  Yes.  You get them both free.  We'll just have an extra tube on the shelves now.

Me:  (Warily)  So...I get them for free?  Are you sure?

Till lady:  Yes.  You can take them.

Me:  (not touching them)  Really?  I don't want to take them without paying for them.

Till lady:  (pushing them towards me encouragingly) But you get two free!  So you can take those.

I relented and put them in my bag, paid for the shopping - not the Pringles, though, obviously - and left the shop without setting off any alarms. 

All the way home I tried to work out how she had arrived at the conclusion that "buy one, get two free" can be converted into "buy two, don't pay for either of them."  I am still not convinced by her logic, and am waiting for a knock on the door from the Fraud Squad.

Other news:  I have bronchitis.  Again.  I went to the doctor on Tuesday.  He listened to my chest, told me cheerfully that he's heard me sounding much worse, and gave me a prescription for the scary syphillis pills he prescribed at the end of my last bout of Black Lung. 

He said "Chest infections usually only last five days or so.  Let's see...how long did your last infection go on for?   Hmmmm....December till.....oh.  May.  Well, yes.  You were obviously a bit unlucky, weren't you?"

Yes, in the same sense that Cornwall is a bit wet at the moment.

He also commented "Oh, you've lost weight."  I nodded, and was about to expound on my slow but steady progress when he said sternly "I hope it's not because of all the stress*** you've been dealing with?"

No, not stress, but thanks for asking, doctor.  Eating fewer pies and drinking less cider, mostly.

I told him how much weight I intend to lose in total in order to be a non-overweight person according the the BMI scale; he advised me not to pay too much attention to BMI figures, and to weigh "as much as you feel comfortable with."  Interesting advice, which I intend to ignore. 

I am still up and writing my blog at 1am, by the way, because when I lay down in bed I start coughing hard enough to make my eyes shoot out of my head and slam into the bedroom ceiling.  And that gets old fast. 

Big day tomorrow.  The auction house is coming to Father-in-Law WithaY's place to take out all the stuff that is going to be in a sale next month.  So, hopefully I will be able to get in and give his place a bit of a clean and spruce-up once it's a bit less crammed with antiques.  And then who knows, we might even sell it.

Which would be nice.





*I'm sure that we are all being monitored via our shopping. 
**I'm on antibiotics. I have bronchitis again.  Yay me.
***Shit Storm From Hades, although that is receding a bit now.  More on this anon.

Walk on by

So. Work has been a bit shite this week. To make a great week even better, I had a nosebleed this afternoon. Which was nice.

At least it didn't rain today, which made the trip down to see Mr WithaY's dad in hospital this evening slightly nicer than it might have been. He's been told he'll be in for at least another 5 weeks, which was a disappointment, but he was in better spirits than you might expect.

There was a poor old chap in the bed opposite who was trying to explain to the nurse that he had to take 2 tablets a day, one in the morning, one at night, and that the doctor had told him to do that himself with the tablets he'd brought from home. The nurse was not only not listening to him, she was talking over the top of him before he even finished his sentences, getting louder each time, telling him what to do.

I couldn't decide if it was funny, upsetting or just annoying.

Anyway. We had a nice chat with pa-in-law WithaY, then scooted back home, calling in at the huge Tesco in Shaftesbury on the way to buy something for dinner.

£125. Bloody big dinner.

I'm in the office again tomorrow, then am spending most of Saturday manning (personing?) the phones as the emergency response unit to support Mr WithaY's frankly mental plan.

The Plan:

He is doing a sponsored walk of about 30 miles around Salisbury Plain. In his scuba gear.

Not, and I am still very disappointed by this, however, in his flippers. No, he is wearing proper boots. And a wetsuit. And a BCD. And he is talking about taking one of his tanks*. I am trying to persuade him that he will have more than enough to carry without a bloody huge metal cylinder.

We shall see.

So. He's doing this bloody long walk to raise money to help pay for his shark-tagging expedition to Mexico in October. I'll tell you about that when I am less tired, and can see straight.

*The sort you fill with air, not the fun sort you drive around Salisbury Plain in.