Dear Blog,
Still can’t send the photos as Jessop’s won’t let me have my snaps as I wanted to pay with a gift voucher that I won in my last trudge. What sort of world do we live in? There was a time when men were men and supermen wore their knickers outside their trousers. And women knew their place and did as they were told. But not anymore. There was a time when our inferiors knew that they were our inferiors; now they have Unions and work place committees and the suchlike. There was a time when it went without saying that those of us who went to places like the Pink Panther University naturally filled our allotted slot in society; at or near the top waiting to be at the top. No question. None of this Polytechnic business. None of this Teacher Training College business. Universities competed in the Universities Cross Country Championships, and the successful ones like yours truly, competed for the British Universities. No question. No clutter from all those other pretentious little places. Take my own case. I wrote you before Christmas that I was putting in a new drive, building a wall, shifting hard-core around the estate, laying 2000, yes 2000, granite blocks, barrowing them twelve at a time from the granite sett pile to the drive way, mixing my own cement by hand, ditto the concrete for the wall foundations and so on and so forth. And why am I doing this myself, you ask Blog. You may well ask. Because the estate staff deemed that my generous Christmas gifts for them fell somewhat short of a paperhatless cracker. So, they are working to contract. I gave each and every member half a chicken, a piece of Christmas cake and a cracker which I thought showed my appreciation of their efforts throughout the previous year. After all, they didn’t get the half a chicken last year. NOW. The Butler will only buttle, the gardener will only guard, the house maid is only concerned with her knee…….. What is the world coming too? Two weeks I have been having to work from 8:30am until 4:00pm. Carrying, lifting, digging, cementing, concreting. I am knackered, cream crackered, kalied every night. Bless my staff. I certainly do. And my wife tries to claim she is just as tired as I am. ‘I have been vacuuming’ – try mixing concrete by hand. ‘I have been baking’ – try building a wall. Here’s a good one .. ‘I have been doing the washing’! Oh yer. Putting the clothes in the washing machine – try barrowing the hard core a couple of hundred yards. ‘l have been shopping’ – try shifting 2000, yes 2000, granite setts. ‘I have been washing and drying the dishes’ – sorry, what was that about the electric dish washer? – try moving twenty paving concrete stones and putting in a new path to the front door. ‘I have had a coffee morning to organise’ – Bloody hell, that is really tough shit? And does she try to trudge every day after her exhausting day, I ask myself Blog?
And of course, having attended the Pink Panther University to spend three years doing a few sums, I am adept at coping with this 1:2:3 ratio business of concrete mixing. No problem there then. The instructions on the back of the cement package are quite explicit, 1:2:3. Cement to sand (sharp not builder’s) to pebbles. 1:2:3. There in black and white. BUT. It doesn’t say whether to use lbs. or kgms.! Very remiss of Wickes Builders Supplies. I shall take my business elsewhere in future. I could be generous and put the omission of units down to the whole country converting to metric from imperial in 1972, but I do feel they have had ample time to decide whether 1:2:3 is in lbs. (or even stones) or kgms. After a little cogitation I decided to go with kgms as the bathroom scales were metric as I used them for the measurements. My dear wife is not too happy about the state of the scales after two weeks of measuring my cement, sand and pebbles on them. But, boy it was slow going, There must be a quicker way, surely Blog??
Interesting. One Christmas gift from a dear relative was a calendar for 2013. Having completed my rich and varied social activity list for January, I turned over the page to fill in my rich and varied social activity list for February .. and there was no February. It was March. Now I know that that nice Mr Cameroon is trying to get more work not less out of his plebs, so I knew that something was amiss. And I know I don’t do too much socialising very often, but I should be prepared just in case that an event pops up in February. I do feel that I should have a the opportunity to fill in a February page just in case that someone somewhere might like to have social intercourse with me. So, NO February. Plain and simple. It was like 1782 all over again, but at least they only lost 17 days. Mr Cameroon and his mates were trying to twist me out of 28!!! No social life in February for Colin, then. But worse….. Does someone out there in the great other place, have two pages of February in their calendar. Just think of the consequences of trying to lead a double life for a WHOLE month. And worse. Like me, there may be hundreds of folk with no February to look forward to. A medical physiological time bomb waiting to happen? Will the Health Service have the facilities to cope, I ask myself Blog. Is that Mr Hunt fellow prepared? And worse still. Are the publishers of the calendar left with a stack of ‘Februarys’? Do they know what to do having all these extra days left on their hands? At least they have only to accommodate 28 days in their ‘lost days’ store room. Just think what might have happened if they had had to cope with 29 days clear. Where would they find the extra space? The company could have gone bust?
Because, as athletes, most of us cannot afford to train full time, all of the time, we must be clever in what we do. We must be efficient, make every second in every session count. So with all the lifting and carrying and lifting and mixing and lifting and barrowing and lifting and building and lifting, I am seriously considering quitting trudging in favour of weightlifting – catch weight of course.
Colin
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