Live to work, or work to live?

Much as I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my job, I think I certainly fall into the latter category.

One of the nice things about my shift pattern is that I work six days on, four days off. That may sound like a lot, but consider that the first day begins as soon as I knock-off at 07:00hrs and is mostly slept away in bed.

Four days off however does afford plenty of time to spend with the girlfriend. Although she’s happy to see me, the first day doesn’t exactly have much in-depth conversation short of me mumbling and complaining about sleep, or lack thereof.

Four days also affords plenty of time to plan stuff.

On this set of rest days we’ve managed to fit in a fair few things, despite her having to work 3 out of the 4 days.

Thursday in particular was excellent. Girlfriend maintains good communication and friendship with her ex-husband, who having met him a few times, I must concede is a very sound bloke. Indeed, one part of my brain is always thinking “Y’know, this is awkward;” every time we meet “He used to be married to my girlfriend.” But all the same I can’t fault him. I especially can’t fault a bloke who maintains good steady contact with girlfriend’s, his, son either.

So girlfriend’s ex-husband, who works as an engineer at a local RAF base, kindly extended the invitation to me to accompany them when the base’s annual friends & family day came around this year.

An excellent day was had by girlfriend, her lad, ex and I – perusing the stalls and watching an excellent flying display. Me being the quite the aircraft enthusiast reverted to a mental age younger than her son’s when the Typhoon slammed on its afterburners and the Vulcan cruised gracefully overhead. And as for The Red Arrows, they never fail to disappoint.

We managed to do some catching up at the cinema also and saw ‘The Dark Night’ and ‘WALL-E’. Two excellent films that show filmmakers at the top of their game in two very different ways. I could hark on about how truly brilliant both flicks are, but you should simply abandon any preconceptions you may have about either and go see. You won’t regret it.

An ice-cream here, a coffee there, but we did also go out for dinner here. Yum.

For the first time in a while I actually feel refreshed, mentally and physically, and ready to go back to work.

Let’s see how long that lasts.

Two-thousand-zero-eight

Party over?

Oops!

Out of time.

[The other night I partied] like it was two-thousand-and-eight.

(With thanks to Prince)

Christmas was...

Different.

It comes with the territory that as an emergency service worker, chances are you're going to be working whist others are out having fun, sleeping, eating etc...

I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas Day nights for my sins, coming off-shift into Boxing Day morning.

Christmas Eve was ridiculously busy. Very little goodwill on the streets to men or women really. Fights going off all over the place and a colleague accidentally gave me a facefull of CS-spray during a scuffle.

Lovely stuff.

Christmas Day night was thankfully very quiet indeed and most of us disregarded the mounds of paperwork, patrolling and chilled out for a change. We all brought in food to nibble and had a bit of an impromptu buffet in the station. I'd slept most of the day before that, I was home alone and to be honest if I hadn't have watched the Doctor Who christmas special I wouldn't have noticed it was Christmas at all! So to have some sort of festivity later on was nice and heart-warming.

Boxing day, early hours, I drove up to the parents in East Yorkshire. Presented myself about 09:00hrs, chatted over a cup of tea for about a half-hour before collapsing into bed. Woke up around 16:00 and helped the family get snacks & drinks together for the 'clan' get-together at our place a few hours later. After much chat, food, drinks, Jenga and board games I once again collapsed into bed.

27th - Relaxed. Did very little. Perfect.

28th - Mother & I hit the sales. Bought very little really apart from a new colour printer, and even that was from a Tesco Extra!

29th - I hung out with friends back Yorkshire-way who I hadn't seen for ages. All good fun, good company.

30th - Unfortunately it was back to work. Drat.

New Year's Eve, as luck would have it, I was on earlies. This meant that even with extended workign hours this allowed me to finish at 18:00 and still have time to drive down to see girlfriend and celebrate with her. Along with her lad we went round to some friends of hers for chat, drinks and board games for the evening. A good night was had by all. I was awoken at around 01:30 by the girlfriend as I'd fallen asleep on the hosts' sofa. They did however cut me some slack when it was pointed out that I'd been up since 05:00 the previous morning.

New Year's Day - Back to work at 15:00, however still plenty of time to sleep off the hangover and drive up back to work.

How did you celebrate yours?

Everything Zen

I've got a week's 'protected learning' back at the training unit which has been, to be frank, spectacularly dull. It has however been lifted by seeing all of my training colleagues again. What his me especially this evening is how these people, over time, unexpectedly became friends, as well as colleagues. Not what I would have expected when we first started out; such a disparate bunch.

We've come a long way.

So tonight was a nice chilled Chinese buffet with a bunch of them and a few drinkies.

What's chilling me out even more though is the prospect of...

*gasp*

Time off.

No wonder I've been feeling so stressed at times, I realised only the other day that I've been pretty much working solid since January the 8th!

Days off here & there, but not a proper week-or-so solid break.

Just tomorrow to go, then it's off until July 2nd!

Even more exciting, I'm off travelling again.

Only a shift hop this time, but girlfriend & I are going on a city break to Dublin next week for four days.

Not a moment too soon.

Chiming in

Blogging has taken much of a backseat of late.

Not that I don’t enjoy doing it – rather work is just so damn tiring that I come home, sit in front of a flashing blank cursor for a few minutes and then slope off either towards the cooker, bed or the TV in creative defeat.

Often in the quieter moments on patrol or around about the witching hour on a nightshift, I think of some insightful ramble into the more intriguing aspects of my job that I suimply must share. Sadly more often than not they’re either simply forgotten on the trip home, or like sand through fingers I lose that wonderful turn-of-phrase that struck me quite suddenly earlier when something trivial distracts me.

*sigh*

Otherwise; currently enjoying the girlfriend’s hospitality on my days off, destroying worlds with her lad on Halo and undergoing rigorous psychological vetting by her friends on a number of nights out. That and drinking copious amounts of coffee in deepest Norwich.

Anyway, another quick chime in just to let you all know that I’m still alive.

Someone slam on the brakes though.

May already?!