Back From The Dead. Almost.

It’s been about a year since I last updated this thing, so I thought I’d have a go and attempting to fill the void with a bit of writing. That no one will read. Anyway, it’s now July 2012. It’s raining outside, and has been for the past two months almost incessantly. I really don’t think the sun is going to be shining any time soon either and this just about sums up the national mood here in England. Everywhere you go, all you see are miserable or angry faces. People snarling from behind steering wheels in gridlocked traffic or moaning in hairdressers about how hard done by they are. Usually before paying for their blow dry with their state-funded benefit money. Makes me pretty sick to be honest.

I suppose the faux joy of both the Jubilee weekend (i.e. a massive piss-up) and the brief run of England in the Euros has now faded, and the grey clouds of normality have once again gathered.

Interlude.

So what’s been happening since August 2011? Well, the biggest thing is that I’m no longer in the Royal Navy! I’m a free civilian who can do what he likes, grow a beard, dye his hair (not that I have), have his own political views and read the newspaper he wants without being subject to abuse (yes, still The ‘i’). I applied for voluntary redundancy last year, and I got it because very few of my contemporaries wanted it. The fear of leaving the secure bosom of the MOD’s payroll department obviously outweighed the basic human right of free will for most of them. Not that I didn’t leave without having my pocket lined by said government department, but that’s another story (and one that will be instrumental in the development of my future plans, which incidentally tie in to what I was saying in the introduction to this diatribe).

While I was in the process of regaining my freedom and dignity, I applied for several jobs and whenever news of my failure to secure one of these positions got back to my ‘workmates,’ the ensuing delight that they took in taking the piss bordered on the shocking. “There’s nothing out there mate,” was the usual advice, often followed by laughter and mocking. Unfortunately for those pathetic amoebas, I did secure employment in a field that is of great interest to me, and also allowed me to leave that godforsaken airbase and general locality behind. I now find myself in a working environment that is occupied by people who can string together a sentence and formulate a topic of conversation that doesn’t solely focus on tits or football or a combination of the two in paper form: aka The Sun newspaper. Furthermore, the workload is actually interesting (heritage sector), so I find myself discovering historical oddities and curious tales all the time. Right up my street, I tell thee. So that’s the state of play with regard to my working life.

To be fair, I still see a few of my actual friends from the navy on a regular basis and they constantly remind me what I’m missing by getting out when I did: fuck all.

 I did take a fairly heft pay cut when I decided to get out of the military, and one of the side effects of this was the decision to ditch my car. The Proton, whilst a great car, just had to go – especially with the cost of petrol seemingly increasing almost daily. As a side note, I recall that at sometime in February, I was running a certain route about four times a week. This route took me past a petrol station, and every time I went past the price of a litre of fuel had gone up by 1p. Every single time! Shocking. So I flogged the motor to my dad and took the plunge: I embarked on a mission to get my full motorbike license.

Next post: my adventures on two wheels. Hopefully it won’t take me a year to write it.