7am Monday morning work shifts and an estuary wilds outlook outside that could only be described as bloody dire.
Welcome to the working week.
Downstairs and I found little cause for optimism. It has been chaos from the kittens over recent days.
CHAOS, I tell you.
I should write crappy tabloid headlines.
We are finding bathroom bits and pieces appearing overnight in the least obvious of places.
Have you seen the bathroom plug, luv?
Oh - that will be in the bowl of Bran Flakes.
Cheers Daisy. Cheers Dotty.
[stop it]
I reached out to Serenade Radio to soothe me into the morning shifts. It’s Radio Trent Lite, with many of the old Castle Gate characters from back in the day still pushing the buttons.
This is no bad thing.
Hearing Andy Marriot’s voice over breakfast has a reassuring ambience, taking you back to the Castle Gate golden days of the mid to late 80’s.
Ahh - nostalgia, etc.
There was little time to slip into the tea drinking chair and relax though.
Monday morning was work crisis simulation time.
I’m actually rather enjoying these sessions that we stage for clients. As ever, there’s not a lot that I can say. My role though involves inventing endless online identities for engagement purposes.
You soon find that you are relying upon a hybrid of friends’ first and second names.
A colleague has come up with the classic character of Anarchy_Steve to poke a not very nice online stick at the corporates that play the game with us.
I think that I was Anarchy_Steve about 15 years ago.
The kittens continued to go kitten shit crazy, leaving me with two crisis games being played out.
The work kept me indoors until mid-afternoon. I then had a break in shifts and so cycled off along an incredibly damp trail.
I looked a right mucky pup.
No swim for Monday - something different instead.
OH HAI Jase the Gym Bunny.
Oh Lordy.
It’s been over a decade since I did any regular gym work back at Brixton Rec. I’m trying to think what was the cause from shifting me from the weights to the water.
No idea.
But with the Colchester gym having had a complete refurbishment over the past week, the Gym Bunny within fancied a bit of Muscle Mary action, so to speak.
You need a routine for gym work; you need some direction and a countdown to completion. I was amazed as to how I soon settled back into the old routine.
I started off on the treadmill. I had a very precise schedule programmed in back in the Brixton days: 10 minutes at 10kmh with a 5% incline, then 3 minutes at 12kmh with the incline down to 3%, and then a flat out f-me two minute sprint on flat territory at 15kmh.
The technology has changed considerably.
No thank you, I don’t want to read my Facebook feed whilst I’m sweating my hairy arse off. But the basics were still there, and I was able to programme in the exact same schedule.
Machine said yes, body said…?
Actually, it was alright. I managed to complete the same routine from ten years ago.
I got a little lost on the weights. I walked straight into the BIG BOYS lifting area. The grunts were audible, even with Downtown Soulville blasting through my headphones.
URGH.
URGH!!
URGH!!!!
Oh, I think I need the more general weights, fellas.
I struggled slightly, but finished what I wanted to achieve.
By now it was dark, and I had more work shifts at home starting at 5pm. I decided to cycle back along a pitch black Trail - perhaps not the most sensible move, given recent events.
So much for the bloody Super Moon. I could see f-all. I was relying upon familiarity with each twist, turn and slight change in the contour.
Shadows appeared in front of me. I didn’t have time to work out if they were birds, squirrels or something more sinister.
The evening work was steady. I recuperated with half a dozen mugs of hot tea.
I continued the current Danny Boyle interest later in the evening, watching Shallow Grave for the first time in over 20 years.
The plot still stands up, even if the acting doesn’t.
More kitten chaos closed Monday.
Where’s my bloody toothbrush?