My Last Week

Here I am sitting in the living room on a cold damp Tuesday morning waiting for the call from my new employer to go to work for the first time. Each day spent at home is a gift, and something to be grabbed with both hands. Sadly, Jools is at work, so I have the day to myself, and looking out of the window, even walking along the cliffs would be pointless due to the mist.
Oh well, there’s plenty to do in the house, a pile of laundry to be ironed. In fairness, I have ironed one shirt; sorry two, since leaving the Air Force; One for the interview for my last job and again for this job. The shirt for the wedding came with the suit! I decided that in 15 years I had done enough ironing to last me a lifetime.

So, I wait some more, at least in the new house, and amazingly, we have internet now. But more of that later as I have tales of lectures and instruction on not how to drown.

Last week I spent three days on a survival course near my old stamping ground north of Norwich, learning how to get out of a ditched helicopter and then how to operate flares, life jackets and the such. As usual in these things, it was death by Powerpoint, but at least there was some banter for those who had been offshore and something for the newbies to the industry to learn from real events.

The only real worrying event was on the Tuesday afternoon when we took to the pool and the helicopter simulator to learn ditching techniques and how to use the re-breather on the life jacket. We each had to do it six times, three of which were upside down. But, after a while it stopped being fearful and became fun, and there was talk of deliberately messing up so to have to do it again. The one thing we did get was confidence with all the equipment, which was the point.

Each night I went back to the country hotel; I’ll spare the place embarrassment in not naming them. But, I think I can say it was the worse place I have stayed in outside the military; service at times was non-existent, rooms dirty and the heating either as hot as the surface of the sun or like the arctic. At least I wasn’t paying unlike some others on the course. But, it did have a bar, although it was either a place for business meetings or a stopping off point for sweary boy-racers. A quiet meal was impossible as the large screen TV blasted out ‘tunes’ from something called MTV Urban, or something.

Tuesday evening, a friend from the other side of the city came to visit, and we took our pints back to my room to watch the game on TV, and to catch up on news, as he has just begun working for my old company, and is really looking forward to a life on the high seas, no matter how many horror stories I could think of!

Wednesday afternoon, after another session in the pool climbing into a life raft, we got our certificates and were allowed to leave. Sadly, I could not go straight home as word had reached me the day before that my friend’s Father was very poorly, and his house was just a short detour for me, and I thought that I could be of support for Andrew. Details of this I wrote yesterday, and it was as painful as you can imagine as Andrew and his sister were just waiting for what they had been told was the inevitable.

From there it was an easy drive south through Suffolk and then Essex over the Thames and into Kent. Stopping off also meant that the remains of the rush hour had passed, and I was home in under three hours. Arriving home is always a joyful occasion, even normally snooty cats greeted me with much leg rubbing.

For the next two days I stopped in as we awaited delivery of the fabled broadband USB hub that Parcelfarce, sorry Parcelforce promised that they would deliver. Each morning they promised it was on the truck for that days delivery, and each day the hours passed with nay a shadow of a delivery driver darkening our doorstep. We did begin to wonder if we would ever get it.

Saturday, we decided to go to their depot and pick the bloody thing up ourselves. We had sat-nav and we set off. Sadly, our sat-nav was a little off and it took us to the middle of a housing estate with no sign of a red truck to give away the depots location. We asked a postman, and he pointed us in the general direction and crossed our fingers.

Once there I waited while the guy on the counter disappeared into the depths of the hangar-sized warehouse behind, and came back with a stupidly small package. Turns out the driver had failed to fill out paperwork, and just gave up trying to find the house and left it back in the warehouse at the end of his route.

I decided to leave it there and after checking it was the real thing we headed back home. And yes, it really does work, even from the upstairs office. And so, the repository of all human knowledge was once again at our fingertips!