The past three weeks has gone so quick but I have managed to get some things done and I have easily slipped into the semi retired way of life.

I’ve been to the library and picked up a few books.

Early morning walks have been extended.

I’ve managed to spend time in the garden and slowly slowly parts of it are taking shape.

I’ve been out on the bike a few times and even tried one of the longer routes although I did take the shorter option because I ran out of puff…….however next time I go out I’ll do the longer run.

I ate my Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie…….delicious…..

This morning I caught up with my mate Peter and we did a short bush walk, it was fairly easy but it was great to catch up after many months and put the world to rights and also make fun of a few of its inhabitants.

Only complaint so far is that the temperature is rising most days, today it says its 36c outside and I am just not in the mood for that, mind you I think it’s more the extreme UV which is the problem. Thankfully inside my blacked out house, all the curtains are drawn, it’s around 27c which is way better. Last year I was working and used their air-conditioning which was so cold I usually had to wear a jacket because it hovered around 22c which felt like winter.

The local bird life seem to be happy that I’m around more often……….for one thing they get fed more regularly but more importantly the bird bath is kept topped up with fresh water and not allowed to stagnate. It’s a ceramic bird bath and it sits in full sun, it’s hot to the touch and the water is rather warm but they still seem to enjoy it. I think they prefer it more in the winter because it will be like a hot spring.

When I went to fill it up today I discovered that my 3000 LT water tank was empty. I didn’t put the hose away yesterday or shut the valve off and so I’m not sure if it drained during the night or I have used that amount of water however they are forecasting rain in a few days so it should fill up fairly quickly.

Not having to be anywhere in particular is great, I can have a siesta and finish whatever I am doing tomorrow if I wish……I like that.

I applied for my Bus Driving Authority which allows me to drive school buses and the like and I’m thinking of doing this after the New Year. I only want to do some part time work and most of these positions are part time, although they usually are split shifts but if I work close to home then this should not be a problem. Driving is easy and I don’t have to think too hard when I do it and the bus runs are straight forward and there is no pressure to battle the clock so I think it will be OK. Peter has been doing this for the past 3 months and quite enjoys it and the money ain’t bad.

I also sent my reply to Kirk at Tradelink and cc’d in my old manager and the state manager and more or less asked him why he lied……..no response yet or fallout to report. I’ve attached the email below:

Hi Kirk,

I got a response from HR within about 30 minutes after sending my feedback, they said “Thank you” However it seems that you gave Tradelink Ipswich some feedback of your own about my comments, trouble was what you told them was absolute rubbish. I’m curious to why you would do that…..

I went into the store a few days after sending the email and got treated like an absolute leper. It seems that they got the impression that I said how bad Ipswich Tradelink was and that I would never want to work there again. They were not very happy with me at all………

To resolve this issue I forwarded the email that I sent to you to my Ipswich colleagues……they too were confused as why you told them a load of bollocks. I can only put this down to the two reasons; You don’t particularly like me or my big words in my email confused you……..either way the guys I worked with for 12 months at Tradelink Ipswich understood what I had to say.

Let me make this a bit simpler for you…..I enjoyed working with my colleagues and friends at Tradelink Ipswich and I will still keep in touch with them. However I feel that the pressures put on them are too much at times and some of the processes seem antiquated. My email was a criticism of Tradelink and not of any individuals, well maybe Gary for sending the termination email. These criticisms that I made offer suggestions which you can either choose to ignore or thank me for my input.

What I do not like is someone doing a character assassination on me while using a fabrication from their imagination……..

Merry Christmas,

Campbell

Up early and into Brisbane to go for a wee ride round the river. I seem to get slower and slower these days but I don’t care if was a lovely morning and I even stopped at the bridge cafe, the coffee was very good.

I only did a short run but I think I will do the longer run next time…. Maybe this week.

Two weeks on and I’m enjoying my semi retirement. I’ve done nothing today. I got up at 5 am because I was awake, had breakfast and then returned to the couch for a snooze. At the back of 8, I went for a shower and then wandered down to Aldi. Its hot today, the UV is extreme.

I feel as if the plug has been pulled, I’m absolutely knackered. The last few days digging that drainage trench and then yesterday I walked for a few hours in the blazing sun has taken its toll.  I had every intention of going out on the bike this morn, hence the early rise, but I felt as flat as a pancake.

The sum total of today goes like this; breakfast…..snooze…..shopping…..coffee….early lunch….TV then snooze…..more TV and then a bit of time in the hammock + coffee……beef vindaloo (Hot) followed by yoghurt. Now I feel like a fat sloth…….but there might still be room for chocolate.

I then put the bike rack on the car and got the bike in place for the morn. I’m going to try and get up early and head to the city for a run around the river…it’s been a while.

After I left the job I decided to send my feedback to the management, well to be honest they do invite you to do so; however I did it slightly differently. The email that is sent to you thanks you for your service to the company and then they ask a number of multiple choice questions where the options don’t really suit the answer you may wish to give. The last part is where you can let loose and have a vent, unfortunately the word count was too small for my rant and so I wrote a few pages and returned it to HR as requested and then I sent it to the national and regional managers. I thought it was time the national manager got to hear from one of the plebs because I know that the regional manager, Kirk, would have stopped it dead in its tracks.

I returned to the Tradelink store a few days later and got a very frosty response from the Luke the store manager. Initially I thought he was taking the piss when he charged me full price for the items I needed, so much for the staff pricing I was promised. I returned a few items and then I bought three drain stop ends even although I thought it was rather expensive but I needed them.

On the way home I went to Bunnings (Hardware store) and bought cheaper stop ends and returned to Tradelink to get a refund. This time manager Luke asked me to come into the office to discuss our previous conversation. Turns out that Kirk (regional Manager) told Luke many things that I never said in the email. I apparently said that everyone in the store was useless, especially Luke and I was glad that I was leaving. Looks like Kirk has been telling porky pies and so I forwarded my email to everyone in the store so that they could see what I really said. I now get staff pricing once more 🙂

The behaviour of both Luke and Kirk has surprised me somewhat. I never expected to be treated by Luke in this manner, at least confront me about what he had heard. In regards to Kirk I can’t believe he has been so stupid to think that I would not share my email with my former colleagues, what a dickhead.

It turns out that the National manager has instructed Kirk to respond to my email, still waiting for a response. I’ll give him till next weekend to reply and then I push him under the bus by confronting him about his lies, in fact even if he does reply I will still drop him in it with his boss….I feel that this is the right thing to do.

I’m looking forward to receiving that email and composing my response.

On the 26^th of November my contract came to an end and I was once more free of the shackles of work. I would have stayed on but as I maybe mentioned before, they changed the job description and I was not too keen in pursuing that direction.

Saturday the 27^th was the first Saturday in a long time that I was able to enjoy without having to spend half of it at work. I woke up at the usual time, had breakfast and then went back for forty winks. After the second cup of coffee I headed to the shops for some food and then returned home and began to just veg.

Guilt began to well up in the brain but I soon put it back in its place. I no longer have an agenda, I have lots of free time and I think I deserve to just chill for a bit.

I’ve had a week to consider my new lifestyle and I like it. To no longer have to look at the clock, and to do what I want to whenever that may be. But it has not been as easy this time to break the routine of work. Part of me is feeling that I am on holiday and I need to get all those jobs done and then I realise that this is my life for the next few months. I will be happy to cruise along like this until maybe the end of January and if I can find part time work to cover expenses then that will be fine.

I’m already worrying about money and I started to fill out an online claim with the brew and when I got to the asset test it struck me that I doubt that they will give me any money anyway due to the current bank balance, so I abandoned that and went back to reality. If I only plan to take a few months off I would rather not get bogged down with the bureaucracy of government as they will only frustrate me and upset my chi

Glen, me plumber, arrived on Monday to finish of his part and then I could get on with finishing off the new laundry and toilet. I’m quite pleased with the result although it’s still not finished. I ran out of material on Wednesday and I need to get the electrician in before I can complete the sheeting. I’ll try to get him in this week. The good thing is…..I have plenty of time and can finish it this week or next.

One area I really want to focus on is the garden. Last year before I started work I had only been home for about 4 months and I had no time to look at the garden. I started the renovations downstairs and that took most of my weekends and days off, so now it’s time.

I want to also get back to previous pursuits, the bike, reading, writing and walking………all those things that I have had to put on hold over the past 12 months.

We always feel anxious when we step out of our comfort zone and head in a new direction. Over the years I have done this a few times and it never really gets any easier because you will always doubt yourself right up to the minute of that decision. So far my choices have worked out……….

My contract with my employer expires on Friday. One month ago I got an email which I may have eluded too, which thanked me for my contribution and then proceeded to ask me to give feedback. This pissed me off severely……..At least have the decency to have management talk to you first before sending out an exit email.

I had to re-apply for the position, well that’s ok and so I did. I got my interview and it went well apart from me losing the plot slightly about the management. Ah well….. one must vent every so often. I was asked to give my decision by Monday on what I wished to do? Stay or go?

On Monday I told them that I would stay and then immediately regretted saying that.

This morning (Tuesday) my feelings were confirmed when I walked in and sat at my desk………I don’t want to be here anymore. An email I got from the regional manager outlined her expectations for the coming year. Some of those expectations were:

Cold calling potential builders,

Having to acquire 15 trade accounts

Report your progress every fortnight and have a zoom meeting to discuss

To increase sales targets to increased budgets

More virtual consultations with customers and builders

And at the same time look after all the retail customers that come in throughout the day and all for the basic wage. I didn’t sign up for all this and it’s worth more than 50 grand a year.

Now some people might just continue to work and let the shit hit the fan further down the track, however I don’t need the added pressure and I am not chasing sales. My head is saying stay and my heart is saying run…………so I ran. I was never that keen to work here anyway and 12 months is enough and may I add I have done rather well.

Of course having the money makes a difference but I feel that my mental health is beginning to suffer because I have not done many of my passions over the last year and to a lesser extent having to listen to the bullshit and paranoid ramblings that often take place at work. There is enough noise in the world, in the media and I don’t want to go to a workplace where the conspiracies are loud and strong. That was one of the great benefits of living in China; being cut off from the outside world……Ignorance can be bliss……I would really like to get back but in the meantime I will return to a simpler life and to have more time to myself. Life has been too busy the past year and I have not had the energy or the time to pursue other interests.

The contract was for 12 months and I really expected, maybe naively, that the world would be open for business but it just seems to be getting worse.

I don’t think I will get work before Christmas and I don’t really want to start looking yet, but if I see a part time job that suits I will certainly go after it. I might be able to sign on and get a few quid which would help, at least that would cover the monthly bills.

But the sense of relief I feel now about my decision makes me know I made the correct choice and the future does not worry me, well not yet 🙂

Increase your sales,

Cold calls in fact,

Stuff that, I ain’t doing that!

Not what I signed up for.

My head says stay,

My heart says go,

And so I chose the latter.

The contract is closing,

Only a week to go,

Mixed emotions ebb and flow,

My only concern is money.

Buy some bargains, buy at cost,

Only a week to go before the opportunity is lost,

Still don’t know my fate.

Mind you,

I’m looking forward to the long walks,

Also looking forward to the long talks,

To reading, writing, riding and that freedom that was lost,

My only concern is the money.

I’ll go to the brew

Wait in a queue,

Get judged by the pencil pusher minion,

Get the third degree and the rules,

No respect for us old fools.

Marking the days till the new phase,

Buy the flight, book the hotel,

Mind you packing the hoose up is going to be hell,

Well I still don’t know if I will have a job at the end of the month, no information has been forthcoming as of yet. Life seems to go on fairly normal and even although the manager has had a few meetings with management on branch matters, I still don’t know if I have been the subject of any of those conversations.

I’ve had a look around for work and there ain’t much about and as much as I am looking forward to a holiday, I think that it would be better to stay put if I can. I’ll be able to continue with my renovations and not dig into the kitty; mind you I am going to buy what I need through the company while I can still get cost pricing. I’ll miss that if I leave.

I’ll also miss to a lesser extent some of the weird conspiracy theories that my long haired drug smoking middle aged colleague comes away with. This week there have been some “Work cover” workers helping out in the warehouse and the hippy and “The Old Guy” have been deep in the mire. It seems that the Rothschild’s, the wealthy Jewish banking family, that have a hand in almost everything in the world including founding members of the Illuminati  ………well did you know that they now live on the dark side of the moon. My long haired friend’s new friend’s wife works in some secret government agency and she knows for a fact that this place exists.

My hippy friend has also convinced himself that he has cancer and will die soon. Bowel cancer to be exact, even although the tests so far have shown nothing more than low iron. In the past 12 months I have not seen him eat anything remotely healthy. Every day he will get some sort of junk food, burger, chips, kebab, pizza, chocolate and to wash it all down either iced coffee or soft drink. Everyone tells him that if he changes his diet and eats real food then he will generally feel a whole lot better and his body might actually repair itself. I did not know that hamburgers were the same as fresh meat………..you can’t argue with stupidity.

The cost of all this junk bought every week must cost a fortune. But he tells everyone that he has plenty of money, except when it comes to a deposit for a house. He wants a house, he says. He bought $1400 worth of hash today, this will last him six months. It’s cheaper to do this because if he bought it every week then he would have paid nearly $200 more. Forward thinking for sure.

He spends most of his time at home playing computer games, mostly VR games or has he has described to us VR porn…….which is a whole other story. He has learned so many things about the female anatomy by immersing himself in the virtual and I am unable to impart most of what he has told me because it is quite disturbing.

He has an online dating app and he tells us that he only gets matched to ‘pigs or dogs’ He is no oil painting I may add. I can’t imagine anybody in their right mind giving him a date and then again he wouldn’t really know what to do with a real person. The sad thing is he is just the tip of a worldwide epidemic of nutters that have fallen down the rabbit hole believing every crazy conspiracy that comes along. I mean he likes Trump. I don’t think he is dangerous in any way but he is a rather sad creature that is 50 years old and has done almost nothing in the real world.

Last weekend was fairly busy. I finally got round to building the wall beside the garage door. I’ve done this to try and stop the rain from being pushed under the garage door when the storms hit from the south east. When they come from this direction they are extremely fierce.

I’ve only lined the external wall as yet, simply because I ran out of time and plus the fact I was knackered. These villa board sheets are a wee bit on the heavy side. I haven’t done this kind of work for ages and it was good to get back to the tools. It came up not too bad and the window that I picked up earlier in the year looks good.

I’ve still got so many jobs around the house which I have been unable to get to because of work, but that might all be coming to an end very soon. My contract finishes on the 26^th November and there is no guarantee that I will be kept on. In fact I think the job has been promised to someone else and the reason I think this is because I got a termination survey email sent to me to thank me for my time with the company and to also ask why was I leaving. An automated process but it would have been nice to actually have the line manager come to me first and give me the heads up, but he told me that he was completely unaware.

The area manager has been pushing for months for me to take up 15 builders accounts to increase sales and I have casually ignored it simply because there is more than enough work during the day to deal with and there ain’t no way I will be taking work home when I’m only on minimum wage, they can fuck right off.

And so I guess they will find some other mug more willing. I always knew that I was only here for 12 months and I thought that by this time the world would have been in a better state where travel was possible once more but as we all know, this is not the case. I wish to return to China and that is just not possible.

I would really like to work until next July and then pack my bags once more. If I don’t get kept on I will be able to survive without a job but I would rather keep the money I have squirreled away over the last 12 months. Mind you not all is lost; they still might keep me on.

If I can find part time work around 25 hours a week then that would be ideal. I would have more time at home to work on projects and still have money coming into pay the bills, so this is plan B. My original Plan B was to win lotto but this is now Plan C.

The local borders within Australia will be opening soon and if I get laid off then it will be a good opportunity to head to Sydney and catch up with a few old friends that I haven’t seen in donkeys. I’ll first have to get a wee bit of maintenance done on the old Ford but nothing too serious. It will be good to do a road trip again.

The yellow Ford stopped at the pump,

Music blaring, thump thump thump,

Blonde bint at the wheel, hair like straw,

I’m thinking to myself, “this is someone’s Ma”

She’s oot the car and what a sight,

Our eyes meet, shit what a fright……

Saggy tattoos on wrinkled arms,

One of her more beguiling charms?

Chest to her knees, arse big as a bus,

Latex leggings about to burst,

Big shiny cowboy boots, whit a mess,

Black metal singlet, dark glasses too,

This old bint must be nearly 82,

Wurzle Gummage springs to mind,

A scary sight at any time,

Strutting her stuff reliving her youth,

Even although she’s a bit long in the tooth,

Her mind is young, her body old,

The Ford looks good and the colour bold,

She don’t give a Fuck,

She lives life to the full,

Mooth like a sewer, but she ain’t no fool,

Sniggers abound, me included,

Am thinking to myself that she might be deluded,

But each to their own, be young at heart,

You don’t want to end up a fogey old fart,