do all royal mail managers have their brains amputated?

i just can't understand royal mail some times they really seem to like shooting themselves in the foot. to the extent that i have now put in a grievance against my manager. why? well here's the story...



last friday i was asked to cover a delivery over in wrington, about 15 miles from portishead. if you get asked to do this nowadays you have to do it as part of the flexibility agreement that came in two years ago. ordinarily i would have no problem with doing this as long as i am transported to and from the relevant office within my contracted hours. after being transported out to wrington i phoned my manager at portishead to ask for a lift, i was told that there were no vans available. fine not an unusual occurence, i'll wait. and so it waited for an hour and a haf before i phoned back. and when i did i was told to my absolute astonishment that i would have to make my own way home. so i had to get a taxi which had to come from clevedon to pick me up. there's no taxis in wrington so it was lucky i knew the number of one of my bros mates whos a taxi driver. cue a phonecall to the bristol cwu hq, my manager has now had a severe bollocking off her manager and had to pay me £20 for overtime out of her own pocket, and is now not speaking to me apart from to call me someone who goes 'snivelling to the union' every time something goes wrong. and gave me a whole list of excuses, that i now know to be lies. like her car was in for mot. three people saw it in the car park. or nigel osmond the driver designated to pick me up was delayed on collection. he told me himself that this wasn't true that he had told her at 8am that he would struggle to complete his workload with giving me lifts. so she said to leave the lifts and she would sort some thing. only she didn't and she left a small problem to fester and it became a huge problem. the excuse that she gave me was that he was delayed on collection, which i now know to be a lie...so after a huge bollocking from her boss, you would have thought that would have been enough. but no...mike newport, the area union rep put out a press release about the incident, an interview was broadcast on local radio, which also commented on the current dispute between the bristol area bosses and the union. so basically my manager has spoon fed propoganda and her boss has given her a right bollocking and the union has caused her and the royal mail severe embarassment. needless to say now i will be supporting saturdays strike and with the proposals they have about 'improving the service' like making our job 10 til 6 for a start a six day week, so there goes our social life for a start and in return we get, you guessed it, absolutely sweet fuck all apart from we been told to save another 10% of hours from the office next year. some people are saying 'oh just get another job', but where? i know people who're 'working ' at the car import centre at portbury docks and not working for whole shifts because there's nothing to do.

but things have been given a sense of perspective this weekend with ewan kelli and isaac staying down with me and it has been hard work even with three of us keeping an eye on him. we have got off quite lightly with just a ripped table cloth and a few attempted cup smashings and playing a game that was a combination of british bulldog and hide and seek. it involved isaac hiding behind the curtains and when we found him he would run at us and try and fight his way past us all good fun and it gives you a sense of whats really important in life...

music to my ears

The latest edition of peak performance magazine dropped through my door the other day (or should i say i nicked it out of the prepping frame at work before my postman ben had tied it up) and i was intrigued to read an article about selection of music for different training sessions depending on what the aim of the session is. now i don't run with an ipod or an mp3 player because i don't know how to use them as i am a complete technophobe, and running on fast rural roads where you can't always see whats around the corner they can compromise your safety by disturbing your concentration. i do though often think about what songs i would like to be listening to on a run. for instance if i'm on a long run like i was today then i may have something rythymic like i'm on fire by bruce springsteen-that just the song that i've got on at the minute-or hayley westenra (for any fans of easy listening music i really recommend this young bird as being a new zealander she's not that well known in this country yet but she has a great voice). i would never choose some thing with a fast tempo for a longer jaunt because although that might help you in the later stages of the run, it also increases the likelyhood of going to fast in the earlier stages of the run, meaning severe pain later on in the session. for a faster paced session like a tempo run or even a run some thing with a really fast tempo. basically the essence of the article was that firstly listening to music does slightly improve performance, but you have to get the pace of the music to match the effort levels that you will be putting in to get the best results from listening to music.

13 miler today like i said, so i think that totals 53 miles this week, with a tempo run on thursday, this is the strongest i have felt for some time. i'm doing the towpath 10k on friday for portishead so that will give me a good indication of where i am with my training and more importantly how far i have progressed since clevedon about 5 weeks ago. i'm not doing any out and out speed work at the minute and in a way i feel like i'm reaping the benefits because i'm not beating my body about so much and am able to save my best for when it really counts

the rules of nature

rule #1 if you don't go before you go out running you will get caught short before your run finishes.

rule 2# if you don't make sure you're balanced properly you will fall over

rule #3 if you do fall over and there is a bramble bush nearby you will fall face first in to it.

so you can probably work out from that what happened to me tonight. the net result is that my upper body is currently covered in cuts and scratches. what made it worse was that the bramble bush i fell in to was below foot level, making it doubly difficult to get out of without shredding my skin. no real harm done though.

on a more positive note my long sunday run is now up to 13.5 miles. i said to my old coach mike a couple of weeks ago that this coming winter i aim to run more miles than ever to really build up for a proper assault on the longer distances. for a half marathon the long run ideally needs to be a minimum of 15-17 miles, maybe even up to 20 as long as it isn't compromising too much on your speedand i aim to be doing a lot of that this winter and so far, although it isn't winter yet i am holding true to that promise.

the situation at work is now deteriorating fast. unfortunately and to my eternal embarrassment portishead delivery office is the weakest and always has been historically in terms of support for industrial action. during the last dispute the office had about 20 scabs out of a staff of about 50 people. compare and contrast this with other local offices. clevedon 5 miles away had a staff of about 60. 1 person broke the strike. avonmouth a staff of about 40, 3 scabs, 2 of which have now left the business. one of them developed a mystery illness after he had flicked a double 'v' sign as he walked across the picket line. not a wise idea.

the vote will be close though. this is not officially a national dispute like last time although it may well become one. i voted for strike action and i hope that the majority would have the sense to vote for it but there are far too many people in our office who a) can't see the long term and b) are too selfish to see past the end of their own noses. in spite of the scabs though there are some real hardcore srikers in our office though like my self, i would have too fmuch pride to ever contemplate crossing a picket line, so the vote could be close. what has annoyed me though is two non strikers from the last dispute, saying that the union has never helped them. well one of them has had nearly half his round taken off him in the past year because its too big and the other after an accident at work is suing royal mail for negligence with the help of, ahem, the cwu...make your own minds up

i am very pissed off at my work

over their failure to book annual leave for my trip to brighton next week. and because one of the days i applied for, well i say applied, they actually told me i had it has now been announced by the union as a strike date on the proviso that we get a "yes" vote, which i hope we will. the date in question is the friday and because of the backlog from the friday that puts the saturday in question as well. so sorry for messing you around like this john and rosie but it was gonna happen to me at some point. its funny how people (but not me that time) had similar problems about the time of the last strikes two years ago.

enough of work though, on the running front i managed my longest run of the year last sunday, 13 miles from portishead to clevedon, along the coastal path, around the old town and back through walton in gordano, and up the old coast road. its funy how running along a path can slow you down so much. i covered the distance in 1 hr 45 mins approximately and by the time i got back home i was in quite a mess with the amounts of fluids that i'd lost.

since then i've just done some steady running apart from 4 very easy miles this evening. about 6-8 miles every night, steady but unspectacular. its funny how these things work out though. walking around my duty this morning i felt fantastic, but when i woke up from my afternoon kip i was groggy as and i never really managed to get it out of my system. better it happens now though then on a race day. i have one mre day of work this week though so i'm going to retire to bed to read "shirley" by charlotte bronte, for a bit and then it'll be lights out until tomorrow.

night night everyone

pete

an eventful day

well saturday did prove to be an eventful day with the cotswold relay and a concert at gatcome park in the evening. i found the pub where i was supposed to be sarting relatively easily and that was about the easiest thing about the race. i spent most of it not knowing where i was or where i was going about 2/3rds of it up hill. the oppressive combination of extreme heat and the terrain meant that by the end of the third hill i and many others were reduced to wlking parts of the climbs in order to get up there in one piece. after approximately an hour of running we were in formed by the attendant at the water station 'its all down hill from here mate'. imagine my joy at hearing this. and imagine my horror when i found out it wasn't. due to national trust concerns the last mile or so of my leg deviates from the official cotswold way and goes along a towpath instead. now i had an image in my head of being able to enjoy the last mile or so some thing that many people get which often proves to be a false dawn. instead with the temperatures rising it proved to be a slogand by the time i reached the finish line near ebley mill i was just about ready to die. thoroughly dehydrated, the last 30 seconds or so of the race are just a blur, and it was a good half an hour before i was ready to move again. the muscles could have taken more but the lack of fluids in me just wouldn't have allowed it.

so then it was off for lunch in sainsburys car park where i quickly woolfed down some pasta and whatever else i could get my hands on. i managed to get find an open air swimming pool in stroud and it worked wonders for my legs in the cold water, helping them to recover far quicker than they usually would of. with so many kids messing about though it was only a matter of time before i lost my patience so i did the minimum amount of time i could get away with before i made myself scarce.

and then it was on to gatcome park where i was due to watch mezza soprano katherine jenkins in action and that was an amazing experience. to give you city dwellers an idea of how big a place gatcome park actually is it's 720 acres. i walked about half a mile from where i parked my car and the house where princess anne lives was no where near bing in sight. she has a reputation for being very down to earth and she thoroughly lived up to that reputation by the way she engaged the audience during the performance. the support act all angels lived up to their emerging reputation and they will one day be as big a star as she is. even getting lost on the way back (old country roadsigns don't show up in the dark) and the hour wait to get out of the car park all contributed to making the day worthwhile.