I have had enough, I'm starting a campaign to get Robbie to look for another job! I have never met anyone more passionate about his work than Robbie and I'm used to him leaving early in the morning or coming home late. I can't count the number of times I've had to 'put his dinner in the dog' or make last minute changes to the evening meal. Even when he gets home, his work often comes with him. Today he was struggling to find a solution to a particularly challenging problem with his December 09 timetable. He wandered around Morrisons muttering to himself about why this or that solution wouldn't work, he got some funny looks from other shoppers, but he was too engrossed in his timetable to notice or to care. His eureka moment came in the yoghurt section when he suddenly announced to anyone who cared to listen “Yes! That could be possible, it could work”. By now I was convinced the store staff were ready to call for the men in white coats, so I hurried him through the checkout and out to the car. He continued his discussion with nobody in particular and by the time we got home he seemed to have settled on a possible solution.
Robbie was exhausted after his 18 hour endurance test on Thursday when he went to visit Network Rail in Leeds, but he still got up early and rushed off to work on Friday morning. By the time he got home in the evening he was too tired and too wound up to eat! He has a reputation to maintain so he managed a few mouthfuls, but he could hardly keep his eyes open. The early starts don't bother him, they don't even bother me very much and we cope w
hen he is late home, I am used to it. The thing that really bothers me is seeing him work so hard and not be appreciated, in fact on Friday it was worse than that, not only did his efforts go unnoticed, but he got moaned at for something that he knew nothing about and was not his responsibility. I know they have had to cope with difficult circumstances, and Robbie has willingly put in time and effort to make things work, but this has been going on for almost a year now and he is being taken for granted, I know he thinks he is Superman, but he can't do the impossible!
It may take me a while to get Robbie to see things my way – but he usually does in the end! In the meantime I have a strategy. Robbie arrived home totally exhausted on Friday evening, he is no use to me in that state. After a good night's sleep and a haircut his strength was restored, but I have plans, he will be totally worn out by the time he goes back to work on Monday morning. Why should they have the best of him? I didn't choose a 'toy boy' just to watch him sleep all weekend!
Robbie's random information for the week was imparted in the middle of the night. Just before 1am on Saturday morning he woke briefly to inform me that 'they have sweeteners reduced at Tesco in Leeds' I'm not sure why I needed to know that, but before I could ask he was sleeping soundly again.
Robbie had an early start this morning because he is going to Leeds to visit Network Rail and you know what that means – the railway will probably grind to a halt! Every time Robbie goes north disaster strikes and they have points failure or power lines down.
As I began writing I automatically wrote Network Fail instead of Rail, that is how they are filed away in my brain and that is how I think of them, not that I think about them at all unless I am forced to! Anyway it reminded me that I came close to disaster when writing the blog the other day. I always use the spell check, but if you accidentally miss type a word that happens to be a different word the spell check will not highlight the problem. I read what I have written, but as I know what I intended to say I sometimes read what I expect to see instead of what I actually wrote. I had intended to write 'Robbie woke with a start' but just before I added the item to the blog I spotted my mistake, I had written 'Robbie woke with a tart'. That would certainly have set tongues wagging!
I think I mentioned in a previous entry that Robbie left home at around 5.30am. He was going to Leeds and he had a horrible journey due to slow moving freight delaying his train and causing him to miss his connection, it delayed his journey by an hour. Being Robbie he used the time wisely and found a nice little cafe! He has had an even worse journey home, he has been travelling for most of the evening and he doesn't expect to arrive back in Northampton until after midnight, so we will have a very late night -again! It is bad enough him getting home late, but if he starts talking about Network Rail in bed again, I will be very tempted to harm him!!
Since Robbie isn't around to provide us with a random fact, here is one I came across earlier today. In the late nineteenth century Northamptonshire had 75 railway stations, today it has just 5! I wish I was a time traveller!
Robbie enjoyed his HST trip to Leeds, he was really excited because the train was diverted twice on route. He gave me a mile by mile account in such minute detail that I began to think that he had been on a secret mission to test out the new Baker's rail atlas! He is still talking about the reasons for the diversion and it is nearly 11pm, it seems I am destined to another night with him droning on while I try to sleep. Network Rail have a lot to answer for - do you think I could sue them for causing mental cruelty. If Robbie ever went on mastermind I wonder what his specialist subject would be? Probably it would be the 'd' words of the railways - deltics, diesels and diversions!
After all the effort to deliver his lunch to work before his trip to Leeds, he was late getting back and he had to buy sandwiches while he was out!!! Unbelievable!!!
Robbie had an early start this morning, he is off to Leeds to talk to Network Rail - I suppose someone has to talk to them! He has this annoying habit of setting his phone to wake his alarm clock up. He fails to answer the phone, then sets the alarm to snooze. He seems quite capable of doing exactly that, but snoozing is the very last thing on my mind. I end up threatening him with a near death experience and he plods off to seek sanctuary in the bathroom. By this time I am wide awake and all I can do is fantasise about taking revenge on him - maybe a mouse trap in the bed would be fun!
As if that wasn't enough I was then treated to the alarming sight of him trotting around in nothing but long socks and knickers looking for a shirt. The socks make him look like an overgrown boy scout! I had ironed 7 shirts and a mountain of other stuff at the weekend, but somehow I had 'conspired' to leave him shirtless this morning. Apparently only one shirt in his vast collection is suitable to wear to Leeds, and oddly enough it just happened to be the only unironed one!
On the subject of clothes, I watched a bit of the Rugby yesterday, It was good to see England win, but they are a fiercely ugly bunch! What was going on with the shorts the French were wearing? They were ridiculously short, it looked as if they were wearing nappies. I'm not really into rugby, Arsenal are much prettier!
What a day! The gale force winds came as predicted and our newly repaired fence went from the vertical to the horizontal. That's what happens when you rely on 'Bob the Builder' to fix the fence! We also lost a few tiles from the roof - and my bank account lost hope. Even if we can claim something on the insurance policy, replacing the fence and repairing the roof will cost a fortune. There was lots of damage in the area near our home too, we have a lovely park not far away and a number of trees have fallen down including a lovely mature tree that has been completely uprooted.
Robbie had to go back to Leeds today so he was up at the crack of dawn to be at the station just after 6am. I wasn't too happy about it because it was already very windy and there were already speed restrictions in place so it didn't seem sensible to go all the way to Leeds and end up stranded. He agreed to leave early in order to get home at a reasonable hour as the speed restrictions would make his journey much slower.
Robbie caught his train to return from Leeds at 2.10pm. It finally arrived in Birmingham 344 minutes late, it had been stopped by obstructions and accidents three times so it had to be taken back to York and eventually managed to get to Birmingham via Doncaster. I am writing this at 10.40pm and he is still on his way home, he is now on a train to Northampton and he hopes to reach the station by 11.30pm. I have been worried about him, but I also feel cross because the entire episode was avoidable. The gales had been predicted for a couple of days, there were already speed restrictions in place and chaos was the inevitable result. Yet he still chose to travel and the train operating companies were still happily selling day return tickets when the odds of arriving at their destination were not good and the chance of getting home again was minimal. Surely we should expect more in the way of joined up thinking from the train operating companies.
Robbie had a busy day, he was up at the crack of dawn to go to Leeds. The trains were a little kinder to him today and he arrived at his meeting on time.
Robbie is still smarting about the loss of his torn pair of PJ bottoms or 'lounge wear' as he insists on calling them. I put them in the bin a couple of weeks ago and he appears to be still in mourning for them. Of course it is not a simple case of replacing them, there is the little matter of bad taste to be considered. Even Marks and Spencer's cannot be relied upon to stock garish coloured PJ's with alarming patterns. It takes considerable effort to track down exactly the right pair to fit his personality, so he is still at the research stage.
His remaining PJ bottoms were in the wash, so this evening he disappeared upstairs and returned a few minutes later wearing what I can only describe as a pair of workman's overalls without the bib part. They were a sober navy blue colour, but they were about a foot too long for him and they made him a very peculiar shape. For some reason he wore them for the whole evening with the M&S price tag still attached to his bottom and this didn't enhance the image, the tag looked like a tail. I couldn't help enquiring what they were meant to be, and he explained that they were lightweight leisure trousers from Marks and Spencer's. Unlikely as it sounds, they are ten times worse than the PJ's and I am actually encouraging him to replace his 'lounge wear'!!!
hen he is late home, I am used to it. The thing that really bothers me is seeing him work so hard and not be appreciated, in fact on Friday it was worse than that, not only did his efforts go unnoticed, but he got moaned at for something that he knew nothing about and was not his responsibility. I know they have had to cope with difficult circumstances, and Robbie has willingly put in time and effort to make things work, but this has been going on for almost a year now and he is being taken for granted, I know he thinks he is Superman, but he can't do the impossible!
