Weekend off

Well we end this week with me and the hubby having a weekend off together!!!! Not sure when this last happened without one or both of us taking annual leave, but hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

I work a shift pattern which repeats every eight weeks, and in that eight weeks we have three and a half weekends off (the half being a Sunday on its own). Unfortunately, the three full weekends are back to back, but after hospitality at least it is weekends off!! Anyway, in the pattern we have earlies, middles, lates and nights, plus what we call spares, which can mean you do anything that needs covering, or if no-one if off, you do a cross between a middle and a late! Anyway, I am currently on week one, which is a short week - Monday, Tuesday off, work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then have the weekend off. Goody, three day week...........pay back is four nights next week. but at least that is followed by three days off including another weekend!!!

Cannot say my week has been incredibly taxing.............it's August, and it would appear that the criminal elements of society must take holidays too, so our days are not as busy as they have been. One thing we do have is all the foreign students................the disadvantage of working in a well known university city (I'll see if you can work it out from where I live, the fact that I work for the police force that covers the area in which I live in and it's not Cambridge - got it??). Anyway, the disadvantage of working in such a well known place, apart from the tourists, is all the foreign students who come to the city for the summer to learn / improve their English. Unfortunately, the language schools insist that they all wear various items of corporate branding, which to them is advertising, but to the local criminal element (those who are not on holiday) it reads 'I am a foreign student, mug me'. Unfortunately many of them fall victim and we spend much of our day dealing with the fall out.

However, not all of these foreign students are the victims they seem. We unfortunately have to deal with an increasing number of students who want to partake of the 'insurance scam'. That is, they claim to have had cash, ipod, camera etc stolen, usually from their room where they are staying with a host family. Now, a lot of these host families live in some of the less nice areas of the city, but you cannot tar everyone with the same brush, and a bit of persistent digging - something along the lines of 'I don't believe you. I think you lost your cash, camera, ipod etc, if you report it stolen we will come round to your host family and they will be arrested etc, etc' usually elicits the truth - 'yes, I lost it, spent it etc'. It is all done to get the magic number - that'll be a 'crime number' and hey ho, your insurance company pays out! Now most insurance companies are not going to bother checking the details in another country and just pay out - and then we wonder why our premiums are so high!! Sad thing is, most insurance will cover you for loss, and we will take a loss report, give you a loss number, and no-one is blamed, accused or arrested!!!

Well, back to the weekend off. As I said, I am on the first of my three back to back weekends off and hubby has started the new job!! I think I explained in my previous post, he had enough of hospitality and decided to retrain as a bus driver. So this Monday he joined First Group, one of the UK's largest public transport companies as a trainee bus driver. Day one was induction into the company, day two was the dreaded Health and Safety - quite important in a bus depot apparently...........human versus 10 ton bus.......you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out who will come off better (wish someone would explain that to the pedestrians in Oxford!!). Then day three he had to pass his theory test for driving and CPC (another money making scam by the government, supposedly making professional drivers even more professional), and his hazard perception test. I am pleased to confirm he passed all three, so Thursday and Friday he has actually been driving a bus - all 12 metres of it!! Anyway, while he is a trainee, they only work Monday to Friday, so hence our first weekend off in ages together.

We are actually both working at the hotel that we used to work at (Macdonald Compleat Angler in Marlow) on Saturday so as to earn a bit of extra cash. The downside of being a trainee bus driver, is the pay is pretty crap, though at least they do pay him, as it costs nearly four grand (that's £4,000) to train a bus driver from scratch. As soon as hubby passes his test, his pay rate will increase quite dramatically, but until then every little extra helps. Also, after spending so long in one industry, it is nice to keep your hand in so to speak. We don't start until 3pm, though no doubt it will be a late finish - probably 2am, but we have then got Sunday off together.

We obviously not to sure what things will be like in the time off department once hubby is actually on the driving rota, though it does appear he gets a long weekend about once a month - now I am not taking bets on the possibility that his weekends off and mine will actually coincide, but you never know! And whatever happens, at least hubby will be working a lot less hours and this should certainly help on the being able to see each other front.