HKT

January to March 2023

This piece gathers two updates from early 2023. After the health scare, the HGV licence, and the move into practical work, life began to settle into a different rhythm. Not easy. Not perfect. But steadier.

Back on the road

Christmas was good.

We had a chilled break with friends and family. We ate too much, watched films, played board games, and generally enjoyed being at home.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to the cinema to watch Avatar: The Way of Water. It was a better way to spend the evening than getting drunk and kissing strangers at midnight, although three hours of high frame rate blue people was probably a bit much. Rhona had to bail out after forty-five minutes because the motion made her feel sick.

By the 3rd of January, I was back at work.

Straight into grain.

Farms to mills.
Tilbury.
Erith.
The usual south-east runaround.

Luckily, I did not have too many nights out in the truck. It is always better to get home to a hot meal, a bath, and a proper bed.

My truck-driving skills were improving every day, although I still had plenty to learn. HGVs leave gaps for a reason, not so someone in a car can dive into them. Sometimes I wish car drivers could spend a day with a lorry driver, just to understand the level of attention required to get through ordinary traffic without turning everything into scrap metal.

One week, I was sent up to East Anglia to work from Diss.

That took me through large parts of Norfolk and Suffolk. It is a beautiful part of the world. I also saw a surprising amount of military aviation. Apaches. Hercules. F-15s. Typhoons.

Not a bad view from the office.

The following week, I was due to work across Essex and West Kent from Tilbury.

I was already counting the days until I could take a few long weekends away from work.

Roll on March and April.

Home life

Karta was working hard at college.

His art was coming together nicely, and he was almost as tall as me. Either that or I was shrinking. Probably both.

He had also started learning to drive.

He had weekly lessons, and I was taking him out in the Skoda as well. He was a natural. Calm, observant, and much better than I expected at feeling his way into the car.

Watching your child learn to drive is a strange thing.

One minute, they are small enough to hold. Then suddenly they are sitting next to you, checking mirrors, using indicators, and preparing to move out into the world under their own control.

It catches you.

The event calendar was starting to fill up too.

GT World Challenge at Brands Hatch.
Goodwood Festival of Speed.
World RX at Lydden Hill.
World Superbikes.
British Superbikes.
Car shows.
Bike gatherings.

I had hoped to go to Le Mans for the 100th-anniversary race, but it sold out quickly, and I did not have spare money for the tickets.

So we planned the next best thing.

A Le Mans watch party at home, with something on the Sunday to turn it into a proper weekend.

That felt enough.

Sometimes the smaller version of a plan still works.

Standby

March arrived with an odd work pattern.

As a bulk relief driver, I did not have my own truck. The idea was simple. I covered existing drivers when they went on holiday or were off sick.

For around forty weeks of the year, that meant a truck would be available for me.

For the rest of the time, I could be sent to another area to use an idle truck or told to stay at home on standby.

That was where I found myself for a few weeks.

On call. Paid. But limited.

One week, I went out for just one day. Another week, I drove a total of 4 hours.

I was not complaining. Being paid to stand by is better than not being paid at all. But it meant missing out on bonuses, and I had to be available within an hour if called in. So I could not go too far from home or get stuck into anything too involved.

That gave the days a strange shape.

Not working.

Not quite off.

Just waiting.

I was told I would soon be seconded to another part of the business for two weeks to cover a colleague on paternity leave. That meant delivering crop protection products to farms across the south-east.

I did not mind.

I had worked from the site near Maidstone the previous autumn, so it would be good to see everyone there again. It would also give me a chance to drive a van for a while.

After months of bulk grain, that sounded almost relaxing.

Filling the gaps

With work quiet, I filled the days as best I could.

I prepped my truck kit.
Read.
Watched documentaries.
Worked around the house.
Planned trips to car and bike events.

Spencer came to stay one weekend. We ate, watched films, and went to Canterbury for lunch at our favourite Mexican place.

It was good.

Simple, easy friendship is underrated.

I also caught up with Formula 1, World Superbikes, and MotoGP testing.

Rhona and I continued reducing the clutter we had gathered over the years. That was going well. Slowly, the house was becoming lighter. Not empty. Not stripped of character. Just less burdened.

That matters more than I used to realise.

Stuff has weight beyond the physical.

Health checks

The health reset from 2022 was still holding.

I completed a five-day fast and was building towards a week-long fast in the spring, then perhaps ten days in the summer.

My diabetes remained in remission.
My cholesterol was where it should be.
My blood pressure had normalised.

That felt extraordinary after the previous year.

The trinity had frightened me into action, but by early 2023, the action had become part of life. Food, fasting, walking, work and routine were now connected.

I still had problems to deal with.

I was waiting for the results of scans and X-rays on my left hip. It had bothered me since I began driving HGVs, and I wanted to know what I was dealing with.

As with the previous year’s health scare, I planned to use diet and exercise to manage the worst of it. Fasting seemed to help reduce inflammation around the joint, so that would remain part of the toolkit.

No miracle cure.

Just management.

That word again.

Management.

Health stops being theoretical once you have to manage it.

Money discipline

I also decided to run a small money experiment.

When I got paid, I would set aside money for food, bills and fuel, then avoid spending any spare cash unless I absolutely had to.

Nothing clever.

Just discipline.

How much would be left by the next pay packet?

That was the question.

Of course, we were also planning a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands, so some of the money would have to go towards that. But even then, the principle mattered.

Plan first.
Spend later.
Keep the leaks small.

After years of financial juggling, that felt like progress.

Not wealth.

Progress.

Spring coming

I had started using Twitter again a little more.

Mostly for road information, Formula 1, MotoGP, and debates around online privacy and free speech. Facebook barely interested me anymore, though I still liked posting pictures to Instagram. I had set things up so Instagram could cross-post elsewhere, which meant I was not really spending much time on the Meta side of things.

That felt like a workable compromise.

The clocks were due to go forward soon, and spring was beginning to show itself.

I was looking forward to more time in the garden, especially now that we had a summer house set up for relaxing and recovering.

That sounded almost too civilised.

A garden.
A summer house.
A job.
A healthier body.
A son learning to drive.
A wife beside me.
Trips on the calendar.
Spring coming.

Not perfect.

But something like a life.

Settling

Looking back, early 2023 was not dramatic.

That is why it matters.

After years of upheaval, plans, failed plans, moves, money pressure, health scares, job changes and personal resets, life had begun to settle into a more ordinary rhythm.

Work was still uncertain at times.

My hip needed attention.

Money still needed care.

I still had to watch my habits, my health, my spending and my tendency to drift into too many ideas at once.

But the direction was better.

The work was real.
The health changes were working.
Karta was moving forward.
Rhona and I were making the house calmer.
The archive of our lives was still being written.

There was no grand revelation.

No fireworks.

Just the feeling that, for once, things might be starting to hold.

Until next time,

adieu.