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22 Things to Know for your First Day on a Building Site

On By AndyIn Random, UncategorizedLeave a comment

What to expect first day on construction site

Disclaimer – don’t actually do any of this stuff (but it is the kind of thing to expect on a building site)

1. Don’t worry about where you put anything. There is officially no official place to leave equipment; in fact, you’ll spend 60% of your time, running around looking for a bucket for mortar

2. If you worry about health & safety people will either presume you are a some kind of snob or an aristocrat.

It is common for brickies to leave bricks for example, standing upright, on the edge of walls above you and it is also common practice to leave as much crap as possible, including packaging, broken bricks and cable ties strewn across the scaffolding for people to trip over

3. Say “f*cking” every other word

4. Establish yourself as the alpha male as soon as possible by being the first to take your top off at any glimpse of sunshine, and by shouting the loudest during the ‘banter’

5. Eat pies & pasties, smoke 20 cigarettes per break, and then tell the middle-class guy that his hemp protein powder is bad for him and going to destroy his kidneys. In fact, being a builder gives you superior knowledge and life-experience, so be sure to put across your strong opinions on nutrition, education and politics 🙂

6. If the boss tells you off, just say “I’m really sorry la, won’t do it again”. He will love you forever as most apprentices can not take feedback at all (feedback = getting a bollocking).

7. Lift exclusively with your back.  People who lift with their legs are also presumed a ‘posh bellend’

www.cafepress.co.uk

8. At break, talk about how hard your mates are, and smoke just inside the door of the portacabin to ensure that it is completely ‘hotboxed’ with tobacco.
It’s important that you are seen either smoking, or using a gambling app on your phone.

9. If you don’t smoke, it is assumed that you are some kind of shifty bugger

10. Never ask anyone’s name, or introduce yourself; it’s just not done.  Call the person “la” and “mate” until you know their life story and it’s too awkward to ask their name

11. If the boss ever has to go off site somewhere, stop all work immediately

12. Once you are an established brickie, it is important to remove your hard-hat whenever the site manager is out of sight

13. Try and pretend you’re interested when the older brickies tell you stories about hod carrying, and saying stuff like “when I was your age…” and “you don’t know you’re born kid”; whatever that means

brick1

14. Pay someone to spread a rumour that you once killed a gorilla with an uppercut. Or something similar.  This will make you less of a target for pranks and the high-brow banter

15. Stop watching documentaries and QI, and make sure your ‘read’ the Daily Sport and Star, just so you can hold a conversation with one of your associates. It is crucial that you hold aggressive right-wing opinions that are reliably informed by tabloid newspapers.

16. Be grateful for being given a chance.  Many people, in many types of work, never get chance to put their qualifications into practice

17. “Bucket of sh!te” = bucket of mortar

18. Energy drinks are compulsory for under 35s. If you don’t have an energy drink and 5 cigarettes in the morning, you’ll be deemed an outsider.

'Hank, can I level with you'

19. “Customer Service” is not a known term. Once the job’s done, it’s done.

20. Always rub your chin 3 times before quoting a price

21. Aggression is the go-to emotional state for any good tradesman, whenever conflict, misunderstanding or frustration occur. The more aggressive you are, the better tradesman you become

22. Passing the buck is an art form on the building site. Just don’t expect anyone to know what ‘passing the buck’ actually means.

23. Crack open a can of beer as soon as you get in the car to drive home*

*Don’t actually do this. Although this did happen regularly when I was lift-sharing

A poem about the great men of the building site

O brickie oh brickie what will it be?
A tea with 3 sugars plus an extortionate fee,
A red bull with 5 fags is the fuel that we need, to lay those bricks 4 u at an exceptional speed,
Ale for us, no yoga or weed,
6 pints in town, its the way that we breed.

Cash in hand for our holiday in the sun,
No receipt 4 u tho its not how its done.
Customer service is our number 1 aim,
But if anything goes wrong, its the previous workman that’s ta blame

builder

Actual Tips for your first day on the job:

  • Arrive there early
  • Don’t make excuses or blame other people
  • Work hard, don’t mess around
  • Be polite – you will stand out as a good worker
  • Be willing to learn everyday
  • When I was labouring, I found beta-alanine helped amazingly

A lot of the youngsters that I worked with were incredibly defensive. If you can be humble, say sorry and that you’ll do that or try harder next time, you will stand out a mile as a good worker. If you actually do some work as well. Try and get the punters/customers to like you as well by smiling and being polite. Again you will stand out a mile.

Baba Sling Review

On By AndyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Pro’s 
– Very quick to put on
– Support at the top for baby’s neck
– Attractive design (!?)
– You can breastfeed in it – although you do need one hand to support baby whilst you’re breastfeeding
– Convenient – nipping out, or driving somewhere and then nipping into the shops – quicker than a pram
– Close to your chest so baby feels secure and happy
– Good for attachment parenting

Con’s
– Weight is ‘across’ so not 100% evenly balanced
– Have to be mindful baby doesn’t slip down – small risk of suffocation

Baba Sling - great for breastfeeding
Baba Sling – great for breastfeeding!

 

Things to do for Free – Night Walks

On By AndyIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I think it’s important to find things that are fun, that you can do for free.

If you don’t mind the risk of getting arrested, or attacked by a bear, then night-walking is awesome. Especially in the woods, on a clear night.  Unfortunately, on the video, I couldn’t get the sky to ‘show up’ nor the moon-light that was on the river.

Trust me though, it’s amazingly peaceful and a cool thing to do. It’s help if you have a dog so that you don’t look like a complete weirdo, and a head-torch.  Picking up poo in the dark can be a bit of a challenge too!

You can make it a cool meditation-esk practice too, by focusing on the sounds you can hear for 10 seconds, then focus on what you can see, and finally what you can feel – e.g. the wind on your face, breathing, feet on the floor etc.

 

 

Underfloor Heating?

On By AndyIn Home, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Underfloor heating, always makes me think of Arsenal football club for some reason – I think, they were one of the first clubs to have under-soil heating; avoiding postponed matches during the winter.

Under-soil heating, may be a bit expensive and not massively practical in terms of the domestic market, however, under-floor heating is becoming quite trendy.

But is it worth it?

Some of the advantages of under-floor heating include:

Pros
1. The floor is actually warm, not the radiator on one side of the room.
2. The heat is more evenly dispersed throughout a given room, rather than heating an isolated area
3. It adds more space to a room, assuming radiators are ‘the other’ heating option being considered.
4. Underfloor heating can work at a lower temperature than radiators
5. It might; might enhance the home’s selling price
6. You don’t get dust mites gathering around and on the radiator, because you probably won’t have a radiator

Cons
1. Difficult to ‘retro-fit’
2. It can take longer to warm up (but you can just use a timer to get it going by the time it’s cold)
3. A cheaper system might not provide enough warmth, so you might end up fitting radiators anyway!
Underfloor Heating Options
Two main types of underfloor heating systems exist – electric and water ones. Water based systems are more expensive to fit, but are cheaper to run than electric ones.

 

I think I’ll stick to my wood-burner for now…but here’s an interesting infographic if you are a bit of a heating-engineer-geek or general nerd that enjoys sciencey images:

Energy Saver 101: Home Heating

by sarahgerrity.

From Visually.

How To Meditate

On By AndyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The quality of this video is terrible but the content is there:

 

Meditation is great for enhancing focus, reducing stress and controlling negative thoughts.

You can learn to meditate, by being guided through 10 minute sessions, for 10 days with the free app from HeadSpace, which you can find here.

Breathing meditation can be done without the app.  Just sit up straight, and set a timer for 10-30 minutes.

Breathe in for 10 breaths, focusing on the feeling of the breath coming into and out of the nose, lungs and mouth.
Then breathe in for 10 breaths focusing on the sound of the breath. Then for 10 breaths visualise the air coming into and out of the body.

Repeat this until your time is up on your timer.
If your mind drifts (which it will!) just bring the focus back to the breath.

You can also try using a mantra, a short phrase you can repeat over and over with each breath.

‘Mindfulness’ can be applied to everyday tasks such as washing the dishes.  Focus on the dishes, not what you want to do in 5 minutes time.  Focus on the feelings of touch, the noises etc as you do the dishes, it should make it more enjoyable!  Should!

Don’t Get Stuck on the Negatives

On By AndyIn Random, UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

Why do we spend so much time thinking about the negatives?
Dwelling on the tiny injustices and trivial occurrences which damage our egos…

Here is a great video about the importance to think about the positives, and how to do it –

 

One of the best tips, that we can probably all relate to us when you’ve come home from work. Tell your loved one(s) specifically about what was good about your day.  Don’t go into the negative things.
This will prove very difficult at first!

This is one way that you can train yourself to focus on the upside of your day. Other techniques include writing down what you’re grateful for each day.

Positive affirmations are also simple, yet effective.  For example, next time you go into the gym, think or state out loud – “this is going to be an amazing workout”

I think being positive is a very important aspect of parenting.  Children copy their parents, so try remember this next time you start moaning about things that don’t really matter.

 

I’m 34 – Should I write a Will?

On By AndyIn Parenting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Will_myths

 

It’s not something that I’ve considered before, but no that I have offspring (well one on the way in 1.5 months) it’s something I should put in place.

This webpage does a convincing job of persuading me to get the proverbial ball rolling, and contact a solicitor to get this sorted.  Especially as I have a mortgage, and well, 2 dogs as well!

You can use the webpage by clicking on the 3 bits of pink text, and separately, choosing a reason that you haven’t bothered writing a well from the pink drop down menu that appears.

I chose “it’s too expensive”, “I’m too young” (haha) and “it’s too time consuming”.  Apparently, it’s not too expensive (normally costs about £150 from my research), I could die anytime and it only takes 1 or 2 appointments to get the will sorted out.

So get going, and contact a solicitor or will writer. After all, you don’t want your kids worrying about finances, when they’ve just lost a love one. Poor Ted wouldn’t know where to start…

TedSnow