Old Dog New Tricks: Catching my breath

Now that I have been here for three swings (i.e. three lots of 14 working days), I can empirically say that it is on Day 9 that The Tiredness kicks in. Oh you are tired all the time with the heat and long hours and everything; but Day 9 is a real killer. Instead of the 4.30am starts getting easier as the swing progresses, for some reason you wake up on Day 9 feeling groggy and awful and like you’ve never had a day off in your life. Following, the five remaining days until your weeks break take FOREVER.

I thought The Tiredness might be because my internal clock has had a lifetime of being conditioned to a weekend off after every five working days, and that 14 days in a row has thrown that out of whack. But, no, that’s not it. I mentioned the phenomenon to a couple of other people who do 2/1 swings – and have been doing them for years - and they all agree. On Day 9 you crawl along the ground with your teeth.

Today is Day 12 for me – and New Years Day to boot. Being post Day 9, I’ve started 2012 with a good dose of The Tiredness, but am also in a pretty good mood. Although it hasn’t been a traditional festive season, I have had a few good laughs – mostly at myself – and it’s a good way to kick off this next planetary trip round the sun.

For example, why – oh why! – on Christmas night did I think it a good idea to join in a drinking game involving gravity, probability and bottle tops with the Mechanical boys from the bus? I went down to the ‘wetty’ to meet a friend and have a few quiet ones, got there first so sat with the boys while I waited - and the next thing I knew I was really quite drunk and talking to Fundy on the phone in a faux Indian accent! There had been a huge dust storm that afternoon and it was still 43 degrees at 8pm, so the icey beers were going down pretty well – and the fact that I kept losing at bottle tops meant I was swigging the amber goodness at a double the usual rate, while additionally providing great entertainment for all in the vicinity. Merry Christmas indeed!

Action at the ‘wetty’. Note Jude Law.

The next morning paranoia set it. We had been told we would all be breathalysed on the bus and you have to blow 0.000 to be allowed on site. Even though the beer here is only mid-strength, I wondered exactly how many I had consumed during the bottle top shenanigans and if I might be over. Dragging myself out of bed, I ventured into the still starry morning to use the self-breath-tester in the laundry.

But the tester was out for servicing. So was the one at the next laundry. And the one after that. And the more I searched, the more paranoid I got and the greater became the likelihood that, zero or not, I would be late for work. Also, the more orange-shirted zombies I bumped into experiencing exactly the same thing. Eventually we found a functional breathalyser miles away over the other side of camp and I did blow zero – but not before I had to get one of the guys to give me a leg up because they had mounted the infernal thing too high on the wall for my Royal Shortness.

“Saw you going for a breatho,” Jude Law winked knowingly when I eventually took my seat on the bus. “Only because you were, too,” I replied, and everyone laughed. The joke was on him.

Unfortunately one of the guys on the bus did blow over that morning. He couldn’t find a breathalyser to self test and so risked it. He blew 0.002 and like a criminal they made him get out and stand on the kerb. He wasn’t allowed to work that day. “He could have farted and he would have been under,” one of the boys shook his head as we left him there and drove away.

For New Years Eve (i.e. last night) I again found myself down at the ‘wetty’. There has been a shift change since Christmas so those pesky Mechanical boys and their bottle tops are back in Perth and I was safe; but I still had a good laugh. General consensus was that, because we were all too knackered to stay up until midnight, we celebrate New Year on eastern states time (i.e. 9pm here). So that’s what we did. I was home in bed by ten, no fear of the breathalyser, my Christmas lesson learned.

Not so good for some others today though. *wink*