Day 2 - Tramworks - plus

Up with the birds, or even a bity before them today and then into town .

Correct - NCP Morrison Street - their flurry of activity was most certainly a flash in the pan - no floodlights repaired - still pot black and place like the swamplands.

So into the Mercat - then about 8 a.m. the Carillion / Tramworks guys appeared for their attendance money !!! and that is nice about them . I was on the door handing out flyers and just observing their actions or lack of them. We had two blokes who just stood and talked to each other though the fence for about 30 minutes , not even pretending to work; my digger driver did a little maintenance work on his machine. A third friend of the aforesaid couple, he was worse , he actually walked up and down the street for over an hour with his leggings under the arm - others started the early trek to Greggs, and passed me on three occasions with his food supplies and that was before their lunch break.

One man actually managed to put his spade into the hole, but when his phone rang he proceeded to march up and down the street chatting away for about 15 minutes before he left the area and never came back.

Spoke to one of the "Bosses" and asked for a job application, told him that i could work for about 10 minutes every hour, and given a mobile phone could cope with the boredom of standing doing nothing. Some of these blokes want eyes in the back of their head so that they can see what is going on when they are actually "working". They opened a hole in the road yesterday, about a foot deep but that was that, hit a concrete plate and stopped, so that is one for monitoring.

On a more mundane note, just because I was wearing one of the pub's Orange coloured cagoules Jamie was calling me the "Easy Jet" man. Pleasant young German lad has been in past three days while on holiday , he likes the boor, food and friendly banter, took himself up to the Edinburgh Castle and nearly died off when the one o'clock gun went off. If he had sat on the barrel he could have been the first German astronaut.

Spotted young Ashley formerly from Imarni's, she is home on sick leave having badly damaged her wrist doing a massage treatment while working on The Norwegian Dawn cruise ship. She says her job is super and has already sailed round the Caribbean , the USA and up the west coast of Canada.

Another of my former colleagues died the other day, Bruce Tyson from Tranent, I can remember when he was the local Bobby in Ormiston , and there was no crime !!! He dealt with everything on the doorstep and without any paperwork - sadly the bosses went by statistics and said that as there was no crime in the village there was no need for the Bobby so they shut the local station and moved him.

Edinburgh City Council have gone bonkers with their PC thingy, various jobs have all been renamed, librarians are to be called "audience development officers" - now just where does that come from and what the hell does it mean !!!

Off to Tranent to the RA tonight with Andy KP - will give the opportunity to start and put the word out about the 27th. Dalkeith Wed and Corstorphine on Thursday.

Graham's Burns supper is proving to be popular for the 23rd Jan., he has his speakers and entertainers all sorted.

Missed out on Andy Murry's tennis recently, and he is going a stormer, bookies are in for a real hammering if he wins the Australian or any of the next Open tournaments - good man.