This hasn't been a wonderful last week on work placement at the clock shop. I've been working on this 16 Century clock for a while, it was something of a wreck and was taking a LOT of work and time.
On Wednesday when there was only me and David, the manager (not the most available\practical of my instructors from college), we were besieged by customers, the clock was due to be collected the next day to go to Australia I was needing a fair amount of help with stuff I hadn't been taught at college.
At the end of the day I was pretty shattered, but remembered to go to the college's Health Dept to ask the health dept to remind the finance people to send my train tickets down to the Health Dept. This was so I could actually collect them without a time-consuming trip back to college and thus more travel expenses I could claim for.
On Thursday, the clock was actually working, however the customer was going to collect the clock the next day instead, *sigh*. Just as well since the clock still needed some work doing, with more assistance from the David *double sigh*. I was still exhausted and had to finish early at 2:50. Back at college, I had tea at 5 and was a little surprised to see Mark at college, he mentioned that he wanted to go shopping, since I had some spare time, a car and couldn't collect my tickets yet, I drove him into town so he could shop and buy tickets for "Return of the King" for the two of us. I returned to college an attempted to pick up my tickets, and discovered that they hadn't been sent down, not wishing the miss the film and also to find a parking space I rushed back into town, found a space and waited for Mark outside the cinema. It was then that I realised that I hadn't brought my phone along, and so I waited for Mark to turn up, in case he had been able to buy a ticket before the "sold out" signs went up. At 7 I concluded that Mark must have been unable to purchase the tickets and went back to college.
At 11:30, a party must have finished because my neighbour brought the noisily inebriated revellers back to his room, I was too tired to get up, and despite the racket fell asleep.
Today went a little better, by hanging around at college for longer I was able to collect my tickets fro the finance people and arrived only half a hour late, thankfully I had been able to phone ahead to let them know about the ticket farce. I spent some time finishing off the clock, and was just packing it when the owner arrived. Then I fixed a badly bent click spring (doodad that keeps a clock from unwinding itself) with impressive speed. Hoovered the shop floor, since it was covered with packaging flakes, tidied away my tools to collect them in the New Year, when I go back to college to finish my training there. Cleaned the work bench and started back home. I decided to treat myself and upgraded my train ticket to 1st Class, expensive but having a seat, especially a comfortable seat made the cost worthwhile.
