Further health and safety issues

One of the question sheets to be completed for Thursday was on health and safety in the workshop. I forgot to put in a section on lack of sleep. Tailors do fairly long hours, sometimes of the year are particularly busy and you’d be working long into the evenings and over the weekend. I’d been getting up for 8.30am all week and hadn’t been in bed before 1.30am since last Thursday. I’d never worked flat out like this before in college. Yeah I’d sit in the library all day but usually I'd be  reading the same pages over and over again cause I wasn’t concentrating the last few times. Then I’d get up and have a chat with someone and then go for a break. There was always a quiet place to have a nap.

Wednesday night I was up til 4.30am then got up again at 8.30am and worked flat out in college finishing my garment construction folder from 10 to 5. On the cycle home I was a bit delirious and the sun was right in my eye line, blinding me the whole way home. At one stage there was a pick-up truck in front of me and every time I looked up I’d get blinded for a second and squint to focus and the truck would be a lot closer than I remembered. I’d blink and it would be a car length away. Then on top of me again. I was dying to get home and the blinding sun and the shape-shifting truck were pissing me off so I slammed on the pedals to go around the outside of it. But out of nowhere the truck had shifted again. I cycled right into the back of it and big bertha bucked like a bronco. The back wheel went way up in the air and crashed back down, but we gave as good as we got. If that had of been my good bike it would have been a different story. I sheepishly cycled by the outside expecting some abuse or a point and laugh but the driver didn’t say anything. Best don’t mess with cyclists who ram trucks I suppose.

I got home a bit shaken up and put on "stay positive" by The Streets and wondered what could happen to me after another sleepless night. I put some wedges in the oven then had a shower and sat on my bed to air dry. I just rested my eyes for a second and woke up an hour later. The Streets were still playing. Shit fuck, the oven! I usually don’t nap for anything less than 3 hours so I don’t know how I woke up, especially with the recent sleep deprivation. But the wedges were perfect, I hadn’t been cooking them for long enough.

That night I had to put together my swatch books. In a surprise move for me I attempted to make a book as early as week 1 but I kind of messed it up from the start so just lashed it together messily enough. I copied a YouTube video on Japanese bookbinding and put in some Japanese lettering that I hope says "swatches."

With having made one earlier I knew exactly what I had to do but that didn’t prevent me from staying up all night to finish them. I didn’t have enough time to do the lettering again but they still turned out pretty damn good. I said at the time I’d never make another one again but I think it was just tiredness talking. They are enjoyable enough to make and do look great. You all know what you’ll be getting for Christmas…clothes, im a tailor not a book maker.