For the past couple of months I've been teamed up with a regular crewmate, working a regular rota. This is a good thing as it provides stability, enables you to get, for want of a better word, a "bond" with your crewmate (rather than working with a different person every shift) and a chance to plan around your off-days some time in advance.
While I have been away from work, my crewmate has been "third manning" with someone who has just come off long term illness; third manning is where someone who might not be 100% fit joins a regular crew so as to ease themselves back into work - it's a good idea and works well. So my crewmate and various reliefs have been working with this return-to-work person.
Last night I got a phone call from one of my managers.
(Can you guess it didn't go well?)
Apparently I am being moved from my regular crewmate to someone else - while my crewmate is being teamed up with the fella returning to work. This means that my place on the rota will change - throwing all my plans for the next few months into disarray, meaning I get to work all of next week where I should have had a week off, and making us get used to working with new partners.
The other problem with this is that the return-to-work fella has thrown his back out quite seriously, so my old crewmate will be working with a different person every shift, until the fella with the injured back is better.

My manager was phoning me because he'd forgotten to tell me any of this in advance...

Consequently my life is up in the air at the moment while we sort out what is going on, just as I was planning on going on two London Blogmeets in the near future.

I think I'll go and have a chat with him tomorrow, and make a few suggestions - I don't think he'll listen as to change things back would be a headache for him, but I may as well give it a shot.

I finished my ECG course today, and I found it a good course, most of which was a revision for me, but it did teach me a few new tricks.

Back to the road tomorrow - Happy, happy, joy, joy!