Not Great

I've not been feeling too great recently, which is why I haven't posted for a while. Aside from trips to Sainsbury (one of which really fucked me off, but I maybe speak of that later) and a trip to John Lewis in Watford, I haven't actually left the house for about 10 days, pretty much the same amount of time since my last blog entry. I've just been feeling a little depressed of late. I've been feeling as if I'm never going to get out of here, I'm never going to find a job that won't make me dread getting up in the morning and subsequently I'm never going to be able to afford to buy my own place (especially with the way house prices are rising). I heard couple of days ago that I didn't get the job at the ASA, they didn't even want to interview me. I really don't understand why I can't get interviews. My CV is pretty good, I would say, but perhaps I need to exaggerate my achievements and tell a few lies. I hear that employers now expect your CV to be somewhat fictitious and downgrade their expectations accordingly. If they're doing that to my entirely truthful CV then... well they're not exactly getting an accurate picture of what I can do. I'm applying for another job this week though. I'd be working at a PC magazine as a staff writer. I expect that my chances of getting it are fairly slim, after all, I have no journalistic experience and there's bound to be somebody who's better qualified. Still, I suppose I'd better try. The application requires me to send in a review of my PC in the style of the magazine. I'm having some trouble keeping within the 500 word limit that they set; after all, every single one of the reviews I read on their website ran to about 750 words. So far I've got it down to about 600 words, but it’s now got to the point that I am no longer able to write things more succinctly without them loosing their meaning. Bah, I'm sure I'll finish within the limit somehow. I doubt that it will do me any good though. We'll see.

Actually, I'm starting to feel a little better as I write, which leaves me wondering. Have I been neglecting my writing because I haven't been feeling great? Or have I not been feeling great because I've been neglecting my writing? Hmm, one to ponder I think.

Well, the John Lewis trip brought about some good news; we’ve finally got a new television. The old 29” Sony CRT TV broke about 4 or 5 months ago. After a couple of attempts to get it repaired the TV was junked. The first place we took it to claimed to have got it sorted, but it broke down within a few hours of getting it home. A refund was duly given, but he still insisted on taking £20 to have a look at it, a charge that I don’t think should be applicable if he couldn’t mend it. As ever, my Mum acquiesced and the man got his money. I’d have argued. A lot. The next place reckoned that it would cost too much to fix. At that point we abandoned it. It’s a shame, the picture quality was great. All that was wrong with it was that it kept switching itself off every so often (though sometimes it would take a number of tries to get it to go back on). We’d had it for about 11 or 12 years, my dad had bought it after he got made redundant/retired, so that kind of made it even more of a shame. Anyway, since we finally gave up on it we’ve been using a tiny 20” Samsung CRT TV. Needless to say I haven’t been bothering to watch TV in the living room much. Instead I’ve made use of the 25” Sony TV in my bedroom (at least 15 years old and still going strong. It used to belong to my Grandma but she died about 8 years ago and I’ve had it ever since. I’ve had to spend about £100 on repairs since I’ve had it, strangely enough it was switching itself off too, but it’s been fine for the last couple of years and shows no sign of breaking, With my situation being what it is I’d rather it stayed working for a fair while longer too). The new TV is a bang(ish) up to date HDTV ready 32” LCD widescreen Toshiba. Compared to the old 20” it’s massive. However, because it has to display pictures from the sky box of a lower resolution than its native 1366x768 the picture actually looks a little worse than the old Sony. Still, I guess it’ll all be worth it when it’s coupled to an Xbox 360, HD-DVD player (I expect that Blu-ray will prove to be the Betamax of the High def DVD wars and fall by the wayside), and something capable of receiving some actual HD broadcasts, either through Sky HD or HD Freeview (if they ever start that properly and manage to improve freeview reception to my house; we appear to be in a small digital terrestrial blackspot. That said, analogue reception is crap too so the aerial could be partially to blame, as could the height of the flats across the road.) then I’m sure that it’s going to look way better. It was £800, more than Amazon charge, but John Lewis give you a 5 year warranty, so I suppose it’s not too bad a deal.

As I said before, other than that I’ve only been to Sainsbury’s which has been getting increasingly busy the closer we get to Christmas. On one of my visits (one where I was getting absolutely nothing for myself) I had yet more proof that there are an awful lot of wankers out there. Parking was limited and I’d had to drive around for about 10 minutes to find one. Eventually I noticed that a car was about to leave, so I duly stopped my car and began to indicate. They what seemed like a couple of minutes to drive off. I suspect that they wanted to go the wrong way along the car parks one way system, but since my car was blocking their path they couldn’t. They oddly chose to take the longest other route out which meant that I had to wait a second whilst they got out of the way. In the meantime, some bastard in a clapped out maroon H reg Ford Sierra (lot of detail there) pulled out of the queue of traffic that was snaking around the car park down the wrong way of the isle where the space was, and crookedly (in both senses of the word) parked his car in MY space. Bastard. I immediately honked my horn at him. He acted as though he were oblivious, shut off his engine and opened his car door. As he got out of his car I wound the window down the window. “Hey” I said “that’s my space, I’ve been waiting there for ages. Didn’t you see me indicate?” “Oh, were you. Sorry about that.” “That’s fine I said, expecting him to evacuate the ill gotten space. But the arrogant bastard didn’t head back inside his car “So, aren’t you going to move.” I asked, stern but polite. “No” he replied. “But that’s my space. I’ve been waiting for ages to get in there. I was here first” I protested. “He arrogantly responded “But I got in there first so it’s mine.” What an arsehole. By this point he was right outside my window. He looked like he was in his late fifties to early sixties; maybe he was younger but just very badly preserved. He looked scruffy with wisps of unkempt grey hair sitting atop his head with its pock marked face. He wore a grey anorak. He looked like a paedophile, or at the very least a dirty old man.

“Didn’t you see me indicating?” I asked. “No, I didn’t sorry” Two lies in one sentence; he clearly saw me indicating and he quite obviously wasn’t sorry.” Look, that’s my space are you going to, move.” “No. I’m not.” “I can’t believe that you just did that. Not only did you steal a space that I was obviously waiting for, you drove the wrong way up a wrong way road to get to it.” After all, had I move just a hair quicker he’d have simply smashed into my car. I only didn’t move more quickly because I could see that he was quite willing to collide with my car just to get the space.

“I don’t see what the problem is, I’m only going to be a couple of minutes.” he said selfishly, without a hint of regret or compassion. “It’s my space. Move your car.” “No”. “Wanker.” I shouted loudly before honking my horn again. He just walked away, no doubt going off to abuse some children or perve on teenaged girls.

A few minutes later, after rejoining the long queue of traffic I managed to find a space. As I walked towards the shop I noticed the bastard’s car. I gave serious thought to keying his car. I’m not sure why I didn’t. He certainly deserved it, bit something stopped me. I even went to give his tyres a kick but stopped just short of their badly worn rubber. I went inside and hurriedly did my shopping. It occurred to me that he might do something to my infinitely more expensive car (okay, it’s not worth a huge amount, but it’s probably worth x100 more than his piece of shit. I thought once again about keying his car as I went past it. I couldn’t though, it was gone. I checked on my own car. Fortunately there wasn’t any damage. It occurred to me that had I scratched his paintwork before I’d gone in he’d have been more likely to go after my car. It was probably a good ting that I did it. Besides, I realised, I’m not that vindictive. Well, I am pretty vindictive (I once publically chucked a drink at someone because he went back on a legitimate bet. He had to be physically restrained as I turned my back on him and walked of to the bar, complaining that I now had to buy a new drink), but I guess even I stop at illegal acts of vandalism. As I said, he might have decided to take revenge in my car so it was probably for the best. Then again, his car was such a wreck, that he probably wouldn’t have even noticed.

The problem is I still think that people who do tings that make the lives of others that little but worse simply shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this sort of thing. There should be some kind of karmic punishment. Maybe there will be at some point, unbeknownst to me, but my need for instant gratification makes me feel that I should be the instrument of karma. I’d usually feel guilty about doing bad things, but he would have deserved it. Besides, if I were only acting as the instrument of Karma I would actually be doing a good thing by, in a way, helping to bring balance back to the universe.

Actually, I really do hate that kind of thing. It’s those small acts of unkindness, of impoliteness and of selfishness that helps incrementally to make the world a far worse place. Just think about it. How much less inclined are you to do a nice thing when somebody’s just done something nasty to you. I mean it could be a small something, like letting a door shut in your face, or cutting you up, dropping litter, whatever. But it all goes towards making you feel a little less kind. And ten maybe you won’t bother to say thank you when somebody lets you out of a side road, they get pissed off and don’t bother to help an old person who’s trying to carry a heavy bag down a steep flight of steps. It’s a long chain that continues until everybody gradually becomes and unhelpful bitter old man who steal parking spaces and abuses kids.

Maybe I’m overstating it; maybe things don’t actually work like that. At least not for everybody else. Yeah, maybe it’s just me who feels that way. I doubt it though.

So for my part I’m going to try to break the chain as often as I can. If somebody’s crap to me I’m going to be especially nice to someone else the next time I have the opportunity. Actually right after my parking space was stolen almost straight away I had the chance to pilfer a space over which someone else had priority. But I didn’t. I guess I’m not anywhere near becoming that sad, bitter, old man in a clapped out old Sierra (who probably needed the space in a hurry because it was time for the local schoolchildren to leave). Not yet anyway. And I hope not ever.

And if you have the chance, maybe you could do likewise. Maybe, if we all did that the world would be just that little more bearable.