Escape to the New World

Well, it looks like I've got my wish. I'm off the the US of A. My boss felt really bad about not renewing my contract. I ended up having to spend time consoling her about having to let me go. I actually feel great about it. I finally don't mind going in to work now. Knowing that it's all going to come to an end in four weeks time somehow makes the whole thing more palatable. I had none of the usual feelings of being strangled as I made my way to the station. No excessive, anxious sweating either. Maybe feeling all that on top of the alcohol sponsored nausea would have been too much for my body to take. Or, maybe, without work to worry about, all the anxiety and depression will go away.

Anyway, the reason why I was felling a little (but really only a very little) the worse for wear was that I'd been to a pub in Baker Street to discuss arrangements For next weekend's trip to the Norfolk Broads. I'll say more about that on another occasion, but a plan was set in motion. I'll work on Friday Morning, but then head straight to Seven Sisters from which I shall get a ride all the way up to England's flattest county. It transpires that I have 4 days Holiday owing to me, so I'm going to use 1.5 days for the trip to the broads and get full pay for the remainder. Not a bad deal I think. That should go some way to paying for my new iPod Touch, or maybe all the way towards buying a digital camera.

Apparently Gok Wan was in Uxbridge filming today. Unfortunately (or is that fortunately) I didn't make it out to lunch quick enough to bump in to him and the screaming masses that were following him around (seriously, is he worth that much adoration?). Instead, I sit hear in the library typing all this out after having first done a little light reading of “Dexter in the Dark”, the third and not quite as good as its predecessors, book in the “Dexter” series (as seen on TV-ish).

Once more I must take my leave of you. A couple more hours of work beckon. The countdown to freedom begins.

Untitled 2/09/08

The past few weeks since have been more than a little disappointing. I've felt more depressed. work's seemed worse than ever. To top it all off, my best friend in my office got offered a job and left on Friday.

Today I was told that I am to attend a meeting to discuss the end of my contract which expires on the 30^th September. What will be said at this meeting is, at present, a little unclear. At no point before today has there ever been a one on one meeting to discuss contract extensions, which would suggest that another contract term may not be on the cards. So, it seems likely that I will either loose my job altogether, be offered it on a full time, permanent basis or, and this is an outside possibility based a little on my demonstrated computer prowess and on my supervisors recent promotion to manager, be offered a new job altogether.

I shall find out at 4pm. To be honest, the best case scenario for me would be a contract extension. Then I could work for a month longer and build up a little much needed cash for a trip across America that I'm thinking of doing. Honestly though, my spirits are pretty low, so I don't really want to be working there for longer than I can possibly help it.

I should also note that today is the birthday of one of my friends (we're meeting up this evening, ostensibly to discuss an impending trip on the Norfolk Broads, but also, I'm presuming, to celebrate his 31st year on the planet) so happy birthday to him. On a rather sadder note it's also the twelfth anniversary of my Father's death. I don't think I've really said an awful lot about that subject. It was, perhaps, the cause of a major depression that stayed with me throughout much of my time as an undergraduate at university, the major result of which was my relatively poor degree. If only I'd thought to seek help back then? I wonder different things would have been? I'm only really grazing the subject, no doubt I'll broach it more fully at a later date. Maybe not. regardless, I can, of course, do nothing about it now. From here on in I can only have an impact on my future, a future which will, almost inevitably spell further unemployment along with a few, post work drinks.

The Return

Right, I really don't have a lot of time to type, so I'll make this quick. Yes, I haven't done anything with this blog for almost a year. I'm well aware of that. But I do have my reasons, and I'll go in to them later. By later I might mean later in this entry or on another day altogether. I'm far to fickle to be even vaguely committal at the moment.

Anyway, once more, I'm typing this blog during my lunch break from a library, Uxbridge library. This of course means that I'm almost certainly still working in Uxbridge, but do I still work for Hertz? Unfortunately, I do, which is obviously a cause of great distress to me.

On the plus side, I'm typing this blog entry on my brand new netbook, mini-laptop-thing. Its diminutive size should, hopefully, allow me to carry it around wherever I go, so hopefully that'll mean more writing from now on in. With it's smaller keyboard, it's a little different to type on, so a few more errors in my typing will probably creep in until I've managed to become accustomed to it. At the moment, with Wi-fi off and 10% of the battery depleted, It's telling me that I should get another 2.5 hours out of it. Anyway, we'll see. I love it though. It still has that wonderful “new electrical item smell”.

But, you might ask (you might ask, but I wouldn't be able to hear you even if you did), surely I must have spent the last 10-11 months doing more than buying a tiny little laptop (there was research of course. Lot's of tedious, painstaking research; I loved it.)? Of course they have. I've bought loads of other stuff too. An Xbox 360 (even though I'd previously said that I never would. See, I'm terribly fickle), a PS3(just for blu rays, not for games. I only own two games and one of those came with the machine). On top of that (physically as well as metaphorically. Well, technically it stands atop a brand new glass stand, but the consoles lie beneath so I think I can be excused my slight technical inaccuracy) sits a brand new(-ish, I've had it since November last year) 32” Sony HD LCD TV.

So, I've bought stuff. What else? Hmm, what else? I fell for a girl at work who didn't like me back (probably for the best, on reflection I think she may have been a bit unbalanced.) She then became quite obviously attracted to a new guy who started (actually, blatantly is a better word. No, an even better word would be shamelessly. She was, at times, all over the poor guy, which I guess is the main reason why he wouldn't have been all that interested.) She left, which was probably best for all concerned.

I've been on holiday twice, most recently to Dublin (Again,. I was there last in 2004) which was great, and before that, to Warsaw, which wasn't. Actually it was depressingly like going on holiday in Slough, if Slough were overpriced and had fewer people in it. Actually I get the impression that most of Warsaw's previous residents had found their way to Berkshire. Maybe they feel at home there, who knows. Anyway, Slough... I mean Warsaw was a wholly depressing place where many depressing things happened. Once I returned home I headed to my Doctor's and got diagnosed with depression. This probably won't come as much of a shock to those of you who've been following my previous musings. Clearly some outside force (actually it's clearly an inside force since it's taken up residence on my head) was guiding me down the wrong path, ensuring that I could never drag myself away from the mediocrity

The little voice that tells me that I'm incapable of doing any better is a little quieter now. The one that tells me that even if I am good enough I don't deserve good things to happen to me is lying (if a disembodied thing can lie) bleeding to death in the gutter. It's that last voice that nearly made me run away from a recent interview. I stood outside the building, waiting to go in to my delayed interview. The job was pretty damn good. The advert from the Metro simply read

COPYWRITER WANTED

Experience an advantage but by no means essential, would also suit graduate or first-time jobber. Healthy interest in consoles and video games a big plus. Good English, grammar and punctuation a must! Small company based in Fulham, offering a fast-track to management and more money within a year for the right person. Starting salary of £18,000, plus participation in weekly cash bonus scheme.

If you're available immediately and want to work in a fun and dynamic environment,
call ***** now on 020 7*******

So, the only contact details were a telephone number. Normally, this would have put me off altogether. “What, you mean I have to talk to someone to get this job. No way, I'm not going to do it.” And that would be that. I'd ignore the add and move on to something else. But not this time. Whether it was because of the extra mental strength imbued through medication, or maybe it was because I really wanted to write about video games (Let's be honest, it was probably a combination of both), after a morning of soul searching I, after my boss had gone home for the day, picked up the phone and dialled the number. I talked to the voice on the other end for a while. I'm told by my friend who sits across from me, that I sounded really confident. I don't really remember, but I guess I must have done something right because I'd somehow managed to talk my way into an interview. To my mind, the interview went pretty well. In fact, I was pretty sure I'd actually managed to pull it off. Whilst the ad had said Fulham, the actual location of the company was Parson's Green, just one stop down from Fulham Broadway. I knew that I could easily manage the 45 minute train ride. It would give me ample time to read or maybe even write. Plus, since work hours were 10am until 6pm,I'd actually have a little more time for a lie in every morning.

One the way up there, I got a message on my mobile to let me know that the interview would have to be delayed by 30minutes. Not a big deal really. Sure, the delay added to my overall nervousness, but at least it would give me time to explore the surrounding area. Whilst there was little in the way of chain stores and restaurants (the delay had made me realise that I was craving a McDonalds Cheeseburger) there were a whole bunch of pubs, cafés and, most importantly, a library. Looking at the area's denizens I briefly fretted over not being (or looking) quite cool enough to work somewhere like this, but a trip to the nearby Gregg's Bakery for a sausage roll, where I noted the similarly not-cooler-than-thou clientèle, quelled my worries.

Anyway, to the interview itself. It took me a while to find the exact location of the office. On my reccy when I'd first arrived, I'd noted the company's sign, which I assumed would be pretty near to their front door. I headed down the side alley, a route suggested by the positioning of the signage, expecting to be greeted by a handy front door. Instead I found a man who, judging by his accent, was of Eastern European origin. Apparently there's an old joke Hollywood joke about a polish actress who sleeps with a screenwriter to get a part in a movie, the joke being that screenwriters have no power over hiring and firing for a movie (or over anything really), but the Polish actress was to dumb to know that. Effectively, in this branch of mildly racist humour, the average Pole is cast in much the same part as the Irishmen in “There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman” jokes. I've never really understood how those jokes could have come about, since pretty much everybody I've ever met from Ireland seems to be pretty sharp. Conversely, the Eastern European man (for argument's sake, I'll say he was Polish) was doing his level best to reinforce the stereotype. Since, he was working on an entranceway to what, logically, seemed like the portal to the office sought, I asked him if he could point me in the right direction. His reply went something like this... “Many people have ask me where is this company. I do not know. Perhaps is next door?” I answered probably not, but thanked him for his help none the less. Obviously I'm not all that fond of racism and xenophobic stereotyping, so I would still be hopeful that this particular predjudice wouldturn out to be absolute codswallop.

As it turned out, the doorway he was working on happened to be the entryway to the office I required. In other words, he was so thick (or perhaps simply ill informed; I'll give him the benefit of the doubt) that he didn't even know for whom he was actually working.

Anyway, after making a few enquiries of another gentleman who was clearly more clued up than the Pole, I discovered that I had to go through the entrance of the building next door in order to get to the interview. The builders therein who were working on what appeared to the the kitchen and toilet area, were far more clued up than their Eastern European counterpart. From them I found out that the interviews were taking place just upstairs and that, as soon as the current one was over, I could start mine.

A short while, and a trip to the toilet later (last minute nerves perhaps) it was time for my interview. A woman with black hair and olive skin came to meet me. It transpired that this was the same woman who had spoken to me on the phone a couple of days earlier.

Until the downstairs building work was completed, the company was based entirely in one, near pristine, white room., accessible via a dirt covered, but clearly newly refurbished, staircase. My interviewer apologised for the messy stairs, noting that it didn't seem worthwhile cleaning them whilst all the building work was going on. I looked around the room. Sitting atop the desk on the right side of the room was a pristine, porcelain white iMac. It's newly opened box lay just a few meters away in the corner of the room. On the opposite desk was a Sony Vaio Laptop which my interviewer had clearly just been using.

The interview itself too the form of a brief chat, a handing over of my work examples and a quick 15 minute writing test during which I had to come up with promotional-(ish) blurb for 3 new/upcoming games, writing 100 words on each. The games were Resident Evil 5 (a game nobody really knows an awful lot about besides the “controversial”fact that it was set in Africa, meaning that all the bad guy Zombies would be black), The Star Wars, The Force Unleashed, a new multi-media/marketing opportunity tie in, which I'd never heard of, so I ended up writing an awful lot about Star Wars in general. The final game was Fallout 3. I'd heard the title, but knew little else about it. Handy then, that I was provided with a couple of magazines and the whole of the internet for research.

I don't think I did too badly. Apparently I did well enough to meet the guy who was bankrolling the operation too, so I went away with a good feeling about the whole thing. I'd find out on Monday afternoon whether my faith had been misplaced.

So, Monday afternoon came and went, and I received no call. By the time I returned home I was deflated. It seemed likely that I hadn't got the job. I actually spent a while convincing myself that not getting the job wasn't altogether bad. It was, of course, but there's no use pining after something that I clearly couldn't have. Or could I? At about 7pm my phone rang. Upon answering I was greeted by an apology that it had taken so long to get back to me. Apparently they'd had “shitloads” of applicants and it had taken some time to whittle them down. Anyway, they'd compiled a short-list of three people and I was on it. I'd get a final decision the next day.

When the decision finally came on Tuesday afternoon I was disappointed. I hadn't got the job. Worse, from what he'd said “we had to choose somebody” I got the impression that they'd virtually picked the winner's name out of a hat. I was pretty despondent despite the promise that they'd look me up in a few months time when they planned to expand and new positions became available. It remains to be seen whether that actually happens.

Yet another job related post.

Again, massive gap between post. Sorry, but I just don’t seem to be able to get round to writing anything when I’m really busy. So, what have I been up to since my last post, live from a top Harrow library. I think I mentioned this before, but my plan for my time off was to actually do some proper writing. Unfortunately the two posts prior to this one are the only results of my good intentions. On the Friday of my first week of freedom from the servitude of work I was told by my agency that they’d managed to secure an interview for me at Hertz in Uxbridge. The job didn’t sound great, but, even after working at the school for 6 weeks and taking out £1000 of my investments, I still had very little money in my bank account. This was mostly as a result of having gone deep into my overdraft just prior to my job in the school. Anyway, I certainly didn’t have enough to keep me going for much more than a month so, as much as I wanted to spend a few months writing, I was in dire need of extra funding. The interview was scheduled for the following Monday. Thankfully it was midway through the afternoon, at 2.45, which at least meant that I wasn’t going to turn up to it all flustered, tired and hot, something that I think had scuppered my chances of getting the job from a few weeks earlier where the interview had taken place at 10am, just after a brief appointment at the agency at 9.30am to discuss how I should approach the interview. I rushed to that and was then kept waiting for a good 10 minutes before anybody would talk to me. That then meant that I had to rush down the road to the place where I was having the actual interview, something that ensured that I turned up thoroughly hot and bothered. Shame really. Boss aside, the job looked quite good. Well, the job looked ok, but one of the girls in the office was really hot. I certainly wouldn’t have minded getting up every morning to see her. Anyway, I digress, I didn’t get that job, but I’d learned exactly where I’d gone wrong. I’d suggested to the agency that morning interviews were really a bad idea. Basically I knew I’d stand a better chance of getting a job if I’d been able to get a good lie in and could travel to the interview at a leisurely pace. I also realised that having a suit that actually fit me was quite a good idea, and I’d bought one (actually had one bought for me by my Mum, but still) a few weeks earlier. Before the interview came the pre-interview preparation at the agency. This time they wanted me to go to their branch in Hounslow. They’d actually asked me to be there for 11am, but, sensibly I thought, I asked then if that could be moved to 12.30 so that I could go straight from there to my interview in Uxbridge. Being me, I didn’t manage to sleep particularly well on Sunday night and I awoke on Monday morning some while before my alarm went off feeling more than a little tired. Still, I felt a little better after having some sausages for breakfast. I got dressed at a leisurely pace (no rushing this morning, no matter what) and got in my car a full hour before my 12.30 appointment. More than ample time, I though, to get there considering the fact that my satnav had told me it would take only 30 minutes. I took my jacket off, set up my satnav, turned on the air-conditioning and set it to full blast. There was no way I’d turn up looking all hot and sweatty this time. After a minute or so of driving, my satnav actually managed to get a fix on a few satellites (I’m sure it used to just find them straight away) and the calming voice of satnav-Sally began to guide me towards Hounslow.

Satnavs are, in my opinion, fantastic. I always used to worry a bit about going somewhere I’d never been to before. Obviously it didn’t put me off enough to shy away from making the journey altogether, but, owing to my somewhat poor sense of direction, I was unwilling to set off anywhere new without first printing out a map of the route along with detailed directions from both the AA route planner and MS Autoroute. This tended to mean that I had to drive with a set of directions sitting on my steering wheel, something that diverted my attention from the actual driving and made me more likely to have an accident or be pulled over by some overzealous and, undoubtedly, bored, policeman. With satnav, this isn’t a problem anymore. Theoretically. Unfortunately, every time I go somewhere there seems to be some previously unpredicted obstacle right at the end of my journey. My trip to Hounslow was no different. A few hundred meters from my destination I was faced with a set of roadworks that completely blocked my route. Subsequently I ended up having to find my way around them, aided only by someone at the agency who had called to find out if I was OK, since I was now about 10 minutes late. Personally I didn’t mind about being 10 minutes late. It was in trying not to be late to my pre-interview preparation that I got myself flustered. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake. Besides, I had plenty of time to make it to the interview afterwards. After all, it didn’t start for another two hours, and it was only another 30minute journey from Hounslow to Uxbridge.

Eventually I made it to the pay and display car park across the road from the agency. I subsequently discovered that there were a fair few unused parking spaces within the grounds of the agency, but I’d been told that I‘d have to park in the Pay and display, so that was what I did.

The agency’s Hounslow branch was a good deal more impressive than the Ealing one. Where as the Ealing branch was situated above a shop on the High Street, Hounslow had it’s own, recently constructed building. They both shared the same sort of fixtures and fittings with each branch being decorated in the company colours, but Hounslow somehow seemed more impressive. I think that’s the only context in which I could possibly describe anything to do with Hounslow as being impressive. Hounslow is, after all, a bit of a dump, so I was bound to find anything that wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the area’s shabby un-chic appearance to be a pleasant surprise.

The preparation seemed to go well. I said all the right things, so they sent me off on my way, seemingly confident that I’d get the job.

I got back in my car, once again engaging the air-con and set off towards Uxbridge. It was a little after 1pm. About 30 minutes later, after having got a little lost despite my satnav (on ti occasion it was my fault. I’d failed to notice that it had actually directed me to the right place, despite Sally’s declaration that I was exactly where I wanted to be. I’d managed to drive just a little to far, and gone right past the massive and fairly noticeable Hertz building and was about to enter a Buses only zone. Still, I finally made it to reception with only… 1hour to spare. Great, I was in for a long wait. Still, at least I’d be able to go through all the information the agency had given me about the job. After getting a pass I parked my car in the visitors section of the underground car park and slowly got myself together. It was dark, so I went off to reception to wait and do my final preparation. It was 2pm. 45 minutes before my interview.

35 minutes later I was collected for my interview. The building, dating back all the way to 2002, seemed very much like any ordinary large office. At least, it looked like any ordinary large office I’d seen on TV. Previously I’d only worked for small companies in small offices. This was on an altogether different scale. The interview went pretty well, I thought, with the only blip coming when one of the interviewers asked how old I was. What is this obsession with my age? It was the second time in as many interviews that I’d been asked how old I was and I was beginging to get paranoid about it. Do I just look particularly decrepit. Maybe it’s the thinning hair and the expanding waist?

After the interview, as tradition seems to dictate, I got a limited tour of the building which took in the canteen (nicer than I’d expected. I think that my idea of a canteen still backdates to when I was last at school. Of course at the time of the interview, the last time I’d been at school had been only 10 days earlier) and the Gym (way smaller and far less well appointed that I’d imagined, though perhaps, I’d imagined something that was pretty much unrealistic. I’d never been to a gym before and I guess I just imagined it would be like all of those dedicated gyms that I’ve seen on TV. I really must get out more). Apparently gym membership was only £10 a month, not bad considering that it did, in fact, have everything you’d need for a good workout. I made some enthusiastic noises; having the opportunity to exercise in my lunch break was certainly appealing, but ultimately I think my phobia of exposing myself in front of strangers would prevent me from ever using it.

I toyed with the idea of doing a bit of shopping before I went home, but ultimately I couldn’t be bothered. Well, I couldn’t be bothered and didn’t have any money anyway so there was really very little point in prolonging my stay in Uxbridge. I set off home.

Once there, I got changed and, as instructed, gave the agency a call. I found myself actually being pretty positive (though I voiced my concern that I’d been asked, once more, how old I was. The lady at the agency to whom I spoke could only comment that I had looked pretty smart from behind, but she hadn’t seen me from the front so was unable to comment on the effects of my potential rapid aging.) At the end of the conversation she promised to give Hertz a call and get back to me ASAP. About 20 minutes later she did just that. Apparently they were impressed by both candidates (me and the other guy) but, ultimately, when pressed, they were forced to admit that I was the best. Obviously this was highly gratifying, but it did have the unfortunate effect of thrusting me, once more, back into employment. I was to start on Wednesday.

So, I had one day to prepare myself. One day to buy a new pair of trousers and perhaps a shirt. I’d also decided to do something on that day that I’d been putting off for a long time. I was going to get my eyes tested so that I could buy a new pair of glasses to replaced my 7 year old, heavily scratched and, in the corner of one lens, chipped pair. The lens had been chipped after I’d gone down to Brighton to visit a friend and we, drunkenly, decided to have a pretend fight in the street. After he accidentally (or so he assures me) cuffed me across the head, the left lens came loose and shot across the pavement. When we eventually found it, a chip had appeared in the top right hand corner. Nothing that would impede my vision, but I would have to put up with this relatively minor cosmetic blemish for another 5 years.

The Next Day….

I obviously had to get used to getting up for work every morning, so in preparation I decided to wake up bright and early at 11am.

My plan was to go on a shopping trip to Uxbridge, the aim being to both acquire a new pair of trousers, and see exactly how to get to the Hertz building from the station. I’d decided that to spare myself the hassle of driving, I’d get to work by tube. I’d actually started to develop something of a hatred for driving after having to spend an hour in heavy traffic each morning whilst attempting to make it to Heston on time. I certainly didn’t want to repeat the experience. Driving should, after all, be fun, not a chore. I’d reserve car trips for pleasure purposes, like my now weekly trip out for drinks in Marlow where I’d be able to really “open her up”(whether you can truly “open up” a 5 year old Vauxhall Astra is, however, debatable, but with its sports suspension if definitely hold on to the road well, even if the stiff ride means that running over anything larger than a tiny pebble feels like it’s dislodging your spine) on the twisty A-Roads and actually have some fun. Of course I’d still use my car to get the weekly shopping, but that would be in the evening when I wouldn’t have to deal with rush hour traffic.

Inevitably, just as I was about to leave for Rayners Lane Station, my Mum professed a desire to come along. On the plus side she did at least “help” with choosing trousers. I ended up buying the pair that she said she didn’t like; a sure indicator that I’d made the right choice. I also bought a couple of shirts in the sale at Burtons, one for work and one for non-work. Unfortunately, after only one wash, the shirt, which had previously been a perfect fit, managed to shrink meaning that it unfortunately had to go back. Still, otherwise it was a successful trip. I’d worked out how to get to work and I’d got some clothes to wear once I made it there. Time however, had marched on, so I had to head straight from Uxbridge to Harrow where I’d had my 2.30 eye test appointment at Boots opticians.

The initial signs weren’t all that good. I was kept waiting for about 25 minutes, and during that time two people had appeared to complain about their glasses. One persons glasses didn’t fit (an easily rectifiable problem though, with careful measuring it shouldn’t have happened in the first place) and the other was insisting that the glasses had not been prepared to her prescription.

Eventually I was ushered in the back room to have my eye test. I subsequently found out that the vision in my right eye has improved, which didn’t really come as a shock to me. My eyesight had seemed to be getting better of late and, owing to the state of my glasses, it had been preferable to look at things without my artificial ocular aids. The only down side was the glaucoma test which apparently showed that I was in the high end of the safe area, meaning that I was at risk of being at risk. So, not all that bad really.

Choosing the glasses was, however, a bit of a nightmare. It was buy one get one of the same or lower price free, so I’d have to choose a spare pair as well. Happily my Mum, who’d reappeared after her own shopping odyssey, was once more, on hand to offer some expert advice.

I should add that I’m usually pretty good at making decisions on things. Remember, just hours before I’d managed to choose a pair of trousers with no meaningful input from anyone else. However, the glasses thing had me stumped. I was pretty sure that I’d found the primary pair, but I couldn’t seem to find a second pair that I liked and that would actually suit my face.

In the end I’d got fed up with (and slightly revolted) at looking at my face in the mirror. I ended up being convinced that no pair would ever look good because I’d be the one wearing them. Things were further complicated by the fact that I’d limited myself to glasses under £99.99 by choosing the primary pair at that price. The second pair, if it was being used as sunglasses, had to cost the same or less than the primary pair. In the end I went for a near identically styled pair that simply had slightly smaller lenses.

Of course, once I’d chosen the glasses and declared as much to the optician they presented me with the option of having photosensative lenses. More decision. In the end I went for the photosenstive lenses (even though they cost £90 more) for the primary and regular, but scratch proof lenses for the spare set. In retrospect I think that I should have had sunglasses as the spare pair since the reactalight lenses don’t change if I’m looking through my car windscreen, which sort of negates one of my intended uses.

Anyway, having solved the glasses conundrum I had to face my first day of work. And I’ll tell you all about it another time. Hopefully soonish. And, if I do get around to writing again you can hear about how bad my training was, how I managed to start a massive argument with a "senior" member of staff after having been there for only 3 weeks and how I somehow managed to get my contract renewed.

New Post

The next post was actually written 6 weeks ago, but I just never got around to finishing/posting it. Plus it was ridiculously long and contained an awful lot of rambling rubbish. Actually, I'm not sure ho that makes it any different to any of my other posts. Anyway, in the interest of actually contributing to my blog I am going to publish it. I've been a little off writing of late (work/mood related badness), but hopefully I'll get back to writing again soon. In the meantime, here's the full, unedited mid-late July blog post.

Nothing

I didn't head to the library today. My local one was closed and I didn't fancy the walk to the centre of Harrow. Needless to say, my mother's endless requests prevented me from doing any writing whatsoever. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. I think this is my shortest ever post.

Day 2

Today I’m in Rayners lane library, finishing off my blog entries. Let’s put it this way, I now long for the halcyon, relatively noise free, day at Gayton Library. There are far more problems with Rayners lane Library. First, down to an incredibly bad bit of planning half of what used to be the study area is now designated as a children’s library. There may be a flimsy wall and doors between us, but I could still hear them shrieking and whooping. Not the kids fault, but bloody annoying all the same. Then there’s been someone who decided to have a long conversation about the poor mark she got on her essay that she didn’t feel she deserved. Quite frankly, I think she did deserve it if only because she talks loudly to people on her mobile phone in libraries. After all, when I got a call (from the agency, offering me interviews at jobs that had a sales aspect. When will they learn? That said, I’d rather they mentioned things to me than not). Then there’s the scary Asian guy, who picked up a newspaper, and, unbelievably loudly turned, no flung, each page open as if he was trying to cause maximum annoyance. This was clearly part of his two pronged aural assault because he combined it with the sort of heavy breathing that would put Darth Vader to shame (two Darth mentions in as many post. I’m a hack). Of course, the thing I found most disturbing about him was the fact that he spent a good few minutes, as he started reading the paper; he sat in his seat, rocking his upper body back and forth in the manner of a complete loon. Libraries are truly scary places. I’ll give Gayton one more go tomorrow (Rayners Lane’s closed on Wednesdays), but I’m starting to think this whole library thing might not work out as well as I could have hoped. I definitely, so far, prefer Gayton. For one it’s simply a nicer environment. Secondly they don’t mind you having a drink whilst you work. In fact, given the presence of a hot drinks station they clearly encourage it. Rayners Lane, backwards thinking as ever, have signs across the library that completely forbid food and/or drink.

Plus, whilst I have been writing, I still haven’t actually properly started my screenplay. I think that maybe I don’t enjoy having to tediously set up the formatting etc. Maybe I’ll give all that a go when I get home. Anyway, that’s where I have to head right now because my battery is once more, about to die. There are plug sockets by the desk at Gayton, so I should be able to use it off the mains. Failing that I’ll probably borrow my sister’s battery (she has the same laptop, so it should work). I should really get myself a spare battery for just this sort of occasion. Perhaps once one crops up on eBay that I can actually afford and finishes at a time when I can actually be at my computer for the close of the auction, and not finished at 10.44pm on Friday night when any sane person is bound to be out down the pub.

Unemployed again. Occupationally, but hopefully not cerebrally.

Right now I’m sitting in Gayton Library attempting to write. It’s not exactly going well owing to the fact that some people are so bloody inconsiderate. First a mother let her children loose on the study area where they decided that it would be a great idea to play games, the sister occasionally yelling “Jump” to ensure that her younger brother took the correct course of action. They left, but were replaced by a slightly more annoying girl who decided that it would be a great idea to carry on with a phone conversation in what I think must be Polish. So far my wonderful experiment of trying to get some aggravation free time to write during the day in the library isn’t going all that well.

Ah good. They’ve all fucked off. Now maybe I’ll get a bit of peace.

Of course, you may ask, what am I doing in a library in the middle of the working day? Unfortunately my temping job at the school in Heston finally came to an end. I had hoped that it would last another three weeks (which it would have done had the girl who was returning to the position after maternity leave managed to get the Head’s PA position for which she had applied), but then I hadn’t expected it to last quite as long as it did, so I at least have to be thankful for the work I’ve managed to get.

It’s actually been the most pleasant experience of work that I’ve ever had. Sure the work was pretty dull, tedious and, forgive me for sounding a touch self important, a little beneath me.

(FFS the kids are back and now they’re banging on a computer’s keyboard for, seemingly, no reason. You’d think that their mother would exert some sort of control over them. Could she not, at least, exhibit some kind of consideration for the other users of the study area who, just like me, probably just want to have a little peace and quiet? Now the boy is providing a commentary to his inane computer game antics. This is seriously annoying. )

Where was I? Ah yes, work. Yes, the job itself may not have been particularly intellectually taxing (it was actually fairly mindless, save for my brief stints on reception which were merely terrifying) and the journey, which sometimes lasted as much as 1hour and 15minutes, was a hellish odyssey though a slow crawl through heavy traffic, but the school itself was a really nice place to be. It took me a couple of weeks to get relaxed. After all I’d been used to working in an environment where people were constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for me to make a mistake for which I could be gratuitously chastised. Did there people not realises that, by putting me under so much more pressure than was absolutely necessary, they were making my life far more difficult and setting me up to fail. Do they not realise that the very act of observing someone changes their behaviour? Idiots. Bu the school was nothing like this. Everybody just let you get on with things, and if you did cock up, your failure was met only with a laugh, a smile and comment along the lines of, “Oh well, not to worry.” Under those kind of circumstances do you think I ever made the same mistake twice? Of course not. Not like in the gulag that was my last work place. Working at that place was only one step removed from working for the evil empire in star wars. I probably wasn’t far off having Darth Vader force choke me for my minor slip ups.

It’s nice to finally have a nice experience of work. I was beginning to think that jobs were simply meant to be unpleasant and torturous. This has at least restored my faith in work and human nature a little. The kids are still little shits though. I like working in a school, but I’m not altogether sure about teaching at the moment. I’m not exactly certain that I’m confident enough to stand up in front of a class of children, all of whom are just waiting to pounce on me should I show the slightest weakness. Actually, put like that it sounds a little like my last job, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be that bad. Still, if I can make it in to the course through clearing I’ll definitely go. It’ll allow me to add another string to my bow and give me a steady, guaranteed income for the 9 months of training. Plus, should I move away, I’ll have some peace and quiet for writing. On that subject, I’m also considering a journalism course, but since that’ll actually cost money, I’m not so sure about it. I know that, ultimately, I’d love to be a writer, but I’m not entirely sure, at this point, that journalism is the right route to take. Still, at lest not having a job at the moment is giving me time to decide. Having a little time to write also helps.

Well, my battery is showing that I only have about 10 minutes left (though it’s frequently wrong. At 0% I often manage to get another 15-20 minutes and today I’ll probably eek a little more time out of it owing to the fact that I’ve switched off my Wi-Fi), so it’s almost time to pack up and go.

Has working at the library been a good idea? Will I manage to finish the first draft of my film if I keep working here over the next few weeks (or for however long it is that I remain unemployed)? Well, firstly I’m probably going to give Rayners Lane library a try tomorrow. Rayners Lane is certainly closer (I only walked here today because I had to pay in a cheque and Harrow has my closest HSBC Bank) and I’m hoping it’ll be a fair bit quieter too (though I’m actually getting used to the small children’s constant chatter that seems to be rapidly turning in to an argument). I’m certainly going to have to get used to typing again too since the fingers on my left hand are now starting to really ache. Could I cope with this for the whole day? Actually it wouldn’t be so bad. At Rayners Lane I could certainly do a morning stint, head home to recharge (my laptop with electricity and me with lunch) and then come back in the afternoon to continue working for a couple of hours. Actually that doesn’t sound so bad. Plus I won’t have to worry about an alarm clock since my agency seems intent on calling me a little after 8.30 every morning so as to as me inane questions like, as they did this morning, “Are you still available for work?”. Of course I bloody well am. What kind of a stupid question is that? And why did it need to be asked at 8.34am?

So, in conclusion, coming to the library to write is definitely a good idea. I’ll actually get a sense of achievement from having actually, ahem, achieved something worthwhile. Plus it’ll get me out of the house for much of the day and thus prevent me from incurring large does of moaning from Mum. Finally it’ll keep me in the habit of working (even if it’s for no money), which can only be a good thing. Oh, and if I do decide to occasionally come to Gayton Library it’ll provide me with the exercise I so clearly need. It would be nice to be a touch more svelte. At least then I’d feel better, look better, and feel like I had a touch more to offer to any prospective girlfriend/casual shag.

I’ve just noticed that the mother actually left her two annoying brats up here alone whilst she left the library. That’s terribly irresponsible behaviour. Then again it’s probably to be expected from .someone who clearly lacks any kind of consideration/

Ok, let’s see how this lasts for, but I’m going to give this routine a go.

1. Wake up at around 9.30-10am. Exercise (weights and sit-ups) and have breakfast.

2. Head to the library and write until my battery runs out (or until I get hungry if I’m actually allowed to plug my laptop in).

3. Go back for lunch and recharge my battery (If necessary).

4. Head back to the library until it’s time to go home for dinner.

5. Do some miles on my exercise bike whilst watching a Film/TV show in my laptop. I’m really glad I bought a laptop now. Worth every penny.

Well, at least I can give it a go for the week and see if it works out. Maybe at the end of it I’ll have a finished screenplay and a healthy body. Worst case scenario I’ll feel a little healthier through walking and I’ll have got away from mum for the day.

Right. 1% battery life. Time to go. Shame, I actually wanted to stay longer. I think this working at the library thing may actually work out. Now for the long walk back home.

Still Busy

I had a bit of a hectic weekend. An early start on Saturday (12pm is early for a Saturday) was necessitated by my participation in a Clapham based treasure hunt. I’d hoped we were going to be able to make up a team of four, but as things turned out, only myself and my friend who’d told me about it, were able to make it. I was actually a little shocked that nobody else wanted to come. Firstly it was, at least, something different to do. It wouldn’t simply be a night out at the pub. Secondly it looked like fun. And it was. Sure we got rained on a few times and yes, we only managed to come 17^th out of 21 teams (I think a lack of local knowledge played a part. Now that we’ve walked most of the way around Clapham I’m sure we’ll do better next year) but it was al still a lot of fun. In many ways, walking around and solving clues kind of made it feel like a Graphic Adventure from days of yore (sorry, geeky comment I know). After the first question I actually thought that we’d do an awful lot worse than we did, especially since we’d managed to completely fail to follow the predetermined route. In our defence we thought it logical to answer question no. 1 first and didn’t really notice that there was a red route marked on the map. Actually we had a fairly good stab at answering the first question, considering the fact that half of it was missing. The question had consisted of a clue and an equation that needed to be solved to work out where to go to get the answer. Unfortunately part of the equation was missing so that it didn’t actually look like an equation at all. And that’s why we managed to waste 20 minutes walking up and down a street desperately trying to work out the answer to a question that we could, as it turned out, only answer through blind luck. At least it turned out that we weren’t as big a pair of idiots as we initially thought.

Oh, and I also managed to properly meet the girl my friend is currently seeing. She was actually one of the organisers though he didn’t tell me who she was until after we’d left her company. I managed to properly meet her at the drinks at The Microbar afterwards. She seemed really nice. I finally got home a little before 12am and went to bed, absolutely knackered. But I wasn’t going to be able to rest for long. The next day I was off to see, amongst others, Kaiser Chiefs at the O2 Wireless festival in Hyde Park.

I woke up the next day, still tired from the events of the day before. Luckily I’d had the foresight to download a copy of the previous nights Dr Who just before I went to bed. Since I wasn’t meeting up until 3pm I’d have plenty of time to watch it whilst I ate breakfast. Of course, no matter how much time I have I always end up rushing to get ready, and that morning was no exception. Despite my customary unpreparedness I still managed to make it to Marble Arch Station (TFL, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to close the whole Piccadilly line, including Hyde Park Station, for the weekend) more or less on time. That’s more than could be said for my friend, who kept me waiting another 15 minutes. Ah well, I can’t complain, it was because of him that we’d managed to get half price tickets, £23 instead of £46. Besides, I had to get some cash out. Central London is full of cash machines, but is one within five minutes walking distance of Marble Arch Station. After buying a couple of 500ml bottles of Coke at Superdrug (2 for £1.40 instead of 95p each. I couldn’t resist) I gave up my search for an ATM and waited for my friend. It turned out that he was in need of cash, so we both set off on our quest for a cash machine. I really can’t believe that there aren’t any within a 10 or 15 minute walk of the park. Unbelievable. Eventually we found and HSBC bank. I’d initially assumed that it was some sort of heat induced hallucination. No way could we have finally found somewhere to get cash. As it turned out, we hadn’t. The bank was bereft of an external cash machine. Our quest continued. Finally we found some sort of Arabic bank. Wary that they might charge some sort of fee for cash withdrawals we ended up taking a trip across and a bit up the road to the Natwest. At last we had our money. Walking back, my friend noticed something odd. All of the newsstands sold only foreign papers, not a News of the world or a Sunday Times on view anywhere. Very strange. Perhaps we’d stepped through a portal and into some strange foreign land with no ATMs. Perhaps we’d stepped through another to make it back to our country, resplendent in all its bank-having glory. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just nonsense. There’s no such think as a trans-continental portal. Still, I have a friend who has a theory about Ikea. My friend thinks that there is, in fact, only one Ikea in existence. All the other sites are simply gateways, or portals that teleport you to the solitary store. It would certainly explain why there are some many people speaking in foreign languages inside each store.

Anyway, I digress. After we’d got our money we headed off to meet my friend’s friend, who actually had the tickets. As it turned out, the tickets were stored as a sort of barcodey thing MMS message on my friend’s friend’s phone. It wasn’t actually a barcode, more a sort of 1cm square thing with a randomly pixelated pattern on it. Scanners read the pattern and allowed us to gain entry to the event. Quite cool, and quite high tech, but I do miss not having a printed ticket stub as a memento of the day.

We walked inside the walled area that played host to the festival and immediately saw two things. Firstly, a beer tent that sold, quite moderately priced Tuborg beer, something I hadn’t had since my trip to Copenhagen a few years ago. For £3 a pint, I expected it to be terribly watered down, but it was actually quite tasty. This, I thought, was a good omen. The second think we saw was an array of cash machines. Shit. Sure they would have charged us an extortionate amount to get at our money, but it would have saved our odyssey across the bank free wilderness of Hyde Park’s surrounding streets. Anyway, after joining up with another friend and his girlfriend, we got some beer and extortionately priced food (there had to be a catch and £6 for a burger was it. I actually went for the less wallet busting £3 spicy potato wedges with all the ketchup I could fit in my plastic tray. I went a little bit crazy with the condiments, but when don’t I) we found a place to sit. An orange jumpsuit wearing Japanese band were leaping about excitedly on stage. Not bad, but possibly a bit too manic for the first act. Of course they weren’t the first act. The day was, after all, already four hours old by the time we got in. Anyway, the orange jump-suited guys were followed by Mumm-Ra (Named, I assume, after the bad guy in Thunder cats), a band who’s songs I heard a little on XFM. Not bad, but not all that memorable. Unlike Pigeon Detectives, who were absolutely brilliant. As soon at the Mumm-Ra set ended there was a mass exodus from the main stage to the XFM tent where they were playing. Demand to see the ‘Detectives (or maybe the Pigeons) was so high that they had to turn people away from the tent. They played a great set and put on a good performance. They really seemed to be communicating with the crowd. There was even time for a bit of a sing-along. Throughout the 35minutes they were on stage they consistently proved that they were a band to watch out for. After they finished it was time for the last two acts, Editors and Kaiser Chiefs.

If I’d have written a review of Kaiser Chief’s latest single, “Everything is average nowadays” it would have simply read “Q.E.D”. That’s until I saw them perform at the wireless festival where they flagrantly failed to make their own point. They were, in fact, nothing short of spectacular. The animated antics of Ricky Wilson were in total contract to Editors who were about as interesting to look at as five static blokes playing instruments. That’s not to say that they didn’t playa good set, they just didn’t look entirely comfortable on such a large stage. Of course I did spend an awful lot of my time looking at my friend, who’d come along with his new special lady. That sound, in some way, twisted, but I can assure you that it wasn’t. I was mesmerised only by my friend who, throughout pretty much every song, simply stood, peering up at the stage as if straining to see what was happening but couldn’t quite make out what all the fuss was about. Obviously this kind of behaviour induced my other friend and me to hurl empty beer cups at him. I scored a direct, albeit only to his back, whilst my friend managed hit him with a cunningly crafted (or exceedingly lucky) ricochet shot which bounced of the ginger noggin of an innocent bystander and caught my friend on the back of his head. He did at least become slightly more lively during the ‘ Chiefs (chief’s performance of “I predict a riot though I suspect that his limited bouncing was more as a result of trying to remain upright when faced with the problem of a near riotously jubilant crowd who clearly had no time whatsoever for inactive bystanders.

I like festivals and gigs because everyone’s so friendly. I did get a little upset, however, when somebody said that I didn’t look very Rock and Roll. I was, initially a little perturbed, I almost let it ruin my weekend (I tend to dwell on irrelevant details and minor critiques on my character and appearance, perhaps because I’m actually a touch self obsessed and narcissistic as well as being, conversely, quite insecure.), but then I thought of Hunter S. Thompson. He didn’t exactly look Rock and Roll, did he? Take the image we get of him from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” He most certainly doesn't look cool. Basically, he looks like what he is, a writer. Despite all the though, he was, without a doubt, Rock and Roll. Perhaps even more so because he didn’t conform to any self-consciously cool image. He was who he was. The guy got his remains shot out of a cannon by Johnny Depp for fuck’s sake. If that’s not Rock and fucking Roll I don’t know what is.

Anyway, it was a great weekend, but I was unbelievably knackered at the end of it. Shame, since I had to go to work the next day. Let me put it this way, it was not an easy week, and the quiet weekend in that followed was extremely welcome.

Busy

I seem to have neglected my blog over the last month. Sorry to anybody who was hoping for some more regular updates. The irony is, that any time my life gets busy and I therefore have something to write about, I simply don't have the time to blog. I think this may be the first time over about the last 3 weeks that I haven't had my day filled from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. Firstly there was the whole thing about redecorating my room. Initially, the idea was to replace my carpet with real oak flooring. It was on special offer at Wickes and since it was almost 1/4 of the usual price it was too tempting to miss. Especially considering how worn my carpet is, especially right by my desk. Of course, doing my flooring meant that all my things had to be moved out of my room, and, given how much stuff I have, that was something of a Herculean task. The idea was that I could move my desk and TV into the spare room and, temporarily, use that as my bedroom. Things didn't exactly work out unfortunately. My desk and TV fit in the spare room just fine, but when it came to actually sleeping on the bed... Lets just say that as soon as I lay down on the bed I sunk in to it. There was absolutely no way that I could sleep in (and I really do mean "in") such a knackered bed. So, I had to continue to sleep in my room. My room with nothing in it but a bed. So, every night, I had to bring in a little bedside table with enough room for a lamp, an alarm clock and a place to put my laptop at night (I was using it to watch downloaded video file before going to sleep). Of course, being me, I had to have a TV in there too, so out came the little 14" TV on a little wheeled table. Then, the following morning, everything had to be moved out again (bed excluded) to make way for the decorating. Oh, and before any floor could be laid, it was decided that the wallpaper on the ceiling (that just sounds odd) had to be stripped, have the cracks filled in, sanded and then repainted. Of course I was the one who had to start the work on my own, because certain other parties who had promised to help, didn't want to work on a Sunday. Anyway, it finally looked like we were in a position to lay the floor there were murmurings about replacing the wallpaper too. Those murmurings quickly turned to screams when, completely by accident, my mum managed to rip off part of the existing wallpaper. All of this meant that I was without a proper room for a little over 2 weeks. A little over a week after that I've only just finished moving my stuff (most of it anyway) back in to my room. Of course then came all the extra superfluous little touches that somehow became essential to the completion of my room. New curtains (the blue ones were too dark. Apparently) new sheets (to match the curtains) and a few new storage units; essential because apparently I was no longer allowed to have any fixed shelves on the wall. This, as you can imagine, drove me mad. I spend most of my time in my room. It's my place, the only place in the house where I can be semi-insulated from all the other crap that's gong on around me. Of course it's not really my room now. Sure, I wanted a new floor, but my space is now decorated with wallpaper I didn't choose, curtains I didn't need and a complete lack of anything (DVDs and CDs aside) that really has anything to do with me. I can't even put up my Mallrats poster; ironically, because of the new picture rail it there isn't enough vertical space for it. Still, at least the door shuts (now that the door's back on) and I can, to a certain extent, keep everything else outside.

Of course, everything was exacerbated by what happened next. A few days in to my rooms refurbishment, just when I'd gone past the point of no return, I got a call from my agency. They had a temp job for me in Heston. Usually I'd have just told them that it was too far away and that I wasn't interested. However, this job required me to work in a school reception. Since, a the time, I was looking at doing a PGCE course (I won't be, on a purely logistical basis. At least not this year. 3 out of 4 university's have thus far turned me down. It looks like they were all filled up a few months ago.), so some experience working in a school would have been invaluable. So, within the first week I'd pretty much decided that I didn't want to be a teacher. Maybe it's just that the kids at that school are little shits, but there's no way that I'd want to spend my days with a bunch of ill mannered, semi-literates. Maybe I just had this completely unrealistic Dead Poets Society/Public school image of teaching (I'm not sure why. I didn't go to public school and I've never watched Dead Poets Society). Even the good kids are rude little bastards. Nope, teaching is not for me. Well, maybe I could have stomached it if I were a university lecturer, but we all know that's not a possibility.

So, at the end of the day, all I'm left with is a crappy, dull admin job that pays badly and finishes at the end of July. Of course, what I wasn't told was that my services wouldn't be required for the whole of the half term week, which is why I find myself, once more temporarily on Holiday. Yep, a weeks holiday was exactly what I needed right now.

Actually, that's sort of true-ish. Last week was particularly stressful, since I had an interview with a publishing company on Thursday. It looks like a great company and a cool place to work (they're the company that publish Record Collector. No the best music magazine around, but still...), but the job itself was just more boring Admin/Customer service stuff. Not all that different to my last job really, except the pays better and the hours were even worse, being as they were, from 8.30am until 6pm. Anyway, they seemed to really want someone who really wanted to be in the role for years to come, and that's certainly not me. Seriously, did they ever think that someone like me would be interested in staying in something that was obviously so dead end? There's no point whatsoever in me taking a job that provides no prospects of advancement. Still, they said they'd let me know some time this week or next, but to be honest I hope I don't get it. I'd be far too tempted to take the job, only to find myself in a years time, right back where I was when I quit my last crappy job. A bad move then. Shame though. i was really hoping I could use it as some sort if stepping stone into professional writing. It looks like, from what I was told at the interview by the companies MD and by my agency at a prep session the day before, that was never a possibility. Still, it's made me think that doing a journalism course might be a good idea. I'd certainly find it to be a far more rewarding career than anything I've done to date, even if the pay's meant to be crap. I could jut do with a job that doesn't make me fear the alarm clock every morning, regardless of remuneration. Besides, I think it's something that I might actually be good at; which, as far as jobs are concerned, has to be something of a novelty. They main problem is the cost. Where as with teaching I'd have been paid to do the course, with journalism I'd have to use a fair chunk of my savings (about 10%) just to pay the fees. Still, I guess it would be a worthwhile investment in my future (provide that things work out of course). Otherwise I've just got a lifetime of crappy admin roles to look forward to. Having spent two weeks doing filing and data entry I don't think I'd be able to manage a particularly long lifespan if all I had to look forward to was admin. And it's only fear that it would go nowhere that stopped me before. Ironically my inaction has led me down the path I feared anyway. Maybe some research in to courses is in order.

Oh, and today i was supposed to have a telephone interview for yet another job that sounded like it would be a nightmare. Some admin, inputting data into spreadsheets and a little bit of accounting stuff. Really not me. I got a call today that 8.30 this morning from my agency to tell me that the interview had been cancelled since they'd offered the job to someone on Friday. Maybe that's not a good portent for my future with this agency. Are they clued up to my total hopelessness when it come to jobs already?

Not good

It's been a while hasn't it? Well, what to say. Things were looking up recently. I sent off my application for teaching courses, got my reference from my former screenwriting lecturer (albeit 2 weeks after it was requested due to the fact that I asked for it whilst the University was closed down for the holidays). I've had some great nights out, the highlights being drinks with an old university friend who'd been abroad for years, and a great party in Islington.

I even had a good experience at a recruitment agency today. Bizarrely they seemed like nice, friendly people. Even more bizarrely they were actually quite impressed with me. They actually felt that they might have a job for me, albeit one that's not all that well paying. Still, it's £1.5K better than my last best paid job.

But all of that means noting, because I heard today that I didn't get in to my first choice of university, Reading. This means that I probably suck extremely badly and I suspect that I won;'t get in to the others either. I'm not sure it actually matters because Reading was the only uni to guarantee places in halls for PGCE students. It was also the only one I had any special desire to go to. So, basically I'm fucked once again.

Once more, I have proof that I'm destined for... well... nothing.

God, did I ever really see myself as a teacher? I'm not sure. I was beginning to waver over the last few days. Perhaps it was just nerves. Perhaps I thought that maybe I didn't have what it takes to be a teacher? Regardless, I definitely wanted to do the course. Mostly I definitely wanted to go to Reading. Was it because my application was bad? perhaps it was my degree result? Perhaps my old lecturer gave me a bad reference. Maybe it was because I didn't do a degree in English? I can see that doing a degree in history was the worst mistake I ever made. It's clearly going to cause me trouble for the rest of my life. But what the hell can I do about it now? I'm fucked. I'm really, really fucked.

Everyone else I know is doing so much better than me, and the way things are going, they always will. Am I ever going to get anywhere? Do I have a hope in hell when nobody seems willing to give me a chance.

God, how bad would I have felt if I'd had a shitty day at the recruitment consultants too? I expect I'd have been suicidal. At the very least I'm sure I'd have been contemplating a vigorous bout of self harm.

I should have known. Nothing ever goes well for me for long. It all goes shit in the end. Now I just have to wait for the rest of the rejections to come in.

What the fuck am I going to do now?

All I can do I guess. Watch TV. That's what I'm doing now and probably for the rest of my pathetic life.

Maybe I'll write some more tomorrow. I was always going to write something this week. I just expected to be way more upbeat.

Become a recruitment consultant. Annoy the world.

The day after the Graduate Recruitment Company debacle, at 8.44am (I know, I checked the clock) I got another call from a guy who called last week to find out if I was interested in working as a recruitment consultant. “Oh did I already call you. Sorry I must have forgotten to take you off my list” he said. A lie, I’m sure. He then went on to ask if I’d changed my mind. He even said that they might have a job at a branch more local to me, Watford. Having had such a bad experience the day before and feeling somewhat demoralised I wasn’t prepared to dismiss him straight away. “How about I call you back in a couple of days time?” And he did. And, rather foolishly, I agreed to an interview on Monday. He’d already sent me over some details about the job, so I gave them a proper look. It really wasn’t me. Basically it was everything I’d hated about my previous job multiplied to the nth degree. But what other option did I have?

A short while later my phone rang once again. It was a recruitment consultant wondering if I was interested in a much better job working for a Media Monitoring company near the Tower of London. She described the job. Basically I’d be reading newspapers and checking the internet for stories about whatever client I was working for. It sounded great. I was definitely interested and eagerly awaited her promised email containing more information. She asked me to look it over and give her a call back by the end of the day. It didn’t come. To make matters worse my email started playing up. I called back. It turned out that she hadn’t sent it. I waited. It didn’t come. Thursday turned to Friday and I called back. She claimed that she couldn’t find the job spec and that she’d send it to me when she was resent it by the company. She did, however, say that they were very interested in me. Finally today (after I called twice) I got the information and a promise to arrange an interview for me on Wednesday. Hopefully she’ll call back tomorrow. Still, I’ve had to jump through a few hoops to get there.

Anyway, in the meantime I still l had this interview for the recruitment consultant job. When I’d called him up on Friday to make sure that the interview was still on, he’d promised to call me on Sunday at 4pm to talk me through the interview. By Sunday, when the phone call finally came, I’d had serious doubts about the job. It really wasn’t for me. I’d just be miserable. After consulting a number of friends I’d decided to be honest about my misgivings when he called. I was pretty up front with the guy about how I didn’t think the job was right for me. I first asked him what a typical day would be like as I figured this would be a good way of illustrating why I wouldn’t be suitable. Alarm bells started ringing when he told me that my regular hours would be from 8am -6PM (so you can bet that, in reality, I’d have to stay a fair bit later). He continued to describe what seemed like a nightmare day for me and as he spoke I was becoming even more convinced that this simply wasn’t for me. By the time he told me my basic salary (£16k, with commission not kicking in until after 3 months, by which point, if some miracle had happened and I’d got the job, I’m sure I’d probably have been sacked), I was utterly convinced that I would hate the job, even resent it in the same way I resented my last job for its low pay and long hours. This job was, just from the point of view of pay and hours, would have been even worse than my last. I would be spending even more of my time on the phone being interrupted by callers, and under pressure to hit targets. I’d probably have had a heart attack within 6 months.

So I told him the job wasn’t for me. Quite emphatically in fact, yet I couldn’t get him to say that he thought it would be best if I didn’t come in. Although he admitted that if I said all that I had said on the phone to him to the guy who would be interviewing me, I wouldn’t get the job. None the less, he kept insisting that I should go to the interview anyway. It didn’t seem to matter that I’d just told him how bad I was in a sales environment and how much I really wouldn’t like it. I emphasised the point by saying that, had I seen the job advertised, I wouldn’t have even considered applying for it. I simply don’t get a buzz out of making sales.

I even gave him a way of making the job appeal to me. I said, “I suppose you could argue that it’s a worthwhile job because you’re helping to find people work.”

“Nobody” according to him “does this sort of job to help people.”

By now, any shred of doubt I had in my mind about not taking the interview had evaporated. He was giving me a hard, but completely untargeted sales pitch for some reason. I felt sure I’d made that perfectly clear, yet he continued trying to say that it was still a good idea to go to the interview. “I can see you’re in two minds about the job” he said at one point. He extolled the virtues of his company, saying that they weren’t like any other recruitment agency. Oddly enough his hard sell approach to forcing the job on me made it clear that they were just like any other Recruitment Agency. Maybe they were a little worse.

We left it that I would call today if I wanted to cancel the interview.

I called, but he wasn’t available, so I left a message and sent an email, asking that the interview be cancelled.

It really is odd that he spent so long trying to convince me to come along when I clearly felt that I was, in so many ways, completely wrong for the job. I even said that I felt it would be a waste of time going but he shrugged this off, telling me that it wouldn’t.

I can’t exactly worry about turning down today’s interview. I didn’t want the job and would never have got it. If I had it would have just made me miserable.

Anyway, I’ve come to an important conclusion. Recruitment consultants really are full of shit. At least now I know that I’m completely unsuited to being a Recruitment Consultant. I’m just not that much of an arsehole.

“Hello there. I was wondering if I could completely waste your time.”

I do feel like I need to find something I can do in case the teaching doesn’t work out and I don’t make it onto the course. Besides, even if I do make it onto the course I’ve got another 6 months before it starts. And minus-no money in the bank. Clearly I need a job to take me through until September. Clearly recruitment consultants are the, slightly unpalatable, answer. At the beginning of February I emailed and called about 15-20 agencies. None gave me a particularly positive response. The guy at Hudson at least gave me some pretty good advice and the lady at Australasian talent (odd name I know, but recommended by a friend) suggested that she’d have some basic admin jobs if I was “desperate”. However, y far the worst response came from the Graduate Recruitment Company. After I’d submitted my CV via email they sent me a text requesting that I call. Straight away I got on the phone. To be frank, the lady at the GRC was pretty rude. She asked me what I wanted to do. I spelled it out pretty clearly. She said we don’t handle that sort of thing. I said that I’d be happy to do pretty much anything, perhaps something not dissimilar to my last job. She had a go at me for not being focused enough. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was simply being flexible. Her whole attitude was patronising and condescending. She advise that I look thorough their website and apply for a job if I liked the look of it. Basically I was left with the overwhelming impression that they couldn’t be bothered. Arses.

Last month I had an extremely negative conversation with them, which is why I was so surprised that they called me back. I thought that they’d had a change in attitude.

Of course when, a month later, they called me back and asked me to come in, because they “may be able to find some jobs that I could do” I jumped at the chance. “They must have had a change of heart”, I thought. After all, they had my CV, so they should have known everything about me already. So, last Monday I went in for an interview with one of their consultants. To put it mildly, it was an unpleasant experience and a complete waste of time. From what I can gather they apparently just wanted to be nasty to me in person.

I arrived 15 minutes early, as requested, and filled in some forms. All the reception staff were pretty, young and very attractive, so I was looking forward to an interview with someone similar. As it turned out, my interviewer was almost entirely dissimilar. I’d been asked to wait in a room, fill out my forms and await my interviewer. About 20 minutes later she entered the small room. She was huge. I mean really fat. She made the already small room seem tiny. She was wearing a very low cut v-neck top which showed off (that’s really not the right phrase) her large, but saggy breasts. I tried to keep my eyes on her face but it was hard to stop my gaze from falling downwards on a couple of occasions. Not, I should say, because I found her breasts titillating. Really looking at her boobs had more in common with slowing down to rubberneck a particularly nasty car accident. Things didn’t get any more pleasant.

The cow made me feel as if I had no options. Deep down I know she’s wrong, but it installed in me a nagging doubt. I still can’t work out why she bothered if all she was going to do was pick me apart. She attacked me, my work history and my education for the whole interview. Perhaps it was all under the guise of seeing how I’d be in an interview, but, when it comes down to it, it wasn’t an interview for a job, it was an interview for an agency, so I’m not sure why she was spending so much of her time telling me how unmarketable I was by telling me all the reasons why I wouldn’t get a job as opposed to concentrating on how I could get one. Basically she turned every positive into a negative. A diverse range of qualifications and experience was, according to her, a bad thing. That was, as far as she was concerned, an un-debateable absolute. After having told me all the reasons why I would find it hard to get a job she went on to criticise me for having a gap in my employment since I left my last job. She, without a hint of irony, went on to ask, “Employers are crying out for candidates, so why haven’t you found anything?” She’d initially got me in to discuss possibilities in the technology sector, but then spent much of the interview telling me that I’d have a hard time against the competition who were straight out of university with Computer science degrees. If she thought that why did she bother to call me in at all? Does she just like wasting people’s time? The fact that she continued by making a comment about my age, which she followed up by saying that “of course, we’re not allowed to discriminate based on age.” And continuing by making it perfectly clear that age was a major factor in their rejection of me. In fact, having thought about it, I wonder whether every other negative comment was made simply to get her out of her allusion to age being a major factor on rejecting me. Otherwise the whole thing was extraordinarily nonsensical and contradictory.

She was even somewhat patronising. I was quite willing to do anything for which my skills would be a match and she attacked me for being unsure of what I wanted to do. As it all drew to a close and she’d told me they really couldn’t be bothered to help, she told me that “I should go and see a career service. Perhaps one at your university.” Given her previous comment alluding to the fact that I might be too old to get accepted by the agency I responded by saying that “So, you don’t think that I’m too old to go back to my university’s career service” She didn’t really have anything to say to that.

She actually said that my CV was too unfocussed to get anything at the moment. When I suggested that I could work on it, and re-focus it, I was virtually dismissed. Having said, just moments before, that my CV’s lack of focus was a big problem, she was now almost immediately saying (and I’m not remember it exactly as she said it, but it’s pretty close) “it will take more than a bit of paper to get you a job.” Oh, on the subject of CVs, she’d asked me to bring along a hard copy of my CV as well as email her with an updated version. In front of her was the old version of my CV she had received a month earlier. At no point did she ask me for the hard copy, meaning that I was carrying around a bag containing my CV for absolutely nothing. The whole thing really seemed like she wasn’t bothering.

I really thought that agencies were supposed to help you find work, not tell you why you’ll never manage to find a job. Ever.

You can see why I was so upset about the interview. It seemed like she’d simply decided to hate me on principal. She said, during the course of the interview that she had wanted to follow up her degree and masters in English with a PhD, but hadn’t been able to afford it. She said that she didn’t know what she’d have done if she hadn’t become a recruitment consultant. Basically she came across as being a bitter, patronising, condescending bitch. In other words she had all the attributes you’d expect to find in a recruitment consultant.

Those who can’t...

A few days later I drove up to Reading to meet a friend for lunch at a pub near where he works. I hadn’t seen him for a while so it was good to catch up> the food was pretty good too, and pretty substantial too, despite the fact that we’d both ordered “reduced size” portions. I shudder to think how large the regular portions would be. Of course, as with any friend I don’t see every week (and in fact most that I do) the subject of job hunting came up. At this point it really wasn’t going very well (unless you count random emails from companies who saw my CV on monster and want to offer me jobs as a computer programmer or Java scripter just because I have an A-Level in Computer Science, as going well.) This is where the potentially life changing bit comes in. My friends’ boyfriend is a teacher. He suggested that might be a good career move for me. He told me about how you could get a huge bursary (£9000 for the year as it turns out) just for doing the course. I thought about all the holiday time. He told me that it was a fulfilling career, something that would give me a sense of achievement. I thought about what I could do with 13 weeks holiday a year. He said that, as a key worker, I’d have access to affordable housing and get a salary that would allow me to buy my own home. This appealed more than the abundance of holiday time. The last five years that I’ve spent stuck in this boring, mediocre little suburb have bee torturous. I long to actually have a proper life of my own, something that was never going to happen whilst I stuck living in the same house as my mother in Harrow, the closest London equivalent to Tatooine. If there is a bright spot in London, Harrow is the place furthest from it. (For some reason it feels good to reference/paraphrase Star Wars.). So, teaching could offer me a good, fulfilling job, where I could feel like part of the solution, not part of the problem (the problem being selfish and extreme capitalism and the sort of people who engage in nefarious, dishonest practices. Like all my previous employers). Not only that, I’d get a decent salary (decent in the sense that it’s far higher than anything I’d got before), and have enough spare time in the holidays to keep writing. To be frank I doubt that I’ll ever manage to fit in at most commercial organisations. Making somebody else rich was never a particularly strong motivating factor for me to work. I’m not even that bothered about being rich my self. Just comfortable. Sure I’d like my own house (and, with house prices being what they are you kind of do need to be rich to own one.) and a nice car (I keep mentioning cars and driving. They’ll be something more specific on all that later), but I’ve never really had much enthusiasm for accruing wealth just to put a few more zero’s on my bank balance. Honestly, being happy and doing something that I think is worthwhile is far more important to me.

Of course I’m quite scarred about the idea of teaching. I’d initially discounted it because I thought I’d make a lousy teacher. Admittedly this was based entirely on my inability to teach my mum how to use a computer so that wasn’t exactly a firm basis for saying that I’d be awful. But, when it comes down to it, I’d really love the opportunity to impart knowledge to people. To educate them and shape their minds. All that stuff. I decided that I’d probably make a pretty good teacher. But what to teach. I certainly wouldn’t want to do primary school. I really couldn’t stand being around kids who know absolutely nothing. No, far better to teach secondary school and be around a bunch of kids who think they know absolutely everything. I’ve decided that I’d like to teach English. I ended up regretting not doing English at university. Doing history was a bit of a mistake and, I think in retrospect, I let my Dad influence me in my choice of degree too much. I’d actually justified my choice of a History degree in a purely logical way. I did well at A-Level and GCSE, so I was bound to get a good degree. Sure, I liked history, and I got pretty good grades for GCSE and A-Level (both As’ in case you’re wondering), but I get the impression that my interest and motivation to do well was influenced by my desire to please my dad. Once he died, and I went to university to read (as they persistently say on University Challenge) History, I lost all motivation. I just wasn’t that interested. Oddly enough I’ve realised that I would have been much better off doing a degree in something that I got Bs in, like English. After all, to get a B for English I didn’t even have to bother trying. How well could I have done if I’d put a bit of effort into it? In fact the more and more I heard about English degrees in my third year (I was going out with a girl who, along with some of her friends’, studied English) the more and more I realised that I’d chosen the wrong subject. Of course by then it was far too late. I only had a couple of months before my degree was over.

Of course to redress the balance (and stay at university for another year with my younger girlfriend), I decided to do my MA in Film Screenwriting. I somehow cajoled my way onto the course and all was well in the world. Until the girl dumped me. And then, when I finished the course I still didn’t feel like I’d made up for doing so badly ion my first degree. Clearly doing so badly at my History degree is going to haunt me forever. I felt as though I wasn’t good enough, and, perhaps, that’s caused more difficulties in getting a job than the actual result of my degree. In fact I thought that having an MA would imply to employers that I’d actually done well in my first degree. I found out the other day, at an interview with a recruitment consultant that it worked. She really thought that I’d got a 2.1 (at least that’s what she wrote in her notes, and I wasn’t going to correct her). I’ve actually got more to say about the recruitment consultant, but that’s for another section.

Anyway, perhaps doing this teaching course is simply another vein attempt to make up for my bad degree. But even if that’s the case at least it should help me to get many of the things that I’ve wanted for the past few years since I left university. I’ll hopefully have a worthwhile job, a good salary, plenty of holiday time and the means to buy my own place. Surely it’s worth the risk. It’s not even a particularly great risk since I’ll be paid to do the course. Not only that, I think, I’ll probably move into halls whilst I do it, so I’ll be able to get out of Harrow for a while. Then, at the end of it, I’ll have another qualification. It really is Win, Win, Win.

Now, I just have to get around to figuring out where I want to go (My first choice is definitely Reading. I’m not entirely sure why, though they were my original insurance choice for my first degree). Basically I have to make my choices based on where I want to go and where I’m most likely to get in. I think that fact that I have such a bad degree in History may harm my chances of getting on to an English course, so I have to be a little pragmatic and include a few ex-polytechnics in with my choices.

I’m pretty sure that this is the right course of action for me. Besides, it’ll be nice to be a student again. I wonder if students still get a 10% discount at HMV.

It's been a while

Wow, it’s been ages since I contributed anything to the blog. The irony is, when lots of stuff’s been going on in my life I don’t tend to have the time to blog it all. That said, I get the feeling that making time to blog it will be beneficial. Once I’ve written about it I’m sure I’ll be able to think more clearly.

So, the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy and pretty important. Well, some things weren’t al; that pivotal, but I’ll talk about them over the next few posts anyway. I’ll try to keep it vaguely chronological, but it’s mostly divided into topics. I’ll start with something frivolous.

A few weeks ago I visited a friend in Essex to, at his request, check out his Xbox 360. To be honest, it seems just like the original Xbox, only instead of being a big black box it’s now a slightly svelter white box with an external power supply unit that is, quite literally, the size of a brick. Apparently it’ll also break after a year (if anecdotal evidence is to be believed) so it’s also far more fragile. I’ve had my Xbox for a few years now, and the worst thing that’s happened is that it’s developed a slight, asthmatic wheeze when first started up. It goes away after a minute or so and then continues to operate completely normally.

None of the games look an awful lot better than regular Xbox games. Of course the reason for this is quite obvious. Whilst my friend had a new, ultra modern, ultra powerful Xbox 360 he had it hooked up to a decidedly un-modern CRT, non-HD TV, meaning that every single game was displayed in a resolution well below that which was intended. Any graphical fanciness was completely lost on the blurry old SD TV. In actual fact, the images were so un-sharp that I actually started feeling a little wonky just trying to play a game of gears of war. I don’t suppose this was helped by the fact that I had to play split screen, thus halving the screen size and effectively reducing the already woefully inadequate display resolution. It’s no wonder I had to stop. My eyes were really going funny and my head was beginning to hurt. It was becoming abundantly obvious that I was right all along about the Xbox 360. There’s no point in getting one if you don’t have an HDTV.

Oddly enough, as a result of the televisual shortcomings, all the new games held little appeal for me and I ended up spending most of my time playing Halo 2. Of course, none of the alleged enhancement made to Halo 2 for playback on the 360 were apparent because, you’ve guessed it, it wasn’t connected to an HDTV. It therefore looked exactly the same as it did on my near 5 year old Xbox. Since Halo and its many sequels are the only games I’ll probably end up playing on the 360 it really does render the purchase of a 360 completely pointless. Of course I’ll probably change my mind when I get my own, personal 360 and Halo 3 comes out, but for now, even if I had the money (which I don’t), I wouldn’t buy one. Besides, there’s supposed to be a new version coming out soon that’s black and has an HDMI port enabling it to be connected to an HDTV in a purely digital way as opposed to the many pronged analogue component approach favoured by the current model. Perhaps it won’t break down so quickly either. Of course all this is only a rumour, but I’m certainly prepared to wait and see if it’s true.

Besides, I really have stopped playing a lot of video games (though, inevitably, I’ve ended up playing Halo on the PC far too much) owing to the cancellation of my Xbox Live account, thus preventing me from playing Xbox games online and saving me up to £40 a year. I must stop playing Halo because it stops me from pursuing more worthwhile activities like writing and applying for jobs. Which neatly brings me to my next subject.