MInd the Gaps

Note to self. Remember to eat before going out drinking.

After about 10pm I only remember bits of last night. Small patches do keep coming back to me. We went to the Maple Leaf in Covent Garden. I still remember that. Jamie was waiting for me at the station when I arrived. I was 5 minutes late, but that's too bad considering how late I left. I figured we'd start off at the Maple Leaf then head over to that Irish pub near Piccadilly Circus (O'Something or another'; yeah, I guess that's a pretty safe bet). As it turned out we stayed there for the whole evening (actually I think that Luke and his friends, possibly Jamie too, ended up at The Walkabout on Embankment). That's the problem with the Maple Leaf; it's such a great place to be and practically impossible to leave if get lucky and find a table. Admittedly I'm not too fond of the log cabin style refurb. And they got rid of the "Molson" chair. A portrait of John Molson (the man behind my hangover) hung over an inactive fireplace. In front of that was a table and a high backed, leather arm chair, the "Molson Chair". It was sort of chair that you'd expect to see being used by a man sporting a large handlebar moustache, smoking a pipe as he enjoys a good single malt whisky at his preferred gentleman's club. In the old days, when the Maple Leaf was just a little less busy we always made a beeline for the Molson chair. It's still there, but it’s no longer at the back of the bar by the fireplace underneath the portrait of John Molson. They've moved the portrait too. Nobody bothers to go for the chair anymore. Still, at least Bernie the stuffed (and slightly anorexic) bear is still about. Hmm, all of that sounded like it was building up to be metaphor for something. Well, except for the bit about Bernie (and it’s not like we’ve ever called him that; I’ve only just arbitrarily decided on an alliterative name for him).

Anyway, surprise of the night came when Luke turned up, complete with a girl from his office. She looked a little unassuming at first, wrapped up in a ¾ length, blue/green coat, but when she took it off she revealed a slender East Asian form, cloaked, very lightly, by a tight blue bustier-esqe top that cupped her small, but shapely breasts. If only I could remember the conversation as well as the breasts. I did talk to her for a wile. I’m told I was quite funny, if a little over the top with my good natured banter about Luke’s many deficiencies. Still, even if I was funny and charming it was all for naught; I found out later that the girl, Joyce, yes that was her name, was married, even though she wore no ring. I wasn’t interested of course. At the risk of being crass Luke had dibs anyway. No, I had no real interest in Joyce besides using her as a means by which I could keep myself amused, to prove that I could still hold the attention of a pretty girl if I so wished. It helped that I was in something of an exuberant mood at the evenings beginning. Even before the alcohol that followed. In another state of mind I would have undoubtedly found it less easy.

Now that I think about it, perhaps, conversely, my lack of any real interest in the subject (so clinical) rendered the exercise entirely pointless anyway. Still, it made me feel better for a short while.

Shots were ordered and I made Jamie seem foolish in front of the barmaid he fancied (at least that’s what the tell me). Jamie bears me no ill will; apparently he has no memory if it either.

Some other people turned up; I assumed they more of Luke’s work collegues, apparently only one of the three was.

I’ll reiterate my earlier point. It is essential that I eat BEFORE I go out.

I left at some point, of that I’m sure. It was an indeterminate amount of time after Ben and Craig left, but maybe not before Jamie. Certainly it was before Luke and his rapidly expanding entourage left (they went on to join Rosh at his gathering for the 19 year old girl, whoever she was, at the Walkabout). I vaguely remember finding myself walking across Trafalgar square, not my usual route to Piccadilly Circus (where I’d usually get the Bakerloo line, but not that day); the result, I think of an abortive attempt to go to the Strand branch of McDonalds for a burger. Quite what was wrong with the Leicester Square branch that I would pass by had I taken my regular path, I don’t know. Quite why I didn’t go for the burger after all I don’t know either. Maybe it had something to do with how queasy I felt going back on the Piccadilly Line to Rayners Lane (obviously I couldn’t muster the strength to change trains so as I could go directly to my closest station). Luckily the toilets weren’t open. The local youth must have decided to ply their vandalistic trade elsewhere that weekend. I continued to be unwell when I got home. For the first night in weeks, I had no trouble sleeping.

I notice that I’m naming names today. If anybody who reds this has any objections I’ll remove them. I’m Lee by the way.

Why did I bother?

I got a call from Craig at lunch time today. In truth it woke me up, but still, I'd been woken up a few times already by that point anyway. He wanted to play Halo 2 later. To sleepy to come up with a good reason why didn't want to (retrospectively I probably should have simply said "I don't want to") I said yes. So at about 9pm he called and, a while later (it was about 9.30pm, but it seemed like quite a while) we started playing. It was just as bloody awful as I remembered. Hordes of screaming, sub-literate American kids, gleefully attempting to mock you for your accent or kill you deliberately even though they're on your team. Then you have to put up with laggy game play where your efforts are seemingly further hampered by the unfair advantage that Xbox 360 owners seem to have with what appears to be a far more accurate and deadly auto aim, meaning that you die about twice as quickly as your richer (at least their parents are richer), younger, whinier, transatlantic cousins. That's if the Yank kids haven't already quit because they've gone 1-0 down after 30 seconds of the game. In the end the whole thing was starting to wind me up so much that I simply gave up bothering to play properly. In the past I even managed to get so pissed off with the uneven playing field that I threw my joypad on the floor. This would have been fine, the joypad's quite sturdy after all, unfortunately it's connected to the headset, which is nowhere near as well but and promptly snapped as it came off my head.

It wasn't fun. I probably won't renew my Xbox live subscription when it expires in February. I'm starting to think that Xbox live is a major contributing factor towards the rest of the worlds hatred towards America. I really do hope that the miscreants one encounters on Xbox live aren't in any way representative of the US population as a whole.

Craig has an Xbox 360. I'll probably never get one. He's been trying to persuade me to get one. He talks as if it's inevitability. It really isn't.

So, a complete waste of an evening. Sort of. I suppose at least now I know that I'm not missing out on anything good by leaving my Xbox turned off.

Oh, you know, stuff

Well, I'm stuck in waiting for a guy to fix the grill on the oven so I figured that I might as well write something. They're due between 2 and 4pm. Its gone 3.30 now and they're still a no show.

I actually applied for a job last week, so I guess the hunt is on. That said I haven't applied for anything else so the application count stays at a staggering one in four months (since I left work. It's only been two since I stopped getting paid. They paid me for 6 weeks after my last day. Quite frankly that's the least they could have done under the circumstances. I really deserved more given how badly they treated me.) I don't think I ever fully explained what happened. I will at some point, just not today. I'm a little fed up with talking about it to be quite honest.

Over the last few months (well, years, but especially in the last few months) I've been playing a lot of video games. Actually, that's not strictly true; I've only been playing Halo (PC) and Halo 2 (Xbox). I don't know why I was spending so much time playing games because I was getting virtually nothing from it. I'd get frustrated when I lost and an overwhelming of, well, nothing when I won. Plus I seemed to be playing so much that I was neglecting other, more important things (like applying for jobs and writing; why do you think I've posted so here so infrequently up until a few weeks ago.). In other words playing video games was having a detrimental effect on my life. It simply wasn't giving me the sense of having actually achieved something that I get from, for example, writing or applying for a job (though I'm still not sure if the later is futile. After all, I applied for literally hundreds of jobs after I left university and had no luck whatsoever). It was just monopolising my time and giving me nothing back. In fact, it almost took a sizeable chunk out of my finances. I was really close to asking for an Xbox 360 for my birthday, but that would have meant contributing at least £200 towards the cost, which is an awful lot. In the end I decided that it wasn't worth it. After all I'd just end up playing the same games I'd always played. In other words, it was pointless, but only a little more pointless than continuing to play as often as I did. Which is why I've pretty much stopped. Days go by without playing. I did have a go on a little Halo yesterday, but it was a totally unfulfilling experience.

Time will tell if I start playing again. I practically stopped before when I started university, only to start again towards the end of my undergraduate degree. In all fairness at that point I only played when I could play with other people. Well, I suppose that's why online gaming is so dangerous; there's always someone else out there who wants a game. By the way, the link at the side of the page for DVASquad.com takes you to the homepage of the Halo clan of which I am a member. See, I was so involved I was even a member of a clan.

I've just made the whole thing sound like some terrible addiction. It isn't of course. It was just a way of avoiding getting on with things. Or maybe it was just a way of avoiding the reality of my, fairly miserable situation at home. On that subject I just got a phone call from my mum. The oven repair guy still hasn't come and she's trying to say that I probably missed him because I took a shower at 1.30pm, about a half hour before the earliest time he was due to arrive. Let's not forget that when I've needed her to stay in when I've expected a package, she hasn't bothered. She's always blaming me for things though. Last night she (and my sister) had a go at me when the internet refused to work on my sisters PC. It turned out that my mum had damaged the network cable when she moved my sister’s bedroom around. So, I said that she could use a cable I had, but she'd have to get me a new one. All hell broke loose and the upshot was that I had to supply the cable and expect no replacement or everybody would stop contributing to the broadband bill. A little unreasonable don't you think.

And talking of being unreasonable, the guy arrived to fix the grill whilst I was writing. He promptly told me that it needed a new burner, the part that the previous guy said it didn’t need, despite the fact that the guy who came before him had said the contrary, and promptly sent back. So, now let’s hope that they get it fixed on their fourth visit. Once again, I’m not holding my breath. See what I mean about people being incompetent?

Anyway, I did actually men to write something a little more interesting this time round, and I've just ended up ranting again. Maybe next time I post I'll actually talk about some of the things on my mind.

I'm still here

I'm still around. I'll try to post something tomorrow (or today, it is 5.30am after all). After a week of going to bed at a reasonable hours I've defaulted back to post 5am bedtimes (meaning that I don't get to sleep until after 6am). I don't even need to since, for this week only, I have the house to myself from midday until 5pm. Of course that didn't stop the remnants of my family from making my life a misery for practically the entire 2 hours that they were both in. I like staying up late. I like being alone. I like the quiet. Goodnight.

Worth the Wait?

Finally it came. But was it worth it? Well, it's a little bit chunkier than I'm used to. At this point it occurs to me that I should make it clear that I’m talking about my new phone. I’m definitely glad that I waited. It looks really nice in silver and, as well as the bond stuff pre-installed on the phone, it also came with the two disc editions of 3 Bond films, Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Goldeneye. I’ve actually got all of the original single disc versions of the Bond films (put them altogether and their spines spell out 007), but it’s always nice to get something extra for free. Technically I guess that their not free, I did pay £90 for the phone after all. Then again my line rental has been cut by £10 a month, so I’m still £30 up on the deal over the course of the whole year.

I’ve had it for three days and the battery has just worn out. Not too bad for a first charge. It should get better with time (I hope). Besides, I won’t be playing about with it so much in the future, so that should let me get a better standby time. The camera’s great though. It has pretty much every feature that you might find in a dedicated digital camera. The flash is excellent; it even has redeye reduction. In fact the only feature missing is an optical zoom. Maybe they’ll have that in next year’s model. Anyway, the camera has so many features that I haven’t really worked out how to use them all yet. Hopefully I’ll get to grips with it soon so that I can get a few pictures to post on my Blog. That is, of course, assuming that I can figure out how to do it.

So, from the silver K800i to the film in which it is so prominently features, the new James Bond adventure, Casino Royale. So many people have questioned the appointment of Daniel Craig as the new, blond, James Bond. I myself was a little unsure of him since he seems to deviate so much from the established image of Bond. However, one should remember how much our image of James bond has deviated from that portrayed in the original Ian Fleming books. For that reason his portrayal most closely resembles that of the “first” James Bond, Sean Connery. He cold, yet charming. People have criticised him for lacking the pretty boy looks of some of his predecessors, but to my mind his appearance is far more appropriate. His face is far more anonymous, far easier to forget, surely a desirable attribute for a secret agent. He’s also obviously spent a bit of time down the gym. Fortunate, since this is a far more physical Bond. From the brutality of Bond’s first kill to the climactic sequence at the movie’s close, this one film has more exciting action that the entire oeuvre of Roger Moore’s Bond. Of particular note is the chase sequence where, Bond pursues a free running bomb maker that follows the films opening sequence. In fact the stunts throughout are great, with no CGI intrusions whatsoever. Just as a Bond movie should be. I don’t want to say too much more about the film just in case I spoil it for you. All in all, the film managed to respect the history of the Bond films; references are liberally smattered across the celluloid, but it also successfully brings the franchise up to date, dispensing with the suspension of disbelief defying gadgets. There’s no invisible car to be seen. But then I suppose that you wouldn’t see it even if there were. If you see what I mean. Anyway, without a doubt this is the best Bond movie in years. In fact it may even be the best Bond movie ever.

I despair

Believe it or not I told a friend of mine that it was easy to get an upgrade for his mobile phone. He said that he didn’t have time. I said that all you needed to do was make one phone call. It’d take five minutes tops. I think that this is the most wrong I have ever been.

Sorry to keep going on about this, but in this post I'm going to talk about my new phone. It didn't come. Instead I was sent yet another black one. I am somewhat more than mildly annoyed with o2. Apparently (I say apparently for, well, reasons that should be apparent), they are sending out the correct silver one tomorrow. I'm not exactly counting on it. I have absolutely no faith in their abilities to get anything right. I did get a sort of explanation why I got the wrong phone. According to the dim sounding guy at o2 "we didn't have any of the silver ones in stock then" before he added "but we do now."

We'll see.

Anyway if it does end up coming tomorrow I'll probably go shopping for new glasses on Friday. I've been wearing my current ones for way too long. They're so covered in scratches that I can almost see more clearly without them than with. There's also a small chip in the corner of the left lens from when a friend and I, drunk after returning to his house following a night out in Brighton, go involved in a play fight. Yes, immature I know, but surely alcohol provides a reasonable excuse. After a somewhat week and ineffectual punch to my face my friend caught his hand on my glasses. They went flying, the lens left the frame upon impact with the pavement. Luckily The chip is barely visible, unless you really look, which is why I’ve been able to get away with it for the last few years. I suspect my prescription's changed a little too as I tend to get a few more headaches than I used to. One night last week I had terrible eyestrain after an evening reading from my laptop. Anyway, it’s way overdue time for a change.

And on the subject of change, I think I may call up an employment agency next week, probably the one recommended by a friend. I really don’t have the stomach to go through sending off hundreds of applications, only to be turned down by pretty much all of them. I must have applied for hundreds of jobs straight after university. Rejection letters followed for some, most didn’t bother replying at all. A few actually called me in for interviews, but they never went anywhere. I only ended up getting my first job after a friend heard that there was a position going at his friends firm. And that didn’t exactly work out for me.

I haven’t really had much luck with work. All of my jobs have been pretty crap and they’ve eventually made me pretty miserable. Bearing that in mind you can understand why I’m so reluctant to embark upon yet another journey towards misery. Still, it’s got to be better than staying here. God, I really need to move out and leave Harrow behind for good. It’s not that it’s a particularly bad area its just so bland, so mediocre. People say “Oh Harrow’s not that bad. It’s got easy access into Central London.” You know that somewhere really sucks when the best thing that you can say about it is that it’s easy to leave.

Anyway, I have to go to bed soonish. I have to wake up early tomorrow so that I can stay in all day waiting for o2 to deliver the wrong phone.

Stupid is as stupid does

Well, after over an hours worth of driving (the trip to Hayes was not fun, the traffic was pretty heavy). I got my new phone. At least I though I did. When I opened up the box I discovered that the geniuses at o2 had sent me a black K800i, not the silver Bond edition that I asked for. I did actually make it abundantly clear that I wanted the silver one, so quite how they managed to send me the black one is beyond me. I now have to wait until Wednesday when they have promised (after I had to make phone calls to 3 different people, giving each of them all my details) to send me a replacement phone and collect the incorrect one. We’ll see.

Am I being to pedantic? Should I have simply accepted the Black phone? Am I making too much out of this?

I just get frustrated when things go wrong as they quite frequently do when they are out of my control. A part of me knew that this would happen. Things like this always happen when I have to rely on other people. I really wish I didn't have to. Nobody seems to really care any more. I'm not sure I entirely blame the staff though they must shoulder a far amount of the blame. It seems that a great number of companies have a complete inability to get things done correctly. I know that was certainly the case where I last worked. I would say that I spent about half my time sorting out complaints from people who had been sent wrong/damaged items, all because warehouse staff couldn't be bothered/weren't to do their jobs properly. All that made it difficult to actually do my job properly. Things had to be rushed and inevitably the odd mistake was made which caused even more disruption. I tried to explain that the warehouse staffs incompetence was causing me problems, but my boss just said "I don't care." When the problems continued I was told that I would have to inspect some of the deliveries that the warehouse prepared, costing me yet more time. It's crazy. That place was appalling; they didn't care about their staff and couldn't manage things properly. I really hope that it closes down. Obviously I hope that everybody who's any good finds another job though, but mostly I hope that the people who run the company find themselves poverty stricken, unable to buy toilet brushes costing over £100 (I know for a fact that the owner of the company spent this much money on one. Why should people be allowed to spend silly money on ridiculous extravagances whilst others suffer. It explains why they only pay such paltry wages, wages that were insufficient to live on).

I really haven’t had good experiences with jobs, and it’s making me reluctant to find another. At least I’m not prepared to work in a job I hate for a company I despise with people I loathe. Not again.

And I certainly don't want to work for a company who devote time to chastising their employees for writing notes on their notepads (which nobody, not even within the company, would see) in the "wrong" colour ink. It's pathetic.

Some good news

Well, after that extended rant about the inadequacies of couriers, I have at least discovered that some thing good has happened. Since I go broadband I’ve been saddled with a lowly 512K connection due, apparently, to my “poor quality line”. I got an email from my ISP telling me that there would be a short outage of my service today whilst they installed their LLU equipment in my local exchange. A little after 12am, my internet connection died. It came back on again 30 mins later and I continued with my www related business.

I just checked a download and discovered that it was going at a speed far in excess of my previous limit. So, I went into my router settings and low and behold I now have a 2mb connection. I’m sure that it’s probably temporary; maybe they’ haven’t set up their equipment properly yet, but it’s nice none the less.

DHL=Fuckwits

Despite the fact that I have waited in for the entire morning I have just had a note through my door from the so called couriers at DHL telling me that there was nobody in to accept delivery of my Mobile Phone. Clearly the courier is a fucking idiot who doesn’t know how to use a doorbell to let me know that he's here. Now, because of his fuckwittedness, I have to go all the way to sodding Hayes to pick up the phone that they should have bloody well delivered. It was either that or have to wait in tomorrow when he’d probably fail to use the doorbell again. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if he'd forgotten to bring the phone with him and is trying to get out of it by simply popping a "could not deliver" notice through my door.

To make matters worse, I haven't actually slept. I stayed up all night writing and by the time I realised what the time was, I realised that I had not time to actually sleep. Bloody great.

Sorry, but I'm a bit pissed off, very tired and extremely fed up with having to rely on other people to get things right. Nine times out of ten the cock things up and cause me trouble. It was like that where I used to work too. Is nobody even vaguely competent. To get a job do I have to be a complete imbecile.

Well, I’m going to use the intervening time to get my food shopping from good old dependable Sainsburys.

If I ever get my phone I’ll write copiously and enthusiastically about how great it is. Either that or I’ll discover that it’s shit/broken.

Or maybe I’ll just go to bed. By the time I get back with my phone it’ll probably be about 6.30pm. There’s always heavy traffic out there at that sort of time. It really doesn’t help that I have to go past my old place of work to get there, so I’ll get a reminder of how crap my time there was. Anyway, by 6.30, I’ll have been up for 30 odd hours straight.

Sorry for the rant, I’m just pissed off about how undependable everyone is. It's just solidifying my view that the only person that you can rely on is yourself, and that's a pretty sad way to think.

Time for a change

I'm fiddling about with the formatting of the blog at the moment. I'm going to try to personalise it a little with a new title page and maybe even add a few pictures to the actual blog.

I'm getting a new phone soon (hopefully tomorrow if o2 decide that I’m worthy) which actually has a better camera than my dedicated digital camera, which boasts a paltry 2megapixels. I'm going to use it to add a few pictures to my blog (provided that it's any good). I really do love my gadgets and I especially look forward to getting my phone upgraded every year. Sad I know, but what else do I have to look forward to? Anyway, it’s the Bond special edition silver version of the K800i, available for only 3 months exclusively on o2, so at least I’m likely to be one of only a few people to have one. I’m actually a pretty big fan of the James Bond movies which kind of lead me towards getting the phone. Plus all of my most recent phones have been made by Sony Ericsson, and I’ve been pretty happy with all of them. They don’t change too much, a few features are added or upgraded, bugs are ironed out and they make a few refinements. They do just get better and better to the point that I can only find a few minor faults with my K750i. Hopefully the K800i will have ironed those out.

I’m off to see the new Bond film, Casino Royale on Friday, so I’ll probably let you know what I thing some time after the weekend.

The Lazarus Post

The original idea was to use this blog as a sort of journal of my day to day life. I figured that I’d maybe write an entry every week. The more observant among you may have noticed that this hasn’t exactly happened. With things as they are I haven’t actually been able top muster up enough of my own interest in my life of late, so I’m sure that everybody else would care even less.

I am going to try harder to keep the blog alive though. This time I’m not going to make any promises about updating it every day/week/month. That’s blatantly not going to happen. I will promise to try to write something (situation permitting) every time I feel the urge. I say situation permitting, because I offer start writing an entry in my head whilst I’m unable to get to my laptop. Apparently laptops don’t work too well in the shower and I seldom carry it with me on the tube on the way to a night out.

I’ve also written a few entries that I haven’t had the courage to publish. Generally I tend to first write my blog on word (to help iron out any spelling mistakes and ensure that I actually have a copy of my work in case blogger decides to reject my entry, losing it some where in the internets’ darkest corners. Those are, of course very valid reasons for typing it up on word first. Of course it gives me time to be a coward and back out. I'll try to go over them at some point, finish them off and post them over the next few weeks. Most of the time, these entries are written when I’m feeling particularly depressed. I worry that if I show people how low I get that they won’t want to know me or wont come back for a read. Is depression contagious? I start to think so. I’m stuck living at home, because I had to leave my job. Because of that with no one on a daily basis in whom I can confide. I’ve tried to talk to my Mum about it, but I only get told to shut up because I’m “making [her] depressed.” That’s why I ask, can you catch depression?

Anyway, right now I’m feeling ok.

I stumbled across a blog last night. The author was so prolific that it shamed me into resuscitating my own ailing blog. Actually, perhaps it's been so long that it's really more of a resurrection. I’d been feeling ok, for most of the later part of the week (the part that came after my actual birthday on Wednesday). I guess I’d been looking forward to the actual celebration with my friends on Saturday, which kept me going; maybe I’ll talk about that later. After that I started to flag a bit, though coming across the blog helped to cheer me up a little. It’s nice to have a window on a complete stranger’s life, even if they occasionally draw the curtains. (Is it sad that I’m so proud of that metaphor?)

But to my birthday celebrations. I was really bad at trying to organise things. I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to do. Actually that’s not true. I’d pretty much decided what I wanted to do right away, but for some reason I kept trying to find something else. I wanted to go to The Roxy, a club just off Oxford Street. I’d had a lot of fun there the last couple of times I’d been there, but that was the problem. I felt like I’d been there too often too recently. And I wanted to be original. Honestly, I don’t know why I think that I should try to do something new when I can virtually guarantee that I’ll have a great time by going back to somewhere I know and love. So in the end decided that we should meet at The Royal George, which is a great little pub, with a small, but high quality selection of drinks (they serve draught Grolsh, my favourite), great food (as I discovered for the first time that evening, at least I made a little nod in the direction of originality) just off Charring Cross Road.

It’s got a nice atmosphere and is always just crowded enough. You can even get a seat sometimes, just like we did that evening, which was fortunate since it’s pretty hard to hold a plate in one hand, a pint in the other and still somehow manage to eat without looking like some sort of bipedal wild animal. On the annexe to our table were a couple of girls. Oh that’s another thing; all of the clientèle are seldom unattractive, so you’ll always be able to keep you eyes happy.

We’d managed, after about an hour, to get a table at the back of the pub. It was a low table, in the shape of an L. Two comfortable leather sofas provided more than adequate seating. We took up most of the L whilst two girls sat right at the end point. One had dark, almost black, hair that covered much of her face from my perspective. The other was a tall, slim girl, with light brownish hair. She was pretty much bang on my type from a physical perspective (there were a few aspects that I didn’t like, but a few minor imperfections in a girl’s physical appearance seem to be a key aspect of my type. I kept catching her glancing over at me, though maybe she was just looking at me in disgust. Was I staring too much? I thought that I was just making the occasional glance, but I have less control over where I look and how long I take looking after a few drinks. And by that point I’d had more than a few drinks, courtesy of all my friends (thanks by the way). I was feeling pretty drunk by the time I was offered a “car bomb”, half a pint of Guinness mixed with something else, something creamy and sweet in a shot glass. It was nice, but I’m surprised that I wasn’t sick as I left the pub. Of course long before I left, the two girls at the end of the table moved. Was I staring? Was I freaking her out so much that she no longer felt comfortable staying? Maybe it was nothing to do with me at all? Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Still, the upshot is that I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. Bah, I thought, there’d be plenty of girls at the Roxy.

The music at The Roxy is always great, loads of stuff that I like, stuff that you can drunkenly dance too and not worry about having to try to look cool (just as well since it was patently obvious that I didn’t). In fact conversely, my friends who decided that dancing was beneath them looked anything but cool.

It was a great evening and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. One of my friends even remarked that I should have my birthday more often (and this coming from someone who’d only just celebrated his birthday the week before). It was fun to dance the night away; not the entire night, we left at 1.30am, I suppose I must be getting old. And on the subject of getting old, it really felt like all the girls out that night were just a little too young. Perhaps that’s the reason why I just felt like I couldn’t be bothered to pull. No, that’s not quite right. If I couldn’t be bothered it means that I wanted to but didn’t want to make the effort. I simply didn’t want to. I guess that I’d decided to have a good time, that was my mission above all else and making an unsuccessful attempt to pull would undoubtedly mar that. Actually last time I went to the Roxy, I did make a vague attempt, which was spurned. I felt quite bad about it afterwards, like I shouldn’t have made an advance that proved to be unwelcome. Perhaps that’s what put me off trying to pull. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter since I had a great time regardless.

Besides, I tend to prefer to meet girls in quieter, less dandy environments. I guess it’s no coincidence that I’ve tended to meet girls that I’ve subsequently gone out with in such circumstances. When I put it like that it tends to make me seem less shallow; it clearly takes more than simply good looks for a girl to be attractive to me. Or perhaps my limited natural charm is enough to distract the ladies from my relatively grotesque visage? Well, limited charm coupled with plying the poor unsuspecting lady with alcohol.

I made finally made it back at 3.30 after a trip on the Night Bus, followed by a 30minute(ish) walk back from Harrow-on-the-Hill Bus Station. It’s the fact that it takes quite so long to get back home when I stay out late that puts me off doing all that regularly. I did, however, discover that I’ve been making the journey unnecessarily long. Most nights when I have to take the bus I tend not to notice the route that the night bus takes to get back due to tiredness/drunkenness or just possibly just my black of observational prowess. As a result, whenever I’ve gone to the Roxy I’ve walked all the way to Trafalgar square to get the bus. Once I’m there it takes me a good 10 minutes or so to actually find the right bus stop. What I discovered the other night is that I could catch a bus from a bus stop just about 10 minutes walk from where I started. This effectively means that I’ve been taking a completely unnecessary 30minute walk that, coupled with the first part f the bus journey, effectively takes me around in a big circle. Doh. However, now that I know where I’m going wrong I should be able to knock a fair bit off my trip next time.

Oh yes, I suppose I 'm back. It's been a while, but hopefully I'll have lots of time to contribute to this blog in the not too distant future.

The Forlorn Hope

Well, it's official. I'm ready to leave my crappy little job. Needless to say I've been gradually getting more and more disillusioned by the intrinsic crapness of the whole company. I've been bored. I’ve been bored and I've made mistakes. I've been overworked and that’s lead to the odd error. Who said "to err is human". I'm not sure, but then neither, I'm sure, are my soon to be former employers. I think as far as they're concerned I need to be some sort of Nietzsche superman (less fun than DC comics Superman admittedly). Anyway, just a few months ago they decided to take disciplinary action against me for some of the vaguest reasons. They said that they thought I was unhappy. No really, that was what they said. Of course they came up with a few other things by the time of the hearing (and that must be the loosest use of the word on record). They refused to accept that I was overworked. They refused to acknowledge the fact that I was receiving more calls than my predecessor despite the testimony (now it really sounds like I’m talking about a court case albeit a kangaroo one) from someone who shares my office to the contrary. In fact they tried to imply that I was only getting more calls because my customers had to keep checking things with me because they were not confident about what I was saying. He then went on to say that he didn't have any confidence in me and then, without a hint of irony criticised me for my lack of confidence. Needless to say they decided to give me a warning. Not exactly a fair and balanced verdict. More than a touch heavy handed really. I'd complained that I felt like I was under constant scrutiny. They denied it. They told me that I should go to my boss for help if I needed it. As you’ll subsequently see they didn't really mean it.

So fast forward 6 weeks, by which point I'd managed to correct any of their minor issues. Of course that wasn’t good enough. So, they weren’t putting me under scrutiny yet they had been compiling a secret list of any mistakes that I'd made. Not only that they had decided that I was costing the company money by losing them orders. Let’s forget about the fact that my Boss had failed to order enough/any stock and I continually had to tell customers that they couldn’t have the stuff they wanted. Oh, and let's put to one side the fact that the stock records are so continually wrong that I quite frequently told customers that we had stock of what subsequently turned out to be phantom doors. Or maybe it was because the warehouse continued to deliver incorrect or damaged doors. Perhaps it was because orders were continually mis-invoiced by the accounts people. No, all of this was clearly of no importance. It was obvious, I was solely responsible for everything that went wrong in the company (that may be overstating it a tad, but only a tad). I must be responsible, since I was the one who had to spend huge amounts of my time fixing all the problems. And besides, there's no way that I could be making mistakes because they had reorganised my schedule so that almost half of my work for the week now had to be done on a Monday. Oh, and on top of that Monday was the day on which I had to attend a weekly meeting tat usually lasted for around 2 hours. And the fact that I couldn’t return all of the messages that had been left in my voicemail because by the time I left the meeting I only had 30mins to do so before all of my customers shut up shop for the day is invariably not going to be seen as a valid reason.

Oh, and this one’s brilliant. You remember what I said a couple of paragraphs ago about how they'd told me that I could talk to my boss when I needed help. They mentioned that he'd be very approachable. Lies.

I had a problem with a customer. One of the things that I was accused of was not sticking to company policy. So, when a customer asked for a free delivery when he'd ordered less than the qualifying amount I told him no. He insisted that he speak to my boss. I told him that he would say the same thing. He still insisted. So, I ended the call and relayed the message to my boss. Needless to say he wasn't prepared to make the call and told me to tell my customer just that. I duly did what he said and that, somewhat miffed protestations from the customer aside, was that. Except of course it wasn't because the whole episode was brought up as reason for disciplinary action against me. Quite frankly I thought that I was allowed to pass on messages from customers and ask for help from my boss. Apparently I must have been terribly out of order.

Well, this is pretty much all I'm going to say to them on Wednesday. They may be perfectly reasonable arguments, but then their not perfectly reasonable people. Their behaviour to date provides more than adequate proof to back up that assertion.

I'm tired of the whole thing really. I'm tired of working in an atmosphere of oppression, of working for a hopeless inadequate who's clearly incapable of running his own company and has to rely on a scapegoat (that would be me) to blame when he can only afford to kit out his house with a £100 toilet brush holder. Actually I think that his bog brush receptacle may have cost a little more than that, but that only adds to the validity of my argument.

It possibly goes without saying that I’ve made my mind up to leave regardless of the foregone conclusion. I mean outcome.

A Moment of Weakness

Fantastic. That was completely over the top wasn't it. Well, a few days have passed and I feel a whole lot better about the events/emotional trauma/slight breakdown detailed in my previous entry. Really, it’s not so bad now that I've put everything into perspective. I'm glad I wrote it all down. Yes, its' embarrassing, and yes I could just delete it, but what would be the point of that.

I can't remember whether I mentioned this last time out, but I got a pay rise. A very, very pathetic one. I think the work nominal might be considered to be hyperbole when applied to my unbelievably small wage rise. I was told that, after a trial period, I'd be given a pay rise. Well they didn’t lie, but for fucks sake. I've only stayed there for so long to see how much I was going to get. I expected it to at least be enough to say that I can make a living from the job, but this is quite frankly not on. So, come New Year it'll be time for yet another new job. I get bored of work very easily so finding something else to do every few months has been something of a necessity, but even I'm starting to tire of the process.

Actually in some ways, by offering me such a paltry sum they've made it easy for me. If I'd actually been given the kind of money I should be getting for the job then it would probably be hard for me to leave. It just reminds me that whilst I was staring to get comfortable there it was never what I wanted to be doing.

My problem is that I crave the stability and respectability of a regular, well paid 9-whatever job whilst lusting after the something a little less regular but a hell off a lot more fulfilling.

It’s a lot of fun being me. Fun, but confusing.

Fear, Self Loathing, Paranoia and Depression

It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered to post anything here. Is that because I haven’t found a moment to write? No, it’s probably because, over the last few months there haven’t been any moments worth writing about.

My job continues. I got promoted after three weeks to Account Manager. For the first month it was scary and interesting. I had a whole load of new things to learn and every day brought something new. Now I’ve learnt almost all I need to know and almost all of it bores me to tears. I was offered another pay rise the other day. To put it bluntly it was pathetic, an insult. Mostly it made me realise that the one redeeming factor about the job, the fact that it gave me some degree of self worth, was in fact a lie. This job is worth next to nothing. There are people who are working part time in the same offices who have a higher per-anum pay than I do. I have nothing. I am nothing. I have no intrinsic value. A touch depressing I know. But hang on tight dear reader, it gets worse.

I have a feeling of stagnating, of not going anywhere. At times like this I take the only logical course of action. I peruse the pages of Friends Reunited so that I may depress myself further by throwing my lack of any kind of worthwhile achievement into sharp relief by measuring it against the accomplishments of others. Most days it’s just depressing, today when I read it my first thought was to end my own life,

It strikes me that I’m missing out on three key elements in my life, the Holy triumvirate of happiness, as I pathetically call it.

Firstly I lack any kind of fulfilling employment. This wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the fact that my wholly unedifying job also fails to provide me with a decent enough wage to achieve the second of my three objectives, to have somewhere good to live.

Since I left university I’ve languished in various states of poverty, unable to coble together enough finance to affect an exit from my dreary home town.

Finally, but by no means the least of the three point of happiness is a point that leads to the cessation of loneliness. To find someone, be they man or woman (depending of course on you sexual preference. I myself am partial to the ladies) who can be with you and forever banish the feelling that you are alone in the world.

So I have none of the above. I expect you’re wondering why I brought up that font of all depression, Friends Reunited.

I should backtrack further I think.

When I was at university I was, perhaps, a little naive. Oh, and somewhat damaged. At the age of eighteen, just weeks before I left for the University of London’s so called “country campus” Royal Holloway, my dad died. Not, you might think, a good start to my university career. It had, as you might expect, a somewhat profound, and indeed detrimental, effect on my emotional stability.

The she came along. I won’t bore you with the details. She had her own problems to deal with. I tried to help, but I simply couldn’t cope. My own problems were already overwhelming me and I had little left to give. I suppose I was of little worth. She told me she loved me, over and over again. What’s worse is that I believed her. I should have realised that she wasn’t being truthful. If I had, if I had been as harded to the intoxicating effect of love as I am now I would never have fallen for such a beautiful lie, never fallen for such a beautiful girl. But I did. And tehn I failed. She went away, she saw the world and realised my lack of worth. She came back and let me go. It was a hard fall, a fall from which I’ve never really recovered. I try to tell people that I’m optimistic, that I don’t expect any future relationships to go like that one did. But by saying that now I’m the one who’s lying. I know why it will never work. I know the one thing that all my failures have in common. Me.

After her I was more broken than ever. I lost my ability to trust and to love without condition or fear. That’s gone forever, never to return. Again I struggle to not use a cliché, but I can’t put it any other way. She killed my capacity to love like I once did. In short she forever broke my heart(see cliché after cliché, I’m such a hack). Actually maybe i should say that she broke me.

I read today on that website of misery that she isn’t similarly afflicted. That she’s managed to get her life together. She has a good job, a place to live and someone new to love. Someone she’ll soon marry.

And here I am, still stuck here alone, each day making the 25minute car trip to a job I hate.

It’s funny, writing this has made me feel just a little better. Perhaps that should, in itself, tell me something. Is the act of expressing one’s emotions therapy in itself or is it merely the fact that I have spent the last hour simply writing the cause of my relatively improved mental state?

I read back on what I have written and, tragically, I realise that my writing is full of cliché, indicative of a lack of imagination and talent. It is little more than the ramblings of a man who has never been able to escape an emotionally adolescent state. Sorry to inflict it on you, but as my Ancient History teacher once told me, it’s better to include tan exclude and given the state of my blog of late, it’s clear that I have been excluding far too much of late.

I’d best post this before I change my mind about sharing, just as I’ve done so many times before.

Goodnight. Perhaps we’ll meet again some time.