The flag, continued

I got fed up with waiting for Mr Flag to reply to my email today, so in the end I just called them. The conversation went something like:

Me: Hi, can I speak to customer services, please?
Assistant: Sure, how can I help?
Me: I ordered an Australian flag at the weekend, but when it arrived yesterday it was a World War II German flag. With a Swastika on.
Me: I still have my confirmation email that says I ordered the Australian one...
Assistant: Oh, can I have your order number?
Me: Sure, it's #########
Assistant: Mr *****
Me: Yep, that's me.
Assistant: (apparently trying not to laugh) I'm sorry about this, I will send you out your order again, and will include a return envelope for you to send the other one back.
Me: Thanks, you're very helpful.
Assistant: (still faintly amused but hopes she's hiding it well) I... don't know how this happened.
Me: Ahh well, these things happen, huh?

I know perfectly well this wasn't an accident -- since it's barely possible with the way the site is set up to order such a different flag as this. Had it been any other flag in the whole world I would have thought it was just a mix up, but clearly this was someone being a little shit.

I did consider trying to make a fuss, claim all sorts of offence had been caused, arguments started, tears shed, long family histories dishonoured, but it wasn't worth it. The girl and I are both vaguely amused about it, while thinking they could have tried to be a little more contrite about it.

All things taken into account, their service has been really very good -- the first flag was sent and arrived very quickly, and there was never a moment's hesitation about replacing the flag and sending me a return envelope. It's unfortunate that someone in their team has a funny sort of sense of humour -- or was trying to make trouble -- but if this replacement comes by Monday morning, I'll forgive and forget.

Though I still think I should have tried to claim because of all the distress they should send me the £90 version of the flag, rather than the £5 I bought.

Mix up with Mr Flag

I am not entirely sure how it has happened, but I ordered as a gift for the girl this from Mr Flag.

....

....

But instead I received this one.


I will not be happy if I have to pay to return it and pay for the correct item to be sent to me.

I've had a rough night and I hate the fucking Eagles

With somewhere like rome, it's hard to know where to begin -- so I will try and relate it in some kind of chronlogical order.

Our holiday began when we arrive at the airport, an hour before check-in was supposed to open. The holiday gods smiled benevolently on us, and we were able to check in right away and ditch our bags. My rucksack with all its loose straps and buckles had to go to oversized baggage, but we were unfazed. Security was no problem, even with my steel toe-capped boots, I just x-rayed them with everything else, and we were on our way.

By this time, we were starting to get hungry, so we found a restaurant and decided to treat it as our own private depature lounge -- taking up residence there, and staying for hours, making everything drag out as long as possible. While seated, the girl noticed it begin to snow outside -- but I managed to convince her that her suggestion of it might be dust and not snow was a good one, so as not to see her upset at missing it.

We boarded at a reasonable time, the flight took off without delay, and almost before you know it, the plane was landing again.

The other end was again without drama, through customs we went -- the girl having a much shorter queue for a change, coming from outside the EU -- and our bags turned up almost right away. We had booked a transfer from the airport to the B&B where we were staying, and had to watch out for a man holding a sign with my name on it. Except he was nowhere to be seen.

He eventually arrived about 8pm -- half an hour after we landed -- and I can't decide if he was just lazy, relaxed and roman about time, if he had expected us to be late and got caught out, or if he was deliberately late on purpose so that we would have to pay 50 euro instead of 40. Either way, he was friendly and helpful and we were on our way though the dark, Italian night.

As is so often the case with these drivers, his taste in music was pretty dodgy at times -- and we were reminded of The Big Lebowski when the driver started playing the Eagles. I wanted to ask him to change the channel, tell him I'd had a rough night and I hated the fucking Eagles. He probably wondered what we were laughing about in the back seat.

Traffic in Rome is probably just as you've heard -- road markings are less of an instruction and more of a gesture, but we arrived in one piece at the B&B and were shown to our room. All rooms were themed, and ours seemed to have a very far east feel to it -- especially with the Hindu wall hanging. I celebrated being in a new place by almost immediately breaking something -- I was a little over-zealous, picking up my rucksack from the floor, and attempting to swing it onto one shoulder, hit the full-length mirror hanging on the wall.

I didn't just crack it, though, I knocked the mirror crashing to the floor where it shattered into a thousand pieces of barious sizes. Luckily our transfer hadn't left yet -- we got the impression perhaps his other half owned the place, since he gave us a business card and said we could call any time -- and he was totally unfazed by it. He saw the funny side as he swept up the shards of glass, reassuing us not to worry and even saying it was "good". We never established if he literally meant it was a good thing I had broken the mirror, of if he just meant "it's all good" as in "don't worry, it's fine". To this day, I have never been asked to pay anything for it -- so consider myself very lucky indeed.

So, yadda yadda, accommodation was clean and comfortable, with breakfast included and in a not-too-dodgy part of town. An area that seemed to consist of Chinese clothes shops, that is clothes shops run by -- at a guess -- Chinese immigrants, which had barely any stock, and never any customers. The girl insists they were merely fronts for dodgy dealings. We had heard not to stay near the station from various sources, and when you got near the station you saw a world of difference to where we were staying. We were still a good 15 minute walk from the Colliseum, but it was worth it, plus there was a supermarket up the road we frequented with broken Italian phrases.

Next post: day one; the rain, the Roman forum
(sorry about infrequent updates, I can only udpate here if I visit my parents)

I've got a girl who makes me feel sea-sick

Yass, yass, I know. I suck. I promise more updates then don't deliver. Must try harder.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day. A year ago, I was 26, unemployed (or barely employed in the book store), single, and living at home with my parents.
I was seeing a therapist almost every week, who felt that I needed therapy so desperately that he was willing to see me pro-bono, rather than see me stop our sessions.

It's now a year later. I am 27, gainfully employed in a well paid corporate PR & marketing role, am with a beautiful girl and we are about to move in to a rented place of our own. I haven't had therapy since December, although it's open to debate if I need it.

I have raised several thousand pounds so far for Macmillan Cancer Support, to undertake the trip of a lifetime next year, hiking the Inca trail in Peru.

I was trying to work out one idle day a few weeks ago if I had cosmic ordered the girl into my life, back when that was the kind of thing I was into. I can't remember what I specified for my 'order', nor the timeframe, so I can't be sure -- but either way, I feel very fortunate.

I also considered if I had 'ordered' this good job -- but I think not. I remember the order for that was for a job to come up in June or July time and involve travelling to or living in another country. Just the same, I am pretty pleased with the job I have got. It's got prospects, lots of writing and creativity, and I'm the other side of the office to the colleague who used to annoy me.
Though I can still hear her, so it's not all good.

The girl and I have been talking for a while about finding a place together, but it has always been dependant on my work. I needed a new job before I could really afford to go anywhere, and we needed to know where the job would be before we started looking for places to rent.

I think we were both a little disappointed that we weren't going to get to move into London when I took this job, but Chelmsford has better transport links than where we are now, and much lower rent than London. After completing my tax return showed me that not only did I not owe the tax department any of my savings, but they actually owed me money, we felt there was no need to hesitate any longer in looking at places to live -- so we set to work, looking at them online.

A week ago I saw a couple I liked online and left messages for letting agents to take a look at them. A week later, I have viewed four properties (the girl didn't see the first one, but didn't need to, we didn't want somewhere completely unfurnished) -- and have dismissed two out of hand. Out of the two remaining there was a difference of £100 a month, and have decided to go ahead with the more expensive of the two -- just because it's bigger, closer to town and a nicer area. We've paid our administration fee and completed the reference forms -- now we wait to see if everything goes according to plan.

If everything goes well, we could start moving as soon as next weekend.

Swallow my pride, oh yeah

I don't start my new job until October 13, but I have already started writing press releases. Granted, these are press releases about the company's generous sponsorship towards my Peru trek -- so I have a vested interest -- but it's publicity all the same. It's lucky for them, really, they gave me the marketing job, otherwise I would still want to be writing my own press releases and confusing the hell out of everyone.

It's been a little frustrating, since the releases were mostly written over a week ago. The MD asked me to run them by the marketing manager for the company before anything got sent out, so I copied them both in -- along with my soon-to-be-boss, with a note to the MD to say that his quotes could be changed at his discretion. A couple of days later, the marketing manager called me -- we chatted about the releases and he suggested a couple of small style changes (the company should be referred to as a singular and not a plural, that kind of thing) but generally had no changes to make to the content. On Monday the MD stopped by my desk to give me his feedback, which again was just changing one or two words, and that was it.

Then he mentioned that the marketing manager was unexpectedly taking some time off for undisclosed personal reasons, and in the meantime to run all this sort of thing past someone else again. Fine, not a problem, I dutifully make the MD's changes and send them out again -- this time to the head of PR and marketing for the company.

At first I get a short email asking me to re-send the releases on the company template for press releases. This is the first I have heard of any such templates, in fact I am fairly sure I was told before that releases were just sent in the text of an email. I replied, explaining my position -- not yet in the new job, but already doing the work, but don't have access to things like templates. They were sent on to me without complaint, but the head of PR also took a look over the releases.

Either she is more fussy, or just paid more attention, since she almost completely rewrote the opening two paragraphs.

I wasn't overly taken with all the changes -- from training as a journalist I insist that the intro (the first paragraph) should be very short, like 10 words short and while giving a very brief snapshot of the story, as light on detail as it can be. I am in absolutely no position to argue or to complain. I was grateful to her for making it seem more exciting in a way, and have quietly tried to compromise on the opening paragraphs by cutting a few words and details out. Having resubmitted the releases to her today, changed and on the template, all she did was change the size of the title. So I guess I got there eventually.

Now, finally, I think they are good to go. The MD has approved his quotes, the head of marketing and PR has changed the title and sexed the opening paragraphs up a bit, so with the final nod I will distribute the two versions -- trade press and local media -- via email and a few clicks of the mouse. I'm torn whether to send them right away, or to wait until next week if I am going to be out of the office from Thursday to Monday, using up accrued holiday.

This is the sort of exciting life I lead.

Otherwise, things are pretty quiet -- the Peru sponsorship hasn't made any great leaps forward, but I am planning a fundraising quiz night locally, which should hopefully bring in a few quid towards the final total.

Important work news

OK. I promised the update about work. We saw how I interviewed for a bunch of positions, and naturally I was getting to the point where I was going to have to have a re-think. I was vaguely planning a mass mailing campaign, contacting all the PR agencies I had interviewed with in the past and liked, and also starting to target publishers as well as more specialised magazines.

It didn't come to that. My last hope was a job where I was already working -- not to do the crappy "purchasing" job I have been in since January, but a sideways move into a more marketing focused position. One random day, wheels were set into motion when a girl who was working in the marketing department told me and my colleagues she was pregnant. I remember the day very well, since I didn't know what to say to her -- instead I just told her "well done" which clearly isn't the right sentiment. "Congratulations" was what I meant, but one doesn't exactly mean the other. I also remember texting some friends about it, and mentioning to them how my first thought was "maybe I can have your job?".

Weeks turned into months, I kept half an eye on the company intranet for job postings, but kept looking for jobs in London. Then one day as expected the marketing job appeared, naturally I applied for it -- and mostly forgot about it from there. It seemed like forever before my application was acknowledged, and then only to say they would contact me about an interview soon. The girl said at the time the email was a good sign, they wanted to keep me keen while they were still sorting things out. Though I resorted to contacting HR a while later after no further indication of interviews had been had, the interview did indeed come.

I didn't tell my bosses the day I had the interview. I figured unless I needed time off, I didn't tell them about other interviews, and it just wasn't their business. The interview itself was pretty informal, but went on for over an hour -- I left feeling exhausted, but hopeful. I felt very well qualified for the position, and was encouraged by a lack of other candidates -- in fact, part way through the interview I had to try and stop myself from smiling too much, when I got the feeling that the job was mine.

I've learned not to trust that feeling, since I've had it in interviews at least twice before. A week passed after the interview and I began to lose hope, I told a friend on Thursday morning that I wasn't feeling optimistic, sure that I would have heard sooner if there was good news. That same afternoon I did get the news. The contact from HR stopped by my desk and asked if he could "borrow" me, which meant only one thing. I was taken to a conference room, where between them the HR guy and the marketing guy told me they were giving me the job.

It's a year's contract, starting in October -- it seems that despite them needing someone right away, and despite me not even being on a contract any more and only needing to give my temp agency a week's notice, somehow the "powers that be" wrangled that I should start the second week in October, so they can find someone to replace me. My job is by no means difficult, but it is going to take considerably longer than a couple of weeks to train someone how to do the various aspects of it.

Pretty much, it's all good news. The wages aren't spectacular, but very good for the location and the level of the job, the job is much more suited to what I enjoy and what I am good at, and with a little bit of work, the girl and I can now move into a rented place of our own.

It's not ideal for the girl, who still has to commute to London, but being the lovely, supportive girl she is she sees all the improvements it brings -- like better transport links, cheaper rent than London, a reasonable commuting time and a place where we can be together. Plus, in a year's time when the contract is either up for renewal or expiring, maybe then we can make it into London.

We celebrated the job on Friday night with steak and chicken fajitas and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, that I was given when I left my first freelance job and had been saving for when I got a real job. Part of me thinks I am well overdue this -- I still think I should have been given the job after my PR internship, and still wish I had got the job in Brighton. But I was asked in my interview about mistakes I might have made in the past, and feeling philosophical I said sometimes with a bit of distance you can see how making a mistake lead to something important -- maybe you learn something, or maybe you find something out, or maybe it just leads you somewhere better. That's how I like to think of the jobs that never were -- not mistakes, but leading me somewhere...important.

I'm trading in my steel-toecapped boots that are required footwear in the bus depot itself which is part of the office where I work, in favour of a smart pair of Tom Wolfe shoes. I work in marketing & PR again now, and I intend to look the part.

Making a promise

Ack! It's been over a month since my last post. I'm a bad, bad blogger -- but as of today, I promise to do better. If the girl can commit to posting every other day (or every few days) then so can I, dammit. Even if I don't have internet access in work, it just means I'll have to draft posts out in notepad.

I don't know where I left off with my last post or with regular scheduled programming, but I will try and pick things up and move on as best as I can.

I've been going to Reading Festival nearly every year since I was about 17, so for the last 10 years. I don't go religiously, there have been years I've missed -- like the summer I returned from Utah, and the year when I had to finish my dissertation. I think The Pixies headlined that year, so I remain unconvinced I made the wise decision. Anyway. I didn't go this year. I went in 2005, 2006, 2007 (I don't know about '04) but this year, the lineup just wasn't doing a lot for me. There were a few bands I'd watch, but nobody that made me go weak at the knees for. So I resolved to sell my ticket. I thought at the time the money I made from the ticket I put towards a holiday, maybe a week's surfing down in Newquay or the like. Then somewhere along the line, I changed my mind.

Instead, I decided I was going to go to Peru. Not this summer, of course, but next year -- and I would scale the Peruvian peaks in aid of a cancer charity. My first idea was to do it for cancer research, but they didn't seem to have a trip organised specifically -- however, Macmillan Cancer Support did. It wasn't like Macmillan were my second choice, part of the motivation behind the trip is in memory of my aunt who died of cancer late last year -- and the Macmillan nurses were like saints to her. It seemed fitting. So instead of a new television or something shiny, or a week surfing and drinking, I paid £300 registration to trek the Inca Trail next March.

I have already made my "old" blog my dedicated Peru scribblings, it's as much a writing exercise as anything else -- the tone of the writing is intended to be less casual than this one, and more informative. We shall see how it works out. It's also to keep me motivated, and for anyone who wants to follow my progress. The progress itself I would describe right now as "steady". Fundraising is underway, although it seems to be languishing somewhat at under £300 -- when I have to raise £3,300 minimum. I feel a little bit lazy as I haven't really done anything in the way of fundraising so far, other than set up a JustGiving page online. I've emailed all my address book (which got a total of one response, from someone asking how they knew me, as they couldn't remember), I've set up a Facebook group and I've had a few donations. The only reason I'm not freaking out is I know that I have technically already raised at least half of my target, even if the money hasn't been officially donated yet. I asked the MD at work for money, he agreed, and in one fell swoop almost half the target has been promised to me. I feel a tiny bit guilty that I'm selling out or cheating, but if Macmillan get the money, does it matter where it came from? It all feels a bit like Major Barbara, the play by George Bernard Shaw where about weapons manufacturer who donates money to the Salvation Army, of which his daughter is the Major of the title.

I don't want to talk too much about the Peru stuff since that's what the Peru blog is for, but here at least I can write about all the non-official stuff. I got a reassessment at the gym, and have had a training program designed for me specifically for the Inca Trail. As the girl rightly pointed out to me early on, the fitter I can be when I do it, the more I will enjoy it -- and it is very important to me that I should enjoy it. My bodyfat has reassuringly decreased slightly since the last time it was measured, which is mostly due to drinking less alcohol during the week, trying to drink "zero" soft drinks if I have to at all, and eating less chocolate and sugary snacks. But now I am all motivated and stuff by this tangible goal -- not just "I want a flatter stomach" or "I want to look good in a t-shirt" or even the usual things of having more muscle, less fat and lower blood pressure. Now I can focus all on Peru. So I have a cardio-intensive program with lots of stepping and walking and climbing and that's good. It feels like progress.

I've been going for interviews for jobs, like, a lot. To the point where I had almost one every week. Some were good, some where horrible. Most were good but just didn't lead anywhere. I got my hopes up for an IT/marketing job in Shoreditch, but it didn't happen, then I had some interviews for a financial services PR job way the hell out in Richmond -- and that seemed promising, too. I got on well with the MD who interviewed me, started reading the Financial Times and money magazines, and thought it could go my way. Unfortunately, it didn't -- another candidate had more direct experience, so I was out of luck. My year of freelancing and no proper job also didn't help me, and I think not working in PR since was hardly a bonus for me. On the plus side, though, I did get some very useful feedback and a lot of reassurance about the strength of my writing skills -- as well as the suggestion that I should focus far more on these. I've registered on Elance, not expecting to make any sort of real money out of it, but hoping to have more commissioned work to include in my portfolio.

The most important progress was made in being offered a job. The rest of that, I guess, deserves its own post...

Anyway, I promise to try and update at least a couple of times a week now. I need to rediscover my blogging mojo, and it seems a shame to waste my writing on work emails.

Been so long since I been around

While visiting friends in the Midlands, I was struck with the idea of visiting Derby -- taking the girl to see where I had once lived and gone to university.
I don't remember now how long it's been since I last visited that old city, but seeing it again was a strange mix of the new and the familiar.

We headed directly into the centre of the city -- early on a busy Sunday afternoon -- where the plan was to ditch the car and then set out on foot to find some old pubs I used to visit and a place for lunch.

Parking the car was made slightly more complicated than it needed to be by the advent of a big new shopping centre, the first thing that was different. I had the feeling it had always been there in some form or another, but had just been expanded/extended/built upon, but either way it really threw out my already hazy sense of direction -- never having driven in Derby before. By chance we found our way into the shopping centre's car park, beached the car, and found our way out into the city itself.

A little disorientated in the city, I lead the girl through the pedestrainised areas, pointing out places I remembered ("Down there is an Irish bar Tom and I used to drink in, when our favourite bar caught fire and was closed for ages!") and using the city's cathedral as a landmark, I lead the way towards a pub called the Bless. I only sort of knew the way -- I took us down the road I thought it was on, and it wasn't there.

Unsure how to find it, we kept walking while I searched Google on my mobile phone. The first result gave me the road name of the pub, and by luck alone we spotted the right road when we got to the bottom of the street.

The Bless is completely inseperable from my experiences of Derby. I first went there with my poetry friends in my first year, later becoming a regular customer of their pub quiz.

I remember sitting in the beer garden at night, I remember going there with Matt and Rie -- and Rie always wandering off to talk to strangers, bringing them back to the table and getting Matt to confirm to them that yes she really was married to him, she just didn't wear her ring.

I could point to the table where Matt and I were sitting so many nights, talking and drinking. Nights when we stayed out late and I drank only coke, or the night when like so many others we sat drinking -- but I was unaware that I should have been home to say goodbye to my grandmother.

Much of the high street looked deserted, the new shopping centre either providing shiny new homes for the places, or just putting them out of business
We walked down the cobbled side street where I showed the girl the old indie club where I spent so many schoolnights drinking double-vodkas, the piercing and tattoo shop where I had both my left ear and right eyebrow pierced, on seperate occasions.

Friargate I think is my favourite street in Derby -- an old winding, treelined street, with its big stone railway bridge (now disused) and the old Friary -- which like so many other buildings in these places has been converted into a pub.
When it was ever a friary I couldn't tell you, although it is reportedly haunted -- but with Derby being the most haunted city in Britain, most places are likely to be. It's a typical student pub -- it doesn't have a whole lot of character of its own, although I recounted the days when my flatmate Chris and I would go there on a Sunday lunchtime for their special offer on a 4-pint jug of beer and two roast dinners.

After the girl and I ate, we made our way back to the shopping centre to pick up the car so that I could make some more stops on my city nostalgia tour -- places where I once lived.

First stop, my first year halls of residence. In themselves, nothing much to look at -- but I was fortunate that from the road you could see what was once my bedroom window, and driving round the back of the building, could point to what was once my kitchen. I expect now, almost 10 years on from when I moved in there, that its been repainted so many times you can't see where I spent so many hours sticking glow in the dark stars to the ceiling and walls of my bedroom.

We barely slowed down, let alone stopped the car, before we moved on to the next place on the tour -- the house where I lived in my third and final year, with Matt, Rie and a cat named Dubya. The street was lined with terraced houses, a narrow road parked up with cars so again we hardly even slowed down -- and I didn't recognise the front door of the house as being where I lived. Either they've changed the door, or I got the house number wrong. But the chip shop at the top of the road was still there.

Sometimes I still long for Derby, for the houses and the rain (always the rain, it comes off the hills, see) and the memories -- but I guess everyone yearns for the place where they spent their student years.

Musical Monday #31

I'm not sure if this really is #31, if it is then this idea has been neglected for far too long -- and it's about time I brought it back.

The Waifs were originally formed in the early 90s by a couple of folk-loving sisters who made simple, straight forward music -- but it was several years later that they formed a band with a third member.

Obviously, it was The Girl who introduced me to the Waifs (both being from Albany), she was just playing music one night and I immediately took a liking to the band's sound and the stories involved in the songs.

I can't offer anything like a biography of the band without simply copying it from their official site or the wiki article, and I'm only familiar with two of their albums. I'm not even a huge fan, sometimes their music can feel a little too "country" for my liking, or just too much like Norah Jones' particular brand of inoffensive, coffee-table music. But I can write a little about my favourite songs, and my appreciation for their folk/blues roots, too.

Many of the songs have more than a twinge of sadness to them, probably their biggest song is London, Still -- which I expect is a kind of theme song to large communities of people in Earl's Court, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush. A kind of commentary of an Australian in London missing their family and their "sleepy Sunday town", when played live it's been known to bring a tear to the eye.

Perhaps the most obvious autobiographical of their songs is Fisherman's Daughter -- about being a "regular West Australian fisherman’s daughter...a middle class folk singing guitar playin’ girl" -- the song's feeling itself reflects the simplicity of the singers; in a slow, blues style.

A less direct autobiographical theme comes in the song Bridal Train, a song about war brides who in the second world war married sailors in the US Navy and whose passage from Australia to the USA was arranged by the USA so they could be with their husbands. It's more than just history, though, since it directly tells the story of the girls' grandmother who with many others took the "bridal train" from Perth to Sydney.

One of my favourite songs is Lighthouse, but I can only make guesses towards its subject. It's quite an upbeat and um-tempo I like to think that it's a song about depression, that the "cold headland" it refers to is an emotional rather than literal one. I'm not sure who or what the "lighthouse" is (I prefer not to consider the perhaps obvious religious interpretation), instead concentrating on the idea that we have to find our own ways back to shore.

Some of their more recent work on the album my blog now shares a name seems less directly biographical and sometimes more bluesy than folk -- Sun Dirt Water can be watched and appreciated for itself in the previous post without my comments, and maybe it's best if I let the rest of their music speak for itself after this.
Strings of Steel
Lighthouse
Pony

A prelude to Musical Monday

The Waifs' SunDirtWater, the inspirational title track for this new...phase of my blog, and one of my new favourite bands.

Moved

A bit like last season's climactic episodes of Lost where they moved the island, I've moved my blog. Click, click, click and the whole thing is now being published to a new domain name -- but I registered Feverdog to myself again, just in case someone pinches it in the meantime.

Those who wear the clothes should be happy they're dressed

Dune recently said how we attract the things we fear the most. There are various contemporary philosophies agreeing with this -- from the cosmic ordering service and intention-manifestation to explanations more firmly rooted in Psychology. The end result is the same -- whether it's a fear of being left, a fear of never being loved, or a fear of failure, the time and energy you spend thinking about these things acts like a tractor beam, hastening their path towards you.

This post was originally written as one of my usual rants, whines or general complaints about feeling unemployable. While some people may convince themselves of everything from them being unlovable to the idea that aliens fathered their child, I get hung up about work. Which I guess is really the idea that I will never be good enough -- since I'm fairly sure if I didn't care what I could get and keep *some* job or another, yet never be satisfied. Actually, this last point is a post for another day: I think I continue to need therapy because no matter what changes in my life, I don't think I am going to be content (I say may I never be complete, I say may I never be content). There is some obstacle (mostly of my own creation, I don't doubt) that sits in my chest -- so even if I'm someday living in London with a good job, a girl who thinks I rock, and a cat, this feeling is unlikely to shift. I do emo so well it hurts. Which obviously is the whole point of doing it.

What it comes down to is why has "a job" or "a career" become so important? Is it just me that is hung up on it, or is it pressure from "society", exerting a force on many others? When people meet you, the first thing they ask you is "So what do you do?", friends and relatives always ask "What are you up to now?". We are defined by the jobs we do. But you are not your job. You are not the contents of your wallet, or how much money you have in the bank.

What would it be like if people just took any job that came along and nobody thought any more of work than that -- instead, people might meet for the first time and ask what their favourite song is, or what their hobbies are. What constitutes being a success? And will anything ever be enough to stop me considering myself a failure?

Anyway, clawing my way back to the post in hand -- I was feeling unemployable, then two interviews came through. When I decided the time had come to get back into the job market I updated who I thought were my trusted key recruiters -- a media recruiter, and someone who was less media orientate but appreciated my key skills. The latter thanked me for my update, and said to keep him updated with my progress. Gee, thanks mate -- you're meant to be the one looking for the jobs for me. The first was enthusiastic to hear from me, but told me that having not worked in PR for the last six months she wasn't optimistic about being able to find any work for me, since I'd found it difficult enough before. Was I willing to look a bit wider afield this time, she enquired? By all means. My CV was dutifully distributed among the whole of the recruitment consultancy -- resulting in the overwhelming interest from a whole one other recruiter.

The new recruiter, named Jake, found a marketing job that was less PR and more press office and which sounded great. Good location, good money, varied and interesting role. Unfortunately it was filled before they called me for interview. Next he found a job with a digital marketing agency to put me forward for. Time passed, and I heard nothing. I called him and he said that the person recruiting had been away but they were back now so things would start moving. And I still heard nothing. I'm pretty sure I left him a message one day which he didn't return. After I eventually gave up on the position, I was browsing one evening the job's board for the consultancy, seeing what was new. I saw a job I thought ticked all my boxes and I'd be perfect for -- only to find that the recruiter to contact about it was my good friend Jakey. I emailed him expressing my interest and asking his thoughts. He couldn't have been less interested himself, since he never bothered to reply. I unofficially ditched him and his motley crew of colleagues.

The search from there has been in fits and starts -- some days I'd find several jobs online and apply for them all, and receive no replies. Other days there'd be nothing that seemed to light my fuse. One day at work I was roused out my near-slumber that tends to be natural state during the 9 to 5 routine of working in purchasing -- roused by my silently vibrating mobile phone. I glanced at the display, saw it was a local number, and presumed it was the library probably calling to tell my Norwegian language course was available to pick up. When I played the voicemail I found it was instead the recruiter who had got me my illustrious job in purchasing -- having found a job in publishing she thought I'd be perfect for.

Over email, we discussed the job, I had her send me more information and told her to put me forward for it, although a couple of points bothered me -- the location was deeper into the Essex countryside than where I already am, and the pay was pretty low. By the middle of last week I was feeling pretty uninspired about work in general and less than optimistic about myself, I scoured the innernetz for more jobs (since I can't rely on recruiters to be any more useful than a chocolate teapot) and applied for one working for a design studio.

I was surprised when the publishers invited me for an interview, and still torn between being pleased (better job! better prospects! some sort of vague direction!) and being unsure (horrible travel! isolated location! no money!). Annoyingly two days before the interview, my internet died. No warning, seemingly no explanation -- the wireless network and router insisted they were working fine, but there was no internet. Other points in the house at first were still thinking they did have internet, until they caught on to the plan and decided the network didn't even exist. This continued on and off to the next day when I figured the problem was unlikely to be actually the internet but probably my router. Master reset time for the router. Guess who forgot to make a note of the specific details of the username and password? Pretty sure I had the details correct (and safe in the knowledge it was broken before I started the drastic measures) when I was still unable to connect, I called the ISP. Due to unusually high call volumes, the recorded message told me, there was to be a wait in excess of 15 minutes.

While on hold with the ISP on my mobile with one hand I was also trying to marinade pork steaks in piri-piri sauce, they caught me off-guard when they answered but things were quickly got under control. They were also quickly resolved when I found out that Microsoft's latest update had knocked out internet connections for anyone using the ZoneAlarm firewall -- and that I had inputted the wrong username details after the master reset. An uninstall and a correction later the internet was restored -- I felt like I had regrown a lost limb.

What I haven't mentioned was while I was trying to restore my internet my mobile signalled I had another call waiting, to which I responded "busy". After I hung up I noticed the dialling code was for central London, but suspected it was a health insurance company who had been calling me all week wanting to give me a quote -- the voicemail was instead inviting me for an interview with the design agency I had applied for a job with two nights previously. Suddenly I had gone from attracting the thing I feared most (failure) to two job interviews.

The interview with the publishers on Friday morning went well. They liked me and introduced me around to people in the office, I liked them and spoke enthusiastically about what they do and the role. I wasn't even back in the office before my recruiter was calling to say they wanted me to come for a second interview. Still battling my doubts on the job, but I am going to give it all I have and see where the flow of the energy takes me. The design agency job interview is on Tuesday, and I am a little intimidated by their work. I am not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but in my defence they aren't recruiting for a designer -- they are recruiting for a publicity assistant or the like. Presumably, they've read my cover letter, they've looked at my CV, so they know what side my toast is buttered on. Still, it's going to take some more hardcore researching and self belief.

Whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, you'll be right.

UPDATE: I didn't get either job. Back to square 1.

Adventures in car maintenance

One night, a couple of weeks ago, I got a puncture coming home from work.
It was a sunny evening, and I'd opted to take the scenic route -- winding country roads, with fields running along either side.
And the occasional tw*t in a BMW that would come flying round the corner, not expecting to see anyone coming the other way. I pulled almost all the way over to one side, and that was when I must have run over something.
At first, I was concerned by the odd noise my car was making.. I expect the tyre at this point still had enough pressure to be handling normally, and I really should have checked it out when I got home, but the noise soon stopped I thought little more about it.

Until the next day.

Driving to work I noticed a couple of times the handling wasn't normal, and resolved to look at it this time, since I hadn't thought to before I left for work.
Once I arrived at the office, I took a quick look at the tyre and was sure it looked flatter than it should. What next? I wasn't sure. As part of learning to drive a few years back I had to learn how to change a tyre, it's straight forward enough -- jack up car, loosen wheel nuts, remove wheel, replace wheel, tighten wheel nuts and you're done. But I was also advised it's usually better to get a breakdown repair service to change it for you, and you'd be lucky to be able to remove the wheel nuts on your own.

I called my breakdown service for the first time ever and they agreed to come out in less than an hour, and true to their word they did. The wheel changed to the spare, off the guy went again -- but my own adventures were just beginning. The wheel he removed was completely hosed, possibly as a result from driving to work partially deflated and then driving it out to the breakdown truck when it was completely flat, but I got it replaced pretty cheaply so after something like a week of driving round on the spare, I figured I should really get the spare off and this new wheel on.

As I said before, it's very straight forward to change a tyre -- so without even bothering to get changed out of my shirt and tie I set to work. I got the jack out of its secret compartment in the boot, then sat on the drive trying to work out how to transform it into a robot. Or something other than the solid lump it appeared to be. I eventually found how it opened and turned into a jack, and got the car raised without too much trouble -- although I did wonder if it was safe on a gravel driveway.

With the car in the air, I set to undoing the wheel nuts. I then found it was probably a better idea to have done this before jacking up the car, since the wheel kept spinning. So down it came again. I must have been out there for an hour, stamping on the tyre iron, trying to stand on the thing, everything I could, trying to get even the first wheel nut to move. Nothing. Eventually I had to admit defeat and that I was not a real man.

A couple of days later at work it occurs to me that working in a bus depot where they are constantly doing maintenance works on vehicles I was in an ideal place to either enlist someone's help, or at least borrow a piece of equipment better than my Fisher Price car maintenance kit. It was getting towards the end of the day, so I found the depot manager who referred me to a passing engineer -- and he in turn took me to his van, where he gave me a much better and extendible tyre iron.

This time there was no delay in working out the jack, and raising the car -- and with the new tool and a bit of elbow grease, the wheel nuts came off without a problem. I didn't even mind that I was crouched in the car park, in the rain, and getting oil on my white shirt. What I couldn't understand, though, is why with all the wheel nuts undone I still couldn't get the wheel off. No amount of pulling it would budge the wheel, and I considered myself once again a failure as a man.

Back on went the wheel nuts -- although I had the foresight to only tighten them with my shitty tyre iron so as to be able to undo them later. As a brief aside, it occurs to me this must seem very homoerotic -- lots of talk of nuts and extendible tools and heaving and pulling. But I found the engineer after a brief search, returned to him his tool, and he asked if I'd been successful. Removing the wheel nuts? Absolutely. After that? Nothing. Simple, he told me, go get a hammer and give the wheel a whack with it.

I couldn't find a hammer in the storeroom he pointed me to -- and was very aware I really shouldn't have been down there, poking around in storerooms, helping myself, so didn't want to linger. On my way back to the car, though, I saw a toolbox open on the side with a hammer on the top -- so I swiped it and took it back to the car. Once again, off came the wheel nuts and, annoyed that it was taking so long, I gave the tyre a kick.

No need the hammer, then, as the wheel came right off. Having got the cart before the horse, I quickly jacked up the car and took the spare wheel off. From there it was finally as easy as it should be -- get the new wheel on, tighten the wheel nuts, lower car, and you're done. All that was left then was to surreptitiously return the hammer to the random toolbox I'd found, and go home.

I think we can probably write off "motor mechanic" from the list of possible career options for me, even if I did eventually get the wheel changed on my own, I think I get a D Minus in being a man.

Brick Lane

Jiminy Cricket and Non-Blondie, two of the absolute coolest (or perhaps the dorkiest, it can be hard to tell sometimes) bloggers and people-in-their-own-right have kind of officially left the country.

Not prepared to see them go without some sort of a send-off, after some discussion and a little confusion over whether they were free, it was decided that on Friday night we would meet for a couple of quiet drinks, and possibly a game or two of darts. We being the The Girl, Dune and myself as well as the JC and NB.

The plan originally was that we were to meet NB at the pub on Brick Lane where she worked, a couple of hours after she was due to finish, since her regular customers were planning on buying her a few glasses of mineral water and the like. Since Dune worked in east London, she was due to meet NB earlier, while The Girl and I were going to catch up on the drinks when we arrived. Jiminy also had his last day in work on Friday, but unfortunately for him, this didn't involve being bought drinks and instead seemed to mean working late.

Everything was going as planned when I got to the pub -- I'd met the girl, we had found the pub and met Dune and NB inside. I left almost right away to go and get some money out, and it was when I returned that the evening started to wonderfully deviate from its intended course. The landlord of the pub had unfortunately needed to leave unexpectedly with the police, and quite sensibly had placed NB in charge -- since the two girls working behind the bar were still quite new, and didn't speak English very well. Staying in the pub a little longer than originally planned was by no means a bad thing, it had a lot of character -- and a lot of characters who didn't mind buying the occasional drink for a pretty girl, like the three bloggers whose company I was enjoying.

Jiminy joined us before too long, with his enigmatic friend Ted -- last seen in our company on the night Boris Johnson banned drinking on the tube -- and together we all found staying later in the pub also had another advantage: it was karaoke night.
Karaoke night was made all the more appealing by a distinct lack of food in the pub, not having eaten since about midday, and several pints of lager.

Karaoke in a pub is very different to a private karaoke room. For a start, it takes you out of your comfort zone -- the support and encouragement of your friends is matched by the possible reactions of a room full of strangers. It also introduces a wider range of styles and music, and most of all it has a DJ. I don't know if it's common in these places, but the DJ on Friday night was the most self-obsessed karaoke host I have ever known. The man was less introduced in people singing than he was showing off his own karaoke skills in between almost every song. What is the point in being a karaoke host if you can't stand to share the limelight with everyone else? At first it was faintly amusing, he wanted to be the centre of attention, that's fine -- but his own performances probably equalled as many as everyone else put together and he was skipping out songs by Dune and The Girl without apology or explanation. You couldn't help but feel maybe he should get a private room, just for him and his ego. Yes, we know you love karaoke and you clearly love to sing karaoke in front of people as often as you can -- but there is a limit.

There was not a limit, however, to the karaoke talent. Dune was first out of the gate with her blazing rendition of Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me, The Girl was showing off her own vocal stylings with Don't Speak, and even Ted showed himself to be a karaoke madman with an impassioned (or perhaps drunk) performance of Ace of Spades. Naturally, everyone was in awe of my own musical skills -- treating the clientele first to Teenage Kicks (with the chorus changed back to the original lyrics "I want to hold, want to hold it tight...") and a suitably downplayed Bohemian Like You (the "ooh-ooh-oooooh" being particularly brilliant). My final choice of song was a spur of the moment decision -- I had wanted The Clash, but someone else beat me to it, and I also wanted Folsom Prison Blues (after hearing Dune's Ring of Fire), but it was nowhere to be found, so I had to find a third choice.

Paying no heed to the fact that I was in a pub on Brick Lane, I thought the most appropriate song for the evening would be Pretty Fly For A White Guy, which I opted to try and give a New York-Beastie Boys flavour to, rather than the Offspring's original Californian punk style. Apparently I must have been dramatically popular, as both Ted and a drunk man who smelled bad kept wanting to join in and share the microphone with me.

The evening wore on, and Dune had to make her trek home across London -- having stayed out later than she had originally intended to. Thinking this wasn't such a bad idea, since we had a train to catch, The Girl and I also took our leave of Jiminy, NB and Ted in a slightly drunken search for KFC on route to the station.

Somewhere in the excitement of it all, I left my bag on the table in the pub -- narrowly avoiding a terror scare, I expect, by the fact that my good friends were still at the table. I'm surprised that I managed to keep hold of my camera, wallet, phone and door keys, but I did forget my sunglasses. Not to fear, though, as Jiminy safely reunited my glasses with my bag, and charged the esoteric Ted with looking after my bag until I could retrieve it the next day. Since I had all my valuables, my main concern was that Ted might find my paper journal, perhaps if it fell out of the bag, and all my secrets would be revealed. On sober reflection the next day, I wondered why I ever thought he would give a notebook more than a passing moment's thought.

A great night was had, and although there were no dart games, it seems to me like the evening was a fitting send off for the blogger dork twins. Friends, drinks, karaoke, general madness. It's not a sad farewell though, as they are coming back for a few weeks in August -- presumably for one last look at the Great British Summer.

Heinz deli mayo ad shows two men kissing

Heinz pulls mayo ad after complaints

I don't know what annoys me more; that 200 people complained that the advert was "offensive" and "inappropriate", or that Heinz caved to the pressure and pulled it. Heinz seem to be denying this is the reason, of course, instead claiming that the ad "failed in its message". Only the very naive would imagine that Heinz wouldn't have foreseen the media coverage the ad would create -- although perhaps the email warning campaign by American Family Association is going a little far. Here at least is one group very much failing to get the message of the ad.

It makes me angry that seeing two men kissing should be such a horrific thing and so unsuitable for children (isn't it always about "protecting the children"?), although I'm vaguely amused that people were upset at having to explain to children about the gays.

Interestingly enough, the ad was never shown during or around children's programming because the mayo product being advertised was too unhealthy.

I'm interested, though, does anyone around here agree that the ad was unsuitable for children because two men kissing is different to a man kissing a woman?

Justice?

I had the distinct misfortune the other day of giving more than a cursory glance to The Sun. Among the trivia and celebrity gossip being passed off as news was this story about the wanted Nazi war criminal avoiding justice in Austria.

What bothers me about the story is not that for some misguided bleeding heart liberal reason I believe Nazi war criminals should be forgiven, but the insistence that with the man being 95 years old and clearly already frail time is running out for "justice".

I really don't get what they expect to happen. Asner is unrepentant in as much as he denies any wrongdoing, and I'm presuming from all the talk of wanting to haul him before a court, that he hasn't been found guilty by a court. To me the whole thing seems to be saying "Let's execute him before he dies of old age and gets away with it!"

Presuming that someone who is a suspected Nazi and wanted for war crimes would ever be able to have a fair trial, what exactly would constitute "justice"? Should he be made to do community service maybe? Perhaps we should give him an ASBO and stop him from going to football matches? If we refuse to sentence him to death because state-sanctioned murder would be a little bit too close to what he is accused of, what's the alternative -- perhaps he should live out the rest of his (probably quite limited) days in a maximum security prison?

I have no easy answers or quick solutions, it just seems to me that it's all very well writing words in bold and capital letters and shouting about justice, but what exactly is justice in this case, and how would he ever face a fair trial?

The life of the great black bird

Readers may remember how after much blood, sweat and tears (only figuratively, I don't really think of myself as that sort of an artist, although maybe I should), The Great Black Bird was completed.

It was a strange feeling to complete the painting I had put so much time and feeling into, I was left wanting more. Not more from the piece itself, after a couple of days and much thought I became more comfortable with it than I had at first -- the curse of being self critical is I feel like nothing I can do will ever be good enough. Apply this to every area of my life. And yet, it's not always being a perfectionist -- I wish I could say I always strive for greatness, instead I am more often than just dissatisfied. Anyway, I was left wanting more -- wanting to carry on painting -- except I was also back to square one. Wanting to paint, but having no inspiration.

[Unfortunately this lack of inspiration has also been affecting the blogging lately. If anyone still reads this, I apologise for the silence. The words wouldn't come.]

After the completion of the painting and the preparation of the gallery, came the gallery opening itself. The First Time Club gallery was part of the BA Fine Art graduate show of Goldsmith's University -- Hannah, the hostess of the First Time Club had turned her final year project into the First Time Club gallery. And in my humble opinion, hers was best of all the installations I saw.

I arrived in New Cross early on the Thursday evening of the private gallery viewing. It was due to open at 6pm, and perhaps naively I thought that this meant everyone should be -- and would be there for 6pm. I was earlier still, but had enough time to find the college, and make my way back to the station where I was due to meet my guests.

First to arrive at the station was The Girl, who had spent many days carefully planning her outfit for the evening, but unfortunately due to personal reasons and a bad week, Dune was unable to attend on the night -- though she sent her kind words and good luck wishes to me. Running slightly late on the evening, but helping to make up the Aussie contingent were Non-Blondie and Jiminy Cricket.

In the lead was Non-Blondie, who was less-than-impressed with the university's lack of signage and unhelpful staff -- but I took it as a testament to her dedication that despite my bad directions and the other obstacles she didn't give up -- and didn't tell Jiminy to save himself and get away before he arrived.

Because I hadn't been around for when the other members of the First Time Club had set up their art works in the gallery, I had only heard about their individual own projects and not seen any of them. The Girl wasn't over thrilled when one of the first art works to greet her was a semi-nude collage portrait of San. In my defence, until I saw it I hadn't known myself what my ex-girlfriend had produced for her own art work, since it was a closely guarded secret.

Maybe I'm biased, but I thought the work produced by the First Time Club was much better than many of the fine art students -- one piece was a series of audio interviews with people, asking about their first times. Their first time what, they would all ask, first time anything he'd tell them -- so there was all kinds, from their first time making a cocktail to the first time they slept with a woman to the first time they smoke a cigarette. Another piece was called "Cleaning Up London" and featured the contents of a hoover bag, presided over by Ken Livingstone. You might roll your eyes at what seemed to be modern art wank, but that was exactly what the artist was doing himself -- a sly dig at unmade beds and exploded sheds (although I am actually a big fan of the latter piece).

Strangely, on seeing the other installations and art works for the first time I was glad not to have been an art student. Many times when I was at university people immediately assumed I was on an art course, and in the years since I've wondered if I might not have been better off doing a Bachelor's degree in photography -- but on the night there were some times when the other galleries represented everything that gives "modern" art a bad name. Non-Blondie herself put it quite eloquently at one point with the immortal words: "I hate art".

The Great Black Bird had a spot on the wall where it was reportedly lit by the afternoon sun through the window. Because I'm vain, I often liked to stand near it when the gallery was busy, just to see what the reactions were on the faces of the people. I wouldn't talk to them or tell them it was mine, I just liked to quietly watch people. As with the responses here, the people I knew who talked to me about it were nice and complimentary -- and Hannah asked me if it wasn't better in the end doing it the way I did, than trying to find some way to paste an image onto the canvas. The nights I spent drawing, and sketching, and painting, experimenting with colours and textures and styles until it lead me to my final piece? Yes, it was all worth it.

The night ended in a somewhat surreal way, in a local pub that was having a (far too loud) ska night and served Thai food.

I've been thinking about my next painting recently, even though there will be no gallery to display it and few adoring fans to admire my Neanderthal-like style of drawing. My next piece I intend to call "Maelstrom", and as the name will suggest it will be some kind of representation of a storm at sea -- with much more colour than before. Expect many more late nights and rainy afternoons spent with sketchbooks and an old NASA mug being used as my brush pot.

Create your own album.

stolen from something I saw on Facebook:
1 - Go to Wikipedia (random)
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations:
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's explore the last seven days"
Take a picture STRICTLY from the three in the top row - this will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album.

Ladies, gentlemen, bloggers. I give you:



They sap our energies, by Morning in America

Plants

With a lack of anything to do on a Bank Holiday Monday when it was pouring torrentially with rain, I went to the garden centre.

I didn't really know what I wanted. I wanted something leafy and green for my room, to try and circulate the air a bit or some such thing. My snake plant, Frank, lives mostly in the conservatory these days as I think he likes the light down there.

I never did find what I was looking for, since I didn't know what it was. Instead, I bought a sunflower-growing-pot. It's a bright yellow plant pot, and comes complete with some dried compost and a small packet of seeds. I grew several big sunflowers with this same kit last year, so I bought another one.

I also bought a packet of sunflower seeds to give to my colleague Matt. I was talking to him last week about growing sunflowers and he said his wife likes sunflowers. I thought he might like to involve his little boy with growing them, too. It seemed right to buy something small for him, since when Annette took a week off work a couple of weeks back as she had just got two new kittens, I bought her some cat treats for them.

I eventually left the garden centre, with a grow your own chilli plant. The chilli plant was reduced to half price. The girl on the checkout didn't seem to notice this, so I was sure to point out on the receipt when I paid full price. A debate followed where we discussed whether the sticker said "3.99" or "6.99". It looked nothing like a 6.

I live a life of high excitement.

Freak on a train

I was talking to a crazy man on the train the other day.

You know how it is; you get on the train and look around for a place to sit. But all the seats are taken and you really don't want to stand. Then you notice one man sitting on his own and several empty seats all around him. And you just know there must be a good reason why nobody wants to sit near this guy, but you aren't going far so figure you can take your chances.
And it all makes good blog fodder.

I sit down and this wild-eyed, toothless madman looks at me. I pretend to be fascinated with something outside the window. Then a girl listening to her iPod sits down next to crazy man. She is listening to her music loudly, so that all you can hear is the tinny, hissing beat. Crazy man says something to me. I don't know what it is, but I figure it's something about personal stereos not being very personal. I make a noise of agreement. "What?" he says "Hm, nothing" I mumble and continue to look out the window. But I've spoken to him now.

He keeps looking at me, and looking at this girl, then he leans towards me
"Is she with you?" he asks
I laugh "No" I tell him. This doesn't seem clear enough to him.
"Is she your girlfriend?"
"No. I only saw her for the first time when she sat down."
"Nice, though, isn't she?"
"Yes, she's very pretty"
"Why don't you ask her out?"
"I don't think my girlfriend would like that very much"
"Fair enough, I'm just trying to help you out, mate"

I thanked him for the thought, but assured him it wasn't necessary. Then crazy man starts complaining how nobody talks on trains any more. It did seem a little strange when he mentioned it, the carriage was full of people, but also completely silent. Except for him. He was telling me how in his day people would all talk to each other on the train. I was tempted to tell him that people are likely to think you're a crazy freak if you talk to them, but figured it best not to call him names, in case he stabbed me for it.

He moves on to the subject of work. I'm dressed in my finest black suit since I'd just been to an interview and he asks me what I do. I think we can see where this is leading. I was tempted to tell him I was an astronaut. But instead I tell him I'm an artist, I was carrying my bird canvas with me, after all. He says "Really?" and makes a drinking gesture with a questioning look. I laugh and tell him, yes, I'm a piss artist. He points out that I said it and not him, so I can't get mad.
"But really," he wants to know, "what sort of thing do you do?"

If you ever seen Spaced you will remember the artist character, Brian, who whenever he was asked that question would reply with "Anger...Pain...Fear...Aggression...". It took a world of restraint not to take the piss and repeat this to crazy man. Instead I talked a bit about photography and a move towards painting. He asked me if there was a lot of money in it. None at all, I told him. I don't make any money out of art. He told me I should be a plumber, like him. How he was earning 35k a year, and when he completes his next course he will be on more like 50k.

You'd think with that sort of money he'd get some false teeth or something, since he had only one or two mangled, discoloured lumps for his gnashers.

Luckily about this point it was my stop, so I was able to bid farewell to the freak and his misguided matchmaking and try to navigate my way from Deptford to Goldsmith's College...

The great black bird comes to life

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Work continues to creep in this petty pace from day to day. There's been jobs in retail or in a call centre where I've jokingly said it would be alright if it wasn't for the customers -- but it's less of a joke now. My job itself is fine, although mind-numbingly boring. But the people are what makes the job harder to bare. For the last four weeks or so, we've had a new temp in the office -- of course, there were all the usual lies before she started. That she'd be helping us out with this or with that, when really she hasn't been at all -- and my boss has actively stopped her from doing more.

In and of herself I find her incredibly annoying. She's one of those people who just does not stop talking, and her favourite subject of conversation is herself. One of those people who will ask you how your weekend was, just so they can talk about theirs. You might say she's had a lot to talk about, in the relatively short period of time she's been working with us she has had numerous dramas with her car -- from her sister taking her keys and "borrowing" her car when drunk one night, the fan-belt snapping on her way into work one morning, and the car then being written off a few days later when someone crashed into it while it was parked. But I do not need to hear about it fifty times a day. Nor do I want to hear about her debt problems. Every single day she is going on about how she might get herself declared bankrupt, or might do this or might do that, and oh the citizens advice bureau say this and I just want to tell her to shut up. Maybe work just makes me cranky.

She reminds me a little of Ross, whom I worked with in the call centre -- someone who when reading the paper quietly to themselves just can't help but constantly make comments out loud, all the time, about everything.

On a personal level, there has been no mention of what is happening with my job or contract or whatever. I asked my agency if they knew when it was to end, they said they hadn't heard anything but if my boss had his way she thought he would want me to stay forever. This is less than helpful. I have started applying for other jobs, but I do intend to keep an open mind about these things. My position right now is that any extension of the temporary contract is not acceptable. Should they make me a permanent offer, then I would take it into consideration.

I was discussing this with Dune just yesterday, who was laregely of the opinion that if I seriously consider taking a permanent position I will most likely never leave -- and that if I truly want to live and work in London, I just have to leave now. Not so long ago Dune was also advising me that I should stay in this job for at least a year, preferably two, since I have concerns about it looking like I can't hold a job. This concern is the only reason I would want to stay in a shit job. But it can be confusing sometimes which advice to take on board.

While it might not seem like it, I'm not afraid of change. I'm not afraid of making bold decisions to upset my comfort area. After all, I was working full time as a "bar manager" -- but I quit to go work in London without pay. I'm also independent enough to say "screw it" and go on holiday on my own, when nobody's plans fit in with my own. Sometimes I also need to weigh up my options.

The immediate plan of action is I now I have started I will continue to apply for jobs in London -- and if something comes along before my work have made any sort of decision, it's their loss. If, however, my work decide there's no budget to keep me and I don't have anything else... then maybe I will just move to London and couch-surf and work in a pub until I find something regular.
And perhaps that would be a better option to begin with.

More adventures delivering meals

Sunday being one of the hottest days of the year so far, it seemed an appropriate time for me to deliver meals in London again.

To be fair, I knew perfectly well what the weather would be like -- but the sick and needy of east London don't all suddenly get better because the weather is nice. So I set out in my car without air conditioning, and unable to roll my window down very far through fear of getting one sunburned arm. It wasn't pleasant, but the incredibly-awesome mix CD I had made the day before helped a great deal.

Each time, I hope secretly for a hottie for a navigator. Instead this time I got a guy named Andy, whom I've shared the route with on a number of other occasions. He's a very amiable sort of chap, he wants to be a teacher but works in factories from what I can gather -- when he is working at all. He's very bright, and knows a lot about science, but he struggles with telling left from right. It gets to the point where we now have a code between us; he says "turn left" and I have to ask "left-your-side or left-my-side?" -- it's quicker than him holding his hands up in front of him to check.

We had many interesting conversations, like the one about mirages in the desert. He remarked on noticing the heat haze -- like you get in the desert, he said -- and I wondered out loud if people in the desert see mirages of ice cream vans. I concluded that probably not everyone in the desert would, since I expect there are many people -- Bedouin and such like -- that have probably never seen an ice cream van. This prompted us to discuss what it would be like if you had hallucinations of things you had never seen before. I think perhaps we were a little delirious with the heat ourselves.

Another quirk of Andy's is that he has always just assumed I must be gay, perhaps because he is himself, or maybe because The Food Chain is a very gay-friendly charity. He was actually quite surprised -- first confused, then surprised -- when he found out this week I'm not. I told him that for the most part I don't much talk about these things as I don't think it's anyone else's business who I sleep with, but also that people can get a bit funny about it when they find out you're batting for both teams. Which is why most of my best friends don't know.

I wheeled out the old story of the girl in a gay bar telling me I just "hadn't met the right man yet", and how I wonder if I would have got out of there alive should I have suggested the same thing to her.

We went on to have a particular fascinating conversation about sexuality and pubs. We were slightly lost at one point -- as a navigator he's usually pretty good, but he has his poorer moments and doesn't do very well concentrating in warm weather -- and I asked him if he recognised any pubs. Usually, he comments on various pubs we pass, perhaps that they have amateur pole dancing competitions or if they're just places he knows. This time, no such luck -- he said he wasn't really familiar with "straight pubs".

Apparently, for some time he thought on Eastenders the Queen Vic pub was meant to be some kind of "theme" pub, perhaps in the style of some grotty, bygone age. Then he went to a straight pub and found that no, that's actually quite common an atmosphere. I laughed and said, yeah, I've been to pubs like that -- but there's lots of nice "straight" pubs, too. I also shared my opinion that of the gay venues I have visited, I am yet to find one with what I would call a decent jukebox. A good jukebox is very important to me -- the right selection of music can see me spending more on the tunes than on beer of an evening. He conceded that he does get sick of hearing "Dancing Queen" every over song. When I spent time with the LGB group at university it was the first time I'd ever been to gay pubs, but I wished we could meet in my favourite "straight" places where the music was good.

Despite taking longer than we would have liked -- due in part to my slightly concentration-impaired navigator -- the deliveries themselves went without a hitch, with all the "service users" being home and waiting for their meals. A word of warning though, to anyone driving in central London on a hot Sunday afternoon. Do not attempt to go anywhere near Columbia Road flower market.

I was going to end by saying that the next time I sign up for a shift, I am looking at who the navigators are first... but thinking back over navigators I have known, a disturbing number of them struggled with left and right, one had to be gently shown how best to hold a map, and one guy whom I have remained friends with had a very unfortunate stutter when trying to give directions... so maybe it's best to just take pot luck, and hope for a hottie. Or a benevolent and independently wealthy millionaire art collector...

Further on the black bird

You would not believe how hard I find it to draw a simple, bloody, bird. Or in this case less of a bloody bird and more of a black one.

I met up last night with Hannah, along with other First Time Club people and artists. I didn't particularly want to go, feeling anti-social and like it was a waste of my time -- but of course as these things often go it was nice to meet new and interesting people (one much older guy I remembered, with a shudder, from the life drawing session) and there was talk and debate about our individual works, which I found especially fascinating. A couple of people were current or graduated art students and they tended towards conceptual ideas, and while I have no intention of going all multimedia on my piece, it was surprisingly helpful.

From looking at my small-scale "mock up" of my work I realised that it was way too literal. The text I had more or less filled the page with was almost wholly unnecessary -- which I had been starting to see when the night before I had been sat up, painting all the words on a page with a brush. It's when you spend so long on each letter and each word that you re-evaluate just how much text is needed. Through a discussion with Hannah about it I saw that I was kind of beating the audience round the head with my idea -- rather than letting them work out for themselves the quite obvious interpretations of my picture, I was taking them by the hand and walking them through it all. Very slowly. I also considered how much time I generally pay to large blocks of text in a gallery -- the answer is very little.

The text in the picture is to be reduced to the bare minimum. A brief line or two about being a happy child, but still a child that was plagued with recurring nightmares. Then perhaps a line or two about the dream -- playing in the garden one minute, snatched away by this bird-as-metaphor-for-the-devil the next. C'est fin.

I poured my heart about my frustrations with the bird image -- or at least kept banging on about being frustrated and unable to draw. I have been encouraged to stop taking everything so literally, that although the bird image I found was all very nice, why does it have to be that one? Why does what I draw actually have to be a faithful picture of a bird? Now I'm not suggesting I glue a half-empty yogart pot to a canvas and claim that it "represents" a bird, but more that I can try a more abstract or surreal image. After all, it's about a dream.

I've been searching some more, and leaving behind google image search found some very interesting and inspiring images on Etsy and Flickr. This latter bird, by an extremely talented young lady by the name of Sherri Burhoe, is perhaps more along the lines I should be thinking. It has that dramatic feeling to it, and it gives me that uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The Etsy artist -- Pamelam -- has a much more surreal approach to her bird pictures which again I love, and it makes me very jealous. You might look at those pictures and think "How hard can that be?" The outlines are surely nothing too taxing, but even those seem to be eluding me. I have been sat with my sketch book using crayons and pencils for what feels like hours. I'm beginning to think I should maybe have nightmares about parrots instead, since that seems to be the closest I come to anything resembling a bird.

I'm hoping that swimming tomorrow and Saturday spent with my paints and sketch book will afford me some progress... and maybe when I manage to draw the bird right, I will scan in all the rubbish ones, so everyone can see I'm not making it up how rubbish I really am.

Olfactory

I think the sense of smell is the most underrated, out of all the senses. Many people will talk with horror about what life would be like if they couldn't hear, people will imagine a nightmarish existence without being able to see, a life without being able to taste would be a life barely lived at all -- but smell is something we don't always rate that highly.

I have a pretty lousy sense of smell. My hearing isn't great for that matter, and while we're on the subject my eyesight leaves something to be desired... but I sometimes wonder if I might be suffering some kind of permanent allergy, affecting my sense of smell. Mostly because other people tend to notice smells before I do.

I worry on occasion that I might wear too much aftershave. Going out on a Friday night, I might be crammed in the backseat of a car -- and someone, usually Austin or his fiancée -- will remark that I smell good, or perhaps I'll be buying some chewing gum in a shop on a Sunday morning, and the girl on the checkout will ask me if I'm wearing Issey Miyake. I usually get embarrassed at that point, both from the attention and the idea that I must be wearing too much if someone else can not only pick up on a scent but be able to identify it. I'll generally still be unable to smell it much at all.

Despite not having the most wondrous of abilities in that department, I make strong associations with smells. When I was in New York city, I decided it was a city of smells and that one would be able to navigate the city without the need for sight, relying on scent alone. There was the corner that always smelled of drains, or the man selling chestnuts, or any number of other olfactory landmarks. After a while it became a kind of shorthand; go down the street, past this electronics store, then turn left on the corner when you can smell drains.

One of my favourite smells is Sunday night hockey. You walk in through the doors, and are immediately assaulted with a variety of smells -- the slightly sweaty, musty smell of the skates (and probably the players), the various canteen food stuffs, the chemical smell of the ice, and general people smells. I feel happy almost immediately when I smell it all, as it reminds me of good times. Lots of lousy games with Chelmsford being unable to play as a team, but generally good times.

Another smell I love is swimming pools. I love to swim. I find it tremendously relaxing, while at the same time requiring enough exertion to tire me out and release those feel-good endorphins. I love the smell of the chlorine on my skin, that no matter how much you scrub in the shower at the pool afterwards you never quite get rid of. There was a time when I was living in Derby where I was swimming every day -- I'd get up, not bother to shower, just throw on some jeans and a baggy hoody, then head to the pool for an hour of laps. I've taken now to enjoying swimming on my own on a Friday night more than going to the pub with my friends. I went to the pool tonight, and I felt my heart speed up a little with excitement when I smelled the warm air and the chlorine of the pool.

Unfortunately, they're a bunch of bastards and I found out that my timetable was out of date -- Thursday nights is now "staff training", so I didn't get my fix.

Smells can be bittersweet, too -- there's been so many times when I've shared a bed with a girl for a few days, but after she'd gone had to wash my sheets immediately, as I couldn't stand to have the smell but not the person.

But there are a hundred smells I love, and I don't even include fresh cut grass or baking bread. I love the smell of Mexican food (conversely, I strongly dislike the smell of Indian food, even if there are probably a lot of dishes I expect I might like), I love the smell of surf wax -- how it lingers on your hands, from spending so long rubbing slow circles of wax on a board. I love the salty smell of 'the sea', which you get here with the wind in the right direction and the tide is out on the river, or sometimes when it rains and the stones on my drive smell like a pebble beach somewhere. And though it might sound a little unhygenic, I like the smell of my clothes when they have lost the immediate "just washed" smell from the machine.
Not unclean, but not not sterile either.

The great black bird

As a child, I was troubled with a recurring nightmare. I would be on my own, in our back garden, happily playing. And I would be carried off by a black bird.

I have no idea where the idea came from, but I can remember no other dream I have ever had that recurred like this one. I wish I could be more dramatic about it, and could describe the feel of the warm sun on my skin, or a feeling of simple, innocent happiness, before being snatched by the claws of this shrieking bird. But it wouldn't be true, for myself -- in my mind's eye the image is so clear, of playing quietly and of the bird carrying me away, but I can't flesh it out with horror story detail.

Some older readers -- or kind visitors who have been curious enough to read through my archives -- may remember a post about the First Time Club. A group of people I discovered entirely at random one day, who meet in London about once a month and as a collective do things for the first time. Activities they have joined in have included Morris Dancing, poetry readings and going to the dog racing. Where I got involved was with an art class. I said sign me up, and the next thing I knew I was posing for a life drawing class with a bunch of strangers.

There's been other opportunities to meet them that have passed by for one reason or another -- but usually a combination of having to work and not having the money to travel into London on top of whatever else we would do. I might have gone to the Christmas ball at torture garden, if it hadn't been for the cost of the ticket, hiring a costume, drinks, a travelcard, cab fare home... I say to myself there's always next time.

This time I could hardly turn down. The first time is taking part in a gallery show, Hannah who organises these things has for her own personal reasons arranged for us volunteers to display our artistic skills. At first, I said no sweat, I can get a photo on canvas printed to order, and at the end of the show take it home and put it on my wall.

Except that was kind of cheating. In discussion with Hannah about it, she said that didn't really count -- it wasn't really doing something for the first time if I already produced these pictures. She went on to tell me about the other artists taking part, how one man is a life model who draws figuratively, but he is making a sculpture out of sweet tins. It got me thinking, don't I always say I want to paint?

Except I kind of stalled there. Any time Hannah wanted to meet was always inconvenient (yet another reason for me to move to London) and I was just drawing a blank with ideas. I don't get "visual" ideas. I don't wake up one day with a great idea for a photograph (or drawing, painting, whatever) -- unlike how I might get a sudden sentence or turn of phrase strike me that I want to write down. I can't draw so it isn't like I sketch idly in my free time. For weeks I had nothing. I tried asking the universe for inspiration, but much like asking it to deliver me a quid for the coke machine and the parking space at work I wanted, still nothing was coming.

Eventually I managed to arrange a meeting with Hannah, and in a dramatic break with tradition it seemed the universe delivered. I remembered having recently told Dune about this childhood nightmare, and it suddenly seemed like this would be the perfect picture -- something deeply personal and meaningful to me. A dramatic and dark picture of this black bird from my childhood dreams, and drawing on my background as a writer, the bird would be partially obscuring a block of text, explaining about the dream.

Hannah was politely supportive of the idea -- I couldn't tell you if she thought it was any good or not, as I don't think she would have told me if she didn't like it. And that doesn't matter anyway, it's not for her or for anyone else. By way of encouragement, she suggested looking into folklore associations with black birds -- although sticking mainly to English culture, so as not to get too wanky about it (I might be paraphrasing there).

In my research, I've found the usual stories of a crow circling house being an omen of death, and of the legends surrounding the ravens of the Tower of London. What I didn't expect to find was a reference to traditional folklore from Yorkshire, where apparently children are told if they don't behave, they will be taken away by a great, black bird. The idea is obviously very Christian in nature, with the bird being the devil taking away sinners -- and of course, this would tie in with my own Catholic childhood. I'm wondering now what relative would have told me about this great, black bird -- because I am sure I didn't come to the idea entirely on my own.

The art itself is making slow progress. I forced myself to sit down the other day and look up bird images -- since I would need some kind of template to work with, being unable to draw. After what felt like hours -- the more specific I tried to be with my search terms, the less relevant they became -- I found the image I wanted, and with some work put together a kind of mock up in word of what I wanted. I have the text more or less how I want it, and the bird over the top -- although in this version the bird doesn't obscure the text.

What I need now is a canvas block, or several. I need to feel the canvas to know what size it should be; I am thinking something large like an A2 size at the moment. I also need to work out how I am going to paint or print this text onto the canvas, and most troubling of all how I am going to get the bird image onto the page. Suggestions are welcome, particularly suggestions as to what kind of paint would be good to use, where I can buy canvas blocks and how I might be able to get what is essentially a digital image painted onto my canvas...

Spamusement

Do you ever look at your spam emails? I think there's something very weird going on in there.

Generally speaking, as a rule, it's a good idea not to open any spam emails. Often they can contain scripts to alert the sender they have been opened, and that your account is active: giving them the big green GO sign to send more. Not to mention they could contain potentially various other nastiness, and the fact that you probably don't want to enlarge your penis or buy dodgy Viagra.

There was a time when I noticed text hidden in spam emails. If you opened the emails in a normal web-browser, all appeared normal -- but if you tried to view them in something that didn't support html, you saw something completely different. It seems that in an effort to subvert spam filters, these emails would contain large blocks of text -- extracts from Moby Dick, random, rambling sentences repeating themselves like a surrealist poem. I think somewhere in the dungeons of my blog here I've talked about it before, and posted extracts. Go take a look now, I'll wait for you here.

Back? Good. These days I don't open the emails -- and largely give no more thought to it than telling Gmail to delete all messages, without more than a cursory glance to check that a long-lost love has contacted me and been mistaken for a spammer. The other day, though, I was bored waiting for a train, and took the time to read down the list of senders and subjects.

What I am wondering is if these emails are targeted directly at me, if they have somehow found their way to me though other sites I have frequented, or if they are just following traditional themes of humanity. What I am wondering is if spam is controlled by the eddying currents of the universe?

I'm particularly interested that today when I look at my spam folder there is an email entitled "top notch gift ideas here". How did they know it's my Mum's birthday coming up and I was stuck for gift ideas? For that matter, my Dad and brother are reportedly also not exactly brimming with ideas. Perhaps it's just a safe bet, a bit like with horoscopes -- if you mention that you are trying to think of gift ideas, even if you weren't before you start wondering if you should be. Even if there's not a birthday, perhaps Mother's Day is coming up (if you're a silly country who has it on a different date to England), or it could be Father's Day, or a birthday, or a maybe a friend needs cheering up, or you are reminded that you haven't bought a gift for your partner in a while and it would be a nice surprise. Can anyone here say that there is nothing in their foreseeable future that might require a gift?

As for sex and dating, that's probably a given. You might be in a happy relationship, spending many nights (or days) putting into practice the yoga positions you have learned -- but there's nothing like sowing a little doubt in minds of men. "This will allow you have more happy nights with your girls!" reads one email subject, while others use the only phrase men fear more than "long term commitment" -- erectile dysfunction. It could be that you are in the absolute prime of your health, you get plenty of sleep, don't eat too much red meat or saturated fat, you exercise regularly (be it bedroom gymnastics, police dog training or just something more mundane) and you are happy, content and relaxed. Why would you ever need to worry about erectile dysfunction? But the doubt is there now. You might. You're not getting any younger... And of course, a worry itself can be a cause just as much as anything else. Even if you had never thought about it before, you might do now that it's been brought up.

If you aren't in a relationship (in whatever context you deem necessary) then there's plenty for you, ranging from <3 <3 <3 <3 Get A Date! <3 <3 and Meet Your Soulmate!, for those who might be actively looking but not finding, to the more insidious "You REALLY need to find someone special. Seriously." which I think almost shames you into admitting you aren't happy. It's like if someone said "You REALLY need to brush your teeth. Seriously" even if you had never given it any thought before, you will now be asking yourself what's wrong with your gnashers.

Other than that, of course there are dozens of emails offering money; "Get rich quick!" screams one email, while another I don't understand instructs me to "Turn GOLD into CASH". Surely if I had gold bars lying about, cluttering up the place, I wouldn't be too concerned about turning them into cash? And I don't think the chunky gold-plated jewellery from Argos that chavs so adore is what they're talking about.

But again, the job emails are like dating and sex -- they make you stop. They tell you that nurses are in demand, ask if you've thought of becoming a cop? Maybe these don't appeal to you, so there's lots of "work from home!" suggestions, along with more off the wall ideas that might appeal to people who read spam emails -- things like "massage therapist" or a career in culinary arts. Doesn't that sound more interesting than what you are doing? There's jobs for people who like to wear uniforms, jobs for people who don't like to leave the house and even jobs for people who like getting their hands dirty.

If the universe was really trying to tell me something, I'd expect less emails like "Lose weight without trying" (which sounds like having dysentery if you ask me) and in their place emails that would say "Sell your art without having to be any good!" or "Become a musical genius overnight!". Emails that simply say ____________cars_________ in the subject don't do a lot for me. Although, now you mention it, I would like a new car, with power steering, and air conditioning, and a CD player that doesn't skip.....Maybe I had better read that email.