Does whatever a spider-can...

I didn't get the job I went for in Portsmouth last week. Two weeks, two jobs; two rejections. This interview had gone a lot better than the last one, I had a good feeling about it -- although have given up entirely on ever thinking that I might have got it. Today I invariably got the message: "The feedback regarding your experience was very positive and they were very impressed by your achievements so far. However, being such a small team they are very concerned about personality fit, and they weren't absolutely sure that your character would be a good match".

Jon and I went to the pub this afternoon like we so often did after failing our driving tests -- after all, he got a rejection letter of his own yesterday. He commented that I seemed lost in thought, and the truth of it was my mind was elsewhere -- on the now-usual subject of "what am I going to do?".

What I did was come home and start applying for more jobs. All sorts of jobs I could find; copywriter jobs, other PR jobs, marketing jobs, admin jobs. It was then that I thought I'd give the Gumtree website a cursory glance -- every now and again there's some interesting jobs in the media section, perhaps people willing to give a guy a break. I fired off a few emails before I saw one ad that caught my imagination: do you want to be a paparazzi. I asked myself, do I? I ticked it off on my fingers: writing, photography, good money -- perhaps a distinct lack of morals, but what the hell. Could I stand it? Would I be any good at it? I figured I'd find that out along the way.

Suddenly my mind was racing as fast as my heart as I sent off a deceptively upbeat email and got a response almost immediately. The response merely asked what camera I used. I paused. This might be a problem -- while I have a digital camera, it's nothing special. So instead I replied with another camera I have my eye on; dual lens, 10x optical zoom, and figured if I was required to put my money where my mouth was, Amazon would have the camera to me by the next day and I'd doubtlessly earn the cost of it back almost right away. I also asked if they preferred the use of digital SLR. With my heart still racing came the reply; sorry -- it had to be professional kit. A quick look then of how much that might set me back and it seemed ludicrous to have expect anything else -- thousands and thousands of pounds of equipment. So my ideas of riding on a scooter and chasing celebs through French tunnels while trying to snap their picture was vanished. I felt like Superman without the cape.

And that reminded me of course as these things do with Peter Parker. I felt like responding with something along those lines -- where would we be if nobody would give Peter Parker a job? But I figured references to comic books don't make up for not having thousands to spend on telephoto lenses. What I will be doing though is sending out various letters to agencies asking if they'll give me a break -- let me answer the phone and make coffees, in exchange for occasionally getting a chance to write something or shoot a picture.

I have been invited to a costume party in a few weeks, hosted by several of the guys we camped with at Reading festival -- they all live together, it's a bit like the Monkees, but less wholesome. Either way, the party has a theme: the letter P. The only exception is there are to be no pirates, or policemen. While my friends have been wondering what this leaves -- when you dismiss the obvious (pimps, priests, prostitutes...), I have mine all planned. A couple of clicks on ebay will deliver to me the essential ingredients: one black eyeliner pencil, one black emo wig, one black spiderman costume, and I will be the amazing Peter Parker! It will be almost worth the £30 I will be spending on it.