The neuro-virus, and why you shouldn't stroke other people's cats

We take a short break today from the regular scheduled programming -- that is, the forever-delayed posts about the Inca trail -- to instead write about being unemployed. Because hopefully by the time I have written about the remaining three walking days of the trek, I will have a job again and have no witty observations to make on this sort of thing.

Last week, I was sat in the benefits office. Waiting my turn. Smiling to myself every time someone sat down without taking a ticket first. They'd be told they needed to take a ticket, from the machine. But the machine appeared to have no tickets. There would be a moment when you'd see people hover on the edge of getting angry and mouthing off to the claims assistants, or getting more confused. You could almost see them physically teeter on the thin line between them, at which point one of the assistants would instruct them to open the top of the ticket-dispensing machine and find where the roll had curled up inside. Some needed further guidance as to where the end of the roll was. I suspect these people also have a note attached to their clothes for the morning which says "Remember: trousers first, then shoes".

Waiting patiently, if not quietly, one young lady was talking to her friend about the sickness epidemics at her child's school. She told her friend quite earnestly how one child at the school was sick with "the neuro-virus". Why nobody had told this particular young lady just to refer to it as the "vomiting bug" like most mainstream media does, I don't know -- because confusing the norovirus with something that sounds like a brain disease is going to surely cause more harm than good.

They went on to discuss "the swine flu", and how "they say the swine flu might be like the plague, and kill loads of people". It wasn't clear in what sense it would be like the plague, whether it was in total number of deaths or fatalities as a percentage of the population. Nor did she elaborate who "they" were in this case, though I suspect it was either The Sun or The Daily Mail. What she was saying wasn't exactly wrong, there has been media speculation about how many deaths from the virus could be expected this winter, and of course there are conspiracies about eugenics (like those espoused by the rather wonderful David Icke). Just the same, these young ladies didn't seem especially concerned about the possibility of the plague.

Today, the freak brigade were out in force in the post office. I wasn't paying attention at first when I heard raised voices, but after a little while with the counter clerk was explaining to me how long I could expect a first class letter to take if I posted it today (off topic; this is an interesting development in customer service -- I am sure it is only in the last couple of weeks they have started mentioning this and checking you are OK with it) I started listening to what was going on in the line behind me.

From what I could gather, an older gentlemen was having a heated discussion with a much younger man about the younger man's child stroking his cat. What made the argument stranger was that the older gent insisted on calling the younger man "youngster", which coupled with a unique-sounding voice, made you wonder at first if it was someone pretending to be much older and stuffier than they really were. Either way, the young man was getting more enraged and kept telling the older gent to "f***ing turn around and mind your own business". And as I say, there was some argument about stroking his cat -- the young man apparently being angry the older gent hadn't let his child stroke the older gentleman's cat, and the older gent clarifying something along the lines of anybody was welcome to stroke his cat who asked. Perhaps the strife was over not asking permission first -- is it bad manners to touch someone else's cat without seeking permission first? -- or perhaps the child had gone into the man's garden to stroke the cat. I couldn't tell how this related to the older gent being told to mind his own business, perhaps there was a second, more private argument going on at the same time?

A concerned counter clerk shouted over to ask them if everything was OK, they seemed to dismiss her at first, but then the older gent -- whom I then got to see was dressed like a rambler and was carrying a hiking pole, much like the ones I used in Peru (and which don't actually do the same job as a walking stick) -- approached the counter clerk and told her he wanted to make an official complaint. I'm not sure complaining about another member of the public is really very effective. But despite her asking helpfully if everything was OK, she admitted to not having any kind of authority to be able to do something to help, such as calling security or taking the details of the complaint. Instead, he was instructed to go to the Bureau de Change desk for that. Which makes complete sense.

I'm going to be extra careful about stroking other people's cats now, it's clearly a minefield.

In other news, I have a job interview this week. A job doing communications within the public sector, and for which the recruitment process has been ponderously slow -- I was first contacted about it weeks ago, while I still had a job. I have mixed feelings about the job, part of it seems much too junior for me in terms of admin duties and placing stationery orders, but it would be in London and on more money than I was on before, and a job is a job right now.

While I'm out of work, I am trying to see what training I can get on to. I have expressed an interest to the powers-that-be in learning web design, graphic design, digital marketing and while we're learning stuff, I'd like to speak Spanish. It's not often you have the opportunity for free training, and I could potentially come out of this better qualified. On top of all of that, I am also looking at volunteering opportunities -- some local charities need PR, I need something to do. And finally I am looking at giving some time to volunteer at the hospital, being nice to people who need visitors and that kind of thing. It's a role I could potentially keep on even if I get a job quickly. I think I need to do more and be less self-involved.