Things I Love Thursday

I've been bad at this recently, but we are back once more with "Things I Love Thursday" shamelessly ripped off from Lulu, who in turn lovingly borrowed it from Gala Darling.

The most obvious and most important thing I love this week: the girl is coming home.  After 4 months in exile and without pay, my favourite West Australian fisherman's daughter is coming back to England.  It's hard to believe after it took so long for her company's licence to sponsor her -- but her visa was approved within 24 hours of receipt of her passport, and a week on from there her flight back is booked.  We already have dinner plans for the day she comes home.  There's lots of songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane" but are there an equally moving songs about people coming back?

What I also love this week is my hat.  It is big and furry and I feel happy when I wear it because I look so damn cool.  I bought it for myself two years ago as a Christmas present to myself.  It may not be a Mau Mau hat, and I could ideally do with having a larger head (since the hat only comes in one size) because it has a tendency to slip over my eyes when I'm walking, and I have no peripheral vision.

But none of these things matter because it is the absolute coolest hat in the world!  It keeps me so incredibly warm, and it is perfect for when you want to sleep on the train to work -- it gives my head padding against the train window, muffles the sound and I can pull it over my eyes.  What's not to like?  Also, it reminds me of this advert with Rich Hall.

I also love London this week.  It may not be the prettiest city in the world, and it might not have quite the charm of European cities like Paris, or Rome, or Barcelona, or Prague, or the original colonial style of some buildings in Australian cities I have seen -- but it has a charm and history that many modern cities lack, almost by definition.  As I mentioned in my last post, London has grown organically from various smaller towns and almost anywhere you go in the city you can turn a corner away from Starbucks and McDonald's and still find old cobbled streets and disused gas street lamps.   London has a personality and a history that is undeniable, and unrivalled.

I guess following on from my love of London is my love of Europe.  There are still vast areas of Europe I haven't seen, but I love living in Europe this week -- I love that I can call people in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Scandinavia and with the exception of the last one I can usually at least say "good morning" and with French and Spanish "Do you speak English?".  I speak to these people and see bookings for them travelling across Europe to come to London, and they think nothing of it.  Then I'll speak to someone in the north of England and they will balk at the idea of coming down to London for the day.  There is so much anti-Europe sentiment in England, but I embrace it -- how can you not, when you can drive in to a foreign country in less time that it takes to drive to places in Britain?

Finally what I love this week is being one of life's winners!  A competition I entered randomly one day, as I do so often, actually came through for me -- I got an unexpected email telling me that I had won a place, plus one, on the guest list to see Har Mar Superstar at the start of December.  Of course, I am taking the girl as my plus one since I know she likes his music, too, and it can be another celebration of her coming home.

And I guess that wraps her up this week -- not a vast list of things, but I think the first is quite important.  Followed, albeit at a distance, by a good looking hat.

Working late and walking late

Tonight I had to work late.

Almost every night of the week -- or, at least, the working week -- my company hosts events, which in turn means someone has to stay late to show the delegates where they are going as they arrive.  Tonight was my turn, but instead of showing them where they were going I was sending them away with a map to find the place where the event was being held.

This is the least interesting part of the post, I'm starting with this so that it will get better as you go along and you are rewarded for being dedicated readers.

I finished work.  Wrapped up in a coat and scarf, and set off down the street to the Tube station.  Except halfway to the Tube I decided I didn't want to get on it right away.  It wasn't that I didn't want to go home, it was just that there was no hurry.  The house is empty and nobody would know or care if I got home at 8, or 9, or even tomorrow morning, ten minutes before having to leave the house again for work.  I figured instead of taking the Tube three stops, I would walk.  It isn't far, it was mild for November, and it shouldn't be all that complicated...

You know at this point that if it wasn't difficult this would be a very short post.  I thought I was so clever.  I knew that if I walked one way I would be heading towards King's Cross which was the opposite way to where I wanted to be going, and if I went yet another way I would be heading more in the direction of Chancery Lane.  Again, not where I wanted to be.  Short of going back on myself, there was only one direction left that I could go.

Except it doesn't ever work like that, especially not in such an organic city as London.  London isn't so much a city as it is lots of small towns that have, over time, merged together -- so there's lots of different identities all melting together, and there are very rarely any roads that go in straight lines.  There's no grid patterns to be found here.  And there is rarely any sort of a sign that will tell you where you are -- or where you are going.

I enjoyed the walk, hell I need the exercise right now, and I had no particular place to be.  I liked crossing the streets where by now every third car was a cab, walking past the pubs full of city workers having a quick drink after work which must surely have turned into at least two or three by this time, the pizza restaurants where couples sat in the windows having early dinners, and other restaurants where the owners were standing outside to try and encourage people to come in.  I like those kinds of restaurants, it really makes you feel wanted when someone is that eager for your company.  Or your money.

After about half an hour of thinking I knew where I was going, in a roundabout sort of way, and not minding that it was taken much longer than it would have done if I had just got on the Tube, I recognised where I was.  I had unconsciously managed to walk 30 minutes just to end up 5 minutes away from where I started, outside the building we are meant to be moving to next week. 

I set off again, thinking this time I was definitely going the right way.  I turned down one side road, and I almost stopped at the bottom.  I could hear shouts, and possibly the sound of people running, and I wondered if this was something I wanted to walk out into.  As I came out of the street so cautiously, I saw a football pitch across the street.  It wasn't someone being chased by a mob at all, or groups of football hooligans meeting in the street -- just a friendly game of 5-a-side.

I looked for distinctive landmarks -- thinking I would surely be able to make out one office building or another near where I wanted to be, but any tall buildings with lights that I headed towards turned out to be ugly concrete tower blocks built in the 1960s.  After much too long I decided that my walking wasn't actually getting me anywhere, I was starting to get cold and hungry -- and even if I had been on the train that very minute, it would be at least an hour before I got home.

I headed directly to the first Tube stop I came to, and found I had only walked one stop further from where I worked.

It was in the right direction, though, so I consider it a success.

Daddy wouldn't buy me a Mau Mau

I am known in some circles as being something of a poetry groupie.

Ten years ago, when I was studying for my A-Level in English Literature, a friend told me that the year below us were being taken to a poetry conference -- where poets including Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage would be reading some of their work.  Although their work wasn't being studied in class our year, some gentle persuasion got us included to go to the conference -- purely for pleasure.

I remember the confusion many of the students had that I would choose to go, that I wasn't studying these poets but instead read them for pleasure.  I even had copies of their books that I had brought along in the hope of getting them signed.

At the conference, I sat in the front row with one of my friends -- who was writing a book of poetry called Lusus Naturae.  She was one of those people who didn't just write poems, but compiled them into books, and gave friends readings from her collection.

After Simon Armitage read his poems, I told this girl that I was going to see if I could go "backstage" and meet him.  She dismissed the idea.  She said he would already be outside, smoking a cigarette in the rain, and would be gone in minutes.  Just the same, when the conference compere came back out to check something, I asked him to take me to meet Mr Armitage.  And he did.  Simon Armitage seemed shy and probably a little bewildered by this breathless poetry fan who was telling him was a big, big fan he was -- and I asked him to sign my copy of Book of Matches.

Instead of disappearing into the streets of London for the rest of the day -- as was normal behaviour for these conferences -- I sat and listened raptly to all the other poets, until my favourite, Carol Ann Duffy.  The sublime Ms Duffy is now the poet laureate.  I meant to write a post back when she was awarded the post about what this meant for England, and poetry, that all hope was not lost when an openly bisexual single mother from Scotland could the two fingered salute to the stuffy old men of the establishment.  But at the same time I couldn't see her writing poems on demand for royal weddings and anniversaries.

Anyway, I was taken to meet Ms Duffy like I had been before, and she in turn introduced me to the lovely UA Fanthorpe.  I was asked if I wrote poetry myself.  I replied I did, but probably that was going through a dry spell.  I later became much more prolific at university, writing poems that were funny or sad or sarcastic and reading them half drunk and semi wild at open mike evenings on both sides of the Atlantic ocean.  I hope sometime in the near future to find an open mike night in London and maybe dust off some of the better pieces.

Today I was thinking about the Alexei Sayle short story "The Mau Mau Hat" -- where a poet is kept from his work by a younger poet called Emmanuel Pollock (a reference to Coleridge's unwelcome visitor).  In the story, it is customary for older, established poets to have their younger contemporaries over to their houses for tea and cakes, which is how the man Pollock and his hat set off a chain of events and come to be such a distraction for the protagonist.

I still wonder if I could write to Carol Ann Duffy and request that I come to tea with her and discuss poetry.  I could also try writing to Alexei Sayle -- since if it's not a real custom then it's his idea, and even though he isn't a poet, he is funny and clever and brilliant and one of the finest minds of his generation.

I could tell him about the epic zombie novel I'm meant to be writing.

If you're alone and you got the shakes

I know.  I missed "Things I Love Thursday" this week, but being back in work makes it hard to update during the day (as well as seriously cutting down my reading time) -- this week I'll try and make a note each day of a couple of things I love, so that I have the raw bones of the post ready to go on Thursday.

But yes, work.  I am now back in the world of the gainfully employed; getting up at 0630 every day, jostling for position with the other commuters on the train station platform in the mornings, and sleeping on the journey into London.  One day in the near future, when my finances are straight again and so long as it won't impact on anything I'm saving towards, I am going to have to get myself some latest must-have gadget for the journey.  Music makes any ordinary journey seem like a movie, complete with soundtrack.  What I really want is a telepathic MP3 or Spotify player that will read my mind and know what music I want or need to hear -- choosing either to indulge me or challenge me, depending on the setting.

Work itself...is fine.  Just fine.  It's only been 3 days, and I've not yet really started on the "sales" part of my job -- which being a Sales Executive is kind of the big part.  I've done a lot of data entry, and I have started setting up social marketing by registering work accounts on various sites and am beginning very slowly to make friends and find followers of like minded people.  Part of me doesn't yet know what to make of the job, and part of me knows that it will be only what I make it -- if I do well or don't, love it or not, is entirely up to me.

Definitely in the plus column is the people I work with -- so far, everyone seems nice and nobody drives me mad.  I didn't meet the MD of the company until my first day in the job since she'd been in an accident recently (she was hit by a bus), but I have only positive impressions of her -- someone that genuinely cares about what they do, and seems like a cheerful, upbeat person.  It helps that I've also been taken to lunch twice.

Over a lunchtime pint on Friday I tried to sell her my photography printed on cavas for the new offices we're moving to.  She seemed interested, or just was being polite, so I have given her the link to my Photobox page where the items can be ordered.  It would be good if some sales were to come of it.  I've tried selling my pictures through Etsy in the past, but was never very successful -- at least with Photobox I don't have to pay for the service.

Somehow in the course of conversation with the MD and my other colleagues, we came around to PR and my background in it.  To cut out all the boring middle bit, I have volunteered to try and put together some sort of PR for the company.  It's a small company, but I'm increasingly passionate about what they (or we) do, and would like to see them get more recognition -- and, of course, more business.  Since it's not really my job to do this stuff, I'm going to have to approach it in very small measures so that it doesn't interefere with my "day job". With a lot of luck it could take off, and I could slowly move more towards this stuff than the sales side -- even helping them to set up their own internal PR department.  Alternatively, I might find the sales earn me plenty on their own and keep me happily busy so much that I don't care about their PR profile.  Or yet another option is I'll decide in 6 months this job really isn't for me and I'll go find something else.  But for now, it's earning a living like.

And I'll work on those plans for a telepathic MP3 player.

The future is quite different to the present. One thing we have in common with the present is we still call it the present, even though it's the future.

I mentioned in the last post how I was rereading The Time Traveller's Wife, and as usual it's got me thinking about our past and future selves.  I've thought, and probably written about, a lot the idea of what we might say to our past selves, given a chance.  My main advice for my self would usually boil down to don't worry so much, and let things go.  Which is sound advice at any time.

But recently I got to thinking -- what if we were to meet our future selves on a regular basis?  I'm less interested in any tips for the future or any particular words of wisdom on how to deal with our present, but more in the personal relationship between our selves.

My main thought is really: would we like ourselves?  It is widely accepted that the traits we admire in others are the things we like about ourselves, and conversely the things that we dislike and the things that annoy us in other people are those that we dislike about ourselves.  With this in mind, would we by default like these future selves because they have all of the qualities we like?

Even if we can't be objective about our own personality and achievements, would meeting ourself as another person be far enough removed for us to like "them", or would we see all of our flaws?  What would it be like if there was mutual animosity with ourselves whenever we met?

What would you say?  "You need to be nicer to me?" 

Maybe such a meeting would be all we need to get a sense of perspective.  If we had no trouble being objective about this future self that we meet, being able to see that they try their hardest and have good intentions even if things don't always work out would we then be able to put into practice when thinking about ourselves?

It seems counter-intuitive to imagine that we could ever be hostile to a visiting future self.  If they turned up on our doorstep at 3am, naked and shivering with cold, and needing to be let in could we turn them away, knowing that it will literally be us that need that help in the future?  It might seem to detached from us, too hard to accept that it really would be us.  It's unlike if a future self met our present in need, since then they would remember their own kindness -- it is almost like you have to pay it forward, you do the right thing so that it comes back to you when you need it.

There's no real conclusion to be made -- but I'm interested to hear others thoughts on the idea, if it even makes any sense.  Do you like who you are?  Do you think if you met yourself you would like them, or would you seem them embodying all your insecurities?

Coyotes kill Canadian folk singer

19-year-old folk singer Taylor Mitchell was killed by coyotes while hiking alone in a national park.

This makes me sad, and I can't really explain why, it's not like I'm a big fan of Canadian folk music -- the late Ms Mitchell now makes the total count of artists I can name up to one.

Maybe it's just sad that a someone who had so much to look forward to should have died so needlessly. Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's any sadder than dying in a car accident, or from illness, or in a bizarre gardening accident, or any number of other ways, but this in particular just seems so pointless.

It could be the freak nature of the attack. At first when I read it I confused coyotes -- which are essentially jackals -- with cougars, which are also known as pumas. I remember hiking in the the Arches national park in Utah's Moab desert, and being warned of the risk of being attacked by cougars -- the risk was high for lone hikers, along with children who wander off or joggers in some areas.

But then when I read the story properly I realised it said coyote and not cougar, an it seemed all the more senseless that an animal that normally preys on hares should have attacked a person. Attacked and killed.

Some people might say she was foolish, I don't know the details but it was possible that it was unsafe and she shouldn't have been hiking alone at that time of day. But that's no comfort to anyone. You can't blame the animals, of course. They're wild animals, acting on instinct and not out of any malicious intent -- they didn't do anything "wrong", only what they know.

For years, I've joked about wild animals eating joggers and how we should introduce large predators into towns to control anti-social behaviour. Suddenly it doesn't seem so funny.

Changes

As you might have noticed, I've made some changes to the appearance of this blog -- your feedback and opinions are encouraged!

Back to the routine

I didn't mean for it to be a week between updates -- but it's just been one of those weeks where I hold off writing anything until I know where things stand.

We left me at the end of last week feeling optimistic and hopeful about my job prospects -- there had been interviews with two companies and a potential for freelance work.  Friday was as quiet as I expected -- no job offers landed on the doorstep (or in my inbox) and it was too early for any second round interview call backs.  This was fine.  Monday I was starting to get impatient -- sure, nothing could have moved on over the weekend, but by the end of the day I was starting to wonder and doubt.

Tuesday I was beginning to feel downright anxious.  What if neither of the companies wanted me?  I had already lost hope on the possibility of freelance work, since last week it had seemed so urgent but I'd heard nothing since.  I just had to resign myself that worst case scenario would be Christmas casual work with the post office, sorting mail and parcels -- it's not bad work, and there was always overtime on offer when I temped in the past, but this year with temps being recruited to counteract the industrial action, I wasn't so sure it would be the same.

It was difficult to concentrate on my course Tuesday morning, I kept my phone beside me so that I could take any calls when they came in -- I was particularly expecting a call about the comms role that morning, and wanted to know what was happening there before any job offers from the sales position.  It got to about 1pm and I'd heard nothing.  I decided to stay at the college rather than rush home to have lunch, and I was checking my email on my mobile phone -- checking what documents I needed to take for the post office recruitment day on Wednesday.  Except I didn't need to check that email, because the first one I saw had the subject "Emploment Offer".  And it wasn't even spam, offering me employment selling "v1@grA" or whatever.

It was an offer of employment from the sales position.  There would be no working nights and long hours at the post office for me now, the worst that could happen is that I would be gainfully employed as an executive in the city.  Now I just had to get some sort of answer from the comms role.  I called the recruiter -- who typically had no response form them yet -- and let her know I already had a job offer, so that should be passed along to try and speed up the process.

The girl and I remain worried about our finances.  Because she's been on unpaid leave so long, she doesn't know if she has money to pay the rent along with buying a ticket back from Australia and funding her travel to work every day when she comes back.  We're discussing our options on that front -- like if we were to give up our house (and come back to my parents for a room to stay again) would we have to pay cancellation fees on contracts we have in place.

On the other side of the coin, I had a look on the rightmove property website for places to rent in London, and found that when you discount the idea of just being able to walk to work, there are places with only a 30 minute commute that wouldn't cost significantly more than our house in Essex -- and would avoid the crippling travel costs.  Instead of paying out £400 each just in travel every month, we could pay an extra £100 a month each and actually live in London.  It maybe isn't an option right away, but in a few months time after the winter months have come and gone, we might be in a position to live in London.

I got a call yesterday to say it was a no to a second interview for the comms role.  I haven't yet been told why I wasn't up to the task, except that they only called something like two people for second stage and they were "good all-rounders".  I aim to get detailed info on if they liked the event plan I put together, and feedback on the tests they had me do on the day, as well as the interview itself.  But this means that it's sealed, I must take the sales job.  Of course, I could decide not to and that I would rather stay unemployed, living on benefits and looking for work, but my benefits would be stopped if the JobCentre found out I had been offered a job and turned it down.

The only real drawback to the sales role is that the basic wage is low -- obviously common practice in sales, a tactic to motivate you towards meeting your sales targets.  It's so low, in fact, I was earning almost £2k more a year in my last job, where I didn't have to commute into London -- but if I was to meet the targets in this role I would naturally be better off.  It's tough.  I decided to try and barter with them on the salary, tell them if they could make it £18k a year rather than £17k I could accept the job today -- where I had previously told them I would need until Friday to consider all my options.  I got a reply telling me they would have to discuss it with the MD, but if they were to accept a higher basic wage then my equivalent targets would also be higher.

I don't know at this point in time how achievable the sales targets are -- sure, they tell me they are achievable, but of course they would say that.  Is it worth the gamble to have a higher basic wage and risk not being able to hit the targets that make the job workable?  I don't know if I have that much faith in my sales abilities.  After some thought and a discussion with the girl, I've decided to stick with the original offer -- the basic salary is hardly liveable, but that just means I'll have to work harder.  Or find a second job.

So, the good news is I got a job.  Not the well-paid job in communications I really wanted, but a job all the same -- I'm getting off the couch, getting off benefits, and back into the daily 9 - 6 work routine.

"Things I Love" Thursday

A concept I have taken from Lulu, whom I believe also took inspiration from someone else, this is the first post of hopefully many on "Things I Love" Thursday.  Following on from such theme days as "Musical Monday", "Serial Killer Sunday" and "News-Day Tuesday", this is just a snapshot of the things that are making me happy this week, or just today.  I think everyone will be in agreement this is far more palatable than the idea of me indulging in "Half-Nekkid Thursday", as seen elsewhere in the Blogosphere.

Without any further ado, things I love today:

Sunny Autumn days. Just when you think winter has made a premature entrance, when the days have turned cold and it is pouring with rain, Autumn taps you on the shoulder and lets you know it's not done yet.  Today it is warm and sunny, the sun is singing, the birds are shining, and you can throw open the windows to let the air in.  OK, so you're never going to mistake it for a summer day -- but the Autumn sunlight has an elegant charm all of its own.  And the cats like it, too.

Which brings me onto my next point:

Cats!  I know some people have a real grudge against the feline members of society -- and let me remind you that a hatred of cats is latent misogyny -- but I think responsible owners make respectable cats, and none moreso than the kitten tearaways that have come to live with my parents in recent months.  These two show you what there is to enjoy in life -- and approach almost everything with complete abandonment, which often leads to them rolling about on the floor trying to bite each other.  Except no matter how fiercely they seem to be fighting, neither of them minds, and you'll often find them curled up asleep together.  They really need a whole post of their own.

You know what else I love?

Not having to go to the job centre!  I can now give that hateful place the two-finger salute.  No more filling in a record of what I have been doing to look for work, and no more relying on the pittance of job seeker's allowance.  I now rejoin the ranks of the gainfully employed.

The internet.  I know, I should really send a "thank you" card to Tim Berners-Lee for such a wonderful thing it is.  Without the internet, instant messenger conversations would be quite one-sided, web cam shows somewhat dull, and web browsers not an awful lot of use.  Blogging would also be a lot more like Doogie Howser MD, writing a diary on his computer.  But really, what I love most about the internet this week is people.  Last week, I was invited out for China Blue's birthday celebrations, and by the mixture of the people who came along and showed their love I was reminded what a fantastic tool for meeting people the internet really is.  They say that the invention of the bicycle was a big thing for genetics, since it allowed people easier travel to nearby towns and from there access to more people from outside their own gene pool.  The internet is second only to teleportation and inter-stellar space travel, I think, with its contribution here -- people now communicate with each other in real time from all over the world, and with it make friends, fall in love and perpetuate the whole human comedy.

Weekends at the seaside.  It's not the same without the girl, but I still love the sea, I love going to the seaside on a Friday, and I love going to the seaside even more when we're seeing family.  It's my brother's birthday this weekend, so I get to see my brother, and my sister in law, and my four year old nephew and in between I get to throw stones into the sea and look for shells. 

And that about wraps her all up for today -- I want to keep this as just thoughts today, and not an exhaustive list of all the things in the world ever that I love, and certainly couldn't begin to express myself if I was to start including individuals on the list.

But we'll be back next week with more...

Maybe everything that dies some day comes back

Another day, another job interview.

Yesterday's was much more of a proper interview, except if I want to be a grinch about it I feel a bit like my recruiter hadn't given me quite accurate information. And the info from the company was slightly misleading, too. But that's ok.

I can't go into much detail about the company, since this is a public blog and though I doubt they would be bored enough to google key words about their business, they still might possibly find it. But enough to say it is a communications role with a charity that is involved with disabled people.

For the interview I was asked to consider an event that I would need to plan, and what needed to be taken into account. They kept it deliberately vague. One morning last week I was considering it, and how I had no inspiration for it, when I had a great idea. It sucks to be you reading this right now, because I won't talk about the idea. I thought it was a great idea and I put a lot of thought and effort into my plan, but I don't want to write about it in case someone says "I don't think that was the wisest choice". What would it matter? I just don't want to think about it now. So, I wrote about what the event would entail, and my reasoning for this particular event, and all the various things that would need to be taken into consideration, and just to top it all off I gave a week-by-week breakdown of when each stage of the planning would need to be completed.

The information I had said that I would not be asked to present this plan, only to submit it for their consideration after my interview. This was not true, as after our mutual interview questions, they did ask me to talk about it, which I hadn't been planning to do. Hopefully, I was passionate and enthusiastic enough about it all.

The interview itself went well, they were nice and friendly, and seemed pleased with all of my answers and liked my experience.

Next came the test. I was expecting more than one test -- the recruiter had suggested there would be a computer test and a personality test -- but I hadn't fretted it, there's nothing you can do to prepare when you don't know what kind of computer test it will be. It turned out there was no personality test, and the computer test was the last thing I expected -- a written test. First I had to edit a feature article written for one of their magazines -- cutting it almost in half to a maximum of 350 words, then I had to write a press release. I was disappointed there was very sparse info on which to base my release, but I put my heart into it all the same. The editing was tricky -- that was something I'd never done before, editing someone else's work -- but it got done. Now I wait. They are interviewing someone else tomorrow, I'm told, and have no feedback yet but are reportedly pleased that I liked them.

Now, today's interview was the third and final part of the recruitment process for the marketing and sales role that doesn't include much marketing. I had to prepare a sales pitch for a specific two-day training course -- since that's what they do. Again, I can't talk much about the company, but it's IT-related and out of my area of experience. But prior knowledge of this kind of thing was far less important than hard work and enthusiasm, so last night was spent drafting out my pitch. Which I did have to present in this interview -- and was pretty much all there was to the interview. They seemed to like it, referring to it as "excellent", and that I had covered off the key points.

I think they're keen, they told me they were feeling positively about me, and asked me if I was offered the job whether I would consider it. I replied that I too felt positively and would definitely consider it. They mentioned they had other interviewees to see, so I made sure to mention I have other interviews to go to.

Right now, I feel like the communications role would suit me better -- but who knows, maybe my future is in sales. And I got a call this evening about a communications role in the NHS based very close to home, so I'm waiting to hear if I have a meeting on that one.

I look forward to a time in the near future when I have a job and I can then widen my area of interest into the rest of the world and write about more exciting things. Like the new shirt I bought, with its silver buttons and little silver tags sewn on, and how they glints and sparkles in the Autumn sun as I walk down the street. Or how apaprently the Bruce Springsteen song doesn't say "They blew up the chicken mine in Philly last night" -- I just thought a chicken mine would be where chicken salt came from...

When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails

...Or so I'm told. But what does that mean, exactly? Right now, it feels a lot like my job hunt.

I had the opportunity to meet a renowned Marketing writer/blogger last week, grabbing the chance to meet him while he was in London for a couple of days. Unfortunately, however much I think he and his blog are awesome, I can't link to it in this post as if he followed the traffic back here I don't think he'd dig my tales of girls and boys and marsupials, nor the old Serial Killer Sunday posts.

Anyway, I'd filled him in on where I am professionally -- some good experience but now "between jobs" and asked for his advice on how better to market myself, and get that awesome job with it. As part of my ongoing personal development, I have also set some objectives for myself -- working towards them involves in part asking people I admire how they got to be where they are.

It seems that there are two ways I can approach looking for work. The marketer summarised my position quite well, when you're out of work for a while you start casting your net wider and applying for jobs you could do, and maybe even do well, but aren't necessarily what you really want. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. The other approach is to hold out for what you really want, and accept no compromise. He suggested volunteering to work without pay for somewhere awesome, so long as I would be doing real work and not stuffing envelopes.

He has also stressed that I should be writing -- by way of submitting guest posts to relevant blogs, or writing a blog of my own. I tried setting up a new blog the other day just for writings on the PR/marketing industry, but I fell at the first hurdle -- I couldn't come up with a good name for it that wasn't already taken.

This week I have two interviews coming up: a second interview for a job as a sales and marketing exec, that seems to have little marketing to it that isn't actually sales, and a communications role that would be a significant promotion from where I was before. I was informally interviewed on the phone the other day for another sales position -- although it was described as management trainee or something, I think that was just clever marketing on the part of the job ad. It seemed to go well, I was told some of my answers were good, and that I'd here more if I was to be invited for the two-day selection process this week. I didn't hear anything more.

The trouble is, sometimes it seems like applying for jobs that aren't what I really want but I could probably do is treating all problems as nails. Do I actually want to work in sales? Would I be any good at it? And come to that, when did what I do for a living become so damned all-important anyway? It does not define me as a person, and should not be what my life is about. But it's easy to say that when you actually have a job -- getting one first is key, the rest comes afterwards.

A couple of my friends have turned to teaching. One of them has had several other careers to date, including being a police officer, a lorry driver, a petrol station attendant and a media sales executive. Will teaching finally be what they are looking for? The other friend has been treading water for the last few years, not really knowing what they wanted. I can more readily see them staying in teaching. They have suggested it to me as a career path, too, but I'd only take them seriously if they had already been doing it for several years -- but like social work which has also been suggested, I really don't see it being for me.

Finally, a friend posted this video on my Facebook the other day. It made me laugh, but I'm not sure what they were trying to tell me...

Courier for the day

With no sponsorship licence in sight for her this week, the girl's company suggested she become self employed and work for them freelance from Australia. It wasn't a great solution, but the girl needed the income, and so I got in touch with some people from her office about taking them her work laptop. The idea was that they could then get it sent to Australia by courier.

And so it was on a grey and rainy London afternoon I set off in my best suit, with my portfolio and the girl's laptop, to an appointment I had in the city.

I was already tight for time, the meeting had been set up at the last minute and I'd had time only to get home and change my clothes in a Superman-style whirlwind to catch a train. A train that as I waited at the station was getting further delayed every few minutes. Periodically, freight trains would come storming straight through the station, but my train was delayed without explanation -- and I had to get to the gleaming towers of Docklands.

While I was waiting I got a text from the girl asking me very nicely to call her. I didn't have our spare mobile with the cheap overseas calls, but something about the message told me it was important. The girl got to the point quickly -- it might not be necessary for me to take the laptop to her work after all, since their licence had finally arrived.

This means that after advertising her job for a couple of weeks, the girl will be able to apply for her visa and get all her biometric data recorded, as well as a GPS tracking chip embedded under her skin, as I am sure is now standard procedure in a surveillance society such as ours.

Thanks to the joys of internet access on my phone I was able to buy a little time before my appointment so I didn't turn up breathless and rushed, so that went well. I wasn't expected at the girl's offices any particular time, and I think I shared the lift with her Swiss colleague. I was curious to meet some of the people I had heard so much about, and the few I had emailed, but I got no further than the receptionist. I handed over the laptop, and was off again.

Soon now, the girl will be returning, and I am already mentally making plans for fun tings to do -- I won't talk about any of my ideas here and now, but if there was one thing my visit Down Under showed me it is that surely nowhere in England is beyond reasonable driving distance.

Macaroni art

I will return to my regularly-scheduled "Inca Trail" scribblings after this brief segue.

Things have been tough for the girl and I in recent months.

Losing my job to redundancy in July was unfortunate, but I immediately started claiming "job seeker's allowance" to try and keep the wolves from the door when it came to rent and bills. The fight to get housing benefit out of the local council has sometimes felt like an uphill struggle, however -- particularly when we were told the girl earned too much for us to claim benefits.

The girl had to return home to Western Australia several days earlier than she had planned, missing out on a trip to Paris with her Mum, when her grandfather died. Even at that time, we hoped that her work visa would come through in no time, and it would only be a short time before the girl would return to merry old England.

We hoped the setbacks would only be very temporary, but it's October and I haven't yet found gainful employment, and the girl's company still don't have their licence to sponsor her, so she is in unpaid limbo on the other side of the world.

Next month we don't know if we will be able to pay the rent. I have already borrowed sums of money from my parents to help make ends meet in previous months, but we are now getting the housing benefits we were previously denied so I hope to be able to hold the fort a little while longer.

On the positive side, the logic would follow that every day that passes without the girl hearing news on her company's licence we must also be one day closer to her joyful return. I also have some promising leads on jobs that I am interviewing for.

I don't spend a lot of time in the house I share with the girl now that she's not here. It makes sense to visit my parents more and take advantage of their hospitality to keep the running costs of our house down, but most of all it doesn't much feel like "our" house when I'm there alone.

I won't lie, emotionally I've had a bad time since I lost my job. Never having been the most stable of people in the past, losing the security and income of a job I (mostly) enjoyed set me adrift a little.

In a dramatic break with tradition, however, things have taken a turn for the better there -- and it might even seem in years to come that being made redundant was a good thing to happen. For a start, if you're out of work you can access government-funded training. And I'm not talking about basic maths or literacy, but more or less anything you want.

Granted, I am still trying to get someone to commit to the details, but in theory at least there are options open to me if I want to learn things like digital marketing, graphic design, web design because it will make me more employable -- those three could all help me make a move into roles like web content editor.

Not directly related to work, but sort of related to government funding, I have been in therapy, which was probably overdue. I think because of the recession, money has been freed up for what is being called "talk therapy", a combination of counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. While it hasn't exactly set my world ablaze, it has helped me to recognise and address some errors in my thinking. Which neatly leads me onto the next point.

Personal Development. A local college is currently a 10 week personal development course for people a bit like me -- it's not solely for those out of work, but being held twice a week on weekdays probably means it's not very accessible for anyone in fulltime employment. The course is led by a certified Psychotherapist who also makes a decent living in areas like Hypnotherapy, as well as coaching and training.

It's all making for a good combination -- the course provides me with something to do other than look for work, I can tell employers about it when I go for interviews, and it is giving me useful tools for managing my own thoughts and behaviour. Mixing that with my cognitive behavioural therapy I have recently learned to treat myself better and be more objective, feel more positive, and have identified some goals and objectives. I won't go into details of the techniques I have learned today, but it's enough that it is doing me some good.

I visited the girl for a few weeks in August and September, which should have been longer if only we'd known there was not going to be work waiting for me on my return, and no firm return date for the girl in sight. But that's how these things go. I will be blogging about those adventures -- under the title of "Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials" (something I have considered renaming my blog on occasion) -- when I have exhausted my "I trekked Peru, yo" posts.

We aren't too clear where we go from here right now, except that today is one day closer to the girl's return and another day closer to finding a new, incredibly awesome job for me. And people will probably be getting macaroni pictures as Christmas presents this year.

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.

If it were any colder I could disengage

"This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die."

extract from 'Survivor', by Chuck Palahniuk

The cat is gone. I miss him.

One foot in front of the other is an acceptable plan

I guess there's no other way to put it, other than "work continues to suck". I am today exactly one week away from my second consultation, where I will find out if I am "matched" to a position, "pooled" with a number of other candidates for one particular job, or simply made redundant. In my first consultation, I told them I considered myself at the level of "PR and Marketing manager" rather than Markting assistant. I also told them I wouldn't be willing to take a pay cut -- even though what I earn is good money outside of London, I don't see why I should consent to have them cut it, I should be looking to do better, not worse. I also told them that relocating wouldn't be an option if it made life more difficult or expensive for the girl getting to work in London every day. But that if they wanted me to relocate to London that would be ideal.

We have mixed feelings about living where we do. On one hand, it would be nice if the girl didn't have an hour's journey to work every day on packed commuter trains and tubes. It would be good if we could live in London and do all the wonderful things there are in this most amazing of cities, or could get home at night after doing these things. I know the girl didn't move clear across the world to live in the home counties. On the other hand, where we live is nice. It's pretty quiet, we have a big green in front of the house, trees in blossom and cats lying on sunny window ledges. Some people in London can pay more for a room or a small flat what we pay for a two bedroomed house, and the girl knows for her half of the rent in London she would probably see a room in a shared house.

I think if we really had the choice, there's other cities where we would rather live than London -- we'd live somewhere by the sea, like Bristol or Portsmouth or Southampton or Brighton. Or most of Australia. Sometimes it feels like some part of me is calling out to live by the water.

In other news, all else failed. The cat is dying. It wasn't his arthritis. It wasn't his teeth and it wasn't his gums. He wasn't depressed or upset that my parents had been away. He is just dying. A couple of weeks ago he had his dental appointment, and I was told his gums were inflamed. My parents fought with him to get his little cat antibiotics down him. He was also given shots of steroids.

When I met Mum for lunch last week she told me he was doing much better, but it seems her reports of his eating and getting out more were apparently exaggerated to make me happy. Hope has faded, and he has gone rapidly downhill.

When I last saw him he was all but refusing all food. He struggles to stand on his own or to walk, and spends most of the day and night just lying on his side. If you talk to him he's happy enough and purrs, but the vet says she thinks he has leukemia and there is nothing that can be done, other than more shots of steroids and vitamins. This is about where I started with his first visit, so I can't say I haven't been prepared. I asked Dad how much longer the vet gives the cat, because I don't want to come back from Peru to find the cat gone. He doesn't expect the cat to last until I leave, and I leave in just over a week from now.

The girl and I visited my parents for tea, mainly so they could see her cute new haircut but also so we could see them and see the cat. It's so sad to see him this close to the end, it's almost painful.

Next week could turn out to be a double-shot of fun if I lose my job and lose my cat. But I leave for Peru next Friday, and as with all things I have to be brave. If my knees are hurting so bad I can barely walk, I just have to keep going -- one foot in front of the other is an acceptable plan, and that can apply to many things. I just have to put my head down and keep going, sometimes, even if it is hard.

Capturing a moment

I'm a fraud, and a liar, and a phoney.

In my sidebar "about me", it claims I'm an artist. I've decided recently that I should face that this really isn't true. When is the last time I actually created anything? It's been almost a year since I painted anything -- my one and only picture, and I've been feeling disillusioned with photography.

I describe myself as a photographer, and I even tried to sell my pictures on canvas, but that idea never really got off the ground -- simply because my work was no more remarkable or special or interesting than anyone else's -- and it was less so than a lot of others.

I have mixed feelings about digital photography. I like the ability to instantly see the image, and it's hardly like I'm some kind of analogue purist, since I don't even know how to change a film, but it sometimes feels like with digital cameras everyone fancies themselves as an artist. I feel frustrated that everywhere we can go has already been seen, and now extensively photographed and uploaded to Flickr within hours.

What I used to feel distinguished my work was what I did with pictures -- I like to climb into places or seek out unusual angles, and then digitally manipulate images. Now everything just looks so immediately and unmistakeably Photoshop.

The tag line here attempts to pin down why I blog -- to avoid being that tree falling in a forest -- but sometimes it feels like reality is only what we can record. If you go to a concert, people are clambering over each other to get video and pictures, I know I've been so absorbed sometimes trying to get just the right looking picture that I've realised I was missing the whole reason I was there -- for the music. If a singer comes off the stage to meet the crowd, they must find it difficult to see the people for the forest of cameraphones. Is something only real if you can record it?

I was struck after the G20 protests when you saw photos or images of scenes like the alleged police brutality or the rioters storming the RBS building that in the background there are great swathes of people with their cameras.

Maybe I'm just jealous, and feel like I'm not good enough. I feel like I've stagnated and I can't reasonably call myself an artist any more, even though many would argue I had no right to call myself one to begin with.

I want to upgrade digital cameras, I want to learn to process and develop films and I want to feel like I'm creating again. I hate feeling average and I don't know how to find my way back.

The cat came back, he just couldn't stay away

Every time I want to write an update about the cat, the situation changes. I don't even want to necessarily update, but it's a rainy Bank Holiday Monday and I like to think several readers would want to know how he's doing.

At the end of my last post, the vet had called and the news wasn't good. The blood test results were clean, which suggested there was a more sinister problem -- but when I called my neighbour to give her a version of the news, she said the cat was doing a whole heap better and I thought maybe after all it was just his arthritis.

Unfortunately, that was wishful thinking. The cat went off his food again quickly, so I made another appointment a few days later and told my boss I'd be late into work.

This visit was much sadder for me. It sounds pathetic, but I chokingly told the receptionist his name when we arrived, then sat quietly sobbing in the waiting room, while the other pet owners awkwardly shuffled their feet, looked at each other, and talked very quietly, trying to pretend I wasn't there.

I continued to cry like a little girl with a skinned knee when the vet called us in, and I tried to tell her how just maybe the problem was with the cat's teeth. She took him away and weighed him, and confirmed on her return he was still losing weight -- and I think perhaps to humour me, agreed to book the cat in for a dental. The danger was, she told me, that he was an old cat and there is always a risk with general anaesthetic. I hesitated, but she laid it out plainly -- we could risk the operation, or the cat could starve to death. Hardly a choice.

The vet did have an idea for the meantime, and she fetched some special prescription cat food. The food was high calorie, high protein and especially palatable. She opened the tin for him, and let him lick some food from her fingers -- he seemed keen, so she gave me three tins on top of the opened one.

The cat was only required to eat one tin of food a day, and all seemed fine for a couple of days. I agreed with the vet to postpone the dental until we'd fattened up the cat a bit more, and we we went away for the weekend. A phone call to my neighbour on Sunday confirmed he was still behaving and eating reasonably well.

The girl and I decided to come to my parents house to keep an eye on the cat until they got back from holiday later in the week, and it was only a day or two before he was back to refusing food again.

I called the vet again on Thursday when my parents returned (shocked to see such an old and thin looking cat in the place of the one they'd left, two weeks before) and even though they were clearly busy, when the receptionist talked to the vet, they were able to fit in the cat the next day for his dental.

The girl and I separately spent the whole day wondering and worrying about the cat. I counted down the hours until 4.30 when I could call my Dad and find out what the outcome was. The good news came that the cat had behaved well, and was awake following the procedure. The bad news he told me was that they found nothing wrong with the cat's teeth, instead they were in remarkably good condition.

I was practically crushed. If the blood tests revealed nothing and a dental exam revealed nothing, then it must really be something like a tumour. What I hadn't been told on the phone -- annoyingly -- was the vet had decided the cat's gums were inflamed, especially on one side were he was particularly shy and they had given him antibiotics. That night the cat polished off a whole tin of his special prescription food. Unrealistically, I got my hopes up.

Saturday and Sunday followed with the cat showing no interest in any food, and my hopes faded that he was still full from eating a whole tin on Friday night. On Sunday my parents began force-feeding the cat his antibiotic tablets he was refusing to take voluntarily, and now it's Monday and he seems like perhaps, just maybe, he might be a little brighter and a little more inclined to eat.

Tomorrow once again he returns to the vet, where they will ask for a long-lasting antibiotic injection for the cat in place of the tablets, and a steroid shot to boost his appetite.

It's an update, it's where we are up to, but I don't know where we go from here. It's been so up and down emotionally last week and this weekend that I can't even speculate. We just have to remember he's the best cat in the world, the cat who once ate an entire wood pigeon (leaving only one foot) and we aren't letting him go anywhere yet.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone

In an effort to get some training in for Peru, I joined two fellow trekkers for a walk in the Chilterns, an area of "outstanding natural beauty". It was rated as seven out of 10 in difficulty, about 20km and 5 hours of walking. No problem, I thought.

First the good news: I was not noticeably less fit than either of my counterparts. In parts after steep uphill climbs where I'd be feeling a little warm and out of breath, they seemed to mirror my own reactions -- and most importantly, it didn't take me long to recover. Heart and lungs seem to be in excellent working order.

Continuing the good news theme, my hiking boots are incredibly comfortable and there was not even a hint of a blister or rubbing all day. An excellent buy there, and I think we can safely say they are broken in.

The bad news is I am in incredible pain. Somewhere along the way the steep downhill descents must have proved too much for my knees -- and if you hadn't guessed by the fact I am updating in the middle of the day, I am home from work sick today as I can barely stand up. Completing the walk yesterday was very difficult and painful as my knee became stiffer and more unyielding. The doctor has told me today I have strained the ligaments, and I need to rest it. I can also put an ice pack on it twice a day and take anti-inflammatory drugs three times a day. It's a good job I have a stash of the latter in the cupboard.

My research on the internet tells me this kind of thing is quite common, and unsurprisingly associated with steep downhill descents. I was probably going too quickly. For Peru, if not before, I will need walking poles and a knee support -- and I think a small supply of medication in my luggage.

It's frustrating, I want to be out walking and training in the gym, and right now I can't do either. But I'll crawl the Inca trail on my hands and knees if I have to.

Luckily, Jay...

I stole this idea from Non-Blondie, who has more recently started blogging again, and whose wit is equalled only by her charm. Seriously, go visit her blog. I'll wait here.

It's simple enough, put luckily, and your name into google and then list the results. It helps if you are easily amused, or bored. Or both.

Luckily Jay took our advice early on in the planning stages, which left him free to make the best position choices of his tailpipes.
luckily Jay and Bern had a bit of respite from me.
Luckily, Jay’s wife Pat brought out the Brandy and a fine selection of miniatures they’d collected
Luckily, Jay is not only a successful comedian, television personality and accomplished car collector - he's also one heckuva nice guy
Luckily, Jay has had the foresight to recognize this.
Luckily, Jay took over as the national coach just then and I could systematically plan my comeback.
Luckily Jay didn't have a class that afternoon so I called him and told him what happened.
Luckily, Jay's lyrics lend more griminess to a track that has echoes of futurism and will be on the upcoming Notorious soundtrack
Luckily, Jay's problems with the electric got fixed MUCH faster than at the Lounge Ax show
Luckily, Jay, Barry and Mike were equally as dance-worthy