After the ribald and violent cacophany of the saturday night, last night was as quiet as the grave. Taking advantage of this unusual stillness I gave in to curiosity and sat down to watch the British Film Awards.
Award ceremonies aren't the sort of thing I usually watch. After the first few winners approach the microphone and say "Uuuh....", you kind of lose interest. Which is interesting in itself. I noticed that my attention varied in proportion to the awardee's ability and confidenc
In case anyone doesn't know, Archie is dead and Stacey did it. I imagine by this time the whole world has heard about that. Another thing everyone has probably already heard is that I don't like soap operas. That surreal glitziness of working class Coronation Street, that farcical drama and tragedy of rural life in Yorkshire, that irredeemably dystopic world of Albert Square. Those claustrophobic virtual worlds might be wonderful to some people, but seriously, I really don't care what happens. W
What a gloriously sunny day! Now that I spend four days a week locked inside 'The Bin' as the shop staff call it, sunlight is a rare commodity for me. What do you do on sunny days? I've forgotten. Well let's find out...
Sunbathing
I must admit, stripping off in these temperatures isn't a comfortable prospect. Despite the warm sun it's absolutely freezing out there. I remember when I was 14 years old I went on a skiing trip with the school to Austria. On the day we turned up there were young
Roughly every two or three days we get warnings on television about heavy snow. The familiar amber triangle displayed on our screens is getting a little boring, especially when nothing happens. Take today for instance. Despite "The end is nigh" every half hour on the news channel, I've witnessed nothing but fair weather. Lovely day out there. Birds are singing, children are playing, the boss is smiling, and I didn't have to wait for a library computer. What could be better? Apart from millions i
Today was another session at the Work Experience Programme, in which we are supposed to fit a jobsearch in between the various group activities. I always find this very frustrating because what I'd like to do is turn up and get on with it, without all these infant school distractions.
Todays distraction was about presentations, and our group (composed of the noisier elements of the class, myself included) were given a brief to assemble a presentation on facilities and assistance for drug and
It was a damp morning as I left my home for work. The first glimmers of twilight are now visible even on overcast days like this. The usual crowd were there. The builder waiting for his mate to pick him up, leaning against the tool-shop window. The young lad dressed up for inclement weather striding up the hill energetically. The lady-owner of the flower shop at the bottom of the hill, beginning her daily round of smoking outside. The newsagent, who for some reason only seems communicative when
The sound of heavy breathing made itself apparent as I sit here in the library. Poor chap sounds like he's going to expire of a heart attack before he gets to the second floor. I do sympathise, having to climb stairs all day at work too, but he's going to need oxygen at the top of this climb. He does make it to the top of the stairs, waddling slowly onto each step with weary persistence.
Hang on a minute... If that was such a physical performance, why isn't he breathing deeply and resting?
There's only word for it - gutted. Miss T has decided that our friendly department store isn't for her and she's arranged to get work experience at another one. So it looks like I won't be flirted with for the time being. Funny how you only miss these little interactions when they vanish. Never mind. I'm sure she'll make up for lost time at our next session together.
You see, that's how to survive the dreary tedium of joblessness.... Get a blonde to flirt with you. Works for me.
Ousted
Some bright individual has now decided that society would be a better place if there was zero rubbish. What a wonderful image. Almost reminds you of those whitewashed cottages hiding in the midst of verdant rose gardens. Don't see many of those these days. I think they fell into disuse about the same time Ealing Studios went bust.
The trouble is of course our beloved socialist government, who now have the power to enter your home and arrest you for littering it. These days we're not even all
These days my flying is limited to to the computer. But I still dream, and I hope you enjoy my artwork based on screenshots of my particular hobby.
Exuberance
I was sat at a computer the other day, browsing flight simulator forums and enjoying some banter about the Second World War, when I heard the light aeroplane flying around outside. That isn't unusual over Swindon. For some reason the town is on a north-south route for private flyers much to the chagrin of the controllers at Lyneham Ai
What a difference a layer of cloud makes in the first embers of daylight! Unlike Wednesday morning, today it was dark again when I made my way to work. It was bound to be one of those days. My boss made her usual cheerful appearance and said "I've got a little job for you."
Little jobs? Now that they've discovered stock they didn't know they had, they're dropping prices on almost everything and my boss informed me that my job was to write the new price on every tag. That meant checking throu
Today it was back at the work experience program, my very own infant school for out of work adults. It's an interesting experience because with each week the boredom level is clevery designed to increase to mind numbing tedium, so that the workplace actually becomes interesting. We all sat around playing Scrabble. No, really, we did, until the well-meaning advisor brought along a dictionary and proclaimed half our words out of bounds. Young T immediately upset the game board to show her displeas
Today began with my usual stroll down the hill to work. Up until now it's always been dark, but this morning was bright and sunny. Didn't expect that! It was, in retrospect, the day starting as it meant to continue...
The Great Stocktake has begun. Hordes of very important looking auditors have descended on us and today was the day the laughter died. KS and I have been exiled to a area out the back, a sort of dusty and disused chamber of rubbish, looking extraordinarily like a castle dungeon
It can't have escaped anyones attention that Toyota are having some problems with their cars. The issues with accelerator and brake pedals have sparked deep concerns especially after the tragic crash in the US of a car whose brakes failed on the approach to a road junction.
Before I go on about car production and road safety, I can't help noticing that the driver whose brakes failed simply prayed he'd drive through unharmed. Clearly God was on his lunchbreak that day, but that said, God help
The Big Stocktake is due in a couple of days, the managers are nervous, and the weekend shift has predictably left chaos in their wake. No pressure then.
My paltry duty today was to bring some kind of order to the rows of cardboard boxes behind the stairs, the most chaotic region of all, and so off I went, wading through collapsing piles of boxes, waste polythene, and discarded piles of clothes. This is life on the sharp end of Stockrooming. It's a strange experience working in a singularity
Yesterday young miss T leaned over my shoulder and chatted away in her usual jovial manner as I attempted to stay focused on my jobsearch. Of course I failed. No man is capable of multitasking, young pretty blondes demand attention, and the male instinct to flirt is impossible to resist. It also happens we have compatible personalities, which is a bit worrying, because she's somewhat less than studious nor a law-abiding character at all.
"I've had enough of this." She announced in her usual
I happened to spot a book at my local library today, memoirs of a man named Alfred Williams, who was born in 1877 and spent twenty years in the Great Western Railways workshops in Swindon. It seems that he was a man who enjoyed the Great Outdoors more than the hellish graft of his daily grind (literally). In his own words...
One has to die before his mates in the shed would think there is anything the matter with him. Then, in nine cases out of ten - especially if he happens to be one of the
I finally achieved the impossible today. The bins were cleaned up and emptied of incorrectly placed stock.
It's a funny thing really. How do we measure the importance of achievement? In the grand scale of things, what I did today is small potato's. Okay, the boss is pleased, and that might affect my chances of getting a full time job, thus add to my properity and reputation, but in real terms the event doesn't interest anyone else and has probably been forgotten already.
What about savi
It might not suprise anyone but the snow showers never happened. Such is British weather. It was however very cold and I hear that we've been through one of the coldest winters of living memory, the average temperatures worse than the bitter and elongated winters of 1947/48 and 1961/62. Thankfully we didn't get that much snow. All I got was the sniffles.
It was however raining this morning. Not heavily, just a sort drizzly dampness that makes the pedestrianised street somewhat slippery, even
Itching on my left index finger, scratching it, next day waking up with swollen finger plus blood infection ---> Result; doctor cut it open, giving me a huge bandage, getting sick leave and unable to do the simplest tasks without needing endless time...
Last night I saw the glare of a waning moon coming through the back window. A bright moon is always an invite to stare into the night sky but to be honest I was disappointed. Although the sky was clear, the moon wasn't really penetrating the darkness and it still felt like nighttime. You may well say it was bound to be, but a couple of nights before the moon had been nearly full, lighting the streets, yards, and alleys at the back of my home like a pale version of the sun, light grey clouds drif
Time to start work on another row of cardboard boxes, all slightly deformed by the weight of those above them, and recognised only by marker pen grafitti. Stockchecking isn't rocket science. Open the box, count the contents, make a record of the result. It isn't always souch a welcome task however. In one warehouse a large bin stuffed with nearly eight hundred paperback books required a confirmation of the expected total and the bored individual left a penciled message "Probably" next to the opt
Another day, another dollar, and in order to earn my pittance, another early morning. It was dark outside when I strolled down the hil. On my left was the Old College site, looking a little forlorn behind its white painted plywood fence behind the impromptu hedge of brambles and discarded rubbish.
I always remain astounded by how quickly trees emerge from the seed. There's a small one that's growing just the other side of that white fence, only a year or two old. Birds have nested in it and
