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
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
My semi-supervisor, J (he 's in charge of us unemployed placements on site, even though he's an ordinary rankless pleb himself) told me this morning that we were going to have another new starter today, in order to help with the buildup toward the Big Stocktake in a couple of weeks time. That doesn't bode well. The only three I know without placements were refused access to the last premises they turned up at. Oh boy...
Later J passed by and explained tghe new boy wouldn't be starting today
Monday means back to work. Despite the early morning start I couldn't resist staying up last night and checking out a program about animal life along the upper west African Rift valley, that starts in Ethiopia and cuts south. It includes the worlds only lava lake, and I was genuinely suprised by the number of african volcano's littering the area. Great shots of foxes hunting mole-rats, mountain gorillas sitting around waiting for something to happen, or simply just playing and having a great tim
It's a properly celtic morning today. Cold, certainly, that sort of insidious damp chill you can never feel warm in whatever you do. I look out the window at the pale blue sky, static undulations of blue-grey alto-cumulus tinged with gold, and that grey claggy horizon with a distant mountain range of cumulus far off in the west.
It's also a very quiet day. Sundays are sometimes like that, and with these dull grey mornings you usually get a very subdued response from people. One old chap said
Britains terrorism threat has been raised from 'substantial' to 'severe'. The British public might not notice, the authorities claim. They're right, we won't, because unless an event actually happens life will go on as normal. A part of me is still a little suspicious though. I remember that moment some years back when the army cordoned off Heathrow Airport in a blaze of publicity. Was that a 'severe' threat situation? If so, where are all the tanks now?
I have wondered for some time that ev
Bored... Very bored... Okay, lets turn on the television. You never know, there might actually be something worth watching. I think most of us have noticed the irony of having hundreds more channels and hundreds less to watch.
As it happened, I stumbled on a program about sexually predatory women. Now, before you think I'm about to embark on a fantasy, this was a program that looked at the the changing morality in modern times with female affluence and internet anonymity, not to mention outr
The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People should learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Cicero (55BC)
(Courtesy of Councillor David Glaholm)
Councillor Glaholm makes the point in the Swindon Advertiser that nothing changes. He's right of course, but then why would he not
Today was my first day back in the workplace for twenty months more or less. Twenty months!
So how was it? Compatred to the heavily male orientated and sometimes belligerent and nasty warehouse enviroment, it was suprisingly light hearted. It's local, I only have to walk down the road to get there, and there's a quite a co-operative atmosphere.
You would think that was perfect. Well... No, because it's exhausting work. It isn't just that I've been out of the workplace for so long, it's a
Only when I let go of what I am, can I become what I can be
Lao Tsu (400BC)
This afternoon I saw that piece of philosophy hung on an office wall. What a fascinating insight. What it should mean is that only by letting go of the past and any inhibitions learned can you progress. Unfortunately, the chinese fella who wrote this was only concerned with a positive application. It could just as easily mean that a man must hang on to success or fall by the wayside. Sorry, Lao, but you said it. Ult
