They're back. Having reconnoitered the library the other day, an even greater horde of little barbarians have stormed the premises in a quest to occupy their equally little minds with positive activity. The teachers hiss and hush to no avail as they spot something that interests them and erupt into frantic efforts to point at something first.
"I'm only good at the world stuff." Said one child as a statement of his intellectual achievement. Well good for you son. They walked past me on the wa
I am officially at war. Never wanted it to come to this but my Claims Advisor has gone too far. After inspiring me to apoplexy the week before, she made sure there were no independent witnesses in the office and attempted to provoke an incident, one which presumably would have me escorted off the premises and quite probably to a waiting police car outside. Sorry, I'm not falling for that one.
As I look for work, I record each step I make, and I mean fairly exhaustively. That list has satisfi
Back in 1908, Swindon was inundated with 15 inches of snow. Thats more then we got yesterday. The result of all those warnings of blizzards and sub-zero temperatures resulted in this picturesque scattering of snowflakes.
This does in happen Swindon - a couple of decades ago there was a country wide snowfall over Britain. Drifts six feet deep cut off entire communities and made travel all but impossible. In Swindon, not a single snowflake. I would love to know why Swindon so rarely gets
My mobile phone beeped. That's almost a social event for me, and whilst most texts are usually reminders of phone services or the occaisional marketing ploy, I still give it a read. Just in case.
Remember that you're due to attend a course the message said. Eh? What course? Why wasn't I informed? You see, with the current 'One strike and you're destitute' regime absence could cost me my payments. So naturally I'm a little annoyed by this bureaucratic oversight. Thanks for telling me guys.
Top Gear USA? You gotta be kiddin', right? Out of curiosity I watched a few episodes. As part of a franchise there were aspects I found familiar. The stage set, the theme tune, the general format of the show, and having some celebrity race a cheap car around a track. All well and good. But of course this was an american show and so I was struck by cultural differences.
Firstly the presenters, who despite their obvious enthusiasm for wrecking telegraph poles, abandoned houses, pulling trains,
My fame as a jobseeker knows no bounds. Yesterday some bloke spoke to me as I passed him on the pavement of the local high street. He was visiting the the numerous job agencies and must have recognised me from one of those helpful 'How To Search For Jobs' courses that I've been attending over the last year.
"Waste of time, innit?" He said as he loomed over me with a psychopathic smile. He's a big lad. "None 'uv these agencies 'ave got nuffink."
Well you just have to keep on trying. Thank
It was bound to end in tears. A movement of cold air from Siberia plus an Atlantic storm coming up from the Bay of Biscay. Swindon rarely gets any snow despite being inland. Usually the worse areas are the eastern half of England, Scotland, and Ireland This time Swindon would not escape. To be fair, we were on the edge of amber weather warnings and didn't get hit as hard as some parts of the country, but up to foot of snow in Swindon is almost a natural disaster of memorable proportions.
I
For some time now the weather has been dry but cloudy. Sometimes the breeze has been a refreshing change, on other days a dull humidity has made the day uncomfortable to some small degree. So far we haven't had any sign of the blazing summer our global warmers have predicted.
The library has been unbearably stale, air conditioning or not. After a quick visit yesterday lunchtime, I'd had enough of it, and went home via the alleyway behind the Old College site. I'll miss the unkempt foliage w
What shall I do? I've finished my daily business at the library, had my lunch, and there's nothing worth watching on television for the next couple of hours. Aww what the heck, I'll take a walk around Lawns, a local 'open space', for a bit of fresh air.
For a while I sat on the ornamental steps that mark the end of the formal grounds and overlook the low lying suburbs beyond the grassy meadow that sloped away from me. Maybe it isn't the most stiring view to be had in the area, but on a pleas
Yesterday was warm. Very warm. We brits aren't used to that level of warmness. Even hardened package holidaymakers were breathing out heavily and wiping sweat from their brow as they dragged their kids from one place to another. I had no choice but to drag myself.
They do say that only mad dogs and englishmen go out in the mid day sun. Guilty. As I left the library after lunchtime to head for the shops, I crossed the triangular space where our centotaph stands. Standing in the shade of the
Most of cooking is very quicky and easy. Fifteen minutes and I'm done. Sometimes though when I've got a spare bit of cash I like to prove Jamie Oliver knows absolutely nothing about cooking by reinventing the entire genre in the prvacy of my own home. So it was yesterday, when I happened upon some quality products at tjhe supermarket on sale at bargain prices.
I once remember reading a bit of wisdom that said "Love and cooking such be approached with complete abandon". I've always though spo
In what way can a man describe himself as free? I don't mean John Inman style availability (ugh), but rather that sense of freedom that allows you to pursue interests without harm or hindrance. There is the restraint of law, applied by the state to control our actions, which is identifiably a boundary for the lawful. Of course if you happen to be criminally minded then it's a challenge of sorts, but then you risk even more confinement.
Strictly speaking our laws defend our freedom, even thou
The french are upset. Their entry for this years Eurovision Song Contest is to be sung in... wait for it... English! No, surely not.... The French are proud of their language, once the language of diplomacy. It seems that a nation whose quest to eradicate english words in their conversational language has now reached the ultimate irony. French politicians are dismayed - but good grief people, are you really taking the Eurovision Song Contest seriously?
Worsening Situation of the Week
This
Yesterday I looked out the back window to view the monochrome vista of wintery Swindon. It was all pretty quiet. The garage mechanics had gone home, the yard was silent, and vehicles weren't moving on the streets about. Oho! There he is... Mr Fox, a fine russet furred specimen emerging from under the tall white fence that guards the old college site, where I imagine the Mr Fox has set up home.
He trotted up the slope without a care in the world, only breaking into a run to cross the road. Cu
Now that I've been put on fortnightly signing again I have to fill in a form declaring what I've done to find work. The first question asks whether I've completed the criteria of my Jobseekers Agreement. This means all those weekly activities that the Department of Work and Pensions insist on even if they won't improve my employment chances one iota.
If I were to check the 'NO' box, I would have to fill in a series of searching and embarrasing questions, not to mention concoct some inventive
A lovely sunny morning. It really is. Mind you, despite the sunshine, when I left the house earlier today it was very chilly, clouds of breath marking my progress, and if it hadn't been for my steady pace, I would have felt the cold very quickly.
Today was upposed to be the day I started my forklifting course. Some people people might not appreciate how momentous this opportunity is. I sepent nearly two decades in warehousing and no-one would train me on forklifts. That's what you get for dr
When it comes to job interviews, you can tell a lot about the company from the information and advice they give you. Or not. It's been a while since I smelled a rat but something about this woman who phoned me a couple of days ago made me wonder. I quickly realised she was from an agency, though she din't tell me that, nor did she give any information about the job I'd originally enquired about. Not a good sign.
"Do you have transport?" She asked.... No.
"Have you got a bike?".... No.
Not so long ago an office manager held up my CV during an interview and demanded to know why I thought I was famous. He had in fact completely missed the point. Firstly, I never used or even suggested the word at all. Sencondly, did he really expect me to be modest during a job interview? Too late. He was outraged by what he thought was pomposity. He was after all a small time office manager and meeting people with something to say for themselves, however modest, was beyond his experience and th
The gas bill arrived this morning. For the first time since I moved in nearly eight years ago, I've made a loss on that particular service. Worse still, the supply company have automatically doubled my payments. I can't afford to pay that much. My benefits don't cover domestic bills. It seems a bit odd in a way but all I get is Jobseekers Allowance plus Housing Benefit, and I have to pay for everything out of those two sources, which has never left me with a huge profit but now energy prices are
Today is not a good day. And the subject of my woe? That's an interestng question in itself. It ought to be about my car, the Eunos Cabriolet slowly disintegrating with a little help from a vandal or two. Reason being that it's gone. Vanished. Disappeared.
I mean, did someone ctually bother to steal it? You couldn't just drive it away. But gone it most certainly has, snatched away more or less from under my nose yesterday afternoon.I only realised it was gone late into the evening. I doubt i
Some years a Cessna took off from Edinburgh. The pilot was giving his girlfriend a joyride in the local area. Unfortunately the pilot left his radio on 'transmit' which made it impossible for air traffic control to contact anyone on that frequency for more than an hour, during which personal conversations and long periods of intimate silence were heard.
What astonishes me is not the application to join the Half-Mile-Club, but that he succeeded in intimate relations within the very cramped co
The plan was to head for the hills and spend the day wearing myself out on the ridges of the Marlborough Downs. On the way I took it into my head to investigate a corner of the local countryside I'd never strayed into before. The grass was incredibly thick. The blades were almost six feet long, though not standing upright, growing sideways in thick layers of the stuff. I've never seen anything like that in England before.
After ten minutes of wading through that lot, I was knackered. It was
The weathermen keep threatening downpours, they keep on showing amber triangles on the television news, but every day just lately (apart from one exception) starts out fine and sunny. Like today for instance, though that has meant I had to pull the blinds down at the library so that I can actually see what's on the computor monitor.
Pull the blinds down? Lucky for me Dragon Lady wasn't on duty, especially since I'm sat ten feet in front of the helpdesk. That did however provide me with a gra
I sat down yesterday in the Town Gardens to enjoy a good book in the warm sunshine and chilly breeze. All that was missing was that seaside ambience.
Swindon does have a seagull population which is a bit strange since we don't have any sea shore whatsoever, and you'd need to travel some distance to find any expanse of dull grey water. I wonder if they've heard about this global warming thing and reserved nesting space for when the worlds melting icebergs raise the sea level to Swindon Town
There it was again - Another flicker of light. What on earth is going on? Curiosity got the better of me and I opened the back window last night to try and see what was causing that phenomenon.
It was a pretty ordinary evening. Not too cold, perhaps a bit damp, and apart from the odd swish of a passing car, or the flitter of a bat to and fro, nothing stirred. The local cat was making its way home across the yard, a sign that the foxes were coming out to play.
Then I realised what those s
