One of the great certainties of life on the dole is that you adopt a routine just as much as if you were working. Only you don't get a company car.

My routine is very simple these days. Some people will say I need to get a life, others that I don't know I have one. Some will say that I'm a Has-Been, others that I never have been. They're all wrong of course. But if you don't have money, then your richness of life must be found elsewhere.

I now find some of my richness of life at the local Central Library. A rip-roaring rollercoaster ride it might not be, but it happens to contain a microcosm of life all on its own. As I entered yesterday a bunch of carol singers in black uniforms chanted through Silent Night in the library foyer, with some very happy guy conducting from sheet music. They seem very tuneful and together, I doubt the conductor is needed.. Or maybe he is?... I heard a bum note there. God will not be pleased.

Never mind them, I've got better things to do than watch carol singers smitten by thunderbolts. I sit down to do my stuff on the net. A quick glance around and I notice my young lady friend is nowhere to be seen. What? After that wonderful introduction I wrote in my last post? I mean, there's such a thing as being fashionably late, but I wasn't expecting a no-show. Women. Blow their cover and there's no pleasing them.

Irritating Person of the Week

Or maybe she was avoiding the guy in the next cubicle. Clearly an african native judging by the ethnic websites he was looking at. Good grief, surely not a Zimbabwean spy checking up on my blog entries? No, something far more insidious. He opened a bag of sweets and chomped his way through them without any discretion at all. In the quiet library atmosphere I could hear every squelch and the smell was indescribable. If God has reloaded his Thunderbolter, please smite him with both barrels.

You just know there's no justice....