Once more unto the Job Centre, dear friends, once more...

Apart from my regular signing days I sometimes get called in to attend a more serious interview. I think that's just in case I've charmed the pants off my advisor and get away with all manner of shenanigans. As if. Most of the time I feel one step away from a cancellation of payments and believe me, the Job Centre's do that on purpose. Maybe it's right that they should in that claimants shouldn't get too attached to claiming the dole for a living, but nonetheless it can get a little stressful occaisionally.

On this occaision the lady collected me from the waiting area and with a weary detachment went through the usual rigmarole of checking my credentials as a true claimant (yea brother, I have seen the light) and forwarding me onto yet another interminable course to try and assure my ascension to the paradise of the workplace.

If there's one thing a bloke likes to see, it's a pretty lady who's bored out of her mind. If only I were younger and not in a an office full of bored people with nothing to do but stare at what's going on around the next desk. Then again, it would help if the government upped my payments so I could afford to wine and dine. That way I could inject the money into the economy where it's needed. You know what I'm saying.

Seeing it Differently

How wrong can you be? I mean, we all back the wrong horse, buy the wrong DVD player, take pictures at the wrong time, and discover afterwards that you just tried to date an off duty policeperson. What? You haven't? Good grief, get a life.

Come to think of it, I used to regularly encounter warehousemen who sauntered past, blithely claiming they never made mistakes. Oh? Like all those pallets of rubber halloween toys that entered the warehouse seven years ago and never got put on the system at all?

I think by now many of them regard working in that warehouse as a mistake because the majority have been laid off. The company wanted to get rid of 'all the dead wood' as they saw it. What they actually got rid of was anyone who knew anything about how the stock was productively handled. And, incidentially, everyone who knew better than the amateur managers brought in to run the place.

So everyone makes mistakes. That does include me, I have to admit, because I worked for that company too. Also I tend to accept things I've known about for ages. Last night I found out that stone carvings of monsters and demons hanging off the side of medieval monuments are not necessarily called gargoyles. Some of them are merely grotesques. It turns out that a grotesque is a carven image that does nothing except look scary, whilst a gargoyle is a protruding device intended for channeling water. How fascinating.

But what, you may ask, is the significance of that interesting item of information? Well for me it's very enlightening, because I now understand that a certain fun part of my anatomy is slowly changing from grotesque to gargoyle as I get older.

Can't believe I just typed that out.