Another day, another job agency. Part of the ritual of finding work is submitting to the high street slave traders. A very necessary evil. The days when some old woman with horn rim glasses, blue rinse, and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth handed you a card with a vacancy written on it are long gone. Now they're all plush offices with ettiquette and protocol droids ruling the roost with an iron hand.

In fairness the young lady who handled my case was pleasant enough despite her misgivings over my appearance. Her dreams of a Nigel Havers' clone having been crushed, she put me through the usual psychological and data input testing. I notice she didn't tell me how I did.

While I was waiting one of the other ladies in the office was busy on the phone using one of those swish new headphones. All of a sudden she started singing loudly. All the other odffice driods didn't react at all. Must be the sort of person she is, I guess. Finally one of her colleagues came over to pick up the phone and the jovial woman handed over with "There you go. That's your 'hold' music."

Way to go Lady.

Be Afraid!

Occaisionally I see adverts on television showing some strange machine designed to carry passengers through all sorts of wierd and wonderful gyrations. Gone are the days when a ride on a metal horse rotating on a carousel were the in-thing. There's a loss of innocence these days. Good harmless fun has been replaced by these outlandish shock-a-minute rides Fairground rides these days must subject the customers to levels of accelerated gravity known only to fighter pilots as they're whisked around a death defying elevated railway from hell.

Places like Alton Towers and Thorp Park are renowned for these fairground rides. Unfortunately the companies that run these attractions are complaining that too many britons are 'scaredie cats'. Well there you go. Rides so frightening no-one wants to go on them. However, I suspect that ticketpricephobia and longboringwaitophobia are suffered by a great deal of people these days.

Not Again!

We being warned that Britain is on the verge of another recession. Pardon? I wasn't aware we were out of the last one yet.