Out of the blue

No more Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads at 9 in the morning. No more Top Gear re-runs. No more 'Pop down to Waitrose for me if you've got nothing else to do.' Despite my feelings of self doubt after yesterday's second interview, I have been successful in obtaining employ. Hooray for me. I start on Tuesday morning, and I promise I will be a good boy, especially now that I know what it's like on the outside. I will not need the Nurse Ratched treatment in order to toe the line, and that's a promise. Yes sir. I also apologise for anything beastly I may have said in previous posts. It would be a real doozy if I got fired for a dooce before I even started work, eh?

This has been the longest period since I left college that I have been without a job, and though fun when it started, it has definitely begun to wear thin. So with a spring in my step, I will return to daily shaving, daily commuting and daily grumbling at the water cooler. I will let you all know how it goes. What lies before me is a few days of genuine rest, where I can get up without thinking about application forms or daily email prompts from online employment services, where I don't have to check my bank balance against the calendar (birthdays, Mother's Day, my eldest daughter's first school trip - these are all coming up) while biting my lip.

It all starts (where else?) at the Brittannia Stadium (yet again, fucking hell!) with the replay against the sodding Potters this evening. I have a bad feeling about this, is all I will say. But at least - even if we did win - Chelsea away would be the prize, so that makes it all better. Then it's, er, Chelsea away. Bah. No matter, nobody can piss on my bonfire today. I'm a minger!

Quite enough of that

Update: Received a call saying they want to see me tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon. At last!

I'm not even going to mention the game yesterday. It doesn't merit me wasting any of the copious free time I have at my disposal. Instead, on this pissy Monday in the middle of this interminable winter, I will have a quick moan about the job situation.



Since my last post on the subject, which was somewhere around two weeks ago, I am STILL waiting for a second interview date for one of the jobs I applied for. I won't mention the name of the organisation, but suffice it to say that they seem to treat their recruitment process in much the same way as they treat the captive public, who have little choice but to buy their products. No doubt (and I hope that I'm not giving the game away here) there will be a request to attend 3 interviews at the same time just as I have more or less completely given up hope of getting anywhere. There is - it seems - little I can do about it, caught as I am with a recruitment agency, who are themselves somehow brokering a deal on the job with another agency. My contact says she is not able to communicate directly with the hiring manager, so in a word - fucked. Which doesn't mean I don't feel like running over to her and grabbing her by the lapels (a la our famous leader) and yelling "Stupid bitch!" into her ear because there's nothing worse than waiting.

In the meantime, I am preparing for the other second interview which is scheduled for this Wednesday afternoon. I have no idea what I might be asked to do or say however, and will need (I guess) to think on my feet. From there? More waiting, but I don't think too long either way, as these people do seem to be true to their word in communicating their decisions early.

Truth be told, I just want a job now. Any bloody job will do, just so long as I can get myself out of the house for a while.

I hate to say it

But I fucking told you so. Lucky to heave a draw (thanks to some ridiculous refereeing, it has to be said) with the Potters; and Vieira (rightly) banned for 3 games after spitefully kicking Whelan in the nuts. That, at least, will be a liability (why THE FUCK did we ever sign him? Will someone PLEASE tell me?) lost for a while. Sadly, there are too many other liabilities in the team to think about. Now Bellamy is reminding everyone what an obnoxious little Welsh git he is, though he can occasionally play some decent football. And of course, the filthy Rags scraped a jammy win against the has-beens of Milan.

Incredibly, we are still in 4th place, which says as much about the paucity of the English Premier League this season as it does about Mr Cook's 'journey' or the ludicrous amounts already spent on players who have demonstrated such a poor return on investment. To back up that last statement, I will simply say: Roque Santa Cruz, which roughly translates from the Colombian as 'Totally Shit'.



Some dick on the radio was blabbing on about the lack of creative talent in the game the other day, saying that Rooney and, er, no-one else - oh, all right then, Stevie G as well - was carrying the torch for creative play since Ronaldo joined Real, and that only Adam Johnson - out of all the players in the Premier League - could even dream of approaching the sublime standards set by the ginger Scouse. That's as may be, and watching yet another dour performance at Anfield the other evening, it would be hard to propose any cogent argument against. I tend to fall in the Clough camp when it comes to the reasoning that professional footballers should really know what they are doing, and it is sometimes hard to fathom why so many well paid stars fail to produce the goods so often, though I don't deny that a good motivator can make all the difference in the world.

As for Mancini. Well, I was never that impressed (though for purely partisan reasons, anything has to be an improvement on Sparky) and never took to that ludicrous scarf/suit combo. It could in fact be seen as a symbol of the way he is trying to make the lads play, in that it sits uncomfortably and does not look right. He will learn that catenaccio is not City's way, or indeed any way to play in the Premier League. The fans don't like it, and the players can't deal with it. I read today that Mancini's previous roles called only for him to be the players' coach, and that the other stuff around management was left to an army of others to deal with. Now that he has had to take on the psychology/media relations/people management elements of the job, he is struggling to cope. I know precious little about the set-up in Italian football, but it seems odd to say the least that someone with such limited experience would be thought suitable to boss a club like City.

So - what are my considered views of this weekend's fixture? Will I be able to reproduce the form I have showed to raise me to the top of a very small league? Only time will tell, as I predict yet another 1-1 draw. Prove me wrong City. Prove me wrong.

To the 5 Towns

Somebody recently asked me to name the 5 boroughs of New York. Off the top of my head I only managed 4, mistakenly citing New Jersey as one instead of Queens. I later discovered that NJ is sometimes known as the 6th borough, so that was all right.



This evening, for the 3rd time of asking, the Blues face a team from somewhere almost as romantic, edgy, vibrant and intoxicating as the Big Apple - Stoke City. A team whose history easily rivals our own, especially when it comes to mismanagement and under-achievement. They did have to endure Alan Ball (did I ever mention that he - as a young boy - once kicked my grandmother when she was cleaning at the pub where his family lived? I have never forgiven him for that, nor for what he did to City, and I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever achieve closure) but were never cursed with Malcolm Allison.

Aside from the granny kicking, I do have other ties with the '5 Towns'. I used to have a great Aunt who lived in Hanley, and it was not uncommon for us to go and visit her for a weekend. I realise that I'm talking about Stoke, but it used to give me quite a feeling of excitement (we would always arrive at night) as we came over the hill to see the lights laid out in a carpet below, this being the nearest thing to a metropolis my Oswestry eyes had clapped themselves on. The excitement was fairly short-lived, as I would be forced to endure bingo night at Hanley Workingmen's Club, complete with the choking fumes of a thousand Senior Service, sustained only by a packet of cheese 'n' onion and a blackcurrant cordial with no ice. The next day my Auntie Annie (who I remember as smoking roll-ups made with liquorice paper) would send me to the shop for a pint of milk, her thick Potteries accent made even thicker by the countless Old Holborn, issuing dark warnings about some of the kids in the area. It wasn't a pleasant place by day, with the spell of the street lights taken away.

One of my oldest friends is a Stoke fan, and I have endured more than my fair share of watching them play. The pinnacle (though I prefer nadir as a description) being a New Year's Day match at Griffin Park (a terrible ground to get to and from) in horizontal rain. It ended, I believe, 1-0 to Stoke, though I made my excuses and left before the goal, not having been adequately fortified by my half-time snack of a giant Mars bar, and conscious of the 30 minute walk and 40 minute tube ride back home.

Sadly, I don't hold out much hope for us tonight. The Britannia Stadium is a hateful place to play football, and we hardly passed them off the park at Eastlands the other day. My prediction: a draw if we're lucky, but more likely they will beat us.

Ann the Pan

So much blather in the world, don't you agree? I've seen it on Twitter, on the news, and at the last on Facebook, but the original telly viewing was where it counted. And I'm not talking 4OD or iPlayer or ITV Player or Demand Five or any of that shit. No, this was viewed as God intended, when it was scheduled to be broadcast, and I was sitting in a chair with toast when I watched it. I felt positively vintage.

What I watched was part of a strand, as I believe the TV pros call it, on the history of the Bible. Perfect Sunday evening viewing, because it fits in with those Natural World type docs and Lost Kingdoms of Africa - you know the shit I'm talking about - and I had certain expectations of such a programme. Howard Jacobson has been heavily trailed as part of it, and I have always liked his style - erudite and impassioned - with a sense of humour to boot. I had not really seen any, planning as I was to catch up at some point, and was rather disappointed to find that the Right Honourable Ann Widdecombe MP was fronting (and that, dear readers, is very much the cromulent word here) the episode I was due to watch, which was to be on the theme of the Ten Commandments.

After a minute or two, I realised that I have met people like Ms Widdecombe in my life. Presented with an argument she doesn't like and/or cannot respond to, she chooses to ignore it and carry on regardless, and such was the case in this hardly exhaustive and utterly pointless quest to discover the origins and lasting appeal of the Mosaic Law. Seeking to find out more about this Moses character, she pushed her enormous (presumably) un-sucked knockers up the steps of a university somewhere so that she could pick the large brain of a rather foxy professor and find out a little more. Oh, and find out more she did; to the effect that most Biblical scholars these days do not think that the great man ever existed, largely because there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever to substantiate any of the stuff probably written several hundred years after the event by a number of chiselers in order to make capital on it. The numbers in the Bible, we were told by the foxy (Mediterranean looking, as it happens) prof, would certainly have left some mark on the land, as we would expect several million people to have been involved. There was no proof of Moses' existence. Ann was having none of this. She became very frosty very quickly, and her tone grew brusque - almost peremptory.

"But you cannot prove he didn't exist!" she said at last, with a tone of empty triumph in her voice, before heaving her vast (never milked) mammaries towards an unsuspecting Rabbi, who (with his wife present, of course) showed Ann the two of everything (sink, cooker, fridge - you name it) he had in his kitchen. He had only one wife, but he followed some 613 religious laws.

She then went on to canvas various other interested parties, all the while extolling the virtues of some kind of puritanical golden age, exemplified by a pastor in the South West of England in the 17th Century who saved the sinners with his strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, postulating that somehow by following these edicts today, we would be able to eliminate the hoody threat and turn around the awful broken families/rampant alcoholism/nihilism which blights our great country today. None of this - needless to say - took into account any historical considerations around poverty, disease, abuse and inequality which were even worse back then, although you could get a bottle of gin for a ha'penny, so it can't have been all bad.

Her humongous diddies at last came up against Christopher Hitchens, looking splendidly dissolute, and a slightly rabid Stephen Fry (and this is where the blather comes in. Twitter was almost as excited as it was about the Paperchase scandal) who flecked her with his spittle at an Intelligence Squared debate on the virtues or otherwise of Catholicism. Vociferous was, I think, the correct term to describe Stephen, and I was (and am) wholeheartedly behind him - oo-er Missus. Ann's response, in the best Parliamentary tradition, was (effectively) to tell him to stop shouting.

Silly cow.

The Only Living Team

We are in the middle of the bursting of the Southsea bubble. Sorry...



After what can only be described as a routine victory over the Trotters, what more is there to say about the state of the game? On a day when Portsmouth were thrown a temporary lifeline before what appears to be certain doom, I remember a commentator saying at the Pompey game recently that City could be described as perhaps the only club in the Premier League who are not facing financial crisis. One could have reasonably riposted the 'prudent' Arsenal, I suppose, but with mine own eyes I have seen the pitiful state of affairs at Stadium Developments. I will say no more.

Poor Chester City, as we have heard, are on their last legs, having been docked 25 points for going into administration, sitting rank bottom of the Blue Square, and now suffering their players refusing to get on the team coach for an away game because they haven't been paid for months. Casting aside the fact that they might possibly fare better without their players, it's sobering to think that things have come to this pass. Having been out of work myself for a while now, I can only begin to imagine how the lads at such an outfit could possibly survive for any period of time. Neither are they (Chester City, I mean) alone. Cardiff and Southend have both been up before the money beak, and both granted a short-term stay of execution. We are all painfully aware of the situation at Liverpool, and even the mighty Rags - with all their successes (and this is surely what all the money is about?) of recent years - are but a hop and a skip away from melt-down. City are cocooned for the nonce of course, shielded by the money of the only solvent sovereign state (China has a good credit rating, which is not quite the same thing) in the world, but - for how long?

On the pitch, there's not a huge amount to cheer about - Adam Johnson excepted - and a team less toothless than Bolton (say, Hull City, for example) would certainly have turned us over. His goal aside, Adebayor looked fairly ordinary. No touch, little understanding of space around him, and far too easily dispossessed. Toure is a liability, far too slow and poor distribution. Zabaleta looked OK (for once) and De Jong was as determined as ever. Tevez continues to win my respect, but got just a touch lucky with the penalty. Bridge - very poor; Kompany - solid but lumpen; Barry - disappointing (as always - solid enough, but woefully lacking in imagination); SWP - kicked off the park; Given (unusually) - shaky; Vieira - poor (as expected) and inexplicable as to why he has been signed. Sylvinho didn't get enough of the game to be able to judge (especially from my vantage point of Iraq Goals, which kept freezing every 10 minutes - most notably, just before Tevez took the penalty and about 5 minutes before the final whistle, from where I couldn't be arsed trying to restart the stream) and the overall performance was something of a disappointment. But, a win's a win for all that, and it looks as if we should just about avoid relegation.

So, as they say up at the Deva, could be worse, eh?

Observations

Update 3 (12/02/10): Now being called for second interview for the second job I'm chasing. Seems that employers can put us job-seekers through hoops in the current market. Ah well, nothing I can do except go for it.

Update 2: Separate interview this morning. Stress levels through the roof, but I think it was a good one, so any crossed appendages would be gratefully received.

Update: I have been successful for the first interview, but now await the date of a second one. Sigh.

So to interview yesterday - first of two in the next couple of days - and it went reasonably well I think. The main thrust seemed to be about why I was attracted to the job, which is something of a move away from the areas I have been working in till now, and I think I managed to put forward some convincing and cogent arguments.

Prior to going in, I was - as is usual for me - thinking that I would just say 'fuck it' and go home, but I took a deep breath, checked my tie in the mirror for about the hundredth time, and strode in. After a brief tour (very interesting facility they have, which - should I prove successful - I'm sure I'll write more about) I was deposited in the room for the scenario test, and despite my imagination concocting all kinds of things from a panel of professionals firing off questions to a full re-enactment of a road traffic accident, a la Casualty, it turned out to be two facilities-type questions to be answered on MS Word in 30 minutes. Again, I think I fared well enough, as I should with more than 20 years' experience in the field, and proceeded to the panel interview. They were not the scariest panel I have ever faced, and I found myself relaxing into the task as I went on, and could see that I was getting some positive responses. No doubt that last sentence will be the jinx which means that I don't get the bloody thing, but we will wait and see. There were, I was told, six candidates to be seen, and a possibility of a second interview to follow. I was also informed that they would feed back their decision quickly. And so I wait.



On the way there, I had an unwanted demonstration of the worst of this city as I sat on a bus at Parliament Square. A man got on and presented a £10 note to the bus driver, which has been a faux pas for at least the last ten years, and was told that only pre-paid tickets or passes could be used within the central zone. Not to be discouraged, the man said he only wanted to travel one or two stops and then he would get off and collect some change from a shop (as there is a Tesco Metro not far from the bus stop, his argument didn't really hold water, but there you go) but the driver was having none of it. By now, the patience of (no doubt) a lady civil servant near the front of the bus had been exhausted and she said, in a raised voice:

"What are you doing? Get a move on!"

The man ignored her and continued his futile negotiation with the driver and so the woman went on: "You're holding everybody up. Get off the bus!" she said. The man turned to us fortunate, seated passengers and waving his tenner, said:

"Has anyone got change?"

Everybody except the woman simply shook their heads and stared at the floor, while she ranted:

"NO! Now get off the bus!"

He realised that he could not go on and stepped out of the warmth of the doorway into the snow and freezing wind. As we moved off, the woman was saying to her companion:

"He was just wasting everybody's time. Ridiculous!" As if it was vitally important for her to get to her meaningless place of employment in Whitehall so that she could whinge about everyone over her coffee. All funded by the taxpayer. I ask you.

Onward and upward, as they say. Preparation for second interview now, which takes place tomorrow morning.

Once more unto the Breach

Another year, another interview. And it hasn't come any too soon let me tell you. I had a good feeling about the job when I first saw it advertised, and so far so good, though I will find out on Monday whether it gets any better. Between now and then I will be preparing some responses and wondering about the 'impromptu scenario' they've told me to expect before the interview itself starts. The location (oddly) was one of the reasons I felt optimistic about it, being as it is in the same area I've worked for the last three or four years. I don't know why that in itself made me feel more confident, but it did. Genius loci, or whatever.

Although the salary is a little less than I have been used to, the associated benefits more than make up for any disparity, so I will be happy enough with getting there and with my pay cheque at the end of each month. As for the organisation, well, I have always wanted to feel that I could offer a little back through my labour, and there will be an element of that. I won't say any more for fear of jinxing things, but it is at least a positive step.



And, as is often the case, the bus law seems to have come into force again, as I received a call immediately after hearing about the interview with an offer of - potentially - another job. This would be a contract (six month) position, but compensation for that would be received in the higher salary. Currently, needless to say, both irons are in the fire and I am going to do my best to keep the bellows going.

Luck be a lady on Monday morning, please.

Miracles

A graph from the Office for National Statistics on age profiles. Interesting how it resembles a Rorschach blot, don't you think?

DISCLAIMER. This post was due to go live tomorrow, but I've been looking through my archives and realised that I have posted on 2nd February in each year since I started this thing (I only began in June 2007, and could not have done so in that year, even if I'd wanted to) so the anally retentive numerologist in me just had to make the change to today. For that reason, the piece may not be as (ahem) exquisitely crafted, and adherent to Aristotelian Unities as you would normally expect, so please forgive me, but here goes.

As I watch my life ebbing away to the background of Bargain Hunt and re-runs of Top Gear, I realise that all the current noise about ageing, death and all that brouhaha is becoming increasingly relevant to me. A terrifying spectre punctured the fog of my cold-infected brain the other morning as I listened to Today on Radio 4. Somebody was speaking about the population profile of the UK, and came up with an image of certain towns in this country only being populated by pensioners as our inevitable march towards immortality (though it looks set to be an immortality of almost total lameness, propped up by countless interventions and cocktails of drugs. No thank you) continues. I'm no spring chicken, as you are doubtless fully aware, but the thought of living only among the over 60s in such circumstances is not an attractive one, to say the least. I've nothing against the older generation per se, and as with any age group, I do try to speak as I find. There are of course as many curmudgeonly kids as there are sprightly OAPs. But I digress.

What I wanted to elucidate was the feeling of confusion I have over medical science in these marvellous modern times. We are proving ourselves increasingly able to defy nature and prolong life (in whatever condition said life may be) almost indefinitely. Don't misunderstand me, I have no ethical objection to stem cell research or any of that good stuff, and I can too completely understand why any family would wish to try and keep someone alive for as long as possible. I also respect those who (on the flip side, if you will) wish to push the boundaries of legality and question the status quo when it comes to the right to die. Terry Pratchett is - and we would expect no less - making a fine stand on this point, as I'm sure you will have heard. It is a complex issue, no doubt about it, and open to some SERIOUS abuse, which is why I feel that English law (though an ass, let's face it) is perhaps for once best suited to dealing with it - i.e., on a case-by-case basis. If only the media could be kept at a distance, we might see some sense. But that ain't gonna happen.

So (once again trying desperately to return my thoughts to the original argument) I really want to talk about the disparity between what we are capable of when it comes to keeping people alive, thanks to increasingly sophisticated treatments (along with - naturally - much hand-wringing to accompany them) and our inability to safeguard the health of children for the want of the most basic care in countries less fortunate than our own.

I have a problem understanding where we're going with this, and begin to question the point of it. Why do we expend so much money and effort in developing procedures and medicines which can fight almost any disease (even the most fundamental disease of growing old) and injury when we allow millions of kids to die from malaria (I'm sure Ashton Kutcher is well-intentioned and all, but it won't really cut the mustard, will it?) and malnutrition every year? Especially when the treatments are only available to a - in relative terms - select few. In much the same way as Barack is diverting vast sums from the 'folly' of space flight to pay for some much needed basic stuff back home, perhaps we could think about doing something similar with the extraordinary sums pumped into prolonging what is often already a lost cause on the hospital wards? Easily said, I know.