SPAG Bol(locks)

Do you want to join “Goggle fastest growing online digital marketing company who specialise in the re-selling of advertising space on Goggle”/  Yes, me too, and thanks to the folks at Universal Jobmatch who never get anything wrong, we can. Providing we “possess …Willing” and are able to build up an instant “repoire” and maximise the potential of new clients by building a “repoire” and “this position could be for you?”

It’s telesales apparently, which means it’s crap, but contact recruitment@jumpedupmedia.co.uk if you give a shit.  Thanks to the (naturally) anonymous Civil Service techie who uploaded this for giving me a day’s inspiration and a few unintentional laughs.  By the way, the Civil Service is always right, even when it’s wrong.  Happy jobhunting everyone.  Meanwhile, I’m going on Goggle as I think my eyes need testing.

Swings and Roundabouts

My wi-fi tour of the Manchester area has yielded an unexpected gem: The Blossoms on the A6, a mile or so south of Stockport town centre, where I’d only gone to try (successfully) to get hold of some Robinsons Ginger Tom, but which I have discovered is electronically enabled as well.  Good thinking: it means I’ll be back, maybe for Sunday lunch, if there’s enough money in the kitty for a day saver bus ticket.

Otherwise it’s been a morning at the hospital, and being told I’m going to have to be nuked to see if my “stable angina” is anything more serious and deserving of medical attention.  ”Try not to exert yourrself” they tell me.  And try to avoid stressful situations too?  In the current climate??  It’s enough to drive you to drink.

Bottoms Up!

Once again, blogging and dining on the hoof.  No wonder I’ve got angina and a permanent hole in my wallet.

Another pretty uneventful couple of days.  They’re apparently having a meeting about opening a food bank in my parish, about three years too late as usual.  There have been plenty of times over this period where I would have gladly used such a community service, but by the time this actually gets off the ground the recovery will be in full swing, the libraries and swimming baths will be re-opening, and people will be wondering what all the fuss was about over the bedroom tax – though too late to bring back their relatives and friends who’ve committed suicide because of it.

Or (more likely) things will carry on just the same.  I’m all for change from the bottom up – it’s the only place positive change ever comes from – but it’s not going to happen until people in authority start taking notice of suggestions from the bottom.  If the same ideas are flagged up as the result of some IPPR research, or an email from the bishop, there’s no shortage of jobsworths willing to salute them.  What’s the bloody difference? 

Let’s Go Retro

My new neighbour is a prog follower, and is somewhat disgusted by the fact that I gave up on any music of that genre produced after 1976.  He’s burnt a Porcupine Tree CD for my benefit; and i have to say, having checked them out on Wikipedia, I might even want to go so far as to play it!  May not be until the weekend though.  But very Interesting to see (a) Richard Barbieri,  ex-Japan – one of the groups i credit for genuinely keeping the original spirit of prog alive in the post-punk era, in the group’s line-up; and (b) Donna Summer alongside Tangerine Dream and Can in the “influences” section.  Even 35 years ago I was thinking how natural Once Upon a Time sounded in the company of Phaedra or Landed (or The Man Machine, come to that). 

And also some Arion – is that how you spell it?  Liked the harmonies and the guitar work – not sure about all those drum machines though.

I haven’t been on the internet since last Friday, and it’s showing.  A shitload of emails to sort though (they weren’t all shit, I hasten to add) and a backload of activity to blog and/or tweet about.  I will, as ever, try my hardest to compensate.

Thanks again Ryan for liking the last post.  Where would I be without you )

Friday On My Mind

It’s Friday and it’s lunchtime so I’m making no apologies  for using the wi-fi at the pub.  The location puts me a bit in mind of Shane MacGowan’s lyric about talking about whores and horses to the men who drank the brown, but the Budweiser’s a fairly decent £2.80 a pint (Beck’s Vier ist even cheaper), and the juke box is healthily 1960s – Monkees’ Randy Scouse Git is playing as I write – so I haven’t got as much to mither about as I usually do.

Well, maybe the elections.  I don’t think they have anything to tell us about the outcome of the General Election in two years’ time, but I think Lord Snooty might now have good reason to reanimate his Euro “tough guy” persona, which might be convincing if he had any balls.

Despite my current circumstances, i’m not tempted to put a bet on it, any more than I am on the gee-gees on Sky Sports. Have a good weekend, readers. 

May Be

i celebrated the arrival of the merry month of May, the source of so much doggerel verse through history, not by making an apposite contribution to Wattpad (I haven’t been there for months, I’m ashamed to say – poet’s block) but by eating alfresco: cocktail sausages and potato salad from Aldi, where I’m thinking about applying for employment if I can get anywhere with their online form, the last of that packet of cheese and onion crisps, and the tiniest of satsumas, washed down with fine chilled Derbyshire reservoir tap water.

I did this in Albert Square, forgetting to remember that in central Manchester you can’t go longer than  five minutes before someone with issues intrudes upon your personal space.  This time it was Neil trying to rearrange his appointment with Sarah so they could both knock off early tonight, accompanied by the obligato tourists demonstrating their photography skills, and just-plain-rude Mancs who’ll pick your pocket and steal your braces if you’re not careful.

I was lucky in that I did manage to steal  a place in the sun (it would have been ten degrees colder ten metres away), but that wind is still blowing a nuisance.

I’m now at the library writing this, rather than one of my usual wi-fi haunts, as I do need to stay sober for the rest of the day.  i’m not registered to vote tomorrow in the region, more’s the pity, but I do anticipate that the locals will show a bit of Northern common sense.

A Place To Call My Own

Prog rock absolutists might recognise this as the final track of the first Genesis LP, recorded when the group were still in short pants: a touch of emergent sixth form sexuality, probably recalled from school biology lessons, swathed in what I think is a really good orchestral arrangement (by Arthur Greenslade I think – once again i don’t have the relevant documentation to hand), though some may beg to differ.

I’m afraid the prog class must end there, as I intend to interpret that title a bit more literally.  Today’s the day – if things go according to plan, and on past form that it certainly not guaranteed –  that I can go back to living on my own again.  Smileys all round!

Having shared a kitchen, and sometimes a bedroom, for a month now, let me tell you this is a hugely liberating experience.  I haven’t got on too badly with the folks I’ve been billeted with, all things considered, but sooner or later you tire of the things that other people eat and the noise they make while they are eating them.  There are people on earth who can live with the sleeping and toilet habits of strangers, but I’m not one of them.  And sharing a TV is an absolute nightmare after 6pm, when all I want to know is the outcome of the IPL cricket on ITV4 and there’s some overweight 50-year-old teenager who absolutely has to see that gangster comedy with people farting in it on the Movie Channel.

But soon it will be a cup of tea when I want it, a shower when I need it, no more sudden depletions of the milk stocks – although I admit I’ve given as good as I’ve got in that regard – and MY choice of rubbish on the box.  Bliss!  Let’s hope the Housing Benefit gang cough up. 

Beside the Sea

Quite a few things happened over the week, but thanks to the buffering skills of Internet Explorer I never got round to posting them.  I’m doing this on Google Chrome, along with my Kindle and Twitter activities, and finding i’m getting them done a heck of a lot quicker.  So no more excuses for lazy days eh!

Mostly I’ve been drinking watered down Carlsberg at £2 a pint, trying to ignore the sycophancy and historical revisionism surrounding the grocer’s daughter, and in my spare time attempting to find a home – no kids, no students, no yuppies, no “music lovers”, no OCD tidy merchants, cats acceptable but no more than 2 and must meet required standards of grooming – and a job: Starbucks and Tesco Express aside, the only growth industry in this area seems to be teaching cooking and “compliance” skills to NEETs before they graduate to the Jeremy Kyle show.  Kill me now!

I’m being quite “compliant” myself.  While waiting to get back what I spent thirty years paying into the National Insurance system for, I have been attending my appointments and accepting, albeit with the occasional gurn, that my CV might need a bit of tweaking to make it boring enough to meet Civil Service requirements.  I also managed to use up the return part of my Blackpool to Manchester train ticket even though, after a month, it had got a bit crumpled and only just succeeded in getting into the machine to lift the barrier, much to the disappointment of the busybody on duty who probably fancied prosecuting me for not presenting with a suitably manicured document.

I was a bit disappointed that the fudge shop on North Pier was closed. ,  

Actions and Words

Look, I don’t know how long I’ve got before the site crashes, so here are some quick refections on my weekend – but pardon me if I expand:

1. I was (and still am) full of a cold, dripping all over the keyboard like a true professional;

2. The gov.uk/jobsearch website is full of infantile spelling mistakes, as well as the usual third rate jobs; Avon Distributor x 100, ”charity fundraiser” x 250, doing plagiarised assignments for students who are too lazy to write their own x 2.  Send your scanned passport, bank details and a recent utility bill, or tell us why you didn’t wish to apply for this job, you benefit scrounger.  Now I’d gladly tidy up the spelling on a freelance basis if they wanted me to, but it seems they don’t.  Funny that, because you’re always being told by the CV gurus to double spell check your document before you attach it to your covering email, because employers are fussy about things like that.  But then this is what you’d expect in a country that’s forking out £10,000,000 of public money for a Tory booze-up this week, while the hardworking taxpayer is invited to begrudge paying 5p out of his cowboy building fees so that a wheelchair user might, if they’re lucky, get the opportunity for a bit more mobility.  I know this is true because I read it in the Daily Mail;   

3. Nobody bothered to listen, again.  What’s the matter with this stupid country?  I spent some time in church listening to a sermon about how faith without works is no good, and how help should be provided both locally and globally for people in need: sentiments with which I wholeheartedly agree.  I did ask if that particular church was doing anything like hosting food banks, or allowing local people to exchange their goods and skills, or giving food and blankets to the homeless, or establishing a wi-fi zone (have one of our lovely scones – careful you don’t get jam on the Netbook!) or an electronic village hall, but was informed that they were too busy feeding their own fat faces at the moment to think of anything so public spirited, and anyway the PCC would have to approve it which would take a good six months and so on, and so on.  I don’t think society will last that long.

The Right Way

You know what I really hate about Britain at the moment?  The fact that so much money and power is in the hands of ignorant people – and they are the ones you have to grovel in front of if you want a home, a wage or a drink.

This is the true Thatcher legacy: a nation of City spivs, cowboy builders, jobsworths, people who make plural’s with apostrophe’s, and the inevitable Old School toffee-nosed chinless wonders.  I’m just glad she was around too early for the internet, a concept she would never have understood - mainly because of its potential (not always realised) for democracy and protest; an opportunity for the normally powerless to say what they think.   As long as they can type to a reasonable standard, that is.

I hated Thatcher’s politics of selfishness, as I hope my previous posts have demonstrated.  The current economic crisis, which was the result of those politics being taken to their logical conclusion, can only be countered by citizens doing exactly the opposite of what she stood for, i.e. by proving that there is such a thing as society.  They can start by doing things like sharing their jobs (as I suggested months ago), their cars (you can surely offer someone a lift to work – why not charge them if you don’t want to leave the eighties behind completely?) and their houses if they don’t want to pay the Bedroom Tax.  And maybe that tool kit that you never use, or the products of your allotment?

It’d be a fitting tribute.  Not to Thatcher of course, but to social democracy.