Letter to NAME 25/09/05

I am communicating via email with a freind who lives in Canada. She likes to hear all my gossip and I often entertain her with strange storeis and my take on various situations that crop up in the news. I have taken to relating to her what I can remember of my dreams - as she has told me that she does not do so - I do wonder what she makes of my dreams (as do I). I have preserved the anonimity of those about whom I write by using NAME instead of their real/nicknames.

She writes:

Any news yet? Bug, bug.... [This being a reference to my forthcomming job at the Museum with whom I have been assocated with at various times 1989-1992 and 1998-2005 being the time I spent working on the Ice Age Mammal remains]

We're having a great autumn so far....dips down chilly chilly at night but goes up to mid teens-20 during the day....perfect...i love it....sun is warm and the air is cool. What's it like at your place? Stayed up late on Friday night watching CNN as Hurricane Rita approached landfall.....fell asleep before it happened. :( Looks like most of the people were more prepared this time....doesn't make me want to live down there any day soon

My reply to her is thus:

You are certainly a biting bug. If you're not careful I shall have red spots all over my body and I'll have to stay in bed and miss work.

The only news I can impart is that a letter has been sent to my Jobcentre Advisor regarding the work at the Museum, they have also stated that I am required to attend a "training day" on Thursday 29th.

The day in question is a seminar for interested parties regarding CALM - this being Collections Archives Libraries & Museum. A database that the museum would like to use for the public to gain access via the web to its collections. Thus it will require someone with intimate knowledge of the Museum's own in-house database to do data transfers from the current system to CALM.

This will give me a big heads-up when it comes to six months down the line - already having knowledge of both systems and the quirks and nuances of data transfer between the two - thus giving me a stronger position that other candidates who would be applying for said job after the 6 month period.

My boss is away on Monday but I shall telephone him on Tuesday to try to arrange a shopping expedition to purchase a whole bundle of suitable work type clothes (you know sensible shirts, strides, ties and so forth) and if I keep the receipts and do this before starting work then the Jobcentre will pay for them - whoo hoo! [Homer Simpson style whoo hoo]

Now onto last night's dream - which I am sure you are anxious to hear. I suspect (in my slightly negative universe way) that you are completely bored by me recounting my dreams and as such I expect you to give me short shrift if you object.

So imagine if you will a 1950s style American limosine, all crome and fins and big lights, but spray painted in the modern day "grunge" style pulling up to a somewhat "seedy" joint somewhat akin to nightclub combined with youth centre (these things don't exist anymore) where there are other modern day cars spray painted in similar grungy style - this much like the spray painting of camper vans in the 1960s that one might have seen driving around at the time of the Woodstock Festival.

Thus I get out garbed in the most outlandish of clothes (the Turkish trousers, the black/white leafy shirt & mesmerizing black & white tie) to join the shortish queue of young (20-25) people. The people in the queu look at me strangely but do not pass comment on my garb. Inside is a open plan reception desk behind which stand two people taking entrance fees. I pull out of my pocket a large amount of coinage and the man behind the counter says 10p - I am startled as I think that he says ten pounds not pence. Inside the building to the right is a dark room that I do not enter. To the left is a room with lounge style steating and round tables. A marked walkway on the floor runs along the right hand wall to another room beyond. I can hear music being played at a reasonable volume (not too loud that you cannot hold a conversation) although it is of an indeterminate period. In the room with the lounge chairs & tables is a door in the left wall with a smoked glass window above. To the left of the door pinned to the wall are posters for various boxed sets of science fiction television shows such as Star Trek Deep Space 9 and similar. I follow the walkway to the room beyond the one with the lounge chairs and seem to say "see you later" to a group of people and return to the door with the posters. I enter the room which is filled from floor to celing along the whole of the walls with shelves of videos and roleplaying books. In one half of the room is a table filled with all manner of items and people engaged in playing games.

Then the scene "shifts" to another queue for a cinema style lobby, where I see my mum & dad, but I do not want them to see me here (which they do) and I run around a corner and up a set of stairs being persued whereupon I enter a gents toilet to hide.

Cut to a small room which has a bed and a wooden cabinet with sliding doors. It seems as though I am supposed to be moving from this room to somewhere else. For some reason I open the cabinet and inside are boxed games of Warhammer or similar.

All very strange - so now you must realise that I am completely bonkers and as such now have my raison d'etre from being a sad loner type git. Any woman silly enough to engage in a relationship with me must be clinically insane and needs their head examined.

Now I have to tell you about NAME's strange female freind. I have to tell you that in all the very few times (5 or 6) that I have visited his "gaff" (i.e. one's private residence.) I have never seen this particular female in any state other than being completely mashed out of her skull. There I am holding a conversation with my freind regarding some particular topic that has come up upon the television that is never turned off or am trying to watch a particular program that we are both interested in and this person is sitting on the egde of a big comfy chair swaying back & forth thus blocking my view or continuing with an argument that has lasted for the past three hours since the time I have arrived. She is the type of woman who treats my freind NAME as a servant expected to do her every bidding. The fact that she is too wreacked to do things herself is besides the point. She wants a drink, or some food or whatever. Once food is provided (cheap pizza usually), she proceeds to sit there in her wasted state swaying back and forth trying to hold a plate in one hand but only with finger and thumb and stuff a slice of pizza into her mouth with the other that whoops her grip lets her down and the plate tumbles to the unvacuumed dirty floor upside down (of course) whereupon poor NAME puts his head in his hand and she then proceeds to extricate the pizza remains from the floor and proceed to comsume the remaining pieces. It's not a pretty sight I can tell you.

This and the fact that he often has visitors who I have dubbed "dodgy characters" - i.e. I do not know them and they are dubious in nature come & go - thus I sit there and try to make myself as small & invisible as possible in the hopes that I will go unnoticed. That, plus the fact that his gaff has limited amount of space and is eternally untidy, messy and cluttered with an assortment of junk means that I am never completely comfortable being there. The last place NAME lived in was even worse than his current abode - the visitors there were more frequent and of even more dubious nature than the current collection of reprobates who find ocassion to enter his abode. Thus as he lived on the other side of town from me I rarely visited him. Thus as it is now that I find myself frustrated.

The thing I find annoying about humans is that - take for example one of your freinds who has arranged with you some function or meeting and they say "I'll see you about 7". What time is "about seven"? Is that 10 to 7, ten past 7 or any time inbetween. Plus the fact that if they do not arrive at 7 sharp then you are lft pacing up and down, occassionally looking out of the window to see of you can see a familar car or figure striding towardsyour abode. The later they get the more aggitated you become, wondering when or even if they will arrive. Then finaly when they do turn up at 7.40 you are so wriled up with angst that you cannot relax and have the enjoyable social gathering that you had planned.

Thus is the same with NAME. He will say "see you sometime during the week" - hmm....I think, fat chance. I mean this is a guy who has not one but three mobile phones but he never even bothers to telephone me to say he's going to be lare or isn't comming or anything - just silence. Argh! I really, really hate that about other people who have no regared for time keeping or communication.

I sometimes wonder why people bother to have mobile phones if they can't be arsed even to call you to say when or even if they are or are not comming.

Now I am a person who is rarely, if ever, late for appointments and if I am going to be delayed for whatever reason will telephone to inform the person. For example - Thursday 22nd - at 10am I check my post (it usually gets delieverd anytime from 10am onwards) and find a letter which upon opening if from an employer offering me an interview that day at 10:30am at a place that I cannot get to in half an hour unless I was living in the Star Trek universe and had access to a transporter. Unfortunately I live in the 21st century and have to rely on public transport to get me from place to place. I am not dressed (having just got out of bed) and do not have appropriate interview clothes (they being in the wash) and cannot even contemplet rushing out of the house unprepared, peg it to the bus station, a 10 minute walk from my abode, hope there's a bus and get to the locality before 10:30am. Besides the impossibility of this there is the small matter of how would I pay for the bus fare not having two beans to rub together and as bus drivers tend to get upitty if you try to pay your fare with beans I decided the best course of action was to telephone the employer and explain my predicament as well as informing them of the previously offered position with the museum.

I offered to attend at a later date but the employer agreed that as I had alrewady decided to accept another job it would be waste theirs and my time to attend an interview for a job that I would not take even if offered,

Thus is my predicament with the Jobcentre. As I am still offcially unemployed I still have to apply for "any available work" despite the fact that by the time I sent off a CV or requested an application form and retunred it it would be so close to the time of my starting employemnt that there really would not be much point in doing so.

I continue to bang my head againt the brick wall of beaurocracy - these are the people who I am sure will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes (or tosed out into the "paddy fields" to fend for themselves).

Well that's about all for now.