Less is not necessary best!

As I travel up through the endless mountains to Bangor from the big smoke I thought this would be a good as time as any to write my next blog! If any one has ever done the journey from London to Bangor or from Cardiff to Bangor you will know what I mean about the torturous journey through either the Welsh mountains or the English countryside. A journey that feels like it will never end. So any opportunity to waste some time is seized upon.

My blog this week has been inspired by the return of the good weather. The sun seems to bring out the best in most people. I say most because there are still some grumpy sods around. Man on tube, please do not tut and sigh at me again for wanting to keep my personal space and to avoid being squashed into another man's sweaty armpit. Next time I will push you into the stench of body odour and see how you like it.

Any way moving away from the thought of BO, as soon as the sun comes out we automatically get the shorts on and shades out. It doesn't have to be that warm but that is not the point. If the sun shines then it seems a matter of principle that we replace the ugg boots with a good old pair of flip flops and give the pasty white toes some freedom for another six months. Even if it is only the beginning of April!

What I have noticed over the last few days is people do dare to bare! Sometimes ladies and gents this is not the way forward and less is not necessary best!

Prime example, I was sitting on the tube and there was a rather large (ok I am being polite he was massive) gentleman pushing his way on to the tube. He looked like he hadn't seen the sun for over a decade because their were patches of him that were as white as me.*
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*Now I am pale. We're talking milk bottle white. People comfort me with the saying English rose (welsh rose more so)… but my family say I give casper the friendly ghost a run for his money in paleness. I am one of those people who go a lovely shade of lobster red and then back to my pasty self. Not a sprinkling of a golden tan. I have accepted that am never going to be a golden goddess (much to my disappointment) and I embrace the old school victorian pastiness!. ( and when I do get desperate, a good old bottle of St Tropez seems to do the trick! granted I get the streaks and the orange tan lines seem a bit excessive but some times it's better than the glare of whiteness that my legs radiate)

So as I was saying, the man got on, and was literally daring to bare. He had his belly hanging over his shorts with patches of burnt skin and his t-shirt in his hands. Now It's April, firstly it is not that hot and secondly please don't subject me to this. As much as I like this weather, I don't like to be grossed out. So different man on tube, keep your t-shirt on and spare us the explicit scenes so we can all enjoy the weather without voming up our first ice cream of the year.

Football sulkers

I am going to digress slightly with this blog as there is only so much I can write about clock watching on a daily basis and I'm hoping someone can explain to me about what I am about to say.

Right, don't get me wrong, I like football. I can appreciate the skill of Ronaldo, Beckham and Messi. (I appreciate the fit bodies more but I digress!) What I am trying to say is I have watched my fair share of football matches, I’ve cheered Wales on (without much success) at the Millennium Stadium, and I have even tried my hand at match reporting and I reckon I could blag my way through explaining the offside rule. I can understand the obsession men have with the game, oogling over sweaty men in tight shirts and shorts for 90 minutes is obviously quite appealing, who could blame them? But what I don’t understand is why grown men need to sulk over a game of football?

Alex Ferguson throws his toys out the pram when a decision doesn't go his way. Wayne Rooney swears into a camera or whacks someone in the face when he feels like it because he can't control his temper or cope with a bad result. England's World Cup performance was diabolical because they were all sulking about sleeping with each others wives and girlfriends and prostitutes in between.

They earn a shed load of money doing what they love (which in reality is kicking a ball round a field) and something most boys only dream about doing. Yet they still can't refrain themselves from sulking or having a face like a slapped arse.
But its not just these over paid numpties that sulk. I am not going to name and shame but over the last couple of weeks I have noticed more and more of my nearest and dearest sulking over football, and I'm pretty sure I am not the only one in the world who notices.

One of them blamed his wife saying every time she watched Arsenal they lost and she was the reason and Arsenal's curse. (This was watching it in the comfort of her own home. It's not as if she was at the Emirates flashing all the Arsenal strikers putting them off.)An avid Liverpool fan was sulking and scowling at the tv and was about to make a long journey back to London fairly hairy if it wasn’t for a couple of goals that miraculously changed his mood.My head has been bitten off after Bangor City has lost and if Ipswich are conceding goals then someone else I know gets arsey.

I play netball every week. Granted I have renamed it losing Tuesday's as we have lost every game bar one in the last three seasons. But I don't sulk after every defeat and this is me actually losing week in week out not just a team I support.

I just don't understand the need to sulk. Yes they lost, get over it. Learn to deal with defeat gracefully. You are after all grown men.

So men, care to explain the need for sulking or can you please just get over it?

It has been an age since I last blogged, not because I am lazy, (well maybe slightly) but mainly because I decided to put myself through 6 months of journalism training! And to find time to master 100 words per minute in shorthand, get my head around the ins and out of local government (trying not to fall asleep in the process) as well as try and avoid being sued for a defamatory statement in media law) meant I didn’t have time to eat let alone blog!

*Note to self- if my old boss did read the last set of blogs as I am pretty sure after I was treading on sticky ground with the whole defamation malarkey. but if im being totally honest I hope he did read as that would teach the little shit! J

So after failing to make it as the next Stephen Speilberg and confirming what I really already know, that I am a nosy bitch and love a bit of scandal, I thought I had finally found my calling in journalism. As I sack off my social life and head back to school for six months of intense (and sometimes hellish) hard work, I begin on the rocky road of being a journalist.

With journalism comes shorthand! Now in all honesty if someone would have told me that a few squiggles on a bit of paper could ever cause me as much grief, I would not believe them…but it did. It was quite frankly, the bane of my life for the 6months. After about 100 tantrums, tears and 3 failed attempts I managed to pass it. .Not once but twice.(Twice because some old incompetent idiot can’t manage to mark the exam in time so I have to put myself through it again just in case I failed it for a 4th time). But 5 attempts later I get there and and the same time swear I will never write another bloody squiggle again!

So back to reality...Seven months later, I am back with my journalism diploma in one hand and my100 wpm shorthand in the other and reality hits. No money and no job!

This brings me right back to square one… the wonderful world of TEMPING!

Nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

So as I count down the minutes of another tedious day, I start tralling through emails to find my next scoop!

* what’s that I hear you ask? Yes that’s me wayling into a mug of tea as the reality hits of being back on a piss poor wage as the office lackey!

Extracurricular activities

After not quite making it as the next Stephen Speilberg, and not managing to earn enough to pay my rent and bills (bloody temping agencies robbing my money) I land myself my next temp job as a PA. Hold back the excitement when I tell you, I have moved away from Construction Industry and find myself in the engineering world! I know, I land the most glamorous of jobs...

So on a five month contract I begin my role as a PA. This is not the first time I have acted as a PA, but it is the first time I have worked for an unreasonable (to put it nicely) prick! A young CEO, married to his job and on a complete power trip, oh how I am in for a treat. What keeps me going at this point is being able to watch his face go bright red and watch his veins pop out of his head every time he falls into a rage. (This happens on a daily basis, oh how I wish he would explode!)

My luck comes in when the whole office apart from me goes on a trip to Budapest (that’s after I am subjected to two induction weeks of stress, lots of ranting and a bit of raving.) So with a week of peace and quiet I begin to get on with the work they gave me. It’s at this point things begin to start to get a bit more interesting…

One thing I have learnt from my previous jobs is the importance of deleting emails!! I learnt this at a very early stage… the people in this office have not quite mastered this. After they insisted on giving me access to the previous girls email, (the daughter of a senior member of staff) I begin to have a good old snoop. GOLD DUST… I come across a few emails which indicates not all the relationships in this office are strictly shall we say working!

So as I find out that the not so nice boss is sleeping with the Director. SCORE! This gets me hooked, so I start going through the inbox, the sent items and the deleted items to see if I can find anything more about their sordid affair. As I delve a bit deeper I come across an even better bit of scandal, not only is he sleeping with the Director, he is getting it on with another member of staff!! I really am in my element now. Tut Tut Mr CEO, you should really learn to keep your pants on (or at least be a bit more careful when your sleeping with your staff!)

This makes this office just slightly more bearable. The next time he starts ranting at me, there is that smug bit of me thinking I can share his dirty little secrets with the rest of the office, or drop some not so subtle hints to let him know I am aware of his extracurricular activities. So as I ponder as to what I do with this information, I sit tight knowing that I have got one up on my boss. Temp 1 – CEO – 0!
Two lessons learnt… everyone should have an ammunition file! (Just in case) and I would make a damn good spy!

My inability to say no to things has not helped my cause as a temp. Surely saying no to someone is not that difficult… in my case it is! This is where my filming expedition to Coventry comes in…

When my manager says she is impressed with my work so far, (which makes me question how bad the previous temp must have been) and offers me the chance to get some media training so I can go in and film some workshops, I begin to think my luck has changed. Well at least the chance to ditch the cold calling. So after going through a pile of red tape and a million and one form filling exercises (government organisations thrive on pointless form filling) I wait eagerly for my training.

Generally, getting training means you spend some time learning and developing skills from someone who knows enough about a topic to teach you…. Not here. With 24 hours notice I am told that I need to go and rent a video camera in Soho, and that I am booked on a 6.30am train to go up to Coventry to film a workshop for Children being taught outside the four walls of the classroom. i.e film a load of kids in a church. This is where the alarm bells start to ring.

Firstly, I have never used a video camera. Secondly, surely getting up at some god awful hour in the morning is not part of my temping contract. Getting in at 9, yes. Leaving dead on 5; yes. Getting up when it’s still dark traipsing to Euston and not getting paid for it, NO. But this is where my conscience gets the better of me or where you could equally call me a MUG! This is when most people would just say no and I reluctantly agree. I am a fool!

So off I go to Soho, pick up a camera and a tripod and spend the night teaching myself the art of filming. When I say teach myself the art of filming, I mean trying to turn the stupid thing on and off and pressing record.

This is definitely not what I signed up for. Lesson learnt… I am no Steven Spielberg!

The start of the bad luck...

Still feeling smug and waving my old job in the construction industry good bye, I sign up with a whole load of temping agencies! To me, temping agency’s are like estate agents… a bunch of shitsters that help themselves to your hard earned cash without actually doing anything at all! Anyway moan over…they find me a 4 week contract in a government funded organisation. No interview needed, I turn up on a Monday morning and start as an administrative temp. My feeling of smug begins to disintegrate when I realise I am back in the construction industry. This does not bode well!

So after been told there is actually no desk to sit at I am stuck in what I would only call a prison cell. A glass box situated smack bang in the middle of an open plan office with one tiny desk and a lamp. Great, the whole world can see what I am doing. It is bad enough being in solitary, but having people snoop at your screen makes it a whole lot worse. (I guess no facebook for me!) So after been given a pile of mundane tasks to get on with (the ones that really take five minutes but you try make last a week) I begin to think that temping was not such a great idea. Underpaid and treated like the office dogs body I begin to count down the hours, minutes even seconds of the day. You know it’s bad when you start to schedule in tea and toilet breaks into your day. 9am start work (not a minute before and sometimes 10 minutes after), 9.30 tea break. 10am toilet break. 11am another toilet break, 11.30am. another tea break. You get the picture.

After taking what thought to be a lifetime to finish the first lot of crap they gave me, my luck takes a drastic turn for the worst. Two words…Cold Calling. By this point it’s either laugh or cry. I swore to myself this is one job I would never do. I am defiantly not a sales person. And I definitely don’t like ringing people up trying to flog them something that they clearly don’t want… and as it happens nor do they like receiving the calls. (Funny that!!) This is not a good combination! I am given a script and told to ring 500 schools; I manage to ring five in one day. Oh dear. I have however in this process discovered that I am a fantastic procrastinator and can make myself look really busy when I am actually doing sod all, a trick that has come in very useful!

The weekend can’t come soon enough…

Work in progress...

I am 24 years old... 5 months ago I decided to quit my full time, kind of steady job. When I say kind of, I mean, I got paid every month, but there was always a doubt that this wouldn’t necessarily be the case. When pay didn’t always go in on pay day and when we received an unexpected visit from a bailiff demanding overdue rent you begin to question the financial state of your employer. (Word of advice; if anyone has the unfortunate experience of having an overweight skinhead refusing to leave your office without the 10k the company owes him, offering them a cup of tea makes the experience a lot more pleasant. The Great British tradition of English tea never seems to fail.) Also when your bosses tell you over your works Christmas dinner the company will be screwed by the end of the financial year (merry Christmas by the way...cheers!) you start to think about moving on. Well that’s after you’ve necked the bottle of vodka that your boss has so generously paid for and ordered the most expensive thing on the menu out of principle.

So feeling brave and properly the most part stupid I decided to cut my losses in the hope I would find myself a ‘career’. Without a job to go to I hand in my 4 weeks notice. Yes at this point I am feeling smug... 5 months down the line karma has bitten me on the arse. More of that to come...

Next comes the exit interview with the Chief Executive. As a child I was always told that honesty was the best policy. Telling the chief executive that your chairman is a fat pervert and that you couldn’t stand the sight of him was probably (most definitely) exempt from that saying! Mental note to self: learn to keep my mouth shut!

Anyway, in the process of deciding what I actually want to do with my life I enter the world of temping. Over the next few weeks I will report to you what I can only describe as the most painful experience of my working life so far, amusing for my family (not for me!). From attempting to sack a cleaner to going on a filming expedition to Coventry I bring to you the life of a temp...