Sunday 12th September

Ok here we go, this week uni starts, and I've got to go to a few meetings - teaching doesn't start just yet so it's like go see Alex Shepard and get my courses sorted out. I have a startling lack of enthusiasm for this, I freely admit. I'm still worried sick about this job, for which I have heard nothing further beyond that I passed the interview and they are waiting for the references to kick in. I keep telling myself that this could well be down to the fact they have to get a new disclosure certificate for me, which takes forever. But it's very depressing, there's no doubting that.
So what have I been doing to fill my time? Trying not to pay too much attention to those who've handed their dissertations in and are now fancy free, etc! Even in one case, off on holiday! This seems like rubbing salt in the wound. But not to worry, ok, yes I'm worrying, but I'm trying to keep a grip on it.
It was Martin's birthday yesterday - his birthday is now indelibly marked by the events of 9/11, which frankly always seems to me to be wierd, because it should be 11/9. Every time this comes around, I remember talking with him on the phone when I was coming home, on the day itself and saying we could be at war by the time I get there. War with who, one of us said, and I'm not sure we're any the wiser now. At any rate I feel I should pay tribute to the post office who did a really sterling job this year of getting his package to him in less than 24 hours - I posted it around 3.30 to 4 o'clock on the Friday, and was stunned to hear it had actually arrived. The reason for the delay was in the late arrival of one component, an Aston Villa Miscellany from the club shop. He tells me it's full of interesting stuff, including about Pongo Waring, who he remembers Dad going on about quite a bit. Pongo apparently got his nickname from setting off for a trip (presumably a game) with only a toothbrush as luggage, not even a change of clothes. Either it's that or smelly feet allegedly. Personally I cite the influence of PG Wodehouse, who wrote memorably of Pongo Twistleton, a member of the Drones Club and pal of Bertie Wooster. Think of the derogation this poor man's memory may be undergoing if the nickname merely originates from Pongo being his favourite character or something.
And how come no one gets fancy nicknames like Pongo these days? It must have been a 20s/30s thing, and perhaps - well I know I wouldn't want such a nickname! At any rate he must have been a very good player, to still be being talked about all these years later.
Ah, Wikipeadia to the rescue.
Thomas (Tom) "Pongo" Waring (12 October 1906 – 20 December 1980) was an English professional association football player. Nicknamed "Pongo" after a famous cartoon of the time, Waring is one of Aston Villa's all-time great centre forwards. In his career, he scored 243 league goals in 363 matches over 12 seasons for 5 different clubs.
1928 to 35, apparently, died in 1980 and had his ashes scattered at the Holte End prior to a match with Stoke. Seems appropriate somehow. Couldn't find a photograph of the man, which is a shame. At any rate, Martin seems to like the book, which I have to say ranks as a triumph, present wise. What is it about men and presents? You just can't find anything they a) like, or b) really want!

Sunday 5th September

God but this possible may, or may not have a job is giving me kittens. For all those of you who've been reading my FB updates, maybe I'm being too optimistic here, and I'll try to explain why I feel this way.
Firstly, this is a very good job - for a student at any rate. The other thing is it's only a temp job until Christmas, which is actually not too bad, because they employ lots of people and there's always a good chance that something a bit more permanent might turn up. Which is sort of why I'm quite keen on getting it. But...
Ok, so Friday I had to go to this assessment day thing - turned out it was only a morning, we had to take a mountain of paperwork with me, so much ID stuff that I was almost crazed before I set off. Birth certificate, passport (I only have an old out of date one) photo id, utility bill, so much stuff I had to pack it into a folder to make sure none of it got lost. Then, before I went, I had to try and figure out where the place was, which wasn't as simple as you'd think it was.
Yep, went on to google, and used the street view bit, but it was the address that was screwy, they reckoned they were at an "X square" rather than "X street". The street was on the map alright, but not a sign of the square anywhere to be seen, and I was virtually marching up and down there for hours. Turns out the square is the address of a multi storey car park behind the building that they're actually in. I had to even ring them up for instructions it was so peculiar. And given this, I decided I'd set off in plenty of time to ensure I arrived in good time (they said in their email turn up at least 15 minutes early to fill out the forms...!) Happily there was a coffee bar sort of over the road, but my God I won't be going there again in a hurry, it was the worst decaff Americano I've ever had.
Anyhow I get there, with my forms, paperwork - I forgot to tell you, I was supposed to fill out an application form before I got there, and I'd done this, took me two hours but I'd got a really nicely word processed variety. Only when I arrived, and opened my folder of paperwork, thinking I was going to be able to blind them with my efficiency, it turned out I'd picked up the blank copy that I'd printed off and not filled in!!! Talk about - well, showing yourself up to the worst possible advantage. And they were so insistent about it! I had to sit there and try and fill it in from memory, which frankly is not my strong suite - but I eventually persuaded them I'd email the finished copy as soon as I got home, which I did and called them to ensure they had received it. Anyhow, having done that I then had to fill out the form for the disclosure stuff - this is where you get your (lack of) police record checked. This I have no problem with, beyond that I put my old address down on it first, and my current address underneath that, which I didn't think would matter, but they insisted that I re-do it, the right way around.
By this time, I was getting a touch flumoxed I'll admit. In fact, I think I was slightly past caring, thinking I've made such a stuff up of this, it doesn't really matter what I do at the assessment itself. At any rate, it wasn't too bad at all, no interview as such, no the only time their people talked to me it was about bloody paperwork - it was sit in a group with all the other people applying, and chat about pre-recorded calls from this helpline, and say what we thought was good about them, and what was bad. Oddly enough, one thing I found really quite useful for this was the various times when post graduate teaching has cropped up on the agenda, and we've been roundly told that post grads are the worlds worst markers, because they're so harsh. So I was actually specifically looking for the hidden good stuff, and I think that came across a bit. Besides, I have to admit, I hate being negative about everything, you've got to find a positive to end with.
So we did this, and I feel I did quite well. They were really tight about keeping us to deadlines, and there were three calls, one we had to crit on forms, one we had to discuss between ourselves (being listened to) and one we had to 'present', or rather one poor girl had to present, which I felt was a bit, well, odd. There was no time to discuss who was going to do this, the girl who was sitting nearest to the board had to do it, and we had no time to write down headings or anything like that, it was just simply there you are get on with it. I can distinctly recall making a pest of myself by telling them we didn't have enough time for the finicky bits, we have to move on to the next, so I guess I was sort of timekeeper woman. Again, all the presentation stuff in RRSH came in useful here, and I must remember to tell Mark! Given the mess I made of my dissertation presentation, I think he'll be pleased to know I did at least take in the salient points.
So having done all this, we had an English test - I'm sorry to say I found this a bit of a doddle, I must've finished it 5 minutes before everyone else, and I have to say that I think that's an age thing. You just know stuff as you get older, and you don't have to faff around thinking a, b or c. You just know it's c, and there's no need to worry about whether it could conceivably be a, because a is plain wrong.
At any rate, then it was off to have your paperwork interrogated, or in my case, my lack of paperwork, and then off home. The funny thing was when I left, I started to feel so sick - really quite physically sick, as if I'd been bottling up all of the stress and tension etc - this really isn't like me at all. I had to go and have a sit down and another cup of coffee, and I was thinking about it, and it's my belief that it's taking me so long to find a job that no matter what people say to me, I'm totally stressed out about it. I'm financially strung out, and all the psychological terror that accompanies that is getting a bit too much for me. So - I shall be inordinately pleased if I do get this job, but it's down to references and the disclosure check. I'm not worried about that at all, happily I know I have no criminal records etc, but references? Ee-yuck is all I can say, I'm not at all sure about them. We all know how bad the 'reference' was I got from a certain someone, who when I asked for one I could show to people, constructed one that was extraordinarily peculiar and left me feeling I should slash my throat now, because for sure I was never going to work again. So I'm kind of feeling very ambiguous about this. Which is why I'm not to sure that I will actually get this job, and that I may well end up back at square one, and in real trouble because then I'll know I've got a problem with that specific reference, and what the hell will I be able to do about it? It's hard, particularly when you know that you've given time, and trouble and sheer effort in the job, and gone to a lot of trouble to be helpful and offer cover for when people are off, and stuff like that. And it's even harder when you know that you could have done so much more, if you'd been ever asked to have undertaken some kind of task or what have you. At least that's how I feel about it. My guess is that I make some people very nervous, and I've got my own views as to why that is. But what the hell, I'm not at 'back to square one' yet, fingers crossed eh?

Friday 27th August

Funny old week it's been, that's for sure. Firstly I managed to pick up a heavy cold from somewhere, which hasn't helped, and secondly, it's become clear that some of the potential employers in Glasgow just like messing people around. It makes you so damn angry that they do this! And there's nothing you can do about it, you can't even complain because if you did you could kiss goodbye to any future chance of employment.
Basically as you may or may not know, I went to the hairdressers on Monday, and whilst I'm sitting there getting my hair cut - dripping, the mobile goes off, so I answered it. There's this bloke on the phone, saying he's from this call centre that I'd sent a cv to recently, and he asks if I can talk, he wants to do an on-the-phone assessment to see if I'd qualify for an interview. I say it'd be a bit difficult (this is supposed to take 15 minutes) as I'm in the hairdressers, and he says ok, no problem, if you call us back, I'll send you an email with a reference number that you just quote when you call. Fine, I say I'll call you this afternoon.
And I did. First I called when I was back home, about say what, an hour later? Answerphone. Oh he'll be at lunch I thought, and went off to an appointment I had and rushed home and called him again. XX is unavailable. Ok, I thought, maybe a meeting. (I should add that I'd left messages each time, to say that I'd called, with the reference number which he had indeed sent.)
I called perhaps another four or five times on Monday. No problem I thought, I'll be bound to catch him on Tuesday. I started at nine o'clock, and I was a tad surprised to find that he was already engaged. No problem I thought, leaving a message, again, I'll keep calling, and I've left a message, he might call me back.
I called three times an hour for the entire morning. Frankly I'm not sure what else I could have done. I'd found the only other number available for the place, and rang that, only to get another answering machine, on which I left another message. Not one of these multiple messages got any sort of response out of these people, and at no point did I get a ringing phone that didn't get answered by an answerphone. I must have called them fifty times. My guess - now - is that they have a number of vacancies, and they go through the applications on a call them once basis, and if they don't answer, or can't talk, move on to the next, but to cover ourselves, we'll send them a reference number so if there's any comeback, we can prove that we've tried to contact them.
What they don't bargain on is fools like me who keep on ringing, still thinking that they might have a chance of some sort of work. What they don't take in to account is the amount of money we spend on our phone bills to do this. God only knows what this has cost me, because it's not simply a ring, no answer, hang up. There's that answerphone which when it answers starts my bill ticking. All those bloody messages.
No wonder when the cold kicked in I was feeling really quite down.
Then yesterday, I got a call from someone else I'd sent an email to. Could I come to an interview? Of course I could. I'd've needed to have been on my deathbed not to have gone to an interview. Chit chat about the position. Then comes the fatal news, no it's not a part time position, it's a full time one - so there's no point in going to an interview, I'm not about to junk my uni course. So that was that.
I keep cruising the job sites, and I keep on sending my cv off, and yep, things must be picking up a bit, because I'm getting more responses to the cv than at anytime for the last 18 months. But it's soul destroying to have potential work dangled in front of you, and then snatched away, either because they've made a mistake in their advert, or they won't call you back. But then why should they? There are thousands of people out there looking for work, and to judge by the news last night, a few more hundred as of this morning. Oh well, onwards and upwards.

Monday 16th August

Well I did it. It was pretty touch and go there, especially on Sunday - I have blisters on top of blisters, owing to the incredible amount of walking, and I have to say that whilst the idea of following people was pretty interesting to start out with, it got pretty boring in the execution!
Firstly, people have absolutely no idea that they're being followed. You ought to try it, simply to give you an insight into how oblivious you become when you're shopping. Next time you're in M&S, or wherever, just for five minutes, pick the third person to come in through the door, and follow them. The trick to it is that as you're doing it, you stay a bit back from them, but keep them in your eye line. As you go along, touch, and lift up whatever items are on the rails in front of you, or reach to fiddle with the price ticket. That way you make yourself into an ordinary shopper. The person you're following will simply accept that that's what you are, and you become a part of their wallpaper. When people are shopping, they are looking at whatever's on sale. Other people only impinge on their radar if they become an obstacle to be got around, or if you are suddenly focused on the same thing. Then it's that curious dance of "Oh I'm sorry!" when you brush into each other, that kind of thing. You only come back to the reality of your surroundings when you need to find a sales assistant, or the changing rooms, or go to the checkout. Then you start to take in the whole of the room again. Focus is a weird part of being human, the way we blot out the totality to seek out whatever we want, and must have been a key part of survival back in the dawn of prehistory. How else would we have been able to see a ripe berry or the tiny flower of a particular herb amidst a mass of greenery? Now, we turn focus onto whatever we look for amidst a mass of clothing, or whatever.
I've seen some mighty strange things over the past few days. I've seen two teenage girls hunt out the corner that was out of range of the cctv, bury one jacket deep in the bottom of a bag whilst the other tried the identical jacket on and made a big fuss about whether it suited her or not - talk about displacement activity. I wasn't at all sure what to do about this, but we'd been given strict instructions that we were only there to watch, and shouldn't intervene if we saw something like this. So I didn't and yep, still go a few guilt pangs about it. The only thing I can say is that I have absolutely no idea what either of these girls looked like, I can't remember a single distinguishing characteristic of any of these people, because when I picked them to follow I focused on a characteristic that allowed me to pick them out at a reasonable distance - one woman was tall, another had a very odd hair thing involving a ponytail - someone else had the world's worst jacket (I'd swear it was yellow leather), that kind of thing. And I was so transfixed by what they were doing that I didn't seen them at all. Another day I followed a middle aged man and his wife around a men's clothing department, and I'd swear they examined every single shirt in the place. They took what felt like hours doing this, and my guess is that she wanted him to branch out a bit into something a bit different from what he would normally wear - but what did they end up with? A blue short sleeved shirt. Hours it felt like. I would swear that if she hadn't been with him, he'd have been in and out of there in 15 minutes.

But my overwhelming memory that I'm going to take away from this is going to be my feet. The first day we were at this from twenty to ten in the morning until 8 o'clock at night, and the other days were twenty to ten until 6, and I think it's a miracle that I've managed to get through it - confession here, I didn't manage it at all on Saturday, I could barely walk. Come Sunday, I was back at it, and I'm extremely thankful that its over and done with. I wouldn't be able to do this, I don't think anyone would be able to do it on a long term basis. It's not just the trekking up and down between Buchanan Galleries and St Enochs, it's the miles you walk inside of these shops, and I mean miles. A shop like John Lewis, not only is it what, three floors, but those floors have one heck of a lot of ground space. You follow someone in through the doors say at the back opposite the bus station, then they go up an escalator, spend forty minutes or so trekking around the women's clothing department, then they go on a short trip to the loo, perhaps pick up a pair of shoes before heading back to the clothing department to select a few of the garments they've looked at and have twenty five minutes in the changing rooms. They are perfectly capable of coming out of there and going to fetch another four or five dresses. Then maybe it's back to the shoe department to change their original choice for a version in blue, then they'll go off to the cafe - not me, worst luck, I'm stuck in the area around the cafe entrance waiting for them to come out, then maybe they'll be off to look at the lighting, or the hats... it's interminable, and after say what the third time this happens, stultifyingly boring. The only really interesting thing I've found over the past four days is that there are some rather nice scarves around which I may at some point pop back to pick up. I'm getting fed up of hair in my eyes, and it's either that or a haircut.. no not the haircut!!!

The other big downside of this job was that there was nowhere to go to put your feet up, or eat a sandwich. I had to go to cafes and stuff for lunch, and there aren't that many around in the shopping centre that serve a)decent food or b) cheap food! In fact I have to say M&S's cafe - particularly on Sunday when it's unaccountably quiet - was remarkably good value for money. As for that hellhole in the Buchanan Gallery which goes by some variety of the name "Streat", they are charging the most outrageous prices for the biggest plateful of cr@p I've ever had the misfortune to pay for. I had the allday breakfast at about 3 pm on Thursday. What you get is a huge plate, a simply vast bowl style in which are 'decoratively' arranged two extremely cheap sausages - more filler than meat, a small dessert spoonful of scrambled egg that at my guess where scrambled say at about 8 am, enough time for them to have become set scrambled egg at any rate, and I'd swear they must have started out as powdered, a piece of carbonised bacon - so carbonised, or more probably microwaved, that teeth could not penetrate it, and a large piece of some sort of bread. This was extremely mysterious because I suspect it was possibly some sort of pitta, or flat bread, with those odd green/grey marks on the bottom that are meant to indicate it's been baked on stone. This thing had never seen a stone in the totality of it's existence. How they get those marks there I have no idea, but I suspect that a machine stamps them on. It had then been toasted at some point, because it had the toasting lines on the top of it, but despite this, I'm convinced it was a solid lump of dough in the middle. Vile. I didn't touch it. Anyhow for this ghastly concoction they have the cheek to charge you £3.95, which frankly should be reported to the trades description people, but who's going to go to that much trouble? The staff are nice though, and you feel embarrassed on their behalf. In M&S I got a nice salmon and cucumber sandwich and pot of earl grey tea for about the same amount of money, and it was fresh, and tasty. I don't normally go in for food reviews, but maybe amid the sea of woe that were my feet, the most important thing was I got to sit down for 20 minutes!!!

Weds 11th August

Ok so I got the date wrong on the two posts below. Sorry about that, date blindness has been haunting me since I stopped working - but, this post is going to be all about... yay, WORK!
For those of you who don't know, last week I actually got a call from one of these applications I've been making for jobs you see on these websites - I have been seriously suspicious of this, since I keep applying for them and getting no response. But, yay, last week someone called, and off I trotted on my birthday, and even more yay, I got a job. It's only for four days, so it's not leap screaming into the air, but it's a start, and better still, the agency tell me that they always look for their previous employees to fill a vacancy before advertising it, so (should this be the case, rather than simply something I'm being told) I may get even more out of it than simply 4 days work.
But, today I went off to the training. The job is a market researcher, for a company in London who do this sort of thing for various chains, and shopping centres, and frankly it sounded like fun when I heard about it, and now it's turning out to be serious fun having done the training. What I'm going to be doing is following people around in various different shops, with this little handheld computer thingy, tapping 'labels' - ie, lone woman, lone man, looking at item, touching item, measuring item, (it's clothing people, relax!) looking at the price, all that kind of thing. But all of this is done surreptitiously!!!! Yes, I'm going to be a spy!!!!! Oh I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't get excited, but I have seriously always wanted to do something like this! And it's not really spying per se - well it is, but not spy type spying, but it's sort of spy-craft. I had a go this afternoon, in the menswear department of a local department store, and for the first time in my life, my shortness has been a plus - I can lurk behind racks of clothes, and my eye line is just perfect for the gap between the shelf on the top, and the rail that has the hangers on! Everything I've read in all those Le Carre books is just perfect for this. I keep them in my eyeline, and 'follow' them by veering off the 'path' through the department, carelessly handling piles of t-shirts as I go along. God I am loving this job! I dare say I'll be fed up to the back teeth with it by the time Sunday comes, but in the meantime, I am having such fun!


It's not all following people. We also have to count footfall, which means going to the requisite shop, finding a place to casually lean, or sit or whatever, and draw an imaginary box around the door we are watching, then count the people going through the box, those that go in, those that leave, and if they're leaving do they have bags with them? This is not quite as much fun, but I imagine - provided I can find a little seat to do this from, a bit of a rest which will be very welcome. And yes, we will have to do a bit of asking people to answer a short survey. But the big news on this is we have another interactive gadget, so they will be able to do it for themselves whilst I hold the thing. Way better than asking people if they want to contribute to a charity via direct debt for a living. (Mind you not to say that this isn't also a perfectly valid means of earning a crust!) If there was anyway I could do this for my weekends for the rest of my uni career I'd be in seventh heaven, but alas, four days and that's it. Still, in the meantime I shall enjoy it!!

Monday 8th August

Oh dear, Villa are in trouble. Alas Martin O'Neill has left - actually resigned, which is a thing Premiership managers virtually never do. There are clearly deep and dark reasons behind it, which we don't know, and it's very frustrating. Clear contenders are the fact no money has been released to buy in any big players, which leaves us understrength and now he's gone, you've got to put money on no one arriving until the January transfer window. There's no immediate appointment, so this has clearly come out of the blue. Oh God, here we go again. That's all I keep thinking, is this the 70s come all over again?
And that raises more interesting thoughts. Exactly how much of the 70s are we seeing re-played here? We've got a depression. People are being thrown out of work, and we have a caring sharing Conservative government to ease us through these troubling times - personally I'm begining to see a lot in the concept of revolution. There was a very interesting article in the Grauniad yesterday about the North South divide, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/08/north-south-divide-soon-become-chasm which really says it all. Anyday now I expect brown and grey to become the most popular colours, Cameron will start clutching a handbag (frankly I'm surprised he doesn't already carry one, not to mention how fetching he would look in a two peice navy blue skirt suit), and well.. not much more you can say about this really, except how bloody depressing it all is.

Saturday 7th August

Busy week this, what with re-opening the Ebay shop, birthday and all that. What is it about birthdays that makes me feel ambivalent about them? This year's was really great, so many people ringing, texting, leaving messages on FB and all, it was a really great day and yet at the same time I feel like to mention it is somehow to be shouting about what a great time I had in the face of someone who's accidentally wandered onto this blog and may be in the pit of despair - why? Because they've had a lousy birthday that's what!
At any rate I had a very good day. Particularly so because first thing in the morning I went off to East Kilbride and saw an employment agency that not only had a bit of work, but some that they needed to get other people to do - ie, I have a weekend's worth of work next week. This is major to me, and of course they were saying how good they were about finding work for people once they're registered etc - which does rather leave me wondering about whether this alleged opportunity will ever materialise. You know? Everywhere you go and talk to about work, they'll always tell you oh yes, send us a cv, we have various permanent contracts, we'll be in touch. Or some sort of variation on the theme, and you never hear from them again. So I'm not holding my breath, but in the meantime I have as I say a weekends work, and let's not look this gift horse in the mouth. Market research, in other words I shall be one of those women standing outside of a shopping centre begging people to spare me a moment of their time.. like I say let's not look a gift horse and all that. There is genuinely no selling involved in this, it's really interviewing, so it might be more fun than anticipated.
What else did I do? Well we went to Tibo's for a meal on the day itself - very nice. I had beefburger. I was hoping for a nice fishy specials board but there was none, and apparently hasn't been for a while now. I found that a touch alarming, I wouldn't like to see it go downhill. But a good time was had by one and all, and it all led to a slight hangover the next day and it's been a while since I had one of those!
I got some wonderful earrings off a mate, really gorgeous, and a few other bits and pieces (thanks to Ness, Abbs, Aimee!) and even the family remembered - something of a minor triumph there I think! I even had a call off Nick, a day late (what else is new, I'm lucky he remembered it was this century!)

So.. post birthday letdown now....!