Turning 30

Today is my birthday. I try to keep it to myself especially as this year I am hitting the big 3 0.

My sister bought me a bottle of Jack Daniels and a t-shirt where it lights up a small piece of plasic that you can write on like a walking blackboard. Her boy Jack also made me a card which I thought was very nice.

Reiss wanted me to come out and have a couple of beers wih him and his girlfriend, and I did want to, but I was knackered from work and decided to take a rain cheque. That is a weird expession, what exactly is a rain cheque?

I’ll go out with him tomorrow and have a few beers.

Work is going well although I am now doing the proper lists I am finding the phoning part quite difficult, especially when I have to phone places like Russia or Norway who don’t speak English.

Turning 30 isn’t so frightening.

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I Have A Job!

I feel that I must apologise for not writing any blog entries for the past couple of days but I have been struggling with the thought of having a job for the first time in over a decade.

My first day actually went better than I expected. It was mainly training and each new person was assigned an experienced reseacher to learn from and to show how to use the database and how to research and input data.

The guy who I had training me was called Lewis and he looked like a skinny version of Harvey Denton from League Of Gentlemen, if he ever asks me to go to his house I’ll run a fucking mile!

The job seems simple in premise: you are given a list (the lists are devided into four difficulty levels) and you must find certain people at a company (it depends what department you are in: technology, finance, etc) and phone them to make sure the database has their up-to-date information.

The people in the office are nice enough. I have a woman sitting opposite me who offers food to people and takes great offense if you decline, a man next to me who I worrying love the way he says the word ‘English’ and there are now three women in the office with the biggest arses I have ever seen!

The downside though is that the train to and from work is always packed to the brim, I once had to wait for the 10th train before I could squeeze on, a record I broke only the other day when I had to wait for the 11th train! THAT IS FUCKING STUPID!

It is going well!

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My First Interview In Over A Decade!

When you consider that I have not had an interview in over ten years I would say that the interview this morning went very well indeed. The lady (her name is Tahreem and she is the manager) was very nice and did not seem to notice that I was sweating like a dyslexic on Countdown.

When she told me that I would find out within 48 hours if I had got the job or not the cynical side of me came out and I convinced myself on the way home that they were not going to give it to me.

I had a pint with Wayne before going home. I’ll drink with anyone, especially if they are paying!

About 4pm I received a phone call from Tahreem telling me that the company wished to offer me the job and could I start work on Wednesday. After almost 11 years out of work I had finally gone insane and got myself a job!

I am not ashamed to admit that I did a little jig around the room, it was a very manl jig!

So tomorrow I shall be going to Mare Street to buy a few pieces of clothing for my first day at work in 11 years!

Anything is possible!

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Clothes Shopping & AFC Ealing Lose Again

I went to Mare Street to see if I could buy some clothes for my interview on Monday. I wanted to buy a shirt, a pair of shoes and a pair of trousers.

I managed to find a nice pair of shoes and a nice black & white pin stripe shirt but the only place I could find that sold trousers were Marks & Spencers and I’m sorry but I’m not paying £45.00 for a pair of trousers that I’m only going to wear once.

But I did find a nice new fleece, so things are not all that bad.

I thought I would be late to football but thankfully not only did I get there on time but the away team were very late. I again had to put the nets up and I was a little pissed when at fulltime I had to take them down because everyone else had fucked off home.

We lost the match 2-0 but I was so pleased with my own performance as I put in some great tackles & blocks and I ran the defence along with Jayson & new guy Paul very well for most of the game. If I am not named man of the match then this is the biggest injustice since time began!

After the game I had a quick pint in the pub by the moterway, as I watched the scores come in, and then I headed home to get ready to go out with Reiss and his new girlfriend Fes.

I’d never met her before, she came over a nice enough girl, she found Reiss incredibly funny which was slightly worrying. I had a game of pool with her and was trying to be a gentleman and let her win but then the competitor in me kicked in and I whooped her butt!

I fell asleep in the Mucky Pup and dropped my pint all over the counter, which was very embarrassing, but I guess that is what happens when you have Anemia and don’t treat it.

I am slightly worried though by Reiss’ growing obsession with all things orange. He not only wears an orange tie, wrist bands and shoes but now wear orange facepaint and has died half of his head ginger!

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I Have A Job Interview

Wayne contacted me Yesterday afternoon and asked me if I was interested in a job at the place where he works. They are apparently desperate for new employees so I quickly created a CV and sent it to him and he printed it off and handed it to his manager with a bunch of others.

Today I received a phone call from his manager asking me to come in on Monday for an interview. Wayne has assured me that this is just a formality but I’m not so sure. It has been a long time since I have had an interview and although I feel calm now I know I will be really nervous as the appointment draws closer.

My dad has already started mocking me and saying that I’m too stupid to get a job. That is nothing new, he has been doing this since I was about 18. I remember him saying it once and not realising my mum was about to walk in and she stopped short of punching him in the face she was that angry.

Tomorrow I shall buy some new clothes before football for my interview.

Hopefully by this time next week I could very well be in employment for the first time in about ten years. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

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My Holiday Day Two

You Can Read About Day One Here

I was awoken at about 5am by the familiar sound of a young child sleepwalking and crying outside my door. Going to boarding school meant I have heard that before, I was contemplating whether I should go out and check on him as I did not want him falling down the stairs but his mother came out and ushered him back into their room.

Thanks to this whinging wandering child I could not get back to sleep so ended up watching cartoons on ITV & Channel 4 before eventually falling asleep again at about 7am but only for a couple of minutes. I was woken up again by the wafting smell of breakfast being prepared downstairs, boy was I regretting not having breakfast, damn by self-consciousness when eating in public!

I decided to go for a walk through the town centre to grab myself something to eat and a local newspaper, I was expecting to be confronted by the same scummy pikey bastards that I saw last night but what I saw was completely the opposite. There was a flea market type thing going on with lots of middle-class and elderly people milling about buying books and nick-knacks.

Today I planned on going to watch Hastings United take on Lewes in a friendly. I worked out with Wayne the night before that going to Ore station would be closer than going to Hastings station. Hastings has the most fucking hills I have ever seen, not once in the eight hours that I was there did I go down a hill! I met God three times!

The game was not very memorable, sadly I forgot to bring my digital camera with me so I could not take any pictures of the mighty Hastings United beating the also-just-as-mighty Lewes 1-0.

With the match over it was now time for drinking, the only problem was I could not find a pub that was open! I walked for almost 45 minutes straight before I stumbled into Hastings Old Town and found a pub, by the time I stumbled into the pub I was panting like a dog.

I went into a second pub and wish I never had. As I was served by a nice young barmaid (who was WAY too friendly for my liking) there was an elderly man sitting at the bar who I could feel was burning a hole right through my head with his eyes.

I ignored him & his apparent hex vision and went and sat down at a table with my pint of Black Sheep, next to the table was another table with newspapers spread out. I asked the landlord, as he came by, if it was OK to read one and he said it was as long as I put it back after I’ve finished so I grabbed a local paper and started thumbing through it.

I then heard the old man start grumbling and every now and again I would look up and see him eyeballing me from his position at the bar. He then started swearing louder and louder until the landlord came over and told him to shut up. The old man did not like this reply and started swearing and pointing at me and the landlord told him if he did not like strangers coming in here then he should fuck off and drink somewhere else.

It ended with the old man storming out in a huff. As I went back to the bar for a refill I apologised to the landlord and he brushed my apology away and explained that the guy hates strangers coming into the town and me helping myself to a newspaper in HIS local pub was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “Anyway,” he said, “he will be back tomorrow as normal.”

I wandered into a third pub and was served by a young barmaid who was wearing a top that not only showed her assets but her nipples as well, from my newly found seat I could see she was getting angry because the place had a few young men in and they were blatantly eying her tits.

The fourth and final pub I went into turned out to be not a pub but a restaurant where I had the best roast dinner I have ever had in my life, washed down with a few pints of a beer called something weird.

The barmaid was also acting as the waitress and she was wearing a thong that kept popping out to say hello (despite the many times she pulled her trousers up) because she kept bending over tables; men were obviously having a good look and she, like the barmaid in the previous pub, was getting angry at this.

I understand that barmaids are encouraged to wear sexy outfits but why wear a top that has your boobs fully out and a thong that is clearly on display if you do not want people to lear at you?

I headed into Seaford and checked out some of their pubs (a bitter called Sussex Best Bitter from a Sussex brewery called Harvey’s went down very nicely) before walking into The Beachcomber, a pub that I used to get served in when I was a 17 year old at boarding school and the venue for the called-off Seaford music festival.

I ended up staying in The Beachcomber for a couple of hours playing pool with the regulars and having an absolute blast. I only left because I did not know what time the last train was and I needed to get a train back to Newhaven.

By 10pm I was back in my B&B room and thought I’d nip into Newhaven town centre and have a few more beers before closing time. I was standing in the corner near the bar when a gaggle of cackling women came in and were downing shots like they were going out of fashion.

They saw me on my own being all quiet and shy and made a beeline for me and before I knew what was happening I had been dragged over to their group and was being introduced to everyone as they cackled like witches who had hatched an evil plan concerning me.

One of the girls in the group was called Daphne (her mates kept calling her Daffy which they thought was the funniest thing ever) and we got on very well. She lives and works in France, who would have thought that I would get on with a French person!

We were soon kicked out of the pub as it was closing so the girls kidnapped me and took me to some night clubs in Brighton, if anyone fancies a night out then Brighton has to be the place to go. There were so many places to choose form we barely stayed anywhere for more than 30 minutes.

I got on very well with Daphne, so much so that when everyone was parting ways and kissing each other goodnight she opted to come back to Newhaven with me. I was not sure about the rules of bringing people back to the B&B but when we got back there was nobody around so we sneaked up to my room and did what two single people do.

Part Three Is Now Online To Read!

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I’m Slowly Turning Into A Proper Captain!

AFC Ealing (once known as Acton Town) had their first official game of the season yesterday. I’d love to say that we battered Sevenths (B) all over Wandsworth Common but alas that would be a lie.

I had my brother staying with me over the weekend and we spent the best part of Friday night trying to find out how in the hell I was going to get from Bethnal Green to Wandsworth Common, especially after being given three ground names by Jayson and the home team.

We established that I had to get a 26 bus to Waterloo and then catch a rail train to Wandsworth Town and then catch a 44 bus from there to Southside shopping centre and then walk about 17 minutes.

When I got to Wandsworth Town station Jayson phoned me and gave me the name of a completely new venue! So I spent twenty minutes walking around the town cursing out loud and scaring the locals who were obviously not used to seeing people talking to themselves.

When I finally found the ground I was not surprised to see that only nine players had bothered to show up for the game. We had four players starting that I had not even heard of so basically only five regular players had bothered turning up.

During the game Mo got kicked in the face and had to be taken to hospital with a possible concussion so we had to carry on with only eight men and got beaten 5-1. Despite this I thought we played well considering what we had. I was playing alongside a new guy called Dan and we ran the defence almost perfectly between us.

To be fair the scoreline really does not do us justice as we battled away and should have had a few goals and could have actually won it if it were not for the midfield lapsing in concentration from time to time.

This game was significant for another reason: it was the first game that I really started acting like a captain. I may not have turned into John Terry but I started talking and ordering the defence at corners and stuff, something that has been lacking before because I did not have players willing to listen to me.

Jeff continued to ignore me and I’ve made it quite clear that he will end up with a broken jaw if he carries on telling me to fuck off. I get the feeling that there would not be a lot of people in the team who would feel too sorry for him if it happened.

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Goodbye PayPerPost

I received an email last night, just as I was about to hit the sack, from PayPerPost. It stated that they were monitoring the blogs on their network and decided to remove a bunch that were letting the network down with their content, this blog was one of the ones removed.

I have had nothing but trouble with PayPerPost since the moment I signed up with them. They are the Google of the paid-to-review market, as they are the number one choice they have the ability and power to force you to kneel and do what they say in order to be accepted into their network.

The first thing is that you are not allowed any other advertising on your blog. No Google Adsense or anything like that.

And they do not want you joining any other review networks.

To be honest I never made much money with them anyway as I refused to bend to their outlandish demands.

Fuck you PayPerPost and don’t send me anymore of you shit newsletters boasting about how great you are!

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Are Sky Developing BT’s style Of Customer Service?

A couple of weeks ago I forgot to pay my Sky bill and they quite rightly disconnected my service. This was completely my fault as I had so many things to sort out it simply slipped me by.

I tried to pay the amount but I had a problem, Sky would not take my call.

Every day I have telephoned them (sometimes up to three tims a day) and every time I have been met with a recording telling me how incredibly busy they are and that I should call back at a time that is not so busy for them.

Last night I went and phoned them at 3:20am in the morning and apparently they were still too busy to take my call even at that ungodly hour!

Today I received a rather threatening letter from them stating that unless I paid what I owed I would be receiving a visit from the bailiffs. How am I meant to pay the bill when you bastards won’t take my call?

You are earning lots of money - HIRE MORE FUCKING STAFF!

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Seaford Trip Is Off

Well the trip I had planned to take this coming weekend is now offically off.

My brother was going to look after my dog but he has just told me that he is starting a new job so won’t be able to look after her. He has used this as an excuse to get out of doing something for me before so I’m not sure if he is telling the truth or not.

Sadly there is nobody else who can look after her, my sister Charlane hates dogs in her house and my other sister can’t have her because she has the mum who goes for my dog all the time.

I could not leave her with my dad as he does not leave the house so would not take her out to go to the toilet.

I’m bitterly disappointed but the thing that sticks in my throat is that the money I’ve paid out for the trip (I paid for my train fare, B&B room and gig tickets in full) is not going to be refunded to me at all. That means I’m now over £130 out of pocket and won’t be getting any of it back.

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