Countdown to work Part 1...

It's been a eventful past few days after i posted my last message, in fact the day after i posted my last message, my car died, literally-the cambelt snapped whilst driving to meet relatives, destroying the engine and i'm about £150 down financially due to that and it was a real panic time: i had no money to buy another car, none of my family had any spare cash to get another old banger to runaround in and i only had £50 to my name and £30 of that was the money i got from the scrapman for the car.

Thankfully a old mate came to the rescue with a £250 loan, and Neil, if you're reading, thanks again from the bottom of my heart and i am now mobile with another banger which will hopefully last a bit longer than the last one...

Finally got another place to live now, a mobile home. I was a bit weary of this at first, but i've decided not to be so stupid and snobby and just accept it, hopefully i might just even like it!

It was a cheap place to rent, and as a happy ending, me and my fiance are able to live together for the first time in six months. Not so nice is the letter i got from my current letting agent, similar to the one my Mum got in the last posting, but with more of a threatening court action slant...i wish they'd understand that if i could get the money to them any sooner, i would but had to pay for the new place to go to and did try a compromise with the letting agent as you will see on the previous post, and as said there: ho-hum...

Still waiting for the green light to start work, i got a phone call this week stating that it's been put back a bit, and i only hope i'm not being taken for a ride and in all honesty i'm taking advice from relatives about not putting all my eggs in one basket, and i'm going to apply for whatever suitable work i can find in the surrounding area of where my new digs are, but as said, i hope i'm not being taken for a ride, it would devastate me, especially as i trusted them so much.

On a negative work note, my fiance's uncle and cousin both worked for the same major player construction firm, the Uncle for over ten years and both were given their notices this week. I myself thought the building trade was going through some pickup in trade, and i hope they can both find alternative employment. Best of luck lads.

Just also noticed that if it drags on much longer, and i start work next month, it will be a month to the year since i first started this blog, crikey...

Under pressure...

Today, my mum got a heavy letter from my letting agent on the current place i live in, after the rest of the rent i owe, a measly £190. I rang the letting agent midweek to let them know that as soon as i get the money, i'll give it to them, and if not, take it from my deposit at the end of the month when i move out.

So why the letter?, pardon my French but fuck knows. It's just another poxy "where's our money" letter from somebody else, other than those i'm already getting letters from, ho-hum.

I'm just getting bored of it all now. Really bored...

Baby it's cold outside...

It's bloody cold out there. And in here too, in my bedsit as the battered storage heater doesn't seem to work. It's 6am on Tuesday 6th October, i'm wearing a fleece as i type this and this is Shiftswinging!

If i ramble a bit too much i'm also suffering with a cold, and i'm having trouble thinking straight lol!

Actually, it's illness i want to talk about. Since being unemployed last year, i seem to catch every illness bug going, including a very bad cold virus when swine flu was about last time, although i don't think mine was swine flu, but there was a lot of cold and "suspected swine flu" going about at letternumberletter when i caught whatever it was, because i think that's where i got it from, no allegations though!

Illness makes me very anxious and worried, and to be honest i could do without it at the moment with all the other problems that i have at the minuite, and i'm praying that i don't catch the next wave of swine flu that there is supposedly about at the minuite, although i do have the Tamiflu if that happens...

My main worry is what happens if i'm ill when i'm meant to start work?, it's only a temporary job and i'm very worried that if i'm ill they will find someone else and i will be up shit creek without a paddle as everything rests on this job: Getting somewhere to live, clearing debts, getting a new car and paying for Christmas.

It is a bit of a worry, to be frank. Another worry is that i still haven't found anywhere to live. I could go and live with my parents if pushed, but even then i still don't have anywhere to store all my things-i don't have a lot of them, having got rid of quite a few items during consecutive house moves, (and this one is no exception), as storage costs and i have no money...

I've rang around for a few places and you need about a grand up front. In retrospect maybe i shouldn't have handed in the lease on this place, but i couldn't stand it here anymore, i never liked it here to be honest, but that's another story covered in a previous chapter.

Still not started the job yet, this starts in November, preparing ex-lease cars for resale (cleaning, polishing, general valeting etc)

I'm off to bed (well, sofa at least...) to try and get warm...

Good News?...

It's been all quiet on the blogging front this past month or so, and with good reason. I've got a job. Yes, i actually, after months of applying for jobs and getting nowhere, listening to agency waffle, and other poverty related indignities, i finally have a job. A fortnight ago i set myself a target to work really hard, to pull out all the stops, to get employment of some kind, either paid or even voluntary work, and strangely, i did!

I can't really say too much, that would give the game away, other than it's a short-term job in the motor trade, but i'm not complaining as the rates of pay are good and i get to work a shift where i don't get a feeling of jet-lag...(i'm not really a early morings or nights person), so i'm happy.

It would have been nice to have been a permanent job, but that's showbusiness i guess!

Anyway, as said, i'm not complaining. It would be nice to get a bit of money in the house, as i am literally on the bare bones of my arse.

Previous readers of this blog will have noticed that i probably play the poverty card a lot, but it was/is true at the time, but somehow, someway i managed to keep my head above water, well, at chin level at least...something always came out of the bag at the last minuite, (usually selling stuff) but the last couple of months have been extremely hard, this one being the hardest, one problem is that the job does not start right away, and there is another problem: the lease on my flat runs out in the end of October, i don't have any money really to go anywhere else at the minuite, which is a problem.

So i'm skint, have nothing to sell, owe various utility companies a stack of money, and i am homeless in five weeks time. Not a great start.

Maybe it's my own fault, maybe it's not-but it is a problem none the less. I've been ringing various estate agencies but even the most dire places need extortionate deposit and admin fees: would you pay £500 deposit to live in a elderly static caravan?

It's not the fact it's a caravan, and, besides: the rent was cheap enough a month, but there is no way i can afford that off my own back at the minuite, besides, renting bricks and mortar works out strangely cheaper than a caravan when you do the maths...

So that's to sort. One thing i won't miss about being unemployed is the aimless travel everywhere to agencies where jobs don't exist. In fact, i've become a lot tougher and resillient due to this, i hate being tough, but doing the rounds of bad agencies taught me that:

1.) It's a dog-eat-dog world out there
2.) I don't think i like the taste of it...You have to have a hard skin to deal with the BS.

Another thing, i don't think i discovered myself, but i did discover something about me, and that's the fact that i am a small-town boy, i really loathe going to big towns and cities and wandering round as a stranger, not just of the place you've gone to, to look for work, but want of a better phrase, "a stranger of the world..." because that's exactly how i felt, completely alone. I could be a good sixty miles from anyone i knew and 30 miles from my bedsit, in a town where i knew absolutely nobody.

Now, before you think i've lost it, all i'm saying is that i was used to small time rural Lincolnshire life, and after living in and visting some wildly different places in the last two years, and thinking i could take to a sort of sub-Alan Whicker county hopping jetsetting lifestyle, well, the honest truth is that the Lincolnshire is well and truly in this boy, and he thinks that's how he likes it, having tasted the alternatives...

We will just have to see what happens, watch this space...

Thank you!

There's not usually a lot of good to be said if you read this blog, if you look at the older postings, but, i do have some good news: no, unfortunately, not a job, but a huge weight off my shoulders!

I thought today was going to be total crap, it was a "interesting" signing on appointment at the Jobcentre today (did i fancy being a commis chef?!) and i thought it was going to be downhill from there...not so.

I am in arrears with a electric bill from the last place i lived in, it was a harsh winter, like the ones we used to get, in a electrically heated house: nuff' said perhaps, and although i don't owe much in theory, in reality it's a pain in the arse to make the ninety quid payments every month along with other debts etc.

I made a arranged token twenty pounds payment a fortnight ago, because i couldn't make the full payment, got a "where's our money?" letter from the electricity company today, so i rang about the oversight, and...

I was allowed to make as little or as much payment as i want as long as the debt was cleared by late January. Wahey!, i asked why couldn't i pay this way before and was stuck with huge mandatory payments a month, and the reply was:

"Some people are like machines and just look at the figures on a screen, it's lucky you're talking to a human being today..."

Amen, i say...Whoever you are, i didn't catch your name, but thank you very, very much! :-)

Don't call us...we'll call you...

I'm mobile this week now: I got the brakes fixed on my car yesterday, with help from my Dad after panicking about being unavilable for work at any opportunity. I needn't have bothered...

Human beings, by definition, are vain, stupid, etc, and i'm no exception. Although in my last blog i said that i would be moving back to South Lincolnshire, i foolishly though that there might be a chance for me to get work in Northamptonshire, my fiance said i'd be better off still moving back home, but somthing in me still believed naievely that i could get work.

I doubt it now, every job i've tried for, via a agency in Northants bar one (who are still "waiting to get me in" at the warehouse, three months after the registration/induction...) has been either: "It's been filled", "We're just registering right now, we'll call you back" (famous last words), or "we're after people a bit nearer...", or when they do answer, they always ask now how far away you are from the job, which is really annoying as you get the impression that they won't recruit anyone more than ten minuites walking distance from the job, even if you have a car. It really sounds as if they can't trust you to turn up to work.

A sort of contrast to one job i had in the "good old days" (for want of a better word) when i was working in South Lincolnshire in the late 90's, The company i worked for would take virtually anyone on, (possibly why i was there lol!)including Agency staff from Sheffield, and two groups of people would commute a total 150 mile a day journey, six days a week from Doncaster. Now that's dedication! (All i can say is thank god they were using a Proton to get there and back, many people mock these little tin boxes on wheels but if a old car can do this sort of journey a day, it's a good 'un...)

I don't advocate swearing in a blog post normally, but f**k it, absolutely f**k it, the agencies can keep their jobs, it might sound bitter and it possibly is, but i'm sick of trying and just ending up p***ing in the wind. It just hurts so much when you see something like: "40x Warehouse Operatives needed! registering now!" and you ring it and the f**king job has been filled or you get the vague, timid office junior on the phone who knows as much about recruitment as they do the names of pre-war American presidents, it just makes me so angry i just want to scream or puke, how can people play with other people's lives like this?, i've heard jokes/comments about how useless some recruitment agencies are: just scan You Tube for a video or two, but you don't believe it can happen to you. I'm sure all are not bad, as i have dealt with two, who to be fair, were very professional, but why is it the majority of agencies that are p**s poor when dealing with people?, grrrrrr...

Well, they can keep their jobs, that's all i can say without doing a Raspberry right now, i'm starting to apply for jobs "back home", it's a lot simpler...

Midnight train to Georgia

If there was ever a song to describe what i've decided to do, then the evergreen Gladys Knight (i think...) classic would be it.

I've decided to go home. If you've missed some of my earlier postings, to cut a long story short, i "emigrated" from South Lincolnshire nearly two years ago, in the hope of finding work that wasn't in a veg preperation factory, or minimum wage. I did fulfill that aim: I got a job in a engineering firm in Norfolk which was, well...let's not get into it, ahem...(cue embarrassed silence)

Anyway, from there, and since then i've tried to find the elusive "non veg" job, and to be honest, it hasn't materialised. I've moved four times, to three different counties and, i think due to the recession, the jobs just aren't there. Research shows that there are 173 people for every one job in nearby Peterborough (ok, i made that one up but i dare say that it's not far wrong, the job hunting folk of that city have my honest and humble sympathy.)

I've tried getting work in Northamptonshire as where i live now borders that county, but it's either thanks but no thanks, or "your name's still on file, we'll call you", or in the past week i haven't been able to look for anything because a fortnight ago i was floored by a bad cold virus which left me weak, and this week the brake cylinder on my car failed, costing around £75 now and it's still not fixed so i'm 15 miles away and stranded away from any work and with my cash supplies rapidly dwindling.

And that's another problem. I am now so skint and behind with bills that i have to consider Bankruptcy or a IVA.

Not great then. To be honest after a lot of thinking in the last month and much discussion with my fiance, i have decided to go back home to South Lincs as soon as i can afford to do so, it's a hard choice but one thing i have learnt, in fact the only thing i've learnt in my time of exile is that apart from most estate agents being shysters when it comes to property letting, that, although it's a cliche, home really is where your heart is. Nowhere i've ever really lived since leaving home has seemed like home, either the locals are (in the most case when i've dealt with them, so it's only a personal opinion) unfreindly or the property prices are insane.

So i might as well be poor at home where i know what's what, sounds a little small-time i know, but it's how i feel. I know i might not be able to get work at home but i will have to try when i move.

This is kind of closure on this blog, the end of a adventure, and it has been a adventure in many ways, i will keep blogging, but i can't promise it will be as interesting but i hope you will keep dropping in to see what happens, who knows?...