Another day, another job interview, and another bag full of documentation and proof of who I am, what I was, and why I think I could be. For a moment my trusty old CAA pilots license passed through my hand. I hadn't seen it for some time as no-one had ever asked to view it, and as for flying, I haven't been at the controls of an aeroplane since 2002, which at my age means to exercise the full privileges of licensing means another round of costly dual instruction and expensive medicals. Not reall
WW2 revisited as I take the helm of Bulgaria in a computer simulation. Not many options, staying out of fascist control seemed a good idea. I decided Greece would fall to my mighty legions of which I had none, just seventeen various divisions of infantry, cavalry, and light armour. By March 1940 I was able to declare war, somewhat desperate to stay ahead of Italy.
Fighting on the frontier was fierce but those Greeks gave no ground. Worse still, I lost air superiority! How did that happen? N
Whilst I'm not a luddite, I've always resisted the temptation to embrace the internet as anything more than a convenience. It is true that I adopted an internet based job searching procedure back in the days when the internet was not quite so all pervasive and employers recruited by all sorts of traditional means. It's also notable that the Job Centre became very antipathic to my methods once the internet caught up with them and officialdom dictated what was or was not acceptable. They would arg
Okay, I'm single, yes? So what? A great many older men are for one reason or another. I can already hear the population of Swindon England saying "Yes but....". Yes but nothing. It's circumstance, not a statement of sexuality, fashion, manhood, or any other concept these overgrown children struggle with. In particular the youngsters of my home town have been testing my patience with the most ignorant questions and attitudes imaginable. That's the reality of modern sub-culture, kids growing up di
Almost the end of the year. Most of 2020 has been about Coronavirus and the government locking up the population for fear of catching it.
Man With A Skateboard
The other day I was on the doorstep waiting for a parcel delivery (having been advised by phone and email he was going to turn up imminently) when this old guy wandered by taking his skateboard for a walk. Not since the 1970's and the kids tv show Magic Roundabout have I seen anything quite so weird. No, really, it was rolling g
A few nights ago I was walking home late at night along one of the main roads leading into the town centre. In the wee small hours you rarely see pedestrians, and the only movement is the odd hot hatch or police car. The amber street lights might be effective in lighting the dual carriageway but the grass verges are obscured in shadows and gloom. Okay, I do see urban foxes around there quite often, but on this night all was quiet. Hello, what's that in the grass? A plastic bag? The shredded rem
Hello World, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again.
I write this not from the Library (who stubbornly refuse to open despite everybody else trying to restore some normailty to their lives) but a pokey little internet cafe which I might have to frequent more often. But it means I can say hello to the survivors of our post apocalyptic world, assuming I'm not being over optimistic.
A Floating Map
A visit some while ago to my local park was a peaceful scene. Nobody about at a
Hi there. It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog so I thought I’d let the world know I’m not a statistic. Just an hour or two ago I noticed my everyday supplies of daily essentials was running a little low. Nothing for it but to risk a journey to the local supermarket. What could possibly go wrong?
As soon as I approached I saw a car park full of vehicles manoevering for entrance, space, and exit. Shoppers playing dodgems with trolleys packed with everything they never needed b
Almost Christmas. I say that with a distinct sense of freedom and joy, not because it’s the festive season – Bah! Humbug! I say this because this year fate has spared me the usual barrage of Christmas songs. You know the ones I mean. All those songs that radio stations, supermarkets, and those not blessed with a sense of music play at this time every year ad nauseum. Hardly heard any of them this time around. Makes you feel good to be alive.
A Noble Deed
It’s going to be ten yea
I wonder what qualifications are required to become a bus driver? Not that I'm especially interested myself, it's just that I witnessed two drivers changing shift discussing Schrodinger's Cat, a piece of scientific philosophy used to illustrate quantum uncertainty. Good grief. What next? A law demanding drivers must have a Master's Degree in Quantum Mechanics just to drive a new-fangled electric vehicle? One wonders how the future government of Britain is going to make that happen. Half the kids
Fame!
I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna learn how to fly
Those of us scarred and traumatised by the 1980's will no doubt recognise lyrics from that song belonging to a television series which I'm pleased to say I managed to avoid entirely. But what is fame? A reputation? A state of being? A mysterious blessing from fate? Curiously enough, people generally either see it with some degree of religious awe or an excuse for utter contempt.
I made the mistake once of describing my
The weather forecast had already warned us of storms crossing Britain late into the night. As luck would have it, I was on a late shift, and that meant walking home during the period when I was most likely to be drenched in minutes or used by nature to light the vicinity when hit by lightning. There was every risk of both, and to be honest, I’ve always had a policy of avoiding such weather conditions by the clever use of indoors. Not last night then.
One colleague at work told me that storm
The other day I strolled into a music store in my home town, thinking of upgrading some recording equipment. It’s been a while since I took music seriously and having been unemployed for the better part of a decade, I could hardly afford to. But, with money in my pocket, time to splash out and get ready to impose my music upon the unsuspecting world.
“They don’t make those any more” Said GK, someone who has sold me all sorts of instruments and gizmo’s for the last thirty years. After a sho
A fine day with a deep blue sky and some fleecy high level cloud. Great when you have time on your hands but having to trudge four miles to work is a rather wearing prospect. Needless to say, I was sweating. As I strode along the old canal footpath I could see a bunch of workmen ahead. Like all British workmen you spot in the wild, they were not working. They sat idly in the shade, observing my approach and long experience told me I was going to receive a comment or two. It's the British way.
It was bound to end in tears. A movement of cold air from Siberia plus an Atlantic storm coming up from the Bay of Biscay. Swindon rarely gets any snow despite being inland. Usually the worse areas are the eastern half of England, Scotland, and Ireland This time Swindon would not escape. To be fair, we were on the edge of amber weather warnings and didn't get hit as hard as some parts of the country, but up to foot of snow in Swindon is almost a natural disaster of memorable proportions.
I
Many years ago I wrote a piece on the internet about my departure from a company's employment in scathing terms. Back then I wrote how the place would close and the site redeveloped. It has been announced that such will come to pass, my prophecy having been proven correct.
Working there in the good ol days was a different experience than you normally get in warehouses today. There were no agencies involved in finding jobs there, a family atmosphere, and good rates of pay. The rot set
As I type this blog entry it's nearly half past four in the morning. The blackness of the night is giving way to that pale blue twilight before dawn, the amber street lights still shining . It's too warm to sleep anyway. With the window open, I can hear birdsong outside in the street.
Birdsong? There used to be a time when you never heard birds until the sun was up. These days I hear them chirping all night and I find it very hard to get used to it. A couple of weeks ago there was on
Some of my work colleagues are not too impressed with me right now. Pfah. As if I care. The reason is that one of the youngsters is having his birthday celebration today and I have no intention of turning up. Truth is he's always kept me at arms length as it were, and never really conversed with me. No problem, but his big party is therefore of no importance to me whatsoever. Another colleague attempted to persuade me to turn up during the queue for the end of day attendance scan - I told him I
Money is a funny thing. Some people are almost supernaturally capable of accruing it, others simply take what others earn without permission, and most of us get by with what we can get. How we spend our cash is another matter. Younger people tend to be hedonistic - there's a young lad at work who has spent his entire monthly pay cheque in two days each and every time. To be fair, he doesn't moan about the hassles of having no money like some do, but all the same time, he desperately needs some f
In the last few weeks I've rediscovered a television series from the sixties. The Saint were the adventures of gentleman adventurer Simon Templar, played by Roger Moore, a sort of poor man's James Bond without the gadgets and evil villains taking over the world. Moore plays the part with his usual bond-esque humour but it is hard to imagine a real life counterpart so genteel and light hearted. In his world, just like Bond, he's infamous and known to everyone yet can wander around incognito until
"You've had a wonderful life" My claims advisor had told me, having gleaned that pearl of wisdom fom my CV. Of course like all CV's it merely accentuated the positive. All those disasters and mistakes over the years never made it to the final draft, never mind the interminable hassles that life forces us to endure. She was of course trying to win my approval for her state sponsored rebuild of my appearance, character, and history, in the vain hope I might actually become employable. Little did s
Although I've already mentioned I'm currently a dustman inside a warehouse, the company did briefly try me on unliading containers. That's where I got the bruises from, both physical and ego related. It turns out that my age and physical fitness have somewhat reduced my ability to handle boxes in excess of twenty five kilos in weight. There's quite a few of them packed into a typical container. Some are more a hundred kilos. Help.
Of course I'm not working alone. I joined a bunch of cheery y
Last night I wearily wound my way home from work. That's right, I'm working. Or at least I'm trying to. I've discovered that being over fifty years old isn't what I thought it would be. Blisters on my feet, a long bruise on my leg when a sixty eight kilo carton fell on it, stiff legs from constant walking, and worst of all, a well and truly bruised ego. Being a dustman in a warehouse isn't exactly what I 'd planned for.
Across the street were two doormen outside a gentlemans club. I've alway
It's no good. After several evenings of cheap ready meals and the leftovers of my fridge, I felt there was no choice but to succumb to temptation. So I took the oportunity to blow some of my savings on a takeaway meal to stave off dietary diseases and boredom. At the local fired chicken store, one I frequent now and then when I have money to spend, I selected my favourite peri-peri meal. It'll blow my head off but for the english, this culinary torture is a masochistic pleasure, and for me, a we
I'm turning into a couch potato, and it's all the fault of Star Trek. Now that the original series and Next Generation are back on the screen, I spend my afternoons and evenings staring dull eyed at the antics of sex crazed Starfleet officers hell bent on being nice people.
I need help.
Worse still I've started watching that awful Ultimate Force series, the one starring Ross Kemp as a Seriously Argumentative Soldier. The strange thing is, although I've never gone out of my way to watch t
