To secure a scummy minimum-wage job in a café I'm not that bothered about, I had to fill out the most thorough form today. It was almost worrying how detailed and prying the questions were. These are some of the highlights:
Do you suffer from or have suffered from...
recurring stomach, digestive or bowel disorder?
Excuse me...that's a tad invasive.
High blood pressure?
This form is already giving me high blood pressure.
Mental ill-health?
Define mental ill-health...this may be what's prompting me to take this job.
HIV or related condition?
Who've you been talking to?
Do you suffer from any kind of sleep disorder?
I've just spent months writing a dissertation. What do you think?
Do you have any chronic chest complaints?
Yes, oversized breasts.
Do you have difficulty or restriction with cold, freezing or hot environments?
Why yes. I imagine most people have difficulty with FREEZING environments.
Have you ever taken drugs or any dangerous drug controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (incl. marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, etc.)? If 'Yes', please describe.
Am I seriously meant to write: Oh yes, last weekend I smoked a little weed with a bunch of mates then we wandered down to this party by this guy's house and did a bag of coke together. Please hire me.
And then to top it off, there are NO mixed race categories in the ethnic background section. Absolutely shocking. I was tempted to write Black Caribbean but then I was even more tempted to tick all the boxes. In the end, it seemed most sensible to write 'Mixed Other' and next to it a note saying, 'Why is this not here? It should be.'
I don't understand the job market these days. It ain't like when I were young.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Thursday, 26 June 2008
I am going to get perved on by a psycho driving instructor
After walking 65 minutes from my house to Hollingbury (I got lost in Patcham) and then 40 minutes back, it seems like it's about time I stopped putting it off whilst submitting to ridiculous bus fares and just learn to ride a bike.At 22, it's slightly, ok, more than slightly, embarrassing that I still don't know how. In my defence, I can balance and peddle for a bit. I learned that when I was 19 with good intentions of saving money. Unfortunately, I can't turn corners or stop and I've heard that these things are crucial to learning to cycle on the road. I blame it on my father. He should have taught me when I was 5 or something. But then, can't we blame everything on our parents? At some point we have to take responsibility for the rubbish that remains in our lives.
I always find it funny that quite a lot of people seem to think of me as being a bit of a hippie when I can't even ride, a bit that is surely a pre-requisite to genuinely caring about the earth or at least a way of waving a fist at 'the man' by refusing to pay exhorbitant public transport prices. Frankly, I'm not sure that I think or care that much about 'the man', whoever he is, and I'm certainly not as bothered about eco-issues as I should be. Maybe a bicycle will lend me a bit more hippie credibility.
I'm a little concerned though about the fact that lately whenever I conjure up an image of myself on a bicycle, one of two things enter my mind: me on a lady's bike with a long skirt and an Edwardian hat (an amīcus-type who has been staying with me planted this one in my head) or a re-incarnation of the girl from Happy-Go-Lucky. It's more frequently the latter. I'm blatantly going to become loud, overly-friendly and annoyingly and perpetually happy with my lacy blue tights to match my blue skirt, blue earrings and blue eyeshadow. If anyone catches me morphing into this, please shoot me.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Selecting womanhood
Today I am celebrating a year of a pleasurable and endlessly useful relationship with my mooncup. The actual anniversary of the start of our pleasurable and endlessly useful relationship was in May but I feel that I must be honest in light of having misplaced it for a month. Never again, moocup, never again. I have enjoyed the looks of awe (or it may at times have been disgust) from (usually) female amīcus-types, who are intrigued by the idea of them but have either thought you needed to be a proper hippie to use them, have been terrified of the idea of placing something that large inside their friendly bits or simply cannot get their heads around how one empties it.
This is a bit of a vagina monologue moment. I'm happy with my sex, as in gender, today. After the first few days, when the body is attacking itself for the stupidity of selecting womahood, I begin to appreciate having the potential to nourish life, whether or not it ever actually happens.
---
I dreamt of Tickle-hater for the first time last night. We went to this African-American church with lots of soul goodness and he refused to share a pew with me! I was so offended. He insisted on sitting in front because I had previously abandoned him at a Pakistani engagement party. I really don't know what to make of this. I woke up genuinely annoyed until I registered the ridiculousness of it enough to be simply confused.
This is a bit of a vagina monologue moment. I'm happy with my sex, as in gender, today. After the first few days, when the body is attacking itself for the stupidity of selecting womahood, I begin to appreciate having the potential to nourish life, whether or not it ever actually happens.
---
I dreamt of Tickle-hater for the first time last night. We went to this African-American church with lots of soul goodness and he refused to share a pew with me! I was so offended. He insisted on sitting in front because I had previously abandoned him at a Pakistani engagement party. I really don't know what to make of this. I woke up genuinely annoyed until I registered the ridiculousness of it enough to be simply confused.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Little gifts and bad behaviour
Beautiful things have happened to me in the last few days, which reminds me that we often get what we don't deserve:
1. Yesterday a horse ate a piece of carrot from my hand and I nearly fainted with fear. I've never been that close to a living creature that big. I know, this doesn't sound like a positive experience but it was. I want to do it again and avoid having stars interrupt my vision.
2. Today an amīcus-type bought flowers and put them in front of me. I don't know what they're called but they're yellow and that's enough to make me happy.
3. Another amīcus-type is teaching me Latin and started tonight. He did not make me feel stupid.
4. Two nights ago my māter-type called. She made me remember that she knows me and loves me. She made me remember that I know her and love her.
5. A few days ago the flower-giving amīcus-type saw me boiling my mooncup on the stove. She says she thought it might have been, I quote, "Some kind of egg-white something". Hilarity as I imagine someone attempting to eat my mooncup.
6. I am being threatened by a confused tickle-hater. Again, hilarity.
7. Last night, Tickle-hater called me while I was on a long and complicated train journey. He made me less stressed about travelling although he didn't know it. He reminded me that the world is big, in a good way. He didn't know he was doing that either.
Feeling ill has the capacity to reduce me to truly negative adolescent behaviour. It is startling how easily self-pity and low tolerance multiply themselves when prompted by a fever. An amīcus-type and I had an argument about two and a half years ago over whether sickness and tiredness change the way we are or simply reveal that beneath the surface we are horrible people. He believed the latter. More because there is opposition in my blood than because I disagreed, we had an entirely unnecessary and overly-heated debate. In the time since, I've been humbled enough by my own bad behaviour to agree with him that maybe our weakened defences do reveal something about the kind of people we are, lurking beneath. Yet I behave like a child and still receive all these little gifts over the last few days.
Bizarre.
1. Yesterday a horse ate a piece of carrot from my hand and I nearly fainted with fear. I've never been that close to a living creature that big. I know, this doesn't sound like a positive experience but it was. I want to do it again and avoid having stars interrupt my vision.
2. Today an amīcus-type bought flowers and put them in front of me. I don't know what they're called but they're yellow and that's enough to make me happy.
3. Another amīcus-type is teaching me Latin and started tonight. He did not make me feel stupid.
4. Two nights ago my māter-type called. She made me remember that she knows me and loves me. She made me remember that I know her and love her.
5. A few days ago the flower-giving amīcus-type saw me boiling my mooncup on the stove. She says she thought it might have been, I quote, "Some kind of egg-white something". Hilarity as I imagine someone attempting to eat my mooncup.
6. I am being threatened by a confused tickle-hater. Again, hilarity.
7. Last night, Tickle-hater called me while I was on a long and complicated train journey. He made me less stressed about travelling although he didn't know it. He reminded me that the world is big, in a good way. He didn't know he was doing that either.
Feeling ill has the capacity to reduce me to truly negative adolescent behaviour. It is startling how easily self-pity and low tolerance multiply themselves when prompted by a fever. An amīcus-type and I had an argument about two and a half years ago over whether sickness and tiredness change the way we are or simply reveal that beneath the surface we are horrible people. He believed the latter. More because there is opposition in my blood than because I disagreed, we had an entirely unnecessary and overly-heated debate. In the time since, I've been humbled enough by my own bad behaviour to agree with him that maybe our weakened defences do reveal something about the kind of people we are, lurking beneath. Yet I behave like a child and still receive all these little gifts over the last few days.
Bizarre.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
