1642: Still On the Hunt

Still trying to secure a job. It's a stressful process — particularly as I'm not working right now and thus very much need one rather than just wanting one — but at least things are moving, albeit slowly.

I've had two interviews this week, one of which I felt I was unlikely to be successful in but figured it was worth a shot anyway, and the other of which was today. I won't say too much about that as I'm yet to discover what the results were — even if I proved successful at this stage, there'll be a second interview to contend with — but it was quite a pleasant experience.

I've actually had relatively few formal interviews in my overall "career", if you can call it that. Professional working life, if you can't. I had formal interviews for when I worked in schools — during which I discovered that, more often than not, any parent governors on the interview panel tended to look positively on candidates who asked them questions about the school and how it was serving their children, rather than the usual, boring, predictable responses to the dreaded "any questions?" Aside from that, however, my work in retail involved a group "interview" that was actually more of an activity day, and my work in the games press tended to involve either being headhunted directly — always a nice boost to the self-confidence — or behind-the-scenes negotiations without a formalised "recruitment" process.

An interview is an important part of the hiring process for many companies, but I'm not sure it's always the best approach. It's all too easy for a candidate to overprepare and start spewing cliche after cliche rather than giving a true picture of their personality; I try and avoid this approach as much as possible, answering questions honestly and hopefully letting the real me shine through. Then hoping that the panel actually likes the real me, of course.

What I find much more interesting and useful is an "interview" situation where there are things to do that are directly relevant to the job in question. Perhaps the ability to demonstrate my lightning-fast, super-accurate typing, for example, or maybe the opportunity to show my skills at proofreading and editing. Even the much-maligned practice of role-play can be valuable, encouraging you to put yourself in another's shoes and determine the best way to resolve a situation.

Anyway. I'm rambling and being vague, and deliberately so, since I don't want to say too much about the jobs that are still in the running. I have a second interview for a job I went for a little while back on Monday, and I should hear if the company I went to see today wants to see me again next week, too.

Here's hoping something comes of one of these. They're both good jobs that could lead on to better things, and I'd be glad to take either one — but I'm mostly just anxious to get a job, full stop, right now.

Wish me luck. I need it.

1638: Trying Again

I went to the gym today. It's a bit of a trek from where we are now, particularly without a car, but I felt the need to get out of the house for a bit rather than sitting alone in it all day fretting about whether or not I should be doing more to get a job.

They say that doing some exercise is a good idea when you're feeling low, and for sure I've been feeling physically somewhat shitty as well as mentally recently. Thus I figured doing something to loosen up my stiff, tired, stressed-as-fuck body would probably be a good idea, but I didn't want to go too crazy right away since it's been a while since I was in a good routine. (I don't know how likely I am to get into a good routine this time around, but I have done it before, so never say never.)

I decided that I'd try a programme I've had some success with in the past: the Couch to 5k system. For the uninitiated, this is a regime where you do some running three times a week, beginning relatively slow — just under half an hour of alternating a minute of running and a minute and a half of walking — and gradually working your way up to, in theory anyway, being able to run 5km — or at least to be able to keep running without stopping for half an hour.

I've made it through this programme once in the past, and it had a noticeable impact on my fitness. I'm not sure how much it helped me actually lose weight — I really struggle to shed weight, which is hugely demoralising when embarking on an exercise programme — but it certainly got me feeling fitter, less likely to get out of breath and so forth. It'd be nice to be able to keep it up enough to get back into that state.

The previous times I've tried this programme I've done it outside, running around my local area. It's easy to feel self-conscious when doing this, but I normally put some loud music on and its straightforward enough to tune out what's going on around you and focus on what you're doing.

The difficulty, however is that the environment outside is less than predictable. The weather can vary, the surfaces on which you're running can vary and there are hills to go up and down — usually at particularly inconvenient moments. As such, I decided to give it a go on the treadmill today — a predictable environment that I'm in full control of, in an air-conditioned room rather than being under the blazing summer sun.

It worked really well, and I was surprised that I managed to get through the first day of the programme without too much difficulty. I felt something of a "wall" about halfway through the session, but I pushed through and kept going rather than giving in to the little voice in my head urging me to stop and relax for a moment, and before long I was at the end.

My musical accompaniment for the session was the soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIV, whose battle themes make for an excellent workout accompaniment. I'll definitely be making use of that playlist again, just to add a little drama to proceedings.

I'm in two minds as to whether to go back tomorrow and do some weights work before continuing the programme on Wednesday, or whether to just have a rest tomorrow. We'll see how I feel tomorrow, I guess.

1637: Fire

Fell asleep with the TV on last night and woke up an hour or two later in that slightly confused manner where you're sure something's wrong, but not quite sure what.

In this case, it took me a little while to determine what had woken me up and felt "off". We had the fan on in the bedroom, so there was a certain degree of background noise anyway, but it seemed a little too loud. At first I thought it was the television, but after my vision cleared from the murk of sleep, I realised the television was off.

What was this loud noise? I got up to investigate. Andie was fast asleep so, taking care not to wake her up, I took a look out of the window and, upon opening the curtains — we have heavy blackout curtains in our bedroom — was almost blinded by the flashing blue lights of some sort of emergency vehicle.

After blinking a few times to get my sense of sight back, I could see through the glare of the lights that there were two fire engines in the street. They had floodlights trained on something over the road from our house, and there were people standing in the street.

I couldn't quite work out what was going on and didn't really want to go out and rubberneck, but it was clear that something fairly major had happened. My first thought was that a loud domestic argument Andie had heard earlier had escalated into something serious, but then I figured the police would be in attendance as well.

I couldn't see what was going on, and by the relatively calm movements and conversation of the firemen it seemed like the most serious business had already concluded. Indeed, it wasn't long before one of the two fire engines departed, but the other stayed for a while.

I eventually went back to sleep since nothing much seemed to be going on and our house didn't appear to be in any particular danger.

This morning, though, it was abundantly clear what had happened. The block of flats over the road from us had a huge scorch mark up the side of it, and the block's rubbish area — which, earlier in the day, had had a discarded bed and mattress in it — was now little more than a pile of ash.

We happened to run into one of our neighbours on the way out to the shop, who said that it seemed like someone had set the fire deliberately. She didn't seem to have any real evidence for this save for the fact she'd seen it happen before elsewhere, but it seems like a plausible explanation.

So that's that, really, and that's the reason I've been extremely tired all day! Thankfully no-one appeared to be hurt and the building wasn't damaged, either, so all is well. Nothing like a bit of drama to keep things interesting though, eh?

1636: SCIENCE!

I have an odd and longstanding love of when SCIENCE! happens. Note that I'm not talking about regular old science here, I'm talking about all-caps, exclamation mark SCIENCE!

The distinction? Science is often fascinating and useful, but a little bit tedious; SCIENCE! is when something unexpected or fun happens while you're doing something else, and it promptly makes you want to keep doing it, possibly while giggling or shouting "SCIENCE!" at anyone who will listen or, indeed, if you're alone, an empty house.

My most recent encounter with SCIENCE! came after painting the walls in the spare room. I was rinsing off the roller in the shower, as you do, and I noticed that the pressure of the water from the shower head was sufficient to make the roller spin. The longer I held the stream of water in place, the faster the roller would spin, causing the handle to wobble and the roller to spray small, bouncing water droplets around itself.

I was transfixed for a good few minutes by this, even going so far as to adjust the shower head to get a different stream of water and see what effect that would have on the spinning roller. It was fun. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

This isn't the first time I've had improvised fun with SCIENCE!, however. I recall when I was a kid, I had a "science experiment kit" that I'd been bought for some birthday or Christmas or whatever. There were lots of bits and pieces in this kit, but I recall being most fascinated by the pair of syringes (minus needles, obviously) and a length of plastic tubing that could be used to connect them.

I discovered that it was possible to fill one syringe with water, press the plunger and cause the plunger on the other syringe to move without touching it. If done with sufficient force — or if there was enough water in the syringe — it could even cause the other plunger to pop out with a satisfying noise.

These are both rudimentary, stupid bits of SCIENCE!, I know, but they're the sort of thing I've found oddly satisfying and fascinating since an early age. These little things remind you the world isn't as simple as it appears, and everything you do can have an effect on something else.

I'm not sure what point, if any, I have here, but this was the first thing that popped in to my head when I sat down to write today, so here it is. Now I'm off to bed. Good night!

1635: Badvertising, The Return

Andie and I often fall asleep with the TV on its sleep timer, typically tuned to the inoffensive endless repeats of late-night Dave or the '80s and '90s quiz shows of Challenge. This means that we're continually exposed to some of the most stupid adverts in the known universe, what with the majority of channels on Freeview being commercial rather than licensepayer-funded.

We've already discussed the utter bollocks that is Alpen's "Characters" series of skits that bookend most of Dave's late night comedy offerings, so I won't reiterate that too much, particularly since there doesn't appear to be any clips of it on YouTube.

I will, however, discuss a few other things. Let's begin with this.

This is clever, you see, because it's for Gaviscon Double Action, and it's got two people in it. One suffers from one of the things Gaviscon Double Action treats, and the other suffers from the other thing Gaviscon Double Action treats. Except when they suffer from the other thing instead. Or both of them. Making the whole "twins" thing inherently pointless and the whole advert just looking rather stupid.

Leaving aside the dreadful play on words "carfuffle", let's ponder the question this advert asks: "do the words 'headless' and 'chicken' spring to mind?"

No! No they do not! I can honestly say at no time in my life have I ever felt like a headless chicken when looking for a new car. It can be a tedious and time-consuming process, sure, but something that gets you running around in a panic? No.

Social media is big, right? Streaming video is big, right? Let's make a mockup social media site of women who make videos about getting stains out of clothes! That won't look at all patronising!

This is… just shit.

Look, it's funny because women worry about leaving shitstains on the toilet, too. And there's a "clever" play on words at the end.

"There's nothing nicer than waking from a great night's sleep," says Lenny Henry.

I beg to differ. Sleeping is great. And I particularly won't want to get out of bed if I wake up and find my bed is on a fucking beach. Or in the middle of a wedding party. I'm not entirely sure what point they're trying to make here. Perhaps when you go to sleep in a Premier Inn you feel like you're in the middle of a wedding party.

Confused.com have had some legendarily shit ad campaigns over the years, but "Brian" really takes the cake. This ad also highlights a bugbear I have with modern advertising: the age-old art of the jingle appears to be dead, on TV at least, with modern ads tending to bastardise old, often beloved pieces of music rather than come up with their own original music.

(Jingles are not entirely dead, mind you; if you want to hear some truly awful but hideously catchy advertising jingles, I recommend tuning in to your local radio station at the earliest available opportunity. Lovett's move on up! Lovett's move on up! Lovett's move on up… ahem.)

I think I've made my point for now. Adverts are shit. And inescapable. Good night.

1630: Sunday Night

Unimaginative post title, I know, but it's Sunday night (well, 00:30 on Monday morning, technically) and my brain has pretty much switched off. When I wake up tomorrow, it's back to the doldrums of being unemployed and looking for work — not that that ever really went away over the weekend, but both Andie and I have kept ourselves busy enough that there wasn't too much time to worry about stuff like that.

We painted the spare room this weekend — something we've been meaning to do for a while but haven't really got around to. Andie's going to wallpaper two of the walls since she discovered during the initial decorating process of this place that she's actually quite good at hanging wallpaper. (I, on the other hand, can pretty much guarantee that I will not be any help whatsoever at hanging wallpaper, since I am a clumsy oaf who is not to be trusted with anything that required accuracy and careful placement.) The other two walls have been painted and just need another coat before they're done and dusted.

We wanted to get the spare room done because we have visitors at the end of the month — my friends Mark and Lynette are coming over from Canada and are dropping in on us for a few days, which will be nice. It'll be the first time I've been able to host visitors and actually offer them a proper spare bedroom in which to sleep, so we figured it would probably be best if we covered over the revolting yellow and dark blue walls the previous occupants left the room with — not to mention the big patch of bare wall where Andie had scraped off some paint having discovered it wasn't clinging to the wall all that well. (A previous occupier had clearly been a heavy smoker, since the wall behind the paint stank of smoke; hopefully we've dealt with that effectively now and won't have to worry about big chunks of paint falling off.)

Andie also remembered that the inside of the built-in wardrobe in the spare room needed painting, since it was covered in graffiti from what appeared to be a teenage girl. (I guess we know who the smoker was?) The owners before us had had a small child in the bedroom, so I don't think it was their work — I don't think they were really old enough to know what "shagadelic" meant, nor do I think that they had such fickle tastes in men as the writer of said graffiti clearly did.

Anyway, that's been painted (well, primed) over now and should actually look reasonably nice by the time our visitors arrive. Once that's all done, we just need to do another coat of paint in the toilet and the inside of the house will be pretty much done for the immediate future, though there are bits and pieces we may want to change in the long term, like the rather '70s carpets in several of the rooms.

The garden is another matter. The previous owners clearly hadn't had much to do with the garden, as it was rather overgrown when we arrived and has only continued to get worse since we've been here. I attempted to tackle the lawn with a lawnmower that my parents helpfully provided, but said lawnmower was regrettably not all that good, flattening the grass rather than actually cutting it, so we have replaced it with a brand new Flymo that should hopefully be a lot easier to manoeuvre as well as actually cutting the damn grass. I'll have the joy of trying that out at some point in the near future. Excitement.

For now, though, it's time to head to bed, and back to the job hunt tomorrow morning. I really hope this doesn't take too much longer; while thankfully I have a bit of "rainy day" money in the bank — and right now certainly qualifies as the proverbial rainy day — I would rather, you know, save that up to spend on something useful and/or nice than just spend it on the boring necessity of, you know, living. Oh well. We shall see; this whole hideous jobhunting process is not something that, in my experience, you can rush, however much you emphasise the fact that you can start immediately and would really actually rather like to.

Fingers crossed that there won't be too many of these posts before I can joyfully exclaim that I have a new job. And fingers crossed that said new job isn't rubbish, though with every passing day the fear grows that I will, indeed, end up doing something rubbish.

We shall see, I guess.

1628: Void

I don't really have a lot of interesting things to talk about right now, regrettably; I'm in one of those weird sort of "void" periods between meaningful things happening in my life.

I'm no longer at my previous job, and I don't yet have a new one. There are a few possibilities of new jobs on the horizon, but none have come to fruition as of yet and, on more than one occasion, the possibility of them coming to fruition has been postponed indefinitely as I find myself, frustratingly, waiting for other people for whom I have no direct contact details to get back to me.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to end up, at this rate. As I noted when I left USgamer behind, pursuing further opportunities in the games press as it exists right now appears to be the height of folly. The business is a total mess, and is simply incapable of providing the stability that I need at this point in my life. Plus it's riddled with so many frustrations — some of which I've touched on in these very pages — that I'm not sure I even want to pursue it anyway, even if it did offer a stable career path. But that's a subject for another day, I feel.

My days right now, then, are filled with not all that much. Browsing for jobs, submitting occasional applications, Atelier Rorona Plus, Final Fantasy XIV. I should get out and go to the gym or go for a swim, but the motivation is sorely lacking right now. I would probably feel better if I did so, and I know that, but something stops me every time. Perhaps it's the prospect of the long bus ride into town — Andie and I only have one car between us, and she uses it to get to work every day, leaving me reliant on public transport while I'm at home. (I'm not complaining about this, by the way — it's just the way things are!) Perhaps it's the fact that up until today, the days have been scorchingly hot and humid, which aren't particularly conducive to the prospect of physical activity. Perhaps it's the fact that I simply don't really want to because I know it's going to be tiring, uncomfortable and painful.

Or perhaps it's just that perennial bugbear, the old faithful companion, the Black Dog. The thoroughly undesirable situation in which I find myself right now is playing havoc with my mental health, and there are days when I simply don't want to do anything productive. My anxieties about all manner of things manifest themselves in the form of terrible dreams — or, last night, in the form of simply not allowing me to get to sleep at all.

I do not like it. It's frustrating. It's demoralising. And the really annoying thing is that there's only so much I feel I can do about it at the moment. I can't make these job prospects get back to me any more quickly; I can't magically make myself feel better; I can't summon up motivation out of thin air, as much as I'd like to.

And so I continue on in the void, hoping someone will turn a light on soon so I can find my way back to some semblance of normality.

1625: From the Subconscious Mind

I had a weird dream last night, or possibly this morning, I'm not sure. It's been a while since I had a truly weird dream, so this one sort of stood out a bit. It wasn't quite a nightmare, but it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, either. It was vivid, though, and unlike a lot of dreams it appears to have stayed in my memory for longer than five minutes after it happened.

I'm not sure if there was a "setup" to the situation in which I found myself, but I was in a play. I was convinced it was Twelfth Night (which I have both been in and directed on two different occasions) but it clearly wasn't, because I was playing a character called Lord Parry, who is not in Twelfth Night. I was then half-convinced that it was The Wizard of Oz (which I have also been in) but there is not a character in that called Lord Parry, either. (I played both Uncle Henry and Lord Growlie, both of whom only appear in the stage version and are consequently largely unknown to anyone who has only ever seen the movie.)

Anyway, the point was, I was in some sort of play. And I wasn't ready for my scene. I wasn't in costume. For some reason, I found myself putting on a suit, even though I knew somewhere inside me that the suit wasn't my costume. I did up my tie and was ready, and realised that it was time to get on stage, but that I was at the wrong end of the theatre. I had to run downstairs and get into the backstage area — quite why I wasn't getting changed in the backstage area is a mystery I guess we'll never solve — and prepare to go on, but I was suddenly hit with stage fright.

This wasn't normal stage fright. I realised that I had forgotten my lines and cues — and wasn't sure that I knew them at all in the first place. I found a copy of the play lying backstage and tried to flip through to where the on-stage actors had got to, but was completely unable to find it, however frantically I searched. In the meantime, I could hear what was clearly a cue — someone calling Lord Parry's name. It came again, and I still wasn't ready. Eventually, the actors on stage started improvising — initially with some simple lines that drew giggles from the audience, eventually culminating in what appeared to be a full musical number that they had collectively pulled out of thin air.

Meanwhile, I was still backstage, frantically leafing through the book, hoping to find my scene, when I realised that I was fully visible to the audience. I was standing behind a chest-high wall — possibly a bookcase or something? — and I looked up to see the audience gazing at me, or were they paying more attention to the increasingly elaborate improvisations of my castmates on stage?

Eventually, the on-stage shenanigans had deviated so far from the plot of the play that it had become absolutely impossible for me to make an entrance, so I simply ran. And then I woke up.

How odd. Not the most pleasant thing to experience, but equally a peculiarly fascinating incident. And probably one that has disappeared into my subconscious, never to be seen again.

1624: False Start

Hello. How was your day? Mine was almost entirely wasted, unfortunately.

I was all set to have a second interview for a job I've been pursuing recently. I took a shower, got suited and booted, went to the toilet several times as my stomach became increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, left the house, caught the bus, caught the train, had a sandwich, took a taxi to my place of prospective employment… and then waited.

And waited some more. And then a bit more still for good measure. (Rolf Harris was declared guilty of indecent assault while I was waiting. I knew because the place I was at had the TV on in the reception area, and also Twitter was all over it before the Americans woke up and started complaining about whatever "Hobby Lobby" is.)

The time of my interview came. I asked where my contact was. No-one seemed to know, and it appeared that my contact didn't even normally work on that site. A call was put in; my contact's voicemail was reached, a message was left.

The time of my interview went. Still nothing. Rolf Harris was still guilty. Oscar Pistorius was declared free of mental illness, so his trial would continue. (News again. Twitter didn't appear to notice this one.)

Nearly an hour passed, but I patiently waited. I didn't want to be the guy who obliterated his chances by walking out of the door when in fact there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact my contact had apparently vanished off the face of the Earth.

And indeed there was; they were sick. A member of the recruitment team came down and found me, spewed a string of apologies made from seemingly pure guilt — I didn't mind, really; there's nothing much that can be done if someone is ill — and assured me that the interview would be rearranged for another day. I politely thanked them for letting me know, reassured them that I wasn't angry or upset at the fact I'd travelled quite a way and had been waiting quite a while — I really wasn't — and indicated that I looked forward to the true main event, whenever it would actually happen.

Then I walked back to the station — I didn't know a taxi number, and it was only about a half-hour walk, caught a train, grabbed a coffee and a slice of cake, caught a bus and returned home. Now here I am. (Actually, I've been here quite a while; I wasn't out until 11 in the evening.)

Oh well. A wasted day, then, but not one that I feel particularly embittered by. It could be a blessing in disguise, anyway; now I have more time to prepare for the interview. Though I'm sure that even with this blessing, I'll still wake up on the day of the new interview, take a shower, get suited and booted, go to the toilet several times as my stomach becomes increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, leave the house and proceed much as things unfolded today.

At least things are happening, I guess. Let's hope they lead to something a little more… conclusive soon.

1615: As Yet Untitled

There was an interesting show on the TV channel Dave recently — yes, the Dave of my inexplicably popular Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave post — that was, conceptually, very simple but managed to work extremely well. The show in question was Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, a peculiar take on the chat show that was supposedly completely unscripted and off-the-cuff.

Davies hosted the show, accompanied by four guests, usually from the world of comedy. And not the newer brand of comedy that I talked about a short while back; the kind of comedians I liked in my twenties and still like now. People like Bill Bailey, Kevin Eldon, Ross Noble — that sort of calibre of performer; contemporaries of Davies himself, I guess. Performers who, in their own comedy material, do a good job of speaking conversationally to the audience rather than relying on heavily scripted routines, skits or one-liners. One-liner-centric comics such as Milton Jones, who are often seen on panel shows alongside people like Bailey, Davies and Eldon, were conspicuous by their absence, since their form of wit isn't really conducive to a flowing conversation.

And this is an important point, because that's all the show was: a bunch of people sitting around a circular table, drink in hand, and having a conversation. And like any conversation between a group of friends, the topic meandered from one thing to another at a moment's notice, with all the natural flow and surprising twists and turns of a real conversation. One moment they'd be talking about dieting methods; the next they'd be talking about whether or not you'd grab a magic floating poo if it appeared in the air before you. (Would you?)

The format — such as it was — worked really well, and it played to the strengths of its participants. Everyone involved seemed very relaxed and natural at all times, and this led to some convincing, free-flowing conversations that were entertaining to observe. The audience was acknowledged and involved without the participants playing up to them deliberately, and it really made me want to see more stuff like this — it couldn't have been particularly expensive to produce, after all!

When I think about it, I guess all Davies and his team were doing with As Yet Untitled were applying good practices from another related medium — podcasting — to television. And it really worked well. Podcasts are often simply groups of people sitting around chewing the fat, usually on a particular topic but sometimes not even having that much focus — Kevin Smith's podcast is a good example of this — and such was the case with As Yet Untitled. It was nothing more than a group of friends sitting around talking about whatever they felt like — and in the process it managed to feel infinitely more involving, interesting and entertaining than any number of overly manufactured, lavishly produced, completely false-seeming shows like The X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent or My Dog Can Do This Thing With a Ball That is Quite Good. It was simple, raw, pure; it didn't need to be anything more, and so it wasn't.

More, please.