November 14, 2006
Wanted: Amateur Contemporary Dancers
If there aren't any evident amateur contemporary dance companies in London, then I'll just have to form one of my own.
It's 3am and I need sleep so in the meantime, I'll just point you at www.cloud-dance.org.uk
Posted by chantal at 02:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2006
Monday Morning
Tomorrow isn’t just any Monday morning, what’s worse: this one comes fully shrink-wrapped with a new job, and a new term at my dance school. On Wednesday I nearly passed out during a ‘warm-up’ class; tomorrow I have both class and a rehearsal. I can feel my body laughing at me. (Also creaking, clicking and popping as it relentlessly persists in doing since that head injury).
A good friend reminded me on Saturday that it’s been a very very long time since I last updated this site. Properly. It being 2.30am, I’m not likely to do that now, but I just want to state that the floral muppets are fully history, it doesn’t look like I got the job I really wanted, so I’m starting the job I didn’t really want in 7 hours; the intermittent stalker still stalks; that if it wasn’t for several friends, I wouldn’t have managed to scrape by the last two months; that leads me to various random homicidal thoughts, including the muppets at MSN – I’ve not been able to connect for six and a half hours, and I’m only grateful I’m too tired to do anything violent.
On a side note, I texted Laura earlier to tell her the full horror of my realisation on Friday, after her visit: if I do Jen’s performance workshop (at the dance school), I won’t be able to go to the pub after class this term. That’s a seriously tough call. On one hand, I can wait out next week (this week) to see how many Dancers of Mass Destruction are likely to turn up; on the other hand, the last time I did the performance group (with Jen), we were already a fully-formed group of friends at the time (except for Maria), and I can’t really say the same is true of now. And damn it, I want to be able to hang out with Maria after class and not only blubber about my home conditions, and I want to be able to go to the pub on Wednesdays with Fran’s students who don’t much like me, and travel back with a tipsy Laura….
On another side note, I checked Gumtree earlier (as you do when Msn won’t bloody well work), and saw some ads for rooms to rent around the corner. I’m very tempted. Well, as a tourist. This house is great, even if the wireless router should be painfully dismembered.
That leads me back to the homicidal thoughts I was having a few paragraphs earlier, so maybe I should just wrap this up and go for a fag.
In the meantime, I can heartily recommend some websites about 419 scammers. Health warning: they’re seriously compulsive reading.
(And hopefully I’ll be asleep soon and able to exercise said homicidal impulses till Khaled’s ‘Sahra’ wakes me.)
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August 28, 2006
Movin' Again
Hmm. When I finally finish this book (14 more pages) and get out of bed, I've got to start packing to move to my new place. Fourth one in less than six weeks - this is almost getting to be a hobby.
God I hate packing.
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May 22, 2006
Fragments
It’s approaching 3am, but it’s been a shitty week and a shittier weekend, and I’m listening to my favourite Cuban musician, idly wandering around San Cristóbal (Mexico) and Guatemala while I read.
In nearly 11 weeks, I’ve not paused long enough to stop and think, or so it seems. I’ve been working hard at enjoying my time in London, however temporary it might be, but then something shitty like yesterday comes along and blows it all.
I don’t know why I’m thinking of Mexico instead of Guatemala; although life in Guatemala was far from enriched, at least it was mostly predictable: the sun would shine, I would avoid my old office, and I’d go out once or twice a week and see the same faces. When I found that Dikla’d left, I was devastated.
Probably the reason that life seems more complicated in London is that I have more friends here, each with their own schedule and agenda, and juggling those can be exhausting. Or frustrating or depressing, but that depends on the day. And person.
Maybe of Guatemala, there are too many things to list which is why I’m thinking of Mexico instead – and also, Mexico was always a viable long-term destination, which Guatemala was never intended to be.
San Cristóbal – I think I’ve not yet described (on here) the epic journey there – but arriving there finally after about 14 hours, and 7 ½ years – 14 ½ years in my mother’s case. Dinner in the restaurant of the hotel we’d stayed at all those years ago; drinks afterwards in the bar where Margarita and I’d watched the World Cup semifinal. Spending our days trying to revisit mine and Margarita’s haunts, always ending up back at the same bar for our final tequilas and cubas. The bliss of real-life Mexican tacos, only for my mother to get violently ill; no more tacos after that. The shock of finding that San Cristóbal, probably the poorest mini-city in Mexico, is turning into a mini-Barcelona. The Zapatistas starting their tour of the country; though I didn’t see Marcos, we caught them on various occasions during the day, and at night, when it was around -2 degrees Celsius, I wandered through the park as they settled, amazed by the range of people within their group. A week or so ago, I saw that they’d finally made it to Mexico City, and silently cheered. It’s impossible to see something like their procession and not be moved.
Maybe I wasn’t particularly happy in Guatemala, but at least I didn’t spend my time trying hard to keep positive. Life there, and in Mexico, was simple and straightforward; it never feels like that here. Here, I have friends I don’t see nearly often enough, I have my dance classes, yoga and pilates classes – I’ve had to abandon my 10-mile Sunday walks, and yet of that list, the dance classes are the only things I really do for myself. I have friends with varying stages of emotional deficiencies – and a profound sense that London doesn’t want me to be here, most profoundly reinforced by yesterday’s break-in – and Friend’s complete indifference to it, as to the fresh scabs on my face.
The week before last, I bumped into Maria – my best friend from several years ago – at the dance school, so we caught up briefly after class. Tuesday was my only evening at home, and I spent that horribly stressed while trying to work on the latest website. Wednesday I was out with my dance teacher, a few of the students, and her former accompanist (after her teasing me the week before about always being the last one out of the pub, even back then, I had to shove her and the rest out of O’Neills around midnight so I could catch the last tube home). Thursday, my uni friends, and some authentic Mexican food. Friday, a Project party; Matt and I relocated to the Rose & Crown, probably the first time I’ve actually seen him on his own since I’ve been back. Saturday, Martin – we’d had a detailed agenda for the night’s conversation, but not only did it not stand a chance due to me arriving so late, but the night carried on till about 5am.
Weeks like that are lovely, if exhausting and draining. The way I feel now, I can bottle the memories and value the diversity of the week; or I can use it towards grounds for staying longer-term. I suppose I really need to set aside Thinking Time to decide either way, but for all this time, all decisions have been in the hands of someone else who seems to have no inclinations to decide, much less talk.
The psychic I went to see a fortnight ago told me to go easy on Friend, not to rush anything, and to more or less wait till the end of next month (as opposed to this one) before making any rash decisions. I’m almost tempted to throttle the crap out of Friend (watching TV downstairs, studying or not studying) if only to get a reaction out of him, but I suppose sleep is more important.
I’ll deal with next week when it arrives. Albeit in a few hours.
Posted by chantal at 01:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2006
Shitheads (Again)
It's almost enough to make you laugh.
Saturday morning routine: wander downstairs for a cigarette, maybe clean kitchen in the process, wander into the living room for my laptop, bring it to the bedroom and spend the next few hours online.
This morning: wander downstairs for a cigarette, (idly noticing that the back door is unlocked), get heavily rained on in the process, wander into living for my snazzy brand-new laptop - and it's not there. Its predecessor, however, has been moved from its dusty corner of the last month or so to the arm of the sofa, and it's sitting open, as though someone's turned it on and lost interest.
Fume for a while, decide to go to an IT job fair, chat with Max for a bit, then head off - only to notice that my keys and Oyster card are missing. A short witch hunt later, and we realise we've been broken into - the only other missing item is Trevor's Oyster card, admittedly with all his credit cards.
I've been kicking myself over not having taken my laptop to the bedroom last night, or even yesterday when I had a strong urge to do so; I'm now mentally blaming Friend for inviting me to stay in a house where out of all of us, I'll get the most stuff stolen.
Roll on large quantities of rum - and maybe a flight back home...
Posted by chantal at 07:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 03, 2006
Four Weeks
In ten hours, I’ll have been back in England for four weeks. It doesn’t seem possible.
I’ve spent this evening remembering my last day in Antigua, four sad weeks ago. I woke fairly early – made easier as I’d stopped freelance work as soon as I knew I was returning; made harder by my mother waking me anyway long before I was ready. The plan for the day was to go to her lawyer and bank, to give me power of attorney, get my legs waxed, hair cut, get my ring back from the shop, and pack. Not in that order, and including several stopoffs at bars.
My mother had been nagging me for days to pack. Finally it was my last evening, and there was no more wriggling out of it. She settled on the harp as a starting point; I tried explaining to her that packing the harp involves sorting through my clothes first, then deciding which items get to join the harp. Only when that’s been done, can the harp bag be wrapped with my 25 metres of bubble wrap, after which it goes into the sleeping bag which is nigh on impossible to carry. She was anxious to help, so she went to fetch the bubble wrap – and found that the two sheets of 12.5 metres each had been replaced with a large pile of very small pieces of bubble wrap.
I started packing for a bit, then she came in for a brief chat, which led to us chatting for a few hours, helped along by several drinks and cigarettes. Finally the rum became too much, and we both collapsed in bed.
How can that have been four whole weeks ago?! I’ve been in my job for three weeks now, just long enough to be on the other side of an excessively long Induction Period. They had planned a detailed induction schedule, with several training sessions and / or meetings per day, which was abandoned after the first few days. Although they found out I was picking it all up very quickly by looking over a colleague’s shoulder, they didn’t actually give me any work to do, so I’ve managed to spend the time finishing one of my websites. I ‘accidentally’ updated my CV on Jobserve, and posted my English CV on Monster; I’ve had two phone calls so far. Oh so tempting – and also oh so embarrassing.
I’m still in the shared house, although I wonder how much longer that’ll last. (No doubt they are too). We’ve had a couple of late-night parties, which have been excellent fun – and then disappointing when they’re not repeated. After the last one (which was wine-driven), I bought them three bottles of wine as a gift; they all seem to have stopped drinking since then. Just the odd beer now and then. Sometimes the housemates are friendly, sometimes they make me feel excluded and a bit unwanted. I obsessively clean the house, but given that most of the housemates are male, they don’t notice.
For the last few weeks, I’ve had a small pile of new books to read, so I’ve been happy to curl up in the bedroom reading for a few hours – till I hear the voices of several people, or I get guilt pangs about being antisocial - or generally make myself absent for other reasons. There’s a very nice 10 mile walk to Richmond (and back) along the Grand Union Canal Path and the Thames Path; it would be nicer still if I could learn that in England, it rains whenever it wants to. Sunday before last, it just drizzled most of the time, which I just ignored; last Sunday, it started pouring within minutes of me starting and rarely let up. By the time I reached Richmond, Richmond Park was now Richmond Lake, and the rain had turned into hailstones. It’s also a 10 mile walk in the opposite direction towards Greenford, but I’ve gone off that one since reading about a murder on the Path over there.
I suppose I’m more used to being back, now. That may be because I try to avoid unfamiliar places and – to a large extent – people. If I’m talking to a complete stranger, the chances are higher now than a week or two ago, but there’s still no guarantee I’ll manage recognisable English. It’s annoying that people can tell my state of mind by how high my voice is; then again, it’s handy that generally people (unless they read this) don’t know that. Unfamiliar places just tend to leave me wide-eyed and slightly incoherent – like yesterday’s yoga lesson, for example. Sometimes I look at the cars parked along the street, or driving past, and marvel at the condition of them all – probably only about 15% (if that) of cars in Guatemala would actually be classed as roadworthy.
Of course, when my world is this house, commute, work, gym, Eat Café for lunch, the health food shop behind Waterloo for my herbal teas, a choice of two pubs after work, and my walking options being either to Richmond or to a friend’s local pub in Bank (via another friend’s office en route), it’s easy to shelter myself from any more overt evidence of where I am. I should probably explore more – return to my old flat, if only for a check-up, actually go to a supermarket – but I suspect that would exceed my current overwhelm limits. I know how ridiculous it is for me to be in such a chronic state of shock about being back, given how long I’ve lived here, and I should force myself to snap out of it; on the other hand, I want to cling to the Central American reactions, I’m not ready to lose them yet. Then again, on yet another hand, I’d love to simply hop on a plane back home, but given the current airfares, I’d definitely have to shed the harp – it’s charter or nothing.
Posted by chantal at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2006
Magical Mystery Tour
Plan for the day: transfer my latest website from my test site to its own domain. I just received an email to say the servers are down for 6 – 8 hours. Next plan: curl up with a book. Maybe update this site.
I’ve been back in London now for 2 ½ weeks. I was back in Guatemala for 8 months. Returning to London after that length of time is actually a rather fuzzy concept when chatting with a pissed friend, or having a phone interview at 4am for a job you never took particularly seriously when you applied for it. Eight months in one town in Guatemala may be enough to make someone very strongly want to be elsewhere, but it’s not till the plane journey that you realise you just meant a holiday, not an all-out relocation.
So I’m back. New job, new part of London, 5 new housemates, except for the minor details that I’m just ‘staying’ here. The friend I’m supposedly staying with is rarely home, which means that neither am I – either meeting up with friends or out on yet another Very Long Walk.
I had always had vague fuzzy ideas of returning to London at some point – specifically to see friends and check up on my old flat (or rather, which of my belongings my ex-flatmates helped themselves to, and check up on the state of my poor abandoned garden) – but I had joked to myself that I’d only do that once I’d been in Guatemala long enough that London would seem very very strange.
Eight months seems to have achieved that. My first day – travelling from Gatwick to Heathrow by bus, then from Heathrow to here by taxi – I couldn’t even look out of the window, too bewildered by the motorway, the landscape (it took me most of an hour to realise that it’s technically still winter – as far as the foliage is concerned), too alarmed by the buildings.
I didn’t go outside again till the next day; still, a houseful of people all drinking tea, drinkable tap water, central heating and being able to put toilet paper in the toilet again were enough to keep the bewilderment going.
Oddly, speaking English all the time has had the effect that a lot of the time, I can barely speak it at all. Though I spoke English most of the time back home – most of the time when I worked at the magazine, and with my mother – whenever I went out, whether in a bar, shop or elsewhere, or answered the phone, it’d always be in Spanish. For now, I’m substituting that with broken English, or a very strong accent. When I’m not as startled, I seem to talk with a strong Irish accent. It’s good that I like confusing people.
Talking of confusing people, one of the highlights of being back has been turning up unannounced on a couple of friends, who I’d deliberately not mentioned anything to as I was getting ready to leave, even pretending I was still in Guatemala during my first few days here. Maybe the response would have been better if both of them had been less English; I texted one of them on Friday morning to say ‘Fancy going to the pub tonight?’; as I knew that Julian always leaves work at 5.15pm, I waited outside his office for him. That, and a long session at the Rose & Crown with Matt and Martin made me a whole lot happier to be back.
Given how much I loathed sharing my flat, I’m surprised that I’m enjoying sharing with 5 people (even if I’m thoroughly insecure enough about my status here to ensure nothing of mine is left out on display, apart from my laptop and a bottle of water) – there are three guys (all geeks) and two women, or rather one and a half (the other one is an airline stewardess; she’s away for three days at a time, and is currently on holiday in Thailand). Max (South African with some Italian chucked in) and Trevor (Zimbabwean) often insult each other in South African slang or whatever it is; Andy (female, Argentinian/Canadian via Dorset) is reliably the only one of us who will sit in the living room without a laptop on her lap. Last Saturday, two of the guys were in here working, as was I; when she came in and saw us all sat here with laptops, she was horrified; I cheerfully called out, ‘There’s space for one more laptop.’ She shuddered and walked off.
There’s some parkland on the other side of this street, which leads to the Grand Union Canal Path and the Thames Path; in five years of living in a foul area, I’d forgotten what it was like to go for long walks, much less somewhere which seems so rural. It’s also a much more scenic route to Brentford, which is the only other place I’ve walked to so far in this area. (Ealing Broadway was the next plan, but I couldn’t find any reasons for actually wanting to go there).
Work…. For now, don’t ask me about work. I suppose there were three reasons for taking the job (not necessarily in this order): a) they adored me and all but offered me the job without even meeting me; b) it’s about a block from where I worked on the Project, so I’m back within spitting distance of the Project, the Rose & Crown, Eat and my old gym; c) I could get the skillset I need to be more desirable when jobhunting. (The pay is terrible).
It’s also a permanent job. If you overlook the dance job back in ’01, it’s my first actual Permanent Job. Which means three weeks of induction. Perhaps I am not meant to have a brain. Three weeks of sitting around waiting for the next slot when someone shows me something I’ve already picked up by staring at my colleague’s screen. Also three weeks of slots on the induction schedule being missed. Thankfully I’ve been backlogged enough on the latest website that I’ve just been working on that during the day, or at least as much as I can without the passwords for the control panels or FTP access.
So, back to that point about bumping up my skillset. Dan, the ‘development boss’ stormed out of a meeting on Wednesday, and hasn’t been heard of since. Admittedly, he’s meant to be in Greece for a long weekend, but that doesn’t explain his silence / absence on Wednesday and Thursday. If he returns on Tuesday, all is rosy; if he doesn’t, it probably won’t be a job worth my staying in. Until then, my boss adores me; in a week and a half, I’ve not had a single cigarette without him.
So I’m back in London, this time with very wide eyes – and broken English. To an extent, I’m grateful to be in London and not the States: not only is it relatively familiar here, but I suspect I couldn’t get away with this level of culture shock in the States (nor would anybody understand me when I speak). For now, though, I’m not someone who’s lived here for most of my life, I’m someone who’s just arrived from a bloody Third World Country – either I get over it or I go back.
Posted by chantal at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 08, 2005
PS
Having very few functional braincells left after today, I forgot to add a particular thought.
I'm aware that most of my friends have lost track of which country I live in at any given time - London for the last six years - much less them knowing that I'm working in King's Cross these days, but after the events of today, what stands out are the people, friends and family both who haven't been arsed to get in touch.
Lovely people.
Posted by chantal at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bang
It started with a bang.
More accurately, it started with a phonecall from my boss. In the last few weeks, she’s evolved – not very flatteringly – into an Incredibly Important Person. She phoned at 9am to complain that Liverpool Street station was closed, and insisted that, if I couldn’t find out anything useful off the Transport For London website, I was to phone them and find out exactly what was going on and how she was going to get to work. In the absence of information from TfL, I noticed on BBC News that a ‘bang’ had been reported at Liverpool Street station. ‘Bang? What sort of bang? What caused the bang? What did the bang do? etc.’
Our simple-minded local IT guy had overheard this conversation, and told me that King’s Cross had been evacuated, that passengers had been diverted to Euston until Euston too was evacuated. Victoria was evacuated. I phoned Ruth back to let her know that this was a slightly larger issue than just Liverpool Street and adjacent bus stops; she tried to pump me for additional information, which Tariq had unfortunately failed to give me. She sulked her way back home.
From then until 10am, I was sprinting between my office and the other, down the hall, each time there was an additional piece of news about the situation. As there are only two networked PCs in the other office, our three researchers were mostly unaware of the situation. I’d check the news on one of their two useful PCs, sprint back to my office with the latest news, then surf the web till something sent me sprinting back to their office. It was in their office that I heard an explosion; when I got back to my office, the two people there were standing by the window looking puzzled.
I was back in the researchers’ office when our Head of Unit and the Communications Assistant (the two people in my office today) turned up unannounced; it was time for our monthly Team Briefing. Not only was it a bloody inappropriate time to hold such a meeting, it was also extremely absurd to listen to various ramblings amidst a backdrop of ambulances, helicopters and other sirens. Throughout. We were interrupted by someone ordering us to the basement asap.
In the basement, they started serving coffee, and some people pulled out a Monopoly board. Not only did we have no idea what we were doing down there, we also had no idea how long we were likely to be down there for. Also, having been offline for over half an hour by then, we’d had no idea if there had been any significant incident in the meantime provoking this evacuation. Gareth, the Comms Assistant’s girfriend works for TfL, and had texted him to say a bus had ‘gone up’, but without any further details. Eventually someone was handed a microphone and informed us that the Police had advised them to remove all staff from offices with windows, and to keep us in a centralised location. As soon as he added we could return to our offices briefly to retrieve our stuff, I sprinted upstairs to check email, the news, and grab my bag and cigarettes. Gareth takes the bus into Russell Square; the printouts said that that was where the bus had exploded.
In the basement corridor, people were crowded around a radio. It seemed I needed to go up the stairs, then back down again to reach the smoking room; before I’d even lit up, a woman told me that three buses had gone up. I sprinted back to my colleagues to tell them. When I struggled back to the smoking room, a woman was talking on the phone in Spanish to her mother, reassuring her of the situation. I chatted to the group of smokers, then, when they left, to a Kenyan woman who was worried about her mother’s reaction if she didn’t manage to reach her first. Her boyfriend worked for London Underground, and had told her that a major electrical substation had been hit, as well as five buses. Once I’d decided I’d had all the nicotine my body could handle, I went back to the radio in the hall until my colleagues decided it was safe to leave.
Part of the problem with mass panic is that mobile networks get heavily clogged. I texted Matt as soon as we reached the basement, to let him know what was going on and to beg for external news of what was going on; it took about five attempts for the text to get through. I’d been waiting to phone my mother, to reassure her that even though all these explosions (nobody’d mentioned bombs as yet) were going off all around me, and although I’d been evacuated, really I was fine. I finally phoned at 11am. John, who she was staying with, was reasonably awake. She wasn’t, promptly went back to sleep and lost all recollection of having spoken to me. I then tried my father, who, after many attempts to phone him, seemed not to be at home.
Back upstairs, our Head of Unit informed us that, given where each of us lived, if we wanted to leave immediately, then we should. Instead, all of us stayed on, hounding the Internet for news and train times. I found a train in ten minutes’ time for Avneeta, who lives in Enfield, but by the time she’d finished dithering, it was too late; there was no indication of another train for her. In the researchers’ office, Simon managed to access BBC Live on one of the PCs, so I remained glued to that, again running between offices according to announcements, but also painfully aware each time I ran back into my own office that I was spending my time browsing the news and not doing any actual work – say, arranging cancelling tomorrow’s industry launch.
I had commented frequently about how the Iraqi War had been carried out as a media event, bordering on reality TV; today was much the same. What had actually happened seemed less important than immediate updates on the news, scouting other news websites when all the available news was more than a few minutes old. Actually, the bombs, the rumours and the news were all far less significant to all of us than the matter of how we’d get home. The smokers I chatted to throughout the day felt much the same: yeah, terrible tragedy, how the hell do I get home. As I emailed my uncle, there was an intense morbid excitement about the events, but they were ultimately secondary to commuting issues.
I’m trying to remember when London was last bombed. I remember the bombings of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, when bombings were more or less a part of everyday life, and the only variation was in the country attacking us at the time. And when bombings are so commonplace, life reroutes itself around them and carries on, with little attention paid to the near-misses or actual-hits. Today was the first major attack in probably over 10 years, and maybe that was why there was so much media attention; the paucity of information would be another reason. As a prisoner-of-war, interviewed by the BBC while on his way to a POW reunion, more or less said, ‘Been here. Doing it again. Won’t let them beat us.’
My first thought, at the news of the multiple attacks, was that it was linked to the Olympics, intended to demonstrate how inefficient our public transport system is; it was only after a few hours of mild hysteria that we realised that today was the first day of the G8 summit. The Summit is being held in Scotland, which makes it a far more logical target, but maybe London was selected because of the disruption which could be caused, the mortality rates, and the impact it would have around the world. The obvious comparisons have been made with the Madrid bombings, however it’s notable that in Madrid, there were far few targets and a far higher death rate; in London, the targets effectively circled Central London, and the death rate has been comparatively negligible.
The end results: minimal infrastructural damage. The only overground image is that of the exploded bus on Upper Woburn Place. Apart from the deaths and injuries, the disruption is much the same as if there had been a combined Tube and bus strike. No photos of rubble and extensive damage for the press and politicians to capitalise on, to base future wars on; just an increasing yet small minimal death toll. The G8 summit is now apparently fixated on today’s attacks, away from debt relief and global poverty; with no groups claiming responsibility besides the website affiliated to Al Qaeda, you have to wonder who would benefit from today’s events. Obvious candidates would be the G8 countries resistant to the above themes: the States, Germany and Japan. Qadaffi has protested against African countries appealing for aid, immediately drowned out by other African leaders.
In the absence of concrete news, all we really know is that a city far from the G8 summit has been attacked, the G8 agenda has shifted significantly as a result, and it has been carried out in a way to minimise media coverage.
I guess we gotta watch this space.
Posted by chantal at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)
May 20, 2005
Shitheads
Okay, so I'm running out of time here, so I'll keep this short.
Got home yesterday to find the grille on my bedroom window unscrewed and off to the side, the front door kicked in, my bedroom, the living room and the kitchen trashed, the back door wide open and a very large hole in the window next to it.
Laptop's been taken. Life without internet access at home suddenly seems pointless and meaningless.
Also an 11-year old digital camera, which hasn't worked in years, and my cheap discman. All that mess they created for a few bits of technology suffering from near-death experiences.
And I gotta go back there in a few minutes.
Posted by chantal at 04:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 13, 2005
Bad Penny
Too late to write anything imaginative, so here's a text I sent Matt earlier (I'd originally planned to mass-send it, but my thumb pleaded laziness):
i'm definitely a bad penny. got my old job back at rssb, starting mon, another possible interview back at lewisham. this is taking pigeonholing too far ;)
Given I've worked for four places in the last two and a half years, I've so far had two phone calls about working in my old team in the first one, three interviews for my old job in the second one, a phone call about temping with the team I used to sit with and loathe (and be loathed by) in the third, and today, a phone call from the woman I used to work for in the fourth.
And to think they say that the IT industry is picking up... !
Posted by chantal at 02:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 03, 2004
The Hot Chocolates Don’t Work
I’ve never had such a bloody awful day at work. Ever. It was so bad that I couldn’t leave my desk, as I’d storm out of the office if I did; if I went outside for a cigarette, I knew I’d never return. Admittedly, when I finally trusted myself enough to go for a cigarette, I realised it was too cold for me to go any further than back into the office at top speed.
About fifteen minutes later, Fill emailed me for a fag break, and told me he’d heard a rumour (albeit from a completely unreliable source) that I’d be losing my job in a week.
Anyone who reads either of these sites will know that Central America is very much on my mind these days. I’ve spent half my life juggling England and there, and I’m worn out. I don’t have what Gina has – any links with any Latino communities, indeed any connection with Central America besides my regular contact with my mother – I just have my flat, a few scattered friends, and still more scattered plants. Piles of adored ex-colleagues. Also two harps, two guitars and a collapsible piano. It may have taken me over a week to pack up my desk on the Project; I imagine it will take me far longer to pack up my flat. I’ve no doubt that the very few who have seen my flat will more than agree.
So there was that. Homesickness, meeting Gina, no flatmate on the horizon, failure to book flight home, the possibility of losing my job.
A very classic Freudian slip there – I actually wrote ‘the possibility of doing my job’. My day started with seven emails, with me dancing to Cheb Mami and singing ‘An Englishman In New York’ but trying to cram in the words ‘I’m a half-Mexican in London’. It doesn’t quite work.
You all know that I passionately loathe my job. I have spent two days this week swapping jokes and silly websites with Fill, and spent the other three days itching to rip off the heads of the people in my office, my boss, his boss and Rebecca being foremost. He’s off now till Wednesday, and I’ve promised him at least three headless corpses on his return. At some point this morning, I realised what a complete bloody joke my job is. I’m a database programmer (now). This job just seems to consist of dumping data into databases and extracting statistics. I spent over an hour fiddling with Windows Explorer, flicking through thirteen folders with about 50 dbf files in each, none of which actually contained anything even vaguely resembling useful information. I actually felt physically sick at the thought of having to consider approaching any of those files (as opposed to the effect of the two hot chocolates I’d drunk earlier in rapid succession). I realised that my job would never be more than any of this, that even though my job title, according to the org chart my boss’s boss printed off for me on my first day is ‘developer’, I’m never going to develop anything besides homicidal tendencies and an unhealthy rum habit. I’ve tried to limit myself to one lunchtime pub trip per week. I’ve gone to the pub three times this week.
So that hour spent flicking through Windows Explorer was my attempt to appear to be working while despairing intensely.
After Fill told me the gossip about me, I decided I should do some work, at the very least to cover up the two days of doing sod all. More like four weeks (I’ve now been there for four weeks) of doing sod all. If they really do want to get rid of me, at least they won’t be able to say it’s for lack of productivity.
I have two new data sources to work with, mobiles and work extensions. The work extensions are the mass files I mentioned earlier; to date, I’ve spent about a whole day trying to hack into the mobiles data. I spent about half an hour today baffled by the fact that there are 12 calls logged against my extension despite my never having used the phone yet, then returned to the hell of the mobiles.
The first hurdle was the data2.msi file. The file which baffled the Network Rail IT staff for weeks, and the one which determines whether or not I can actually open the sodding databases. Without this one wee file, my computer decides that the database isn’t actually a database, and returns to its nap. It then took me another hour or more to store another missing file in a location I couldn’t copy to – I couldn’t copy the database off Terminal Services, nor the missing file to TS. I gave up, and tried to access the front end. Its command on load is to maximise, so if you’re using a wee little TS screen, all you get is an error message saying that it’s closing down as it can’t maximise. Even when I maximised the TS screen later on, I was still plagued by requests for about nine missing files multiple times before it could complete any function.
I forgot to say that I popped over to the other office to drop off the Christmas Lunch menu – I’d planned to say something gloomy like I’d rather be painfully tortured than go, but then I realised that going would be in itself painful torture. Fill was on his way to the canteen; I needed to speak to ND about that dratted msi file, and it turned out he needed to speak to me too about restoring a backup of a SQL Server database. Apparently it’s yet another of those things my predecessor did which I’ve never so much as heard of before. He summoned an Asian woman to help him eventually, but sitting on a desk watching them was like sitting through a reenactment of Dumb & Dumber.
Fill was in my office when I returned, logging into the PC next to me (also the one nearest to Rebecca, poor thing). Given how much time we’ve spent slagging off our jobs, and how much I was suffering by that point, it was painful not to be able to say anything as most of the helpdesk lot were at their places.
Back at my desk, I pointed the sodding Windows Installer at the msi file, at which point it promptly asked for another, without a browse option. Even if I could create the necessary filepath, there still wasn’t any way I could copy the bloody file over to resolve the issue. It was around then I started swearing and bashing my forehead against the desk. As the main issue was about the lack of a proper Access installation on the relevant server, I decided to access the server through Explorer – and found that it was password protected.
At that point I started swearing loudly.
At the same time, Rebecca opened her mouth. Her two dramas of the last few weeks have been being ill, and flat trauma. She moved into a new flat a week ago, and actually arranged for a police escort from her previous flat of four days. The new landlord wants a character reference. So Rebecca’s writing it herself. I tried pointing out to her that she’s completely invalidating the point of a character reference, and with nine other people in the office, surely someone else can write something for her. Lead balloon. I muttered to Fill ‘I’ve got to get the fuck out of here’, and passed him a note saying – referring to an earlier email – ‘Your first guess was right. This has got to be a nightmare. It can’t not be a nightmare.’ He was on the phone; I grabbed my stuff and headed to the nearest pub.
I only had two hours left when I returned to the office, or two and a half hours, as it turned out. On my second day, I brought in my CD collection, and sprinted over to John Lewis once it was open to buy some new headphones. Ever since, I’ve spent all my time listening to music very very loudly. On the Project, I’d turn my music off whenever people talked around me; normally I don’t bother any more, as I know the conversations around me will only make me all the more depressed, but I saw my boss and his boss talking, and turned Khaled off to hear them discussing a new starter. Although they dropped their voices after a bit, and the rest of the room got noisier in that time, I still heard more than enough. But still, not enough to know whether or not it was my job they were talking about. But I still heard them discuss how well this new person would fit in, how well they would adjust. I’ve already asked once to move out of the office. I spend all day listening to music, looking as though I’m being tormented by unspoken evils. I learned quickly that apart from a couple of people who barely speak to me, I despise everyone in my office, and I’ll jump at any excuse to not be there. I’ve been sacked often enough by very flimsy excuses, which of course makes me all the more paranoid.
I do know that I always loathe returning to England in January. I almost missed my flight back a year ago, and probably this time, I’ll try a hell of a lot harder to ensure that I do. But I’ve wanted to leave England for a long time, since long before I tried to move to Dublin. Fill asked me earlier what’s stopping me, and in reality, it’s simply the logistics of packing up this flat.
Posted by chantal at 10:36 PM | TrackBack
November 30, 2004
Mexican Mouse
Generally, the first thing people comment on when they meet me is my accent. I’m beyond fed up of the questions, of their analysing my accent when it wanders on a minute-to-minute basis, but all the more so when I’m told that I can’t be Mexican as I don’t look like the Mexicans on TV. I always think back to my Guatemalan friends back home, all far paler than I am, despite how much warmer it is there. I’ve fought hard to lose the Spanish accent I used to have – being called Mexican Mouse by Nick and Linda on a regular basis is an enormous incentive in doing so. It comes back from time to time, although I’ve only just noticed that my French accent remains firmly dormant.
Yes, I went through a phase twelve years ago when not only did I try to become as English as I could, I also set myself a photographic project to define Englishness, which involved asking everyone I knew exactly what being English meant to them. Those who know me now know that neither of those two ever amounted to anything, and that I’ve settled for being me, a mostly-foreigner but not pretending any more. At the time, I concluded that it boiled down to Monty Python, but it still strikes me that I nevertheless had to undergo that to try to understand the culture I’d been living in for most of my life.
Maybe it’s the time of year. I always go back to Guatemala for a month over Christmas and New Years, and would never consider spending it otherwise. I haven’t booked my flight yet – Ana has seen to that, for now – but I already feel that I have one foot over there, and that I’ve overstayed my time in London by so long, it would be so much easier not to return to London afterwards. Returning is so hard anyway, so hard to recover from, it’s long past time I decide not to inflict that on myself any longer. Three years ago, I bribed John into extricating me from my usual January misery, but I don’t have any such contingencies any more.
I’ve written about Central America from time to time – in San Pedro Dreams, when I was mulling over a random but compelling memory two years ago, then a week and a half ago, when I was recovering from a night in a horrendously overpacked bar in Waterloo. I don’t know if I can do the region justice, however, if I can truly convey the reality of being there, of adjusting to the lifestyle there without question, feeling at home for the first time since I was last there. I don’t like who I am when I live in London; I miss the person I am when I’m home. I can’t say that strongly enough.
When I was at university, I would return to France and Holland on a frequent basis to distance myself from the London lifestyle; once I had the chance, I would return to Central America as frequently as I could, not only to drink in how wonderful it was to be back home, but also to remind myself of what was actually important in life, and that the accessories which may be so important in London are not even worth thinking about once back there.
It’s been a hard few days. I’m completely drained by the few days Ana has spent here, and that that, as well as other background stuff, is probably why I’m thinking so hard of Central America these days, and that, regardless of the political problems and crime levels, I just really need to be back in Mexico, Guatemala, Nica or Pana, just somewhere where I don’t have to fight so hard on a day-to-day basis.
It’s the foreigner thing which always gets me, in the end. Bad enough for me to be so far away from home, but worse still to live in a country where I’ll never assimilate into the culture, never stop being made to feel foreign because of how alien the people I meet are to me. Even the ones I care deeply for are still going to remain alien, at the end of the day – but as they’re on their home ground, my foreignness will always be all the more of an issue. I know that my accent singles me out first, and my personality second, but what I learned twelve years ago is that I’m not prepared to choke myself so that I fit in. Unfortunately, I’m isolated from the Latino communities here in London, which leaves me without a space where I can truly relax and be myself without being overly conscious of whichever unspoken social codes I’m breaking, probably without even noticing.
Okay, so the main thing I appreciate about London is how multicultural it is, and how someone like me can live here and somehow fit in, whereas the other capital cities I know are too segregated to make that as possible. On the other hand, the communities it accommodates aren’t the ones I want around me; if I’m to stay in Europe, I want to be in Paris where I can at least immerse myself in the culture I’m most enamoured of, even if living there means accepting the cultural segregation and hostilities which would be harder still for me to adjust to.
But it’s not the same. Catacamas. Dirt roads, Maseca signs, the three-quarters empty supermarket on the plaza, but I never once questioned whether or not I felt at home there. I had my peones, but was criticised for wanting to buy them presents to thank them for all their hard work when the project came to an end. It’s because of all of the people I met then – the locals, not the ones on my team – that I gave up being an archaeologist, making me aware that their lives were of far more interest to me than those of their ancestors, and that I felt so much more connected with them than I ever have while living in London.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the rug I call my ‘Mexican God’ rug. I wrote last night about creating families for ourselves out of the people around us, but with Ana leaving, I’m feeling that I’ve given all I can, that I’ve done all I can, that I don’t have any more affection to give, and am not particularly likely to receive any back; and that, as an Australian friend said years ago, I have nothing left to prove by staying here. Also, as I wrote last night, accumulating family members is my way of establishing links with those I care about the most, however I know I have a whole extended family awaiting me anxiously back home.
I want to go home. I want it so much more than anything else – although I don’t necessarily know if I could stay if I did. I want to be where I’m on the same wavelength as those around me, where I don’t have to constantly justify or validate myself, or be forced into pretending to be someone I’m not. I’ve lived in so many countries, I’m used to making myself comfortable wherever I am, I know I could probably continue doing so indefinitely, but for me, life is too short to waste so much of it hiding who I am and trying to adjust to people who don’t adjust to me first.
My brother’s as much of a hybrid as I am, but at least he comes from a different background, not that it’s one I would have ever chosen for myself. We barely speak to each other, but at the very least, I don’t want him to have this geographical confusion I have. He’s never been to Central America, never lived there, would probably loathe it if he tried, but, like me, he’s picked the nationality which suits him the best and thankfully for him, it’s one which is so much easier to reconcile his everyday life with.
Maybe it’s just me being really horribly homesick. But I feel so strongly that the last few months have shown me that I don’t need to do the London crap any longer, that I don’t need to spend my strength caring for people who don’t know where I’m coming from, much less spend my days with people who can’t ever be bothered to say hello to me in the mornings. There may be so very much I dislike about being in Central America, but then all I have to do is remember being back there, and contrast that with walking home to my beloved home here in a part of London I hate bitterly.
When I was at uni, I had an English boyfriend who took all my complaints about England completely personally, but never realised what I was really saying: that I’d given this country everything I had, but at the end of the day, it would still kill me in the end. Out of the last five years, Ana has learned so much more about me than I’ve ever considered telling anyone else in the past years. As I implied last night, I would far rather spend an evening with Ana dissecting our lives than doing my best to kill time elsewhere, but maybe the main reason for that is that, for all I value the British tradition of discussion, it allows for at least as many boundaries as I have again discussing anything even vaguely personal. Christ, I want to take a sledgehammer to the brick boundary, but I just don’t know that I could count on anyone to be there on the other side once I’d finished fully working up a sweat.
I thought that my current job was my dream job. It’s not. My mother would love for me to buy a one-way ticket and settle for the best. Apart from Ana and Sammi, the people I care the most for are my Network Rail friends, and we’ve established over the last two months that we can stay in touch over email on a very frequent basis, regardless of where I am. I’ve lost interest in my garden, so the only thing still holding me here is my flat. Yes, it’s pretty much all that has held me here for the last four years, but when I think about returning to Calle Chipilapa, it doesn’t stand a chance. Fill wants to leave RCN; I just want to leave this godforsaken country.
Posted by chantal at 12:42 AM | TrackBack
July 30, 2004
Job Crisis Continued
Friend 2 forwarded me the email he sent to the Furball and to the Furball’s boss. Though almost neutral, he’s urging for me to be kept on, stressing how key I am to his team’s performance. Having worked closely with his team since last May, if any work is to be carried out for his team, he wants it to be done by me, and not to have to relive the endless hours if not days spent in meetings explaining how his team works and what they produce. He had spent several months waiting while his industry software languished in the hands of IT before he raised it with me in March; even since I started campaigning on his behalf after that, the Furball hasn’t been able to take him seriously, much less give him a straight answer when needed. Matt has no experience of the team’s work, and although yesterday’s hour-long meeting was specifically about the data Friend 2’s team produces, the Furball did not bother to check a single spreadsheet or prepare in any way.
Friend 1’s boss’s boss spoke to the Furball’s boss, who was told I had three weeks to go, which is admittedly generous given my contract runs out on Monday. Developments today have made her team all the more desperate for me to work for them, which continues to invalidate the Party Line that my contract’s not being renewed due to the lack of work. I have about 2-3 months’ work ahead of me, it’s just being strangleholded at this stage. And it’s all urgent, which means that poor Matt can’t be released from his current system to fulfill them, however that might fit into current plans.
I’ve told very few colleagues: Matt, Jenny, the two managers who would be most affected by my departure due to imminent work and obligations, and a friend from my early days on this Project. The rest of my team – the half-person (part-time, that is) and our secretary were informed in our team meeting yesterday – the Furball spent ten minutes announcing my departure – and I spent much of this morning emailing our secretary about it. Our umbrella team meeting was cancelled today, otherwise another three teams would know by now. I should notify the managers affected by my other databases, but I guess I’m waiting to hear a confirmed end date or feedback on the Friends’ manipulations.
Without a doubt, this is the longest I’ve ever held down a job – by more than a year – but it seems to have a unique character hard to replicate. Bearing in mind how many other companies I’ve worked for, I’ve never found such a close-knit work community; when we were divided into four offices at the end of last June, two outside of London, the best analogy I could find was to describe us all as children of a divorce, divided between four different relatives. Although that has been dissipated due to the intense pressure most of us have been under, the Project for some reason does still command fierce loyalty, both to itself and to its staff. As an originally semi-independent project, we were virtually a separate company in our own right, with our own HR team, for example, and with few obvious links to HQ. Of course that’s changed, but to an extent, the culture has remained.
As a result, it’s hard to explain to friends and most importantly, to parents, why it’s so hard to leave. For two months, I’ve been considering leaving, but my work obligations and my adoration of my salary override that every time. Even when I have a small window of extension – and of course, I don’t know how long that will be, which complicates even jobhunting – my priority is to the people I support, and wanting tosee my work for them completed before I go. Both of my parents are in agreement that I should just go, and let the Project suffer the consequences of not renewing my contract. Back in May – even before I flew out for the job interview in Indiana – my primary commitment was to Friend 2, and to seeing his team with a functional system before I could leave. Due to ongoing problems with the IT team, I will have to wait a few more weeks before I can start to do any relevant work, but it’s still something which matters a lot to me, as does sorting out some issues for a team I’ve worked with closely since I joined.
It doesn’t help, knowing that much of the work I do voluntarily is probably outside of my job remit, and won’t be continued after I go. I still think it’s crucial to the role of our team, but then, we’ve all developed our own priorities as the Project has progressed. But as the Knowledge Group, it will be embarrassing to say the least to have gaping knowledge gaps due to indifference. Indifference caused by our isolation from the work being carried out, maybe, but still detrimental.
An analogy might be from when I used to work on excavations. Citing one in particular, we all stayed on a campsite, so we woke together, breakfasted together, worked together, cleaned up together, ate together and hung out together till bedtime; the only time we had apart from each other was when we were asleep. The atmosphere on that dig was similar to, if more incestuous, than on the Project.
Also to contradict The Verdict, I’ve been rushed off my feet for the last two days, in contrast to the last five and a half weeks of mind-numbing tedium. None of it has been ‘oh my god you’re leaving’ work, either. The Furball produced a list of what was supposedly my outstanding work to be completed before I leave; unfortunately, I’d done most of it, and it didn’t actually include any of my real outstanding work. Unfortunately for me, and my sanity, two pieces of work are being delayed pending the Furball’s boss’s approval (i.e. work for the two Friends), and another pending I have no idea what. The Furball asked me to type up the actions from yesterday’s meeting – Friend 2 asked if that was okay with me, then later asked after the very dirty look I gave him - but I have yet to see anything with the Furball’s scrawl on it.
I’ll be interested to hear the Furball’s boss’s feedback on learning that actually I have a lot of work to do, I just have to spend a little time waiting for it to start. I still don’t know whether I’d be happy to stay – every time the Furball hacks up a hairball or opens his mouth, I’m thrilled to be out of there soon – or if I should focus on getting out of there as soon as possible before I do indeed fall off the career ladder altogether. I just want the uncertainty of the last few days to be resolved, to know where I stand and what to plan for.
It’s extremely touching, especially given how few colleagues I’ve broken the news to, how much they’ve rallied around me, and how several are campaigning to have me kept on. Therefore, it’s all the more frustrating to have to explain to others why I don’t feel I can leave in good conscience having left the environmental reports unresolved, the risk team till stranded without a functional system, or the possessions team at the mercy of someone who thinks he can program without repercussions. Having been strongly committed to the Project and my colleagues since joining, I can’t stop considering how my absence will affect their needs and workloads.
It’s now way past my bedtime, and editing this is about the best I can do. I’ve spent about an hour and a half on the phone to a couple of friends who are moving to Fuerteventura in October, fingers crossed, and bearing in mind how low my commitment is to database work these days, there’s not a whole lot stopping me from joining them. Lynn’s a designer. John’s a salesman. Give me a laptop and I’ll have a database and website ready for them within days.
Posted by chantal at 12:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 28, 2004
Imminent Joblessness
I went on holiday a few weeks ago to decide what to do. I’d been jobsearching until then, but wanted to be certain about what I wanted to do and where.
While waiting in the airport, I decided that the best way of choosing where to end up would be by scanning the list of destinations; I chose France and Spain in a heartbeat. But once I got to Fuerteventura, and realised for all that I babbled endlessly in Spanish, my Spanish was out of sync with everyone else’s, I got profoundly homesick for Mexico and Central America. Without even thinking about it, I knew I had to leave my job, for my sanity if nothing else.
It’s been nearly two weeks since I returned, and I’ve spent that time either chasing my rucksack or in my usual sleep-deprived haze, so although I’ve jobsearched, I’ve been reluctant to commit to anything.
Then today. Today I was told that my contract would not be renewed, and that although it could be extended by a few weeks, that would be the most that I could expect. A smoking buddy has been wanting to poach me for a few months now, so as soon as she finished listening to me ramble on, fighting off last night’s sleeping pill (which mutated into a migraine), she had a meeting with her boss to discuss the possible addition of me to their team. He was last heard of raising it with his boss. She was prepared to approach the director, if that’s what it would take.
Soon after I was told about my imminent loss of contract, we had to endure a team meeting; straight afterwards, I emailed another manager who would be severely affected by my departure; he is horrified and concerned, to say the least, and is petitioning for my extension or transfer too; unfortunately, he’s on leave for the next week and a half. The only real work commitment I have is to his team, so it’s sad he might miss his chance through his much-needed holiday; his team has recently downsized by nearly half, and he’s had no assurances that he’ll be able to replace the absent staff.
So that’s what’s been happening today. After five and a half weeks of no work, today was frantically busy; three meetings eating up most of the day, and not even having time to go to the gym. A database corrupted on me, taking nearly an hour to resolve, after which the Furball shouted at me for prioritising that over finding out we’ve been pinning our hopes on someone who can’t even help us on a not-hugely-critical situation. But that’s how the Furball works. Regardless of how we work best, he prefers to flap and chuck random mundane tasks at us, making us lose our concentration and place, making it all the harder to pick up what we were doing when we get the chance to return to it. Worse still, Matt and I are specifically Database Programmers. Any extranet, network or security issues are completely outside of our remit, however much he rants or how many furballs he hacks up in the process. (Matt is lucky; as a poorly-disguised secretary, I get pretty much stuck with the lot). The Critical Situation involves an industry package Friend 2 has been trying to get installed all year. IT are physically and intellectually incapable of complying. Once it’s up, someone will need to upload two years’ worth of data (around 265 spreadsheets), only we don’t know how, as nobody actually has it installed or uses it. The one person we were counting on – Furball was planning a delegation to this person’s desk, but I preempted him by returning five mugs to the kitchen and ‘accidentally’ bumping into him as his desk is nearby – doesn’t use the add-on we’ll be needing. I had argued – and when it concerns the Furball, it’s always arguing – that it’s more logical to assess the data load and quality first, then approach this person about how to install it, as opposed to approaching him without a clue about which data needs to be matched to the current infrastructure.
So I’ve been jobhunting. When Aileen left in April, I was heartbroken, and couldn’t conceive of having to leave all of my good friends here at work. She kept beating herself up over being ‘such a woman’, for being so upset; I realised I’d be far worse with the sheer number of friends I’d have to leave forever. I couldn’t do that to myself. But then my mother phoned me within a few hours with a job interview in the States, and in the next few weeks, I started to accept how dead-end my job has become, how little future or prospects it offers, and how the only rational move is to leave as soon as possible before I fall off the career ladder altogether.
I started to write a piece about a week ago called ‘Furballed’. Furball is what we call my boss, due to the alarming number of hairballs he hacks up on a daily basis. Jenny came up with the term, and not only has it stuck, it’s spread. (Which is almost as revolting an image as the memory of any given furball). I’ve extended the term now to become a verb, meaning anything he says, basically; ‘bullshitting’ is too non-specific. Though there’s another person and a half in our team, I seem to be the only one who argues with him when he talks bollocks, when he tries to teach us to suck too many eggs, when he mistakes me for being his secretary simply because I’m female and nearby. The others certainly complain a lot, but somehow manage to bite their tongues around him. They compsensate with emails; though the partition between me and the Furball may be low, I’ve still mastered leaning far enough down that he can’t see me silently split my sides laughing at the latest email about him. Approximately once a week we pool ideas for doing away with him altogether.
I have no illusions about not being English. From what I’ve heard, American culture would be best suited to me, only I managed to break out in a migraine in May simply contemplating living there. I could never, ever live there – and stay sane. But I refuse to tolerate stupidity, inefficiency or incompetence, and my boss represents the lot. It may be common practice to accept this as the norm, but I view that if someone in IT screws up, they sacrifice their job; if the Furball stubbornly refuses to learn anything about how our Project works, much less what it is called, then ditto. There is no excuse for failure. I have worked for enough people to know that the Furball’s level of ignorance is uncommon (thank God!), and that on the whole, managers tend to understand and have experience of what their team does. Also, it’s unlikely they’ll have a hairball condition. Not only do we have to battle with the root of all ignorance which is our IT department, which the Furball avidly courts, but we also have to contend with a highly non-technical boss who assumes he’s a genius. He’s twice provided specifications for me on certain databases, and both times I’ve had to bite my tongue so as not to say ‘I quit.’ Having not had any database work in a while, I’ve settled for the odd spat over the partition. Matt has just received the Furball’s proudest work, a new set of specs (which the Furball poured his heart and soul into while producing), and he all but packed up and quit on Friday. Over the weekend, I realised that if another database comes my way, I’ll be in the same situation, and I will quit. So it would make more sense to quit beforehand, and avoid the suffering.
It’s sad, though, that a job I’ve been so strongly committed too and which I have so many roots to, has become so much of an endurance test. Enduring staying sane for nearly six weeks with no work, after being completely flat out for nearly a year and a half (working about 13 hours a day for the first few months). A year of tolerating a boss who isn’t capable of doing any job but a secretary’s, but who is happy to see me as his own. Having been fiercely sociable for about the first year on this job, I’ve begun to retreat, and though I’m saddened by the loss of friendships, I can’t summon the will to regain them. I’m ready to leave, but because the Furball is such a key figure in my dissatisfaction, it would be hard to imagine working on the project away from him. Joining Friend 1 would mean staying in the same office, but moving to the other side (no window, so my mini-rainforest would sob); joining Friend 2, though less likely, would result in moving to another office, where many of my friends are based. (Having typed that, I just phoned one of them and left her a lengthy voicemail.)
The excuse I was given was a combination of cost-cutting and insufficient work, although I figure that in the next few weeks, I’ll have up to three months’ work, if not more. I’ve been told it will be passed onto my colleague, but he will be too busy and complacent to be able to action it in the timeframes needed. I currently support about seven databases which I’ve built (one corrupted today), and, having been involved in a lot of data maintenance, am more aware of the live info which he seems to ignore as it’s not relevant to whichever database he’s currently building. A former colleague visited today for some meetings; we had had a meeting months ago when he had told me that I was crucial to the Project because of the historial information I held. As our boss remains allergic to anything resembling information or knowledge, I shouldn’t feel too much remorse in them being stuck with the extant databases and no supplementary data which would actually be of use. We’ve always known that the Knowledge Manager role is an oxymoron; at least I won’t be around to deflect that opinion.
When Aileen left, she told me that she’d assumed six months to find a job, but was fortunate to be offered one much sooner. Given that I want to emigrate above all other options, I decided yesterday that I should do the same, set myself a similar timeframe. So today’s news was a complete pain, that either I might have to postpone emigrating – which I had already done in accepting this job – or grab the first thing I could find, which would slightly defeat the purpose. Bad enough to suffer the inevitable pay drop, and although there can’t be that many managers out there like the Furball, and that any job would be a significant technical improvement on this one, I’d rather hold out for a Good Job than the first one I can find. Wherever it may be.
Of course, a similar plan might be to drop out altogether. I’ve lost more skills than I’ve ever gained on thisjob, wholly due to mismanagement. Till the Furball joined, Matt and I were essentially independent, our boss too busy to do more than supervise us vaguely on a monthly basis. Though he himself did not command much respect on the project, it doesn’t start to compare with the open dislike universally aimed at the Furball.
Life is too short to put up with this crap.Two years ago, I trained in a database system I haven’t gotten my hands on since, and having encountered the utter muppetry which is our IT department, and the general IT staff, I’m not certain it’s something I’m willing to subject myself to long-term. A friend would like me to be his PA in Fuerteventura. I had told him I’d pour his coffee on his head if that happened – I’m not servile enough to be a convincing secretary or PA, nor blonde enough – but that’s one option, as is recovering my harp from Richmond and flying back there with it. I may have given up the musician lifestyle for good, but it’s still a marketable skill. Or I can translate. Or interpret – for all the tourists and expats too hapless to consider learning Spanish. Or settle for any job I can find, and if there’s a database involved, it’ll be a bonus. But at this point, I’m not sure I’d even bother to be choosy.
I’ve dedicated the last year to trying to get my boss fired. Though I never expected I would be the first to go, I always knew I wouldn’t be able to stand more than a few more weeks of him. That’s a shame. We’re really going to have to work on our Furballcidal plans now, we don’t have much time left.
Posted by chantal at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 16, 2003
Castle
They say an Englishman’s home is his castle. But what if that castle faces the A2, and has an intimate view of neighbours to both the front and back? If you can hear your neighbour’s every step, word and dirty dish and item of clothing, and, for the case of some, the prospect of sleep is marred somewhat by the knowledge that bedbugs will be feasting on you for the next eight hours?
I’ve wanted to write on people’s concept of Home for some time, but for now am more interested (oddly) in Gardens. In Dublin, our landlord informed us he planned to patio over the front and rear gardens for convenience; of all the flathunting I’ve done this year, flats either have no garden, a teeny one or a teeny patio. A friend once proudly showed me his rear patio, grateful that all he had to do to it was look at it occasionally. On the other hand, summertime means barbecues – too much a fire hazard to hold indoors, and oddly not that appealing on top of a number of bare square tiles.
I can see five gardens from my own, well, theoretically. One can no longer be seen due to triffids, though when they fall, there’s rubble and pissed-off chained-up dogs to be seen/heard. There is no fence between myself and the wilderness of grass and triffids to the left. The neighbour opposite has spent half a century imposing a recognisable garden on her alloted space, while the neighbour to the right has settled for some beds, grass, and a very big pile of rubbish and triffids towards the back.
I’ve spent the last three years trying to wrestle a garden out of the rubbish dump behind my back door. This year alone – so far – I’ve collected over thirty bags of various rubbish, and had two bonfires of varying success. I moved to this godforsaken area because I wanted a garden of my own, but forgot to specify one free of triffids and weeds with tree-rings, not to mention decades of accumulated rubbish.
Over the last three years, however, I’ve learned surprising amounts about the previous occupants of this flat – and, if my neighbour to the right is to be believed, of past upstairs neighbours too who had aversions to taking out the rubbish like normal people. Sometimes I wonder if I should keep the accumulated rubbish, map it and study it more closely; none of the excavations I ever worked on was this rich in artefacts. Also I’ve learned how unbiodegradable a surprising number of items are, including wood, dead plants and cloth. Also ventilators, bathtubs, whisky bottles, baking trays, t-shirts and plastic-covered wire. Hamburger buns decompose beautifully. Catshit doesn’t; it simply fossilises.
Although most of the triffids’ tree-rings, bizarrely, date to when I moved in, judging by a number of my neighbours, it’s too likely that the garden would have been sufficiently overgrown to be somewhere convenient to dispose of random unwanted objects and furniture. One or more would have been a dogowner, judging by the large number of bones I keep uncovering. Another did make an effort at some point; the ventilator and stupid quantities of broken glass point to a greenhouse or shed with large windows, also the buried plant pots, random tools and plant tags suggest that someone must have cared enough to spend money at garden centres or maybe just supermarkets.
Teenagers too, probably – or adults with junk food habits – if the very many sweet wrappers are any kind of evidence. Few are recognisable, beyond Mars, Milky Way and Smarties lids (an ‘i’, an ‘r’ and an ‘e’ so far). One may have sacked their milkman, judging by the buried milk crate, however the buried milk bottles might suggest they were sacked by the milkman instead. More recently, however, someone has been responsible for hamburger buns, and tin cans which aren’t sufficiently rusted to be convincing. Another neighbour smokes Marlboro Lights.
Most of the scrap metal, however, is beyond me – the springs are recognisable (a biodegraded mattress or chair?), the funiture parts too, although how anyone could get through so many nails of different sizes and varying types of wire is completely beyond me. Also the need for so much packing foam, where so very very many rocks, stones and pieces of mountain could have come from, or what the various pieces of colourful broken plastic could have been. Some woman had a violent dislike of hairpins – or lost them while fighting through the foliage, as most of them are snuggling up together in the same spot. Either she or another woman had a preference for blue hair rollers. Unless the reason there are so many in the garden is because actually she couldn’t stand them. Someone else bought some colourful clothespegs, probably from Deptford, however they weren’t resilient enough to last, nor colourful enough to be retrieved once they’d fallen.
There’s evidence of a number of past bonfires – soil burnt solid, much charcoal, and a carpet which, though charred, is still horrible, and near-impossible to excavate completely. I’ve recently learned what melted glass looks like, though given the secret buried paving stones, there are much easier ways to burn stuff than past occupants seem to have realised.
I used to keep a ‘Chamber of Horrors’ of the prize finds of the day, week or month; my then flatmate would routinely throw them away within days. My memory having deteriorated to its current state, I can only remember what I’ve found in the last few weeks, if that. I’m currently trying to dig up a mound at the back – 21’ l x 3’ h x 3’ d (bathtub included) which is fast turning out to be little soil and much junk. Each shovel-load can result in five or more minutes gathering the things I don’t want contaminating my tropical garden-to-be. In the days when I used to work in Social Services, I used to mutter about ‘garden abuse’. I’ve cursed the past occupants lots, but can at least return inside with fresh information on them on a regular basis.
On the one hand, my websearches and visits to garden centres have had a sobering effect in terms of the cost of plants overall, not to mention the sheer number required to fill the 1161 square feet of bare soil (finally!) outside – and that’s after three years of depleting the local garden centres of weedkiller. Yes, a lawn would be, if grudgingly, fine, but only if you can spare the expense of a lawnmower. To own or rent a number of concrete and/or plasterboard walls is expensive enough, but with a piece of nature to call your own, the prices seem to start at expensive and simply spiral upwards from there.
On the other hand, the local council are so shit at collecting rubbish, dumping stuff in the garden is a bloody good idea.
Posted by chantal at 03:13 PM | TrackBack
November 16, 2002
Home Sweet Home
So I’ve been back in London for six and a half weeks now. I’ve been planning to write a piece on being back in London, but have been too lazy; I’ve also been wanting to write a piece on Dublin in retrospect, but have been waiting to feel less homicidal towards my Dublin housemates. There have been reasons for not writing any of the pieces I’ve had in mind.
It’s a Saturday night, and a Mike Figgis film is on FilmFour right now. The alternative was seeing one of my favourite guitarists, Eric Roche, perform, but that would have involved returning to 12 Bar Club, not something I was prepared to do.
I had very specific ideas and expectations in my mind when I returned to London. Before I returned, even: I was struggling in Dublin and hesitant to even consider leaving, giving up. Even though it felt so fantastic to be back in London the two times I returned, I was still committed to trying to stick out my new life in Dublin, however unsatisfying. It was only when I considered the financial ramifications that I began to see a way out.
Back in Dublin, I had told myself that should I return to London, I would never take it for granted again, would never lurk long-term at home, but take advantage of all that was on offer: dance, music, classes, activities, random festivals, etc. Above all, I wanted to throw myself back into my dance classes and music, after my disappointing experiences of both in Dublin. London had metamorphosed from a city I bitterly disliked to one which had great resources and a flat I was very attached to.
I had also expected that my housemates would forward me my Irish salary and deposit very quickly. I had been paid two days before I left Dublin, and arrived in London with a bit over £100 and a job interview in Nottingham the next day; it would be four weeks before I received another paycheck, and even that one was not for a full week. I also had to cover my rent and accumulation of bills with that money.
Hence: change of plans. I’ve stayed in most nights, avoiding spending money when and where I could. I’m going on holiday in two weeks, and actually want to have something resembling money in my account when I return. I also never want to experience the financial horrors of my first weeks back in London, endlessly trying to pursue my money and remaining belongings in Dublin without success or much hope. So although there are things I would like to do, buy, replace – for example my three newly-dead potted palms – I enjoy my lifestyle too much right now to mind. I haven’t returned to my contemporary dance classes, only my Egyptian dance classes, which finish next week. For three years I’ve had some inexplicable block against belly dance classes, and right now they’re one of the things I’m enjoying the most about being back in London.
The hunt for Arabic music is going less well, unfortunately. Not only are gigs on Tuesdays, the same day as my dance classes, but whichever reason prevents me from going to the former also applies to dance classes. I’ve known for months that Faudel would be peforming a few weeks ago. I actually only know one song of his, ‘Tellement N’Brick’, which I used to dance to when I was working as a belly dancer. What I didn’t count on, after all those months of anticipation and build-up – when I decided to stay on in London, probably my first thought was that I would be able to see him after all – was that I would be suffering too much from a heavy night the night before and ended up quietly moaning to myself at home instead. Or maybe I went to sleep around the time Faudel was due on stage. Another Arabic band, Fantasia, was performing in nearby Camberwell a few Fridays ago. It would be within a few blocks of where my ex-boyfriend lives – who I have no intention of ever seeing again – yet I barely even considered that. Home, quick bath, and then to the bus stop. Two buses, both very frequent, would take me there. I got bored of waiting, and walked to the next stop. After 15 minutes, a 36 finally turned up. It made it as far as the next stop. New Cross Gate is not a vaguely pleasant place to wait for a bus at night, or at least on that night, so I slowly walked back the way I came. In half an hour, neither bus so much as showed. I returned home, desolate, and spent the rest of the evening chatting happily online with two Canadian friends.
On my previous visit to London, within minutes I was horrified by the attitude of Londoners, how aggressive and hostile they are. I’ve not noticed it since. Perhaps that has been due to my shift in perspective, being so readily grateful and happy to be here. Perhaps also due to not going out much, and avoiding heavily stressed strangers. I’m trying to think of the pleasant encounters I’ve had since I’ve been back, but few come to mind, except for the local shopkeepers; they’re very pleased that I’m back to stay, and tonight the owner of the nearby internet café – I only ever go there every few months, if even that often – asked me where I’d been, when I’d next drop by. Friendly male-bashing with a Virgin shop assistant. Eavesdropping on a Dublin couple on holiday in London while on a night bus. Normally I would spend each day feeling increasingly crushed by the negativity of London and its inhabitants, but little, except my Dublin housemates, have managed to break through my cheer.
This is partly due to improved working conditions. The two women who made our workload ridiculous have both left, and the other woman, Tracey, who made working hours an unbearable form of torture, accompanied by back pain, headaches and migraines, is on a six-week sick leave. My mornings are fairly lazy, my afternoons often absurdly busy, yet I get to spend most of my time working on technical problems, however mundane, which I do with great relish. We have a bizarre printing problem at work; I managed to fix one person’s computer, but then a pair of local IT visited and now nobody can print. In addition to the usual problems, I’ve created three Hotmail accounts, helped our surrogate boss with online shopping, and shown others how to use their computer more so that I can do their work less.
It’s everything IBM is not – including bankrupt – and although I have to stress that to myself at times, I’m oddly enjoying it. I think partly it’s due to being acknowledged and appreciated by my seven colleagues, who often beg me not to leave them. After being so interminally bored at IBM, it was a novelty and a relief to be busy again, but I’ve decided I prefer the middle ground. I also prefer functional equipment: I found the design specs for our fax machine, which is officially only capable of handling 12 pages at a time. Given there are seven lawyers each trying to fax documents of up to 60 pages at a time, the two times the printer has managed to scan 18 or 20 pages, I’ve decided it’s proof that it’s on its last legs. The photocopier can’t handle bulk photocopying, which is what we use it for, and the printer is confused as to which tray is which. Sometimes I get annoyed, sometimes I laugh. The rest of the time I spend frantically trying to find a memory card for the fax machine on the internet. One of the lawyers is occasionally patronising, but I get on well with her the rest of the time, and find myself missing her at weekends. Another of the lawyers is helping me with my council tax problems, which I would be more grateful for if I didn’t know he’s dodging his own council tax.
I think my main regrets are that I don’t have more money, and that the last weeks have not been more sociable. Being the email junkie that I am, it’s excruciating not to be able to email more at work, and to be too inhibited by phone bills to email from home. The first weeks when I returned were the most sociable, laying to rest my apprehensions about saying goodbye to all my friends followed by a casual hello again a few weeks later. Unfortunately that was the time when my head was most filled with confusion about what to do next, when I would have been best off at home spring cleaning my mind. Since starting this job at Hackney I’ve been chronically exhausted – I didn’t stay for the second belly dance class this week as I was yawning so much, I was afraid I’d be thrown out if the teacher caught me yawning yet again – and grateful for my quiet evenings at home, also for the commute home with one of the lawyers who lives nearby. The people I have the most contact with are my parents, a friend of my brother’s and my flatmate, also a friend I met in Nicaragua at New Year’s and who has recently moved from nearby to Bath. There are those I miss hearing from and seeing, especially those who were so much a feature of my day that I miss that regular contact with them. There are others who are obvious in their silence, who leave me intrigued and bemused; still others whose friendships I had hoped to build on by being here, but who have been otherwise busy and preoccupied. Had it been a few months ago, I would have been far more bothered and upset, but I’m satisfied with the time which I do manage to spend with friends, especially given my current energy levels and overall lack of availability.
I can keep my feelings about my Dublin housemates separate from those towards Dublin itself. One I despise bitterly, as for the other I feel sad that I didn’t enjoy it more, and hope to do so in the future. I think you know which is which. What it boiled down to, I think, is that I am not the kind of person who can settle easily in a city such as Dublin; I need too much which it – and many other cities – cannot offer, and which I am not prepared to do without. I did not resume my non-Celtic music career shortly before leaving London only to abandon it, nor was I comfortable with the idea of travelling outside Dublin once weekly for my contemporary dance class fix as a viable substitute for the four classes I had been taking weekly, exclusive of rehearsals, in Central London. Certainly I had been intrigued by the new, as yet unknown direction which my life would take in this new city, yet my creative outlets were limited to writing, and my exploration to the very short cul-de-sac we lived on. I loved the number of resident magpies in Drumcondra, and miss the haphazard method of crossing roads. I never made it to the Taekwondo school in the city centre. Nor did I ever return to O’Donohue’s to play. I know that Dublin is not somewhere I would immediately choose to live – I need multiculturalism, as opposed to a very strong national culture – but when a musician friend, Madge, offered to go to Dublin to collect my poor parrot, clothes and books, I was excited by the idea of going with her and showing her around. Above all, I’m intensely grateful for the few weeks I had in Dublin for the lessons it taught me and how it’s shaped my life as a result.
I can’t not mention my home. I’ve gone from being intensely grateful for being there every evening when I draw the curtains and switch on the lamps, having spent much of the day tidying and scrubbing, to looking for ways of mending and improving: hanging pictures, sorting out the kitchen cupboards and drawers, bequeathing covers to my coverless duvets, repainting, finishing the curtains, which have been held up by needles for the last two years, making two more dance skirts, and all the other little touches needed to transform this flat from a slightly neglected to a completely appreciated one. That requires more energy and time than I have at present, but when I’m asked about relocation I don’t even have to pause before refusing.
Finally: I had my vindication. I spoke to an IT recruitment agent last week, who told me that the best thing I could have done was to leave IBM so hastily, that a few weeks on my CV was far better than several drawn-out months. Nobody had told me when I accepted the job what a negative reputation they have within the industry, that they are renowned for poor training and treatment of staff. I think I was having a bad day at the time, but glowed till I went to sleep.
Posted by chantal at 03:24 PM | TrackBack
November 10, 2002
Rat Race Meets Bedlam
Two things distinguish my new job: Tracey, and the lack of funding.
I plan to write a separate piece on Tracey, but she is indistinguishable from the Hackney Legal Services experience. I share an office with her, only a short partition protects me from her, and most of the lawyers who come into our office shoot me a conspiratorial wink or grin depending on her mood.
I did not find out until my third day that the London Borough of Hackney had gone bankrupt two years ago, and that its financial situation had not improved noticeably since. Although a few of the lawyers have been working there since prior to the bankruptcy, I haven’t yet asked them many, if any questions about their experiences and impressions. Sylvie tells me about Hackney going into receivership, and rubbish lying uncollected for a long time. Nobody can remember the exact figures, but two years ago, according to the BBC’s website, Hackney was £50 million in debt. After selling a building valued at £47 million, Hackney was only £21 million in debt six months later.
Ironically for me, the company involved in Hackney’s financial disaster is IT Net. When I was working at Westminster Social Services, between IT Net (payroll) and Capita (HR), very few Westminster employees were paid regularly, or without hassle. As I was paid weekly, this meant that I had to spend most of each week arguing on the phone to both Capita and IT Net, still not being guaranteed payment at the end of the week. IT Net were in charge of Hackney’s benefits payments, and, true to form, did not handle them very well. Hackney were held responsible for the repayment of lost benefits, which were by that point running into six or seven figures. Also responsible were building projects running vastly over budget. Hackney closed down most of its leisure centres to focus on the refurbishment of one, which happened to run £20 million over budget. I work behind Hackney Town Hall, and the most exercise there is to be had is running across the main road to catch a bus.
At Westminster, the smokers talked about how Westminster was the richest borough, and therefore had the best facilities. As I was working in one of the support departments, all I could see was a depressing building with minimal facilities and perks for staff. I can appreciate now the funding that was invested in refurbishing the building, despite the fact that we had to endure months of heavy drilling and migraines, and the awareness that every Health and Saftety regulation was being breached. We couldn’t answer phones because, well, even if we could hear the phone ring, we wouldn’t be able to hear the person on the other end of it. Our department might arrange up to nine meetings a day, but we would not be able to guarantee any of the participants being able to be heard.
So now I am in Hackney. I have heard several variations on my job title; I prefer Legal Support Officer. There are two of us; the lawyers are called Legal Advisors. The former barrister is now the Senior Legal Adviser.
What do I actually do? According to my agency, I am an Audio Secretary (I hate audio work). Certainly, there is a lot of audio typing to be done, although given Tracey’s tendency to ‘lose’ tapes, a number of the lawyers have since chosen to do their own typing. Personally, I see myself as the calm, friendly, helpful and polite support person: the one who is willing to smile and help the lawyers out when needed, or have a friendly chat at other times. Today we had a minor crisis as nobody could recall the Duty Rota; I sent one out entitled ‘confusion solution’. In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of glaring holes today in the overall administration, never mind the fact that these buy me more time off tapes.
Our department has moved every year for each of the five years that Tracey has worked there. We are currently in a condemned building which has the feel of a portakabin. Unless people have explicit instructions or have visited us previously, they will not be able to find us, let alone guess which is our building. From the outside, there is a gate leading into a depressed garden, behind which we lurk. Our office contains the printer, photocopier and two fax machines, none of which actually work, or at least reliably. Given the amount of audio typing we are expected to do, I am still confused about the logic of this. We have eight lawyers on the premises, which amounts to a huge amount of printing, photocopying and faxing, which is somewhat complicated by the photocopier jamming, the printer not printing on the letterhead or plain paper which you specified, and the fax machines only being able to retain maybe ten pages at a time, although happy to swallow the remainder if offered. Interim Care Orders need to be faxed over by 4 pm. We didn’t actually receive the necessary paperwork until well after 4 pm today and yesterday because both fax machines were too busy faxing out. As for adding ours to the queue? I am hoping that when both outgoing and incoming faxes are busy, deadlines become immaterial. At 4.30, one of the Courts phoned to say I’d been faxing the wrong number. Oops.
Despite trying to no longer be a hopeless idealist, I still fantasise about being able to hire a full-time faxer, or replace all equipment. Or upgrade the computers and reinstall all software. Tracey’s audio machine has probably been smashed to pieces by now – at least that’s how it sounds from my side of the partition – and the microwave scares me. I’ve used it once, and hid in the corridor in case it decided to explode. It makes a loud clanging noise when used, and I have never known a microwave to heat so rapidly. The only thing that works, and perhaps too well, is the heating: for once I can be secure in basking in tropical-level heat.
I’m grateful to be working in the legal division of Social Services, having worked in Social Services a year ago. It was frustrating to be working on a high number of child abuse cases which actually involved hyperactive or unruly children, or parents with dubious pasts. Parents whose children were injured when their backs were turned for an instant. A mother who accidentally stepped backwards onto her young son’s penis. Instead, we only deal with the cases which are deemed sufficiently serious for our attention, although that results in losing out on the specific details and contact with the parents.
One of my best friends at high school chose to study law because she was fascinated by the language of law. I’ve been typing it for six days now, and I’m horrified. I’ve often prided myself on having better English and grammar than the people I work for, but I have never really appreciated that until now. I saw a social worker’s report a few days ago which was written in a childish style; I was so horrified I showed it to a few people. Tracey laughed at the foreign-sounding names; another person criticised the bad spelling. Horrendous sentence structure is apparently not a crime. I type out some sentences which appear to be pure gibberish, yet they are signed off and duly faxed over. I am aware that law employs an antiquated form of English, and a very distinctive grammar structure, however it is perhaps too unnatural for some people to be able to use fluently and confidently.
An unexpected aspect of this job is the confrontation with The Job For Life. How Tracey has managed to hold onto her job is completely beyond me. Apparently she has been warned several times but these have had no impact. Where do I start? I can start with the obvious: she has (at least?) four double vodkas in her lunch break, and wafts of cigarette smoke and alcohol odour trail behind her as she returns to the office. I’ve heard jokes about passive drinking. Before she goes to the pub… she’s actually at her best. She complains bitterly about everything, especially her job and how much she has to do, none of which she actually carries out. When she is feeling calm, she narrates everything she does, swearing marginally less than at other times. Most of the time, particularly afternoons, she spends her time shouting, swearing, trying to destroy machinery and being rude to all who come into contact with her. Someone commented that for the first time, she actually appeared to be working this morning. Usually, when I am working on a tape, I crank the volume up to drown her out, and end up with a headache anyway.
Today, all I could hear was ‘tap tap THUNK tap THUNK tap CLUNK SMASH’ and so on. On Monday, she went on an extended lunchbreak, and completely lost it when she found the stationery boxes opened and looted. We named it the Stationery War. I sat at my desk, shaking my head and thinking, ‘it’s only stationery!!’ and yet she raged about the delivery slips having been moved, having to count the contents, how dare the lawyers not wait for her return etc etc. She is apparently notorious for this behaviour, and has reduced lawyers to tears and chased away innumerable temps. Our current boss leaves in a week, and so shows no interest in disciplining Tracey. I hope that her replacement is more proactive, yet worry for Tracey’s prospects, secure in a job where she can terrorise employees and while away the few hours between pub visits, and accomplish nothing in all her ranting, at least workwise. I really don’t know how she would be able to find work elsewhere.
Nevertheless, Hackney is a surprisingly healthy place to work. Since my exposure to Tracey, I have cut down my drinking significantly. Also my smoking: as Tracey is a heavy smoker, and she herself inspires me to smoke, it is surprisingly hard to find opportunities to smoke alone without her and the others coming outside to join me. Until now, I have always bonded with the smokers, making few friendships with non-smokers. Now, I adamantly avoid the smokers and am pleased with the time I spend with the non-smokers. I have an ever-growing stash of herbal teas on my desk, all with a Tracey-oriented theme: green tea, chamomile tea, breathe deep tea, detox tea. Once I get paid I’ll buy more.
Ultimately, I’m fascinated by how I have ended up with someone like Tracey in my face eight hours a day. Given how much I disliked IBM, I’m trying to look for a long-term satisfying job. Tracey is a model of someone who hates her job and whose life has degenerated into a mess. It’s too easy to fall into a job you hate and find yourself stuck there; Tracey reminds me to remain alert. She’s an intensive course in anger management, also in compassion, although that’s harder to come by. She’s a fascinating case study in herself, but for the most part, I can’t be bothered.