I'll do anything for a writing job...

...but I won't do that. (click for bigger picture)




There's something a bit obscure about an employer asking a potential junior writer to prattle on about sex toys...


(Re: Swine Flu - I must thank you all for your concern. You have been rather more sympathetic about my viral predicament than my fellow office workers, one of whom asked if he could do an ‘Office sweepstake” as to whether I’ve got it or not. Charming. As if proof was needed, later, someone sneezed across the open plan room and before I knew what I was doing, I had involuntarily yelled “OINK” instead of “bless you”. Sometimes you just have to see the funny side of disease, or at least you do if you're my work colleagues)

I think I've got the swine flu

Don’t write this off as one of those blog posts where there’s a quirky joke about pigs flying, or some sort of porky pun, or general “har har har I’ve got a cold, it’s probably swine flu so I’m off to die, babahahahaha”. I actually think I’m coming down with something.

Before I go on, here’s what the NHS says:

The typical symptoms are:

• sudden fever, and
• sudden cough.

Other symptoms may include:

• headache,
• tiredness,
• chills,
• aching muscles,
• limb or joint pain,
• diarrhoea or stomach upset,
• sore throat,
• runny nose,
• sneezing, and
• loss of appetite.

It started yesterday, I sat in the office and felt a tickle in my throat which by the end of the day had turned into a full blown cough. Pretty quick turnaround hey? Now it’s a (sudden) chesty cough. I definitely felt a bit hot this morning (high temperature), except when I went to interrupt my mum on the computer while trying to force some toast down (loss of appetite) and she felt my head to see if I had a temperature, she said “ooh you are a bit hot”, but then I told her I’d just been blow drying my hair and she said that would explain my head being all hot. I choffed down some Day Nurse anyway.

Then just before I was leaving for work, the cleaner did her own mini-diagnosis on me, saying she’d been really unwell with a bad cough a couple of weeks ago, so I said “Oh, but that’s alright, look you’re still alive” – but then she told me her doctor had prescribed her very strong antibiotics. Were my lymph glands enlarged? Why, yes I think they are. Are all my limbs aching? Why, yes – but only because I’d gone a bit mental on the exercise routine last week. Apparently the cough started on the first day then her limbs ached the next. “When did you start feeling ill?” she asked. Well, yesterday. Which means I’ll be due for limb, joint pain and aching muscles by the end of the day. She raised her eyebrows.

“See mum? I might have the swine flu” I said, turning around, but she was mid conversation on the phone so I put my hands above my head like pig ears and scrunched up my nose whilst trotting around in circles to stress the point.
“Sorry – hang on. Jo, Sue says to advise you not to roll in mud” and she carried on her phone call.

So then I got in the car and drove to work, and immediately looked up the symptoms on the NHS website. I haven’t sneezed yet, although my nose has been sporadically running, usually whenever someone comes near my desk. My stomach’s been ok, but I’m definitely not hungry. Usually I’ll have a big bowl of Weetabix for breakky and will be hungry by half 11, but here we are at nearly 12 o’clock after two pieces of toast, and there’s not a hunger pang in sight. Plus, I’m a bit chilly and have goose bumps, but then maybe my choice of clothing isn’t the most practical for someone with suspected swine flu in an air conditioned office.

I did the NHS symptom checker and worryingly, it said if you are "more tired and confused than usual" then there's cause for concern. I have been on the receiving end of some rather complex e-mails this morning and I've been yawning a lot. And stretching. And I think my headache's coming back. But then that could be lack of food. Oh, god I'm confused.

If the newspapers are to be believed, I’ve got three days.

Shiz sticks.

Work History

Oh, how I love working. No joke. I know that’s a really bloody weird thing to say, and most of you will be reading this in soul destroying offices doing a job you despise with people who irritate you to the point of committing Death By Stapler, but right now at this moment, I’m enjoying being at work - even if it is just three weeks temping. My mind changes on an almost weekly basis as to what it is I actually want to do, but nonetheless, I need to be working while I figure it out.

To the outsider, it seems as if I’ve flitted from temporary job to temporary job since leaving university, trying out different possible career options and dumping them when I realise they’re not what I want. I’m not sure if this experimentation is a good thing to have on a CV, or whether it’s a worrying “this girl can’t commit” warning to any potential employers, but I’ve come to the conclusion that doing something for free is better than doing nothing for free and sitting at home scratching my arse. And lord knows I’ve done a lot of something for free to avoid scratching my arse.

But to sort my head out as much as anything else, here’s a list of Things What I Learnt Since Leaving Uni.

Working in TV Ain’t For Me
I loved the initial 4 weeks work experience at the Big Broadcasting Company and when I was offered a job off the back of it, I snapped it up and had an exciting funtime. However, the money was awful and I hated making microwave dinners for an Arrogant Presenter before each live show. I realised I didn’t aspire to be a producer, or director…or much in the world of TV, really, so I left at the end of the series to pursue the writing dream.

Book publishing is tooooo slowwwww for Jooooooo
Reading is my favourite thing to do. Whizzing through a good book is my ideal way to spend a day, but the process of making that book is a long, slow, drawn out process. Unless you’re on the Michael Jackson bandwagon at Harper Collins this week, that is. It was all a bit too quiet and mundane, although working in the children’s department had it’s plus points. The clincher was that it required months of unpaid work to get a head start on something I wasn’t quite sure about. I let it slide.

Magazine Publishing Lit My Fire
Now this job, I liked. I had a week of working on the editorial team of a leading Woman’s Monthly Magazine (ooh err). Impressed the right people, enjoyed the deadlines and demands – but had run out of money after a summer of working for free and travelling. I needed money. Enter my old favourite…

PA to the Man Who Got My Name Wrong and Left His Dirty Coffee Cups on My Desk
Difficult man, but absolutely amazing working environment (got paid well too. Bonus) and the social events kept me busy through the breakup. I decided I could handle being a PA if I had enough to do and didn’t work for someone who called me Joanne all the time. Made good friends who I still see a lot. Shame they chucked me out when finances tightened.

I Left School For a Reason
I am never going to work in a school ever again, or believe my mum when she says “We need someone to fill in for a few days until we find someone permanent”. Cue 3 months as an admin assistant; which involved sitting in front of a computer with no solitaire, no internet, and surrounded by lots of women whinging about their weight and staff room biscuits. Shudder. I repeat: never again.

Freelance is mostly free
Ahh, the Writer. Writer? Writer? Where For Art Thou, Writer? I have no idea. He hasn’t contacted me since June, no doubt blaming travel commitments and things being typically manic. Things would be less manic if he let me help, but freelancers are solitary beasts and I fear he is too set in his ways to really let me help with the work load. However, I got great experience, a trip abroad and wrote for some big name titles, albeit under his name. Most importantly, I realised that the freelance life maybe isn't for me; working from home is no match for a buzzing office.

So children, what have we learnt?

Err…

Well.

I think I’d quite like to try working in a zoo. Or the lifetime ambition of a circus acrobat. Failing that, I'll just keep applying for jobs in a vaguely creative officey environment in the hope that someone says "Ello darlin, now then. I tell you what you little rascal, why don't you come and work for me?"

Or perhaps not exactly that, but you get the message.

Horrors, horrors and debt.

Isn't it annoying when a job you didn't particularly enjoy at the time continues to give you hassle even when you've left?

I haven't worked at the Little School of Horrors since April, but horrors indeed it is for entirely different reasons at the moment. After I left, despite the County Council being given the relevant paperwork regarding my end date, payslips continued to arrive at my door. I trusted the County Council to know when they were letting one member of staff go and hiring another - presumed I was being paid legitimately. Holiday pay, or payment in arrears, perhaps. It was only when I received another payslip at the end of June that I realised something wasn't quite right. Whereas arrears would cover April and May, June was out of the question. I cut the spending, alerted the relevant authorities and arrived at the sombre realisation that I'd have to pay back a months wages.

Except when the letter came through from the County Council earlier this week, I couldn't help but yell, loudly, "ERR, WHAT THE HELL? ARE THEY ON CRACK?" as I realised they were asking me to pay back not one, not two, but three months wages; coming in at nearly £2,000. The deadline? Two weeks from now.

Cue much stomping, yelling and RAH, BLAH, NAHing.

This lunchtime I called my manager at The Little School, who suggested I set up a payment plan to scatter the money going back. Which would be fine, if I actually had a salary and regular income. I don't, in fact the two and a half weeks of temp work I'm doing at the moment are my first since April. Then I rung the County Council, whose debt recovery manager listened to my rant before telling me yes, it was their fault but it was public money and would have to be paid back. My voice cracked. Oh, bugger. Tears abounded. She softened, told me to calm down; that there's nothing to get upset about. "That," I blubbed, "is easy to say when you don't have £2,000 of unnecessary debt as well as unemployment to contend with." She took down my details and said she'd talk to people to try and sort something out; and rang back 10 minutes later to tell me to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau.

I understand it must be paid back. I have no gripes with paying back money that isn't legally mine. What I have a huge, mammoth, astronomical problem with is being put in this position in the first place. The way the County Council get away with just a "Eek, my bad. Sorry for the inconvenience. Can we have the money back now.", without a thought to what problems this causes to someone who can't find a full time job, let alone £300, £200 or even £100 a month in repayments. Maybe I should have questioned my pay, kept a better track on things. But that wasn't my job; and the County Council are notorious for letting things like this happen.

What a bloody debacle. I'm fighting it.

They're getting £10 a month, tops.

Edit: PS. Thanks to Keep Britain Tidy for putting a link to yesterday's post up on their opinion bit of the website.

PPS. Have a good weekend.

PPPS. Someone just put Friday chocolaty treats out in the Office Kitchen. I feel better now.

Litter Bug

If you watch BBC Breakfast or GMTV, or enjoy Radio 1's blessed three minute news relief from the vacuous pus pit that is Chris Moyles every half hour, or caught a flash of the Daily Mail's skinnier, freebie sister The Metro on your way to work this morning, you may have noticed a royal PR drive from the Keep Britain Tidy camp. And I thought "AT BLOODY LAST", because they're right on the case about the one thing more likely to cause me road rage than some immensely incompetent idiot tailgating me on the middle lane of the motorway...and that is someone even more immensely incompetent throwing litter (that includes fag butts, you dutty smokers) out of their car window and onto the road / a grass verge.

It is - ipso facto - the one thing that winds me up so much that steam rises from my ears and out the sunroof, turning my car into some sort of novelty teapot; yet short of beeping my horn, ramming my car into the back of theirs or learning sign language for "pick it up, you dirty crackfiend", there's not a lot you can do about it. On Tuesday night, while I was busy three getting lost on my way to West Hampstead thanks to the North Circular's nightly crash closure messing up my AA route finder directions, I saw a paper cup being thrown from the van in front. A cup. Who the hell throws a cup out of their window, biodegradable or not? Since when was the road a bin?

Every time I drive on the motorway I'm glad not to be in the passenger seat, because when you're not busy DJing, what is there to look at? A glance out of the window reveals the grass verges of the British countryside absolutely strewn with litter. Crisp packets, clothing, chocolate wrappers, cups, plastic packaging and fag butts just thrown out of an open window by people too lazy, selfish and uncouth to take responsibility for their own waste.

I'm like look, it's not hard sweetheart - just do as I do. Scrunch your rubbish up and shove it in the glove compartment and side pockets of your car. When that's full, use the foot well of the passenger seat, then every 2/3/4/5 (delete as appropriate) weeks, grab a Sainsbury's bag and collect it all up. Then take it into your house, as you would a bag of shopping, and throw it in with your household waste. Simple. Better yet, your car will be in such a state that you won't have to give your friends lifts anywhere because they can't get in, and your hair won't get messed up on car journeys from opening the window every two minutes to dispose of your mess. Everyone's a winner.

Keep Britain Tidy basically want to change the law so you can get an on the spot fine and points on your licence for being a dirty, littering bugger (for that is where the term litter bug originates...and if that's not fact, it is now) and I personally am all for it. If you don't use the road as a waste disposal unit, why would anyone object?

And ironically, just as I was contemplating this news story at the traffic lights this morning, the well groomed, tidy looking woman in the sports car in front of me inhaled her final puff, and threw the cigarette out of the window where it lay smoking on the ground. Smokers, you choose to smoke - fair do's, go for it, fill yer boots. But keep the butts to yourself, that's what your car ashtray's for. So clear out the 10ps and pound coins, and start using it.

But for those of us - smokers and non - who don't impose our dirty ming mong disposables on everyone else, who sit behind those who do at the lights - what can we do? It seems recycling and keeping clean literally goes out the window as soon as people leave the house.

Keep Britain Tidy have got a monster on their hands.

Porquoi?

Ahhh, "WHY".

That great question of our life and times, gateway to knowledge and a harvest of the brain. Mmm, knowledge. Observe:

E.g. Why is e.g short for "for example"? Shouldn't it be "F.e."? Why is the sky mostly grey? Why do people insist on trying to make dungarees fashionable every couple of years? Why do British people queue so much for everything? Why do some places charge such extortionate amounts for a cup of peppermint tea, when by rights it's just hot water and a few leaves? Why does the sound of someone eating make my stomach boil with irrevocable fury? Why does the North Circular break, delaying thousands of commuters on route to work - every - single - day? Why do cyclists wear lycra on the way to work, does it really increase their speed that much?

Why when I turned up for Boxercise the other night, on the one night I decided to actually use the scathing, money grabbing arse-pit of a gym that I'm a member of straight after work and wait an hour and a quarter for a class to start, did no one turn up apart from me and another equally baffled couple? Why did the receptionist not know what was going on, where the instructor was or why it wasn't running? Why was Stability Ball, a class that requires you to be middle aged, incontinent and able to stretch yourself over a large, bouncy ball, the only other class running? Why was it full? Why on that morning, the only morning in the history of portable music, did I pack my bag and fail to include my earphones, was that the one night I had to use the gym because Boxercise inexplicably wasn't running? Why did I choose the one exercise bike next to the man sweating so profusely that a salty stream dripped from his face onto the machine, causing a puddle of bodily fluid to gather on the floor around him? Why did no one go "Mate, that's rank...here's a mop"?

And more importantly:

Why do children pick their nose and eat it? Why do adults think they can't be seen when they pick their nose and inspect it while sitting behind me in a traffic jam? Why do you use your index finger to pick your nose when you're little, then switch to a thumb when you're older?

Pick one. (Not your nose, a question.) Answer it. Make my day.

Reason no. 12376456383453 why being famous is probably crap

I don't share this generation's obsession with becoming famous. The idea of being splattered across newspapers, photographed at every turn, idolised / hated by the public at large just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. Everyone wants to do a job they love and get paid for it; but what if succeeding in that job automatically means that you have to become a figure in the public eye? Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the media world. It's a fickle industry where people will love you one minute then turn on you the next just to make themselves a few bob. Look at Big Brother contestants. Last year, a friend at uni was contacted via facebook by a journalist digging dirt on one of the housemates. She was offered £1,500 if she put her name in the story, and £1,000 to be named as a source.

Plus, it's no longer just the photographers and journalists you're hiding from, either. Suddenly the public, with their camera phones and instant YouTube / Facebook tendencies are the 21st century paps, and the internet is their front page.

On Saturday night I realised just how careful people in the public eye have to be. While dancing in the marquee in our enclosure at Henley on Saturday night, one such person got himself into quite a lather over a video we'd inadvertently taken of him ballroom dancing to Club Tropicana with a friend of ours. Ironically, we hadn't realised who this mystery man bum wiggling, side stepping, twirling and bending our friend round the dancefloor was, until he spotted us recording the show and immediately stopped and came over to ask us to delete the video. It was then that the penny dropped: I recognised him from an almost daily presence on TV, where he's a respectable, very well known figure. Even yesterday I noticed his face appeared on the front page of one of the weekend newspaper supplements and thought about the potential goldmine on my camera.

It's all a bit hazy, but he was, to put it bluntly, cacking himself about what we were going to do with the video and the effect it could have on his reputation if the papers got hold of it. But we're kind hearted soles, and I reassured him the footage would go no further, and that we hadn't even realised who he was to begin with. He was polite, thankful and never arrogant - just visibly concerned about the potentially damaging results that letting his guard down for a few minutes could have on a career.

"Thank you so much. It's just the papers would have a field day and twist it all out of proportion. You're never safe in the media."

And with that, we said goodbye and he went on his way.

"Oh, and mate?"
"Yep?"
"Nice moves"
"Ha! Thanks."

If being famous means you can't let your hair down to a Wham! classic, then in my opinion, you're better off being a nobody.