No. 9 (Jobless + 3 weeks)

God only knows

As I have elected to squander some of my out-of-work-figuring-out-what-I-want-to-do-now-I-have-grown-up time by going to find Winter Sun in an African nation, I had to pay a visit to the travel nurse for jabs an’ tings.

My local doctors’ practice is called the Mission Surgery and, as the name implies, my doctors have God in no small way. Surgery bookshelves are lined with tomes on quitting smoking and vaccinating small children, interspersed with books on finding eternal salvation through the Lord.

I think my nurse took one look at me, decided I was a heathen and elected to punish me by sticking multiple needles into my arm (not overly gently) and telling me off for not coming in sooner. When the ordeal was over, she sighed, shook her head and sent me on my way to the pharmacy with a sore arm and a pamphlet telling me Jesus loved me.

Anyways, all this got me thinking. I’ve always had a rather ambivalent relationship with God. By Christening me as a baby, I think my parents pretty much felt any religious obligations had been thereby fulfilled.

As a child slightly preoccupied with a growing realisation of my own mortality, I did spend a few years considering whether God might be for me. Apparently faith in Him would not only guarantee me a spot in some fluffy-cloud heaven, where angels fed you Philadelphia on toasted bagels, but I could also ask Him for things I wanted. I could pray that my annoying little brother might be replaced by a much cooler, older brother with super-hot friends and that orange denim would be appreciated more (at that time I had a fashion-forward orange denim hot pants and waistcoat set that my mum had bought me – I wish I had a photo of this ensemble, honestly I do, but as I do not, here is an artist’s impression of the sartorial travesty triumph)...

Please dance with me. No? Oh Ok then.....

... You get the idea.

Along with my other experimental phases (including three months as a moralistic vegetarian, two days as a black nailed Goth dressing only in crushed velvet and nearly a year as a half hearted chav with a huge diamond in my belly button) my mother never tried to dampen my new-found ardour. Together we went along to a church service in our little Cotswold village. Two hours later, bored rigid and suffering severe smoke inhalation from the heady fumes of incense being wafted about the tiny church, and my mind was made up. God was not for me. Not that I would burn all my bridges, however. I would describe myself as agnostic not an atheist, sometimes I would even pray, just in case. But, religious I wasn’t.

My experience with the nurse has caused me to muse upon my perilous situation vis-à-vis the afterlife. Not only am I not exactly God’s BBF but also I think even the Existentialists (yup, them again) would have little truck with me, given that I am not exactly – in my current jobless state - living up to their idea that we should all jolly well make the best out of the short, pointless lives we have (i.e. by penning depressing literature and being intellectual).

So, in an effort to remedy my spiritual apathy, I have decided to invent my own spiritual-philosophy-religion thing (without lizards or red wrist bands). I am starting my own "ism"…….Aha-ism. The principal tenets of aha-ism are as follows:

History

Formed out of boredom, disillusionment and a love of 1980's pop bands, Aha-ism is the term applied to a body of thought which emerged out of those credit crunch afflicted days of the early 21st century. Taking strands from existentialism and darn-I-don't-have-any-ideals-ism, Aha-ism focuses on those essential life questions such as "can I save my soul from eternal damnation?", "do I need to?", "is it a wise plan to quit your job in the midst of a recession?" and "what is the capital of Mongolia?".

Origins

The term "Aha-ism" is believed to have been coined by an English jobless ginger turned audio book reader (well, it’s on the potential job list) and was henceforth adopted by many others who subscribed to the central themes of Aha-ism (see below).

Concepts

Aha-ist thinkers focus on the individual's search for knowledge, innate capacity to remember useless facts and ability to remember the lyrics to random cheesy pop songs of yesteryear. Aha-ists believe that all these elements help the individual find meaning in life.

Aha-ists subscribe to the "carpe diem" concept of, well, you only get one life so…aha…one should do what makes one happy. However, Aha-ists, unlike the nihilists, do have a strong moral code. They make their beds every morning and would always give up their seats on public transport for the elderly, infirm or for those with child. Furthermore, an Aha-ist would never discriminate on the basis of former careers, lack of co-ordination or hair colour.

I may – possibly, maybe, potentially, a little bit – have too much time on my hands.

No 8. (Jobless + 18 days)

What a Waster

One of the strangest things about not working is experiencing, for the first time, what your local area is like on a weekday afternoon. Weird is the answer in my case.

I have lived in East London for nearly five years and, despite the occasionally over-the-top Shoreditch twatish-ness that has come to define some of my area, I loves it. I really do. I love it for its bars and restaurants tucked away off streets with amusing sobriquets such as “Murder Mile” and I love it for the Sunday Brick Lane markets, where vendors set up stalls at the side of the road selling used toothbrushes, single shoes and a multitude of rusty springs.

When I was working as a City lawyer, I felt that living in Bethnal Green was the equivalent to ordering salad with chips, the two concepts together (one bad, one good) cancel each other out. Obviously.

Yet Bethnal Green is all manner of strange when you are out and about during working hours. By way of example, on my way up West early one afternoon to meet a man about a dog, I strolled merrily past the soul music singing tube worker at Bethnal Green station and skipped down the escalator deep in thought about something or other. Maybe about the faux fur coat I have been lusting after to keep out the bone-chilling cold or maybe I was pondering the West Lothian question or reflecting on the possibility of a hung Parliament following this year’s general elections (sometimes I attempt to be high brow, even if just in my head).

Anyways, I didn’t realise that my pace of descent was faster than that of the chap in front of me until I had nearly collided with him. The man turned around and leered at me with a face which resembled that of a shabby-suited, scabrous, semi-toothless 50 year old Pete Docherty.... after a rough night.


I let out an involuntary yelp of fright and he lifted up one scraggy sleeve and lamped me one across the side of my face.

Cripes. Escalator assault by geriatric East End celebrity-a-like tramp. Awesome.

But it’s not just random incidents of assault that make me feel weird about being home in the day. It’s also the little things that I never knew about. The fact that every day at about 2 pm the kids from the local school all troop down my street, muddy legged and scraggy haired, presumably after some collective sporting endeavour. Or the dude with the fluorescent jacket who cleans around the bottom of the trees in our street (only the trees, nothing else) and the little boy across the road who walks his huge staffies every morning at 11 am with his mum and makes me feel old as I catch myself wondering whether he ought not to be in school.

It’s funny, having the time to watch the world around you go about its business; doing jobs it hates but earning money nonetheless, getting beaten up by the bigger boys in school football matches, having a routine and being part of something.

When I was an office monkey, I thought there was nothing more pointless I could be doing. So it’s strange when I realise that being jobless sometimes feels a lot like being irrelevant.

No. 7 (Jobless + 16 days)

Oxford Comma

In an idle moment the other day, I decided to have a look at my school yearbook. The real reason I was looking at it was a self-indulgent one, as I recalled some quote from my former English teacher about my “instinctive written fluency”.
Or something like that.

I will confess that he also mentioned my inability to use the semi-colon correctly, although I would point out that we all have our private struggles (just look at those Vampire Weekenders, and their dismissal of the finer points of punctuation). Grammatical problems aside, it shames me to say it, but I can still get a jolt of confidence from a 10 year old piece of praise.

Having dosed up on approbation, I then decided to take a nostalgic stroll down memory lane, looking at comments written to me by my school friends. Some examples:

Laura B: “When I first met you I thought you were a lairy bitch! But now I know different.”


Ah, sweet huh?

Given that I have not since spoken to Laura B since leaving school, I fear she may have reverted to her original appraisal of me.

Kevin P: “It is a DISGRACE that you did not get best arse of the sixth form” (his emphasis not mine).

I always admired Kevin for his good judgment.

Perusing the rest of the misspelt (shockingly so, as we all went to grammar school) teen-speak messages, I stumbled across a quote from my history teacher, Mr. M (in fact, slightly misquoted....evidence appears to be mounting for a re-examination of the quality of our grammar schools):

“Golden boys and girls all must, as chimney-sweeps return to dust.”

Depressing, much? At the time I remember thinking that this was a peculiarly morbid quotation to write in the yearbook of an 18 year old. I recall wondering whether he used the same quotation for everyone, or whether he had an arsenal of equally depressing quotes up his sleeve with which to remind his young charges of their inevitable mortality and the futility that any of their adult efforts to stave off the essential pointlessness of life (...I think at this time I was studying Existentialism, so may have read more into this than was warranted).

Being literatorially fallible (and prone to making up words, grammar school education y’know), I looked this quote up the other day and discovered it was from a funeral song in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, the exact wording being: “golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers come to dust”.

So I guess what the bard is trying to put out there is that it doesn’t matter what you do for dollars or how fancy yo crib is, you’ll probably end up doing panto in Wimbledon (see P-Anderson) or singing on SAGA cruise ships (see entire cast of X-Factor runners-up), these surely being the equivalent of a slow and painful death.

Food for thought as things currently stand for me. Going to tell me ma not to fret her pretty head about my joblessness, I will eventually die and all this worrying will have been fruitless. Muchos gracias, Mr. M.

No 6. (Jobless + 2 weeks)

I will survive

My P45 arrived through the letterbox this morning. Like a box of my belongings, spare toothbrushes and odd socks, being sent to me by an ex-lover. The last vestiges of our life together landing unceremoniously on my doormat.

This may be a tired metaphor, but leaving a job you have fallen out of love with (if, in fact, it was ever love and not just a relationship of pure convenience – my soul in exchange for your money means clothes and food for me, in that order) is like leaving a long term relationship which has lost its sparkle.

When the realisation hits that that the days of romance and afternoon sex have long since faded and all you are left with are arguments, awkward silences and biannual sex with socks on, it’s time to leave. First comes the rush of euphoria, freedom is yours. You now have the liberty to kiss inappropriate boys, to flirt outrageously, to not shave your legs....etc. etc.

The second phase, however, is altogether less fun and lasts for so much longer. This is the point when you realise that there are no single men to flirt with, that all the good ones are taken and all the single ones are messed up narcissists with more baggage than Louis Vuitton and no room in their lives for you. What’s more, all your mates are paired off in long term relationships and have little time to hang out with your newly single self.

This is the moment when the nostalgia kicks in. The days of the relationship are seen through rose-tinted glasses as happier, more settled times. The lure of what you know and what is safe inspires fantasies about a reconciliation (it could be different this time, no?), ill-advised drunken phone calls to your ex and confessions to your friends that you are considering re-kindling the jaded relationship.

This is how unemployment currently feels to me. My glee at freedom (all leisurely lunches, jeans in the day and hassle free mid-week Christmas shopping) has given way to a mild panic and deep-seated unrest. I know this is merely a phase, but sometimes I think I want back the lacklustre lover that was my old job. I want us to bury our problems and go back to the security of our long, boring days and nights together. Maybe we can put behind us your pedantry and my lack of commitment. Can’t we make this work? For the sake of the kids?

Then I remember the mind-wrenchingly dull evenings of our time together, the demands, the stress, your obsession with spreadsheets and I realise that our parting was the right thing.

I am going to play some Gloria Gaynor, sing along loudly and get back on the market. The job market that is.

No 5 (Jobless + 3 days)

I want to ride my bicyle

My period of unemployment, brief though it has thus far been, has lead to an exponential rise in my cycling activity. From starting point of never cycling at all, that is. I have now, on at least two occasions, actually unchained my rusty, wheeled steed from its iron railing stables and taken it for a squeaky ride through the perilous streets of East London. Like the female Lance Armstrong of Bethnal Green, sans yellow jersey and huge thighs, of course (although if I heed my Mother's scaremongering pronouncements about cycling, my thighs are soon to be gargantuan).

I have discovered that there are a lot of Hoxton-trendy cyclists in East London. All tousled hair (un-helmeted I might add) and scuffed-up brogues, insouciantly cutting up pedestrians. I, on the other hand, look like some young Margaret Thatcher of the noughties, all bouffant ginger hair escaping from my bobble hat, which is squashed under my reinforced cycling helmet (can't put a price on safety, after all). I also seem to be unable to hone my braking capabilities. I frequently find myself careering artlessly towards the back of buses and the side of cars, further upping my cool levels.

My first cycling trip took me to the dentist. A near miss from a car door which was opened at an inopportune moment, an expletive tirade from one of the afore-mentioned hipster cyclist twats and a battle through heavy snow and I was there. However, concern for my personal safety did not leave me once I had reached the dentist and tied up the bicycle.

I am swiftly getting the impression that my dentist is the most passive aggressive man I have ever met. So super friendly to me, yet a man with an extraordinary penchant for extracting my teeth at such a heady rate, I fear he may be selling them off on the dental black market to fund some out of control mouthwash habit. Two wisdom teeth out in two visits.


So it is not without a certain amount of trepidation that I made my way to his torture chair once more.

My dentist, as well as being overly handy with the pliers, has, on my prior visits, also seemed to labour under the belief that I am 5 years old.

Him: Why so nervous love, what are you so worried about?

Me: The fact that both you and the 28 stone dental nurse called Precious are leaning over my numb and wrenched open mouth with tools not unlike those you might find in the cupboard of some S&M practitioner from the Middle Ages.

Him: There now love, once this is all over I think you'll deserve a sticker, don't you think, Precious?

Me: Uggggthhththmmmmm (there now appears to be some kind of dental dyson in my mouth, sucking out all my saliva)

Him: Now love, this won’t hurt at all (lies, vicious dental lies), you won’t feel the pressure (are you kidding me? It feels like you are balancing an articulated lorry on my tooth). Tell me, have you heard that Gordon Brown's handwriting is very bad? Have you heard about his glass eye? Did you read they think he's going blind? Now that's not very good, is it?

Me: uththtuthmmmmth, ffttthhh (Translation: huh? Is he attempting to distract me from the large knife contraption in his hand with Daily Mail politics? I try to point out that David Blunkett seemed to manage, until his multiple affairs, of course. Although, I feel my point is undermined slightly by my inability to speak thanks to the plethora of metal instruments playing percussion in my mouth.)

Him: There all done now (holding up my bloodied tooth). Precious, do we have any lollies?

This time, thankfully, there are no extractions. Merely a short nip round my mouth with the dental dyson and a rub on my arm and I am free to saddle up the bike and return from whence I came.

This is pleasing, for my new non-earning status leaves little spare cash for expensive dental treatment. I have decided to prioritise and the teeth, having had a short reign at the top, have now been demoted to the bottom of my list of things on which to spend money. Happily, as well as being cash poor now, I am also more tooth poor, so hopefully those teeth remaining will behave. Otherwise I shall be toothless as well as jobless and ginger, a heady combination probably to be avoided.

No 4 (Jobless + 1 day)

Please Mister Postman

I am wrapped in approximately twenty layers of wool (temperature Arctic, heating useless). Two lip balm stained mugs by my side, splatterings of coffee across the kitchen table. Computer on and blinking vacantly at me. Head empty. Think I’ll make another cup of coffee.

So this is unemployment.


The postman rang the doorbell at about 11:45 am with a package for Mr Reynolds next door. Not having been home on a weekday for about six years, meeting the postman fills me with some excitement. Accepting the big brown box, I start thinking about the fact that I have lived in my house for about three years and have never had any contact with Mr. Reynolds. What if this suspiciously large package is some kind of explosive device, a special ordering of fertiliser for some homemade pyrotechnics? I check the label. John Lewis. OK, fine. Although, on second thoughts, if you were in the business of supplying dodgy chemicals you probably wouldn’t label the packages as from “House of Fertiliser” or “Explosives-R-Us”, would you?

Such musings are curtailed by the arrival of Mr. Reynolds himself to claim his package, all smiling crinkly face and old man duffle coat. Thinking he was probably not prime demographic material for dabbling in concerning chemicals, I hand the goods to him. Whilst maintaining a wary expression, of course. After all, a friendly granddad demeanour would be the perfect cover for an East End group of terrorists (for I know these sorts hang out in Bethnal Green; it was on Spooks last week).


Excitement over, I return to my kitchen and the accusatory glare of my laptop screen. Cue more vacant blinking (this time from me). Another cuppa, then?

No 3 (Jobless - minus 5 days)

So Real

Working out a notice period is a strange kind of limbo, especially when you’ve jacked in your job with no alternative employment. No one can hate me for defecting to a competitor and no one is bothering to cosy up to me in the hope that there may be a place for them in some brave new legal world I am entering.

My resignation has, however, encouraged fellow lawyers to make hasty tracks to my office to observe me as if I were some kind of new and confusing zoo exhibit. By their reactions, my colleagues tend to fall into two camps:

i) The Institutionalised

The law can engender a kind of wide eyed devotion (or Stockholm syndrome as I like to think of it). Lawyers can become slavish to the partners for whom they work. Viewing them as demi-gods, they frequently describe them as “my partner” and, indeed, treat them as some kind of Donald Trump a-like sugar daddy (for the partners are, almost without exception, male). Instead of a few quick rolls in the sack in exchange for a designer bag and a bijou flat in Mayfair, lawyers provide a steady supply of grunt work and late night IT support in exchange for a word or two of appreciation and the possibility of a profile raising position on the Health and Safety Committee (all counts towards partnership, y’ know).

For the Institutionalised, working consistently until 3 in the morning becomes a badge of honour to flash in the faces of your less committed colleagues who dare to leave before the clock clicks into the am. The ability to check up on hours you have billed translates into the most inane of competitions, as those who have had a heavy month attempt to slip this into conversations with their less busy colleagues. “Oh, you know, I managed to bill like 8,976 hours, just this week. It’s tiring but, well, my clients are relying on me”. OK love, perish the thought that anyone forgets for a moment that you are single-handedly propping up capitalism, one hour of proof reading at a time. What would the Fortune 500 do without you?

Often the Institutionalised take my resignation as their cue to interrogate me on what I had always imagined to be private matters:

"How will you pay your rent?"
"Are you leaving because you are getting married/having kids?”
"Do you have enough money saved?"
“Do you have any mental health problems?”
“Are you a Communist?”

What makes these people think I am suddenly about to share with them intimate details of my finances, family planning choices and political persuasions?

I’ve found the best tactic is to avoid them at all costs, which would be easy if the Institutionaliseds did not so regularly visit my office to tell me that they always suspected the firm didn't suit me (read ‘can't hack the hours’), that they were sure I would find something more suitable (read ‘something more frivolous, probably without spreadsheets’) and to ask when was my last day again (read ‘you’ve got a really great view, I want your office’).

ii) The Dreamers

The equivalent to those child actors whose star waned irreparably once they hit puberty. Broken voiced, acne scarred and washed up at a tender age. They started out brimming with dreams of a life of fame and showbiz glory after a starring role in a sold-out run of some West End musical aged 12, only to find themselves, nearing middle age, selling mortgages and driving pimped up Ford Fiestas, telling tales of their precocious and long since dimmed talent over pints of Stella and a pack of B&H to anyone who’ll listen.

The legal Dreamers were bright academic over-achievers who had the world at their feet at school and could have done pretty much anything. As impoverished students, the law came calling and they found themselves at the age of 23, the most highly paid photocopiers in London.

Some of those in this camp, most of whom have not spoken to me since our perfunctory welcome chat when I joined the firm, have felt it necessary to open up to me about their plans for the future. I find myself unwittingly pulled into chats, which could more aptly be described as mini counselling sessions. Desperate to sneak off early of an evening to drink with saner folk or to escape to my sofa, I am instead drawn into conversations about colleagues’ aspirations to become writers (all lawyers seem to be frustrated writers.....ahem), psychologists, florists and shoe designers. Crazy, creative plans to overturn the years of churning out corporate documents. Not right now though, you understand, but definitely in the future. For sure.


A little bit of me does want to shake them and ask what they thought they were getting into in the first place. A lot of me wants to shake myself and ask the same question.

Yet still, as days of getting my monthly wage draw to a close with a horrible swiftness, I can feel the panic rising. Five more working days to go. Five more days until unemployment. Five more days until freedom. So why does freedom feel so constricting? I wake up in the night in a hot sweat. What if I never get a job? What if my talents really are restricted to dictating sniffy letters and organising documents? What if I discover I really do find data analysis interesting? What if I end up hanging out with the local Bethnal Green Communists just to fill the empty unemployed days? Maybe cutting out some of the incessant rhetorical questions might be a start.