Presumptions

Telesales people are getting awfully presumptuous these days. Thursday evening the phone rings; it is some girl calling me from my building society offering me a special deal on a credit card. She tells me what's on offer to existing customers like me, explains that she will take me through the application form over the phone and then arrange for the card to be sent to me. At no point does she actually ask if I want one. As soon as she started talking I knew where the conversation was heading so I tried to interject several times and politely tell her that, no thanks, save your breath, I don't want a credit card. No fucking chance. Telesales girl was going to get to the end of her opening spiel no matter what. She would tolerate no interruptions and nothing on this Earth would prevent her from reaching the end of her opening pitch.

Except that it wasn't a pitch. They were going to give me a credit card. I would accept their credit card because the terms were so damn good. No discussion. No enquiry into my needs. They had decided that I needed their credit card and that I would take it.

Except, of course, I didn't. "Not interested," I said and hung up. What really pissed me off was not that they were assuming that I would simply acquiesce and accept the credit card but that Telesales Girl just carried on talking over me when I tried to save her from wasting her time. It was her turn to speak, not mine. Wait, motherfucker, I'm telling you what my company is offering and you will listen and you will take our product.

I sometimes feel sorry for telesales people because they work under extraordinary pressure, have huge quotas to fill given to them by ruthless, merciless, scumbag line managers; it must be an horrible job. But then I think, no, fuck that, nobody forces people to work in telesales. It is not the only work going. Even when I have been languishing in the most dire of straits I have managed to avoid getting a telesales job.

So, fuck Telesales Girl, fuck her presumption that I will be accepting her oh-so-generous terms and conditions, fuck her quotas and fuck her tyrannical arsehole of a line manager. No pushy little twat phones me up in my home, refuses to let me speak as they spout forth their sales pitch and expects me to take their product without even asking if I want it.

Interview With A Potato

Or, more accurately, 'interview with two British Potato Council representatives'.

I attended the interview but I couldn't muster any enthusiasm at all. I mumbled and stumbled through the usual interview spiel, stared at them blankly when they asked what attracted me to the job (fuck all) and generally lacked conviction.

I wasn't interested. They knew I wasn't interested. I knew they knew I wasn't interested. At the end of the interview they asked what I thought about the role and I told them I wasn't interested.

Never mind, I'll give Oxford University Press another shot.

A future career in... potatoes?

I have a job interview tomorrow but I am not terribly enthusiastic about it. The role is for a general office admin person for... the British Potato Council. Yup, the British Potato Council.

The job would involve taking care of all the filing and data entry stuff, ordering the stationary and making sure there are enough biscuits to go around at meetings. Riveting. The money isn't up to much either. So why am I bothering with to go to the interview? I've just signed up to a new recruitment agency (another one!) and I had to show willing when they offered to put me forward for the job. Plus, it has been a while since I had any interviews and I need the practice.

So, I have to appear to be making the effort during the interview but also manage to dissuade them from offering me the job. I'll angle for the "he's over-qualified and would be bored in this role" response. Despite being a temp at the Council, I have been there so long that I have accumulated a lot of valuable knowledge and taken on a great deal of responsibility. Also, the person they hired to do the job I was covering turned out to be shockingly inept and they got rid of them; if they had let me go as originally planned they would now be right in the shit. I've become valuable. Ergo, I am setting my sights a little higher than 'admin dogsbody'... but not much.

Besides, how could I look anyone in the eye as I tell them I work for the British Potato Council? I'm sure they do sterling work in pushing the humble spud as the dynamic root vegetable of choice for the 21^st Century but it's not exactly cool, is it: "Hey baby, I work for the British Potato Council. Wanna' come back to my place?" Yeah, real smooth.

Dispatches from the daily grind

It's been a productive day so far at work: I've filled out and sent two job applications.

Face lift

Hark, if you will, at the funky new banner that adorns the top of each page of this Mostly Official And Almost Entirely Pointless™ website. The old one was nice but a bit sparse so I decided to try and make it a bit more interesting. Being both a writer and a musician (in thought if not often in deed) I wanted the imagery in the banner to reflect these two major artistic pursuits... so I filched a picture of a mixing desk off the interweb and stuck some transparent text over it. Then I stuck my ugly mug in there too because this is a website about me after all.

But that is not all. Get thee over to the noise section for I have installed a swanky new Flash jukebox music player thingie. Simply select a tune, hit the play button and enjoy the streaming aural goodness and the little graphic equalizer that bears absolutely no relation to the music being played (but it still looks nice).

I have to admit that I am nowhere near technically proficient enough to have built such a cool gadget myself. I nicked it (legitimately, of course) from a very clever chap called Jeroen Wijering so go check him out too.

Buy this magazine or we'll fuck up yer knees with hammers

Three utterly convincing reasons to by Issue 6 of self-styled rock'n'roll noir magazine Bullet:

1. It's got a story by Charlie Williams in it.
2. It's got a story by The Insufferable Cunt Chris Morrow™ in it.
3. More people should buy short story magazines anyway.

So you have no excuse not to pick up a copy, you slags... unless you are easily offended by fiction that contains lots of swearing and violence, in which case you do have a pretty good excuse after all.

In the footsteps of Dylan Thomas... in a manner of speaking

On Saturday morning I hauled my arse to London to indulge in an afternoon of literary talk and the quaffing of alcohol.

We met at the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street for two reasons:

1. Dylan Thomes used to get booze-brained there and in the other ale houses of Fitzovia so it felt like an apt place for a meeting of scribblers, and,
2. The Fitzroy ain't got no big screen telly showing the World Cup football so the place was almost deserted.

And what a humdinger of an afternoon it was with a prestigious line-up of literary talent. Novelistic debutantes Roger Morris and Jim Younger were present - there was an impressive stack of copies of Taking Comfort and High John The Conqueror on the table and the afternoon became something of an impromptu signing event (leaving Jim mildly bemused and embarrassed by all the attention). Jai Clare was teetering on the Cusp Of Inebriation (we all were but I can't resist the pun), as were Wendy Vaizey and her partner Steve (what a fine name that is), Kay Sexton, Andrew Morton, Rachael King from New Zealand (complete with entourage) and, of course, the Insufferable Cunt Chris Morrow™.

The fates were kind to us and smothered us with sunshine all day as we commandeered most of the pavement tables outside the pub. The conversation flipped from existential literature to celebrity gossip to why London Underground decided to close the Northern Line on the day the capital would be full of football fans to music recording techniques to what is wrong with the British film industry.

And then a big black man dressed as a Reverend pulled up in a big black car and proceeded to conduct some kind of wedding ceremony on a pogo stick. Or something. I was happily nestled in alcohol's warm embrace by that point so I'm not entirely sure what was going on.

In short, a bloody marvellous day out.

Nero the Nerd

Many, many moons ago I casually commented that the square font used on Caffè Nero coffee shops makes the name of the chain look to me like Caffè Nerd.

And then not quite so many moons but still quite a long time ago I receive an email from a Mr. Reg Denke, Chairman of the Caffè Nerd Group, thanking me for mentioning his chain of less than two shops that serves the best instant coffee from sachets filched from hotel rooms all around the world!

Having been to less than one of their coffee shops, I am happy to have endorsed Caffè Nerd, however unwittingly, and can honestly say that their instant coffee is the finest I haven't tasted yet.