Ask a busy person

They say the best way to get things done is to ask a busy person. I have to agree with that statement. I mean this blog is the perfect example. I have no job and little else to do and yet I seem to be neglecting it greatly. I haven’t much to say really, but I feel guilty and thought I best write before the annual festive period about that special baby’s birthday occurs.

Some moderately exciting events have happened over the last few weeks which I should have written about, but didn’t. The unemployment is really beginning to make me lazy (ier). My eldest brother for example held two consecutive Saturday night dinner parties for each side of the family’s cousins’ at the end of November/beginning of December. Niall cooked for I think the 2^nd and 3rd time ever in his life and the latter occasion was a full roast turkey dinner. Both were very pleasurable and inevitably drunken occasions, but I feel rather that I have missed the boat to write about then, pity. Fortunately, my far less lazy brother has written about them on his blog so if you do wish to hear about the festivities then please click on my face and then the Nev 360 link. His last two entries concern the dinner parties.

My lovely landlady wife also held a Christmas dinner about a week ago, I can’t possible say ‘we’ as all I did was buy the table cloth. Jenny the kiddie doctor and Sarah’s brother attended as well as their two Labrador’s Megan and Katie, who I must say, are much better behaved than the Borg, but that may just be because there are 3 fewer of them. They did make a terrible hairy mess on the floor though which slightly OCDly of me, I hovered up and cleaned on Monday once my landlady wife had gone to work. On occasion, when I clean I get carried away and do odd things like hoover the window sills.

This weekend past was host to another festive party when my landlady wife and I hosted an evening of Christmas cheer which consisted of playing trivial pursuit, watching ‘Love Actually’ and eating a tremendous amount of Marks and Spencers finger food. We were joined in this by the aforementioned kiddie doc, Karen of Stirling (not Karen of the Borders, she as far as I know is still there) and running Louise. My brother also made a brief appearance so he could change into a builders outfit, but again I refer to you to his blog as I am sure he will explain that in due course in far more detail.

Talking of my eldest brother, he made his move to Edinburgh a few short weeks ago and then instantly went to Ghana. However, he did finally spend a few nights in his new flat last week and one night joined my newly married Simon (name check) and Devil Mike (so mentioned as the first time I met him he was painted red and dressed like the devil, he is personality wise, very lovely) went on a pub crawl of his new area i.e. the royal mile. This resulted in me being very very ill the next day and glad that all I had to do that day was wait in for the new TV to be delivered. And speaking of hangover, I had another after Esme’s birthday night in Glasgow a week last Saturday. It was merry affair indeed that was ended up in our exclusion from a rather peculiar night club in which they served free toast after Esme’s boyfriend ‘accidently’ stole some beer. The three of us after bidding goodnight to our comapanions had to wait for over an hour for a taxi home in the freezing cold and ended up ‘rescuing’ a rather silly young girl who had gone out wearing nothing but a pair of high heels and dress which in my opinion was barely a belt and she had no jacket or tights. We let her in our taxi and I berated her for this and also for getting into a taxi with 3 strangers- I mean we could have been serial killers (I am not, I don’t think Esme is and I’m pretty certain Stephen isn’t either, but that is not the point).

Gosh this blog is fast turning into a rambling list of drunken nights in the wrong order. I’ll do you a time line

28^th November- Niall’s first Forsythian Christmas Party

5^th December – Niall’s Christie Cousin Christmas Party

I spent the next few days in Aberdeen helping him pack, clean and move. We got a van down to Edinburgh and moved into his new flat which almost killed us both (4^th floor flat to 3^rd floor flat- you try it)

11^th December- I go to Glasgow for Esme’s birthday. I get very drunk and feel very ill the next day. In the evening after my return to Edinburgh my landlady wife and I get a Christmas tree named Trevor.

13^th December- fake Christmas in the Christie-Marshall household. There is no mulled wine to be found on Princes Street. Dogs attend the event and leave hair as a Christmas gift for Dyson the hoover.

17^th December- the first of what I suspect to be many of pub crawls with Niall

19^th December- joined by some friends, we hold another festive evening in which some mulled wine was available.

So soon it will be Christmas. My plans are changing at fast pace, I don’t know where I will be (weather dependent, don’t snow please), I hope to be attending the annual Dingwall Christmas pub quiz on Wednesday evening. If I win I have to declare my winnings to the job centre people. No, really. After that I assume the festive period will contain the usual eating of turkey and consumption of wine just as long as it doesn’t snow too much resulting in that mum and I can’t get down to her fancy man’s or her house explodes. It's something to do with too much pressure on the central heating, if she doesn’t bleed it frequently then it’ll blow the street up or something. The plumber said he come sometime between now and Thursday. No, really.

So a well planned and organised period ahead.

Oh, and did I mention, I have a job interview tomorrow?

Rejection and Recuperation

Ah, another moderate gap between entries. This can only mean one of two things, either I have been busy or I have been avoiding writing. It is the latter. The reason for this is my failure. Yes, my dreams of becoming Scotland’s next poisons expert were shattered on Friday when yet again I received another rejection letter. I have applied for 42 jobs in the last 12 weeks and while you may think that is a small number, you must realise that each job application can take from up to 1-3 hours (sometimes more) so complex are some of today’s application forms. Also you have to factor in the time searching for appropriate jobs added in the bimonthly pop into the jobcentre which takes up an entire morning due to its location far away from my flat. Plus there’s the ever important tea breaks.

Tea breaks are important to me. Apart from my last job in the hospice in which I would say, in 50% of days there would be a communal staff tea break, regular tea breaks were unknown to me. In my first job in the hideous GI ward I barely had time to take my coat off let alone leisurely drink a cup of tea. My second job in the Belford was a strange beast in which I always managed to get myself busy (Andi who works there presently seems to do nothing but have tea breaks, I can’t decided whether this is due to a recent lack of patients or my inability to manage time). My 3^rd job in Sick kids was variable beast in which my role rotated round the various areas. Whilst on the ward it was tea a-plenty, but on the acute unit or day case- the insanely busy centre where you see what seems like hundreds of patients all with minor ailments all demanding far too much attention in my opinion- you never even got the whiff of a biscuit. I then move onto my FY2 year which heralded a new kind of frantic activity first in A&E then the surgical ward. A&E was supposed to have regular breaks, but all I managed was a lunch stop and tea is not a speedy lunch beverage. Also I sweated so much in my shiny plastic suit that adding a steaming hot cup to tea to the mix would have only have increased my malodour. We then come to ward 33, surgical ward from hell. If hadn’t already decided to quit before this job, I definitely would have stormed out in a triumphant and spectacularly melodramatic style whilst working in this post. I did at one stage actually stamp my foot on the ground with sheer anger and frustration (then promptly burst into tears with one of the lovely secretaries), but worst of all in this job if there was a tea break, well, there was no tea. Instead a monstrous coffee machine that demanded feeding and not a tea bag in sight. It was quite horrific. And now full circle back to the afore mentioned hospice and now my current state of affairs- unemployment.

It has now been 3 months since I moved to Edinburgh and tried to get a job. In my head, I had predicted I would have a job by Christmas. That predication seems unlikely to be fulfilled. I have had interviews for 3 separate jobs (and 3 interviews for one of them) with 3 rejections and countless rejection letters from positions that I never even got interviewed for. There have also been the non-informers- the jobs to which you apply for and you hear nothing, not even a letter to say ‘NO WAY YOU UNDER-EXPERIENCED PILLOCK’ which I personally feel is the least they could do. Even a wee email, not even the cost of a postage stamp. I despise them most of all.

I was in the jobcentre today in fact and sitting, waiting for the man to sign me off and I looked around me at all the other people sitting and waiting for the same thing. Literally dozens of people all looking and applying for the same jobs as me and I thought ‘dear lord what chance do I have?’. Now I know many of them won’t have degrees, but scarily a lot of them looked perfectly respectable. I wondered what had brought them to this ghastly place and were they thinking the same about me? If they knew what I had given up, would they beat me over the head with their sign-in clip boards?

But then I remind myself that my flatmate who is meant to finish at 5 never gets home til nearer or past 7. My recently married friend isn’t getting have Christmas with her husband because someone screwed him over in the rota. My friend in the Borders has been forced to be rota master and having to work her holidays to cover for 2 absent colleagues. Another friend in Perth is working 2 jobs and is about to eat her juniors they are so incompetent. And Andi, well, he lives on friggin’ Fort William for crying out loud.

And then I remember, at least now I can have as much tea as I want.