Tue 24th August 2010

I had to start a "New Deal" course on Monday.

I don't consider myself unemployed. Part of the week I look after my children, enabling Kirsty to work. During the rest, I do an MA. I have to keep both activities secret from the dole, lest I appear to be evading the opportunity to work in a callcentre for less than the amount I'd have to pay a childminder to look after my daughters while I worked in a callcentre.

There were six of us, five men, one woman, all younger than me. We were shown into a room full of bits of old blutack dotted about the walls. A set of laminated A4 posters was headed by one which said "Respect and Diversity"; the others went on to provide defintions of terms like "Belief", "Bullying" and "Racism".

A too-apologetic Colin, uneasy about his status as an agent of the State, took us laboriously through a "Handbook", during which we were assured that we would all have a "caseworker" (I'm a "case" now), that fighting would be "reported to the police" and that "sometimes jokes can go too far." We were left on our own for a few minutes, during which one of the more experienced cases said "You don't want to get that Samantha. She's a right cunt."

I didn't get Samantha, I got Colin, and we had a "one-to-one". We jointly looked at a computer screen as we went through my "barriers to employment". Drug use? Difficulties with English and Maths? Refugee Status?

Colin told me about his own part-time MA which he is finishing on the same day as me, three weeks from now. He showed me a job doing the same thing as he was doing, for 16K a year. Of course, I will "apply" for it.

What I'm actually going to do is to default on a credit card while doing a PhD at Leeds with one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. I got my welcome letter today which mentioned "refreshments" after our first day. I'm hoping that means that we'll have several glasses of Ch. de Taxpayeur before I slump elbow-to-elbow in a pub with a beautiful flautist from Edinburgh who will suggest we (cont. p.94)

I've decided to leave Facebook: I preferred it when people blogged. And it doesn't ever really feel under your control.

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 61 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

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Modern Life is Actually Very Good

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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