"You're over thirty, speed limit's there for a reason"
"What are you, my mother?"
"Nope, but if Mammy was here she'd say exactly the same thing."
<sudden burst of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" as yours truly's mobile sounds>
"Buggery, buggery, buggery. Get that, it's probably the job centre about my National Insurance number <continues to ramble as sister answers phone> but if they try and spell aloud one more word that a primary school child could make out of alphabetty spaghetti tell them to stick their jobseekers JSA 1 forms up their...
..."It's London company, I told them to call again in fifteen minutes so we'll just about have time to get ho...THIRTY MILE AN HOUR, IT'S THIRTY MILES AN HOUR, STICK TO THE F**KING SPEED LIMIT!!"
As I write this I am remembering the events of Tuesday last. I have used a free narrative construction of time. Because I am a well good writer. At the moment Ireland is drenched in 25 degree heat and everyone is naked. I approve. Of everyone. Nothing wrong with any of that. I am slathered in factor fifty, iced Shloer (drink of Christmas and champions) in hand and reclining out the back, a view of lush rolling farmland and the green, green hills of home. La vita é bella. Murray got his groove on and I have a final stage interview with lovely London company on Thursday. Aplausos.
Mind you, trouble and strife make for better writing but we shall endure.
That Tuesday we were driving home from making my initial claim for Job Seeker's Allowance. I am officially on the dole. There's about the same level of Jeremy Kyle, Sixteen and Pregnant repeats and Keeping up with the Kardashians but I have yet to succumb to any urges to drink Buckfast in Superdry gear while betting on the horses. Who knew stereotypes were a load of old rubbish?
Some hold true though. Closest home town's social security office must be Dante's fifth circle of hell, dedicated to the wrathful and the sullen. Populated by irate, keening women who were wrathful because "my Shane's EMA was taken off him and sure he only didn't go for a week because he had a wee job on a site there, do you not want people to support themselves?" and dull eyed, weary civil servants.
Mind you within five seconds of filling out forms I was keen to send Marty (all names changed for reasons of anonymity and fear of legal challenges) to the eighth part of the eighth circle of fraudulent advisors and evil counsellors. Well, not so much evil. More robotic and vague, as if all joy had been stolen from long ago. Observe;
"Now you're for Job Seeker's Allowance, that's with two e's in Seeker and then ah-el-el-eau-double.ye-ah-en-see-eeee. And you're an initial claim, that's eye-en..."
"Stahp. Just stahp. Stop this nonsense. Your embarrassing me and yourself. Now usually I don't do this because I don't think a person's university or lack of one tells you what they are like, just what they themselves like, but THIS. This is a degree from prestigious university. I can spell res ipsa loquitur and volenti non fit inuruia. I once got through twenty cards in a minute during a game of Articulate. I think I can just about manage to spell allowance..."
Then there was a bit of a debacle because I didn't have my national insurance number card/letter on me. I know it. I know it off by heart, like my PIN and my passwords and all the words to Remix to Ignition. But they just wouldn't let me give it to them!
(That sounded a bit rude, apologies, been watching a bit too much Carry On and when I read my last sentence over, Kenneth Williams just popped into my head to say "Don't be disgusting!" Funny, same reaction when auntie was wondering where she'd parked her car and innocently stated "I should be up against a wall somewhere...")
Anyway, thus spake the jobcentre lady, "Now it has to be a hundred per cent so I'd really like you to go home and get it right. You can always come back another day."
And this jobsworth-ness was the reason for snarling and gnashing of teeth and blatant disregard for the speed limit when lovely London company called me on the way home. And with that one sweet, small, serendipitous phone call (open beside computer, "How to Write like Twain, Chapter One, repetition of title in main body of work...) I was set for London this coming Wednesday and a final stage interview with a company I dearly want to be a part of. Dangling preposition there, Twain is spinning in his grave. Or simply doesn't care, he did go hard at the bourbon...
And with that suddenly all questions from aunties and uncles at our family shindig this Sunday were fielded well. I must just add for the Catholics that this was in fact Cemetery Sunday. For the non-believers among you (which will include some Norn Irish Catholics, we're really more of a culture than a religious affiliation) this is where you say Mass in the graveyard as we all stand around our dearly departed, sprinkle on the Holy Water and ask intercession for forgiveness of sins and the glory of the life everlasting, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Then we all go back to our house for wee triangular sandwiches and a lot of cake. And there was even some Ferrero Rocher this year. Classy.
But I understand this trying time for graduates when they go home. Or those made redundant and recently out of a job. Or those who have decided to take a career break. There will always be the question "what now?" There was a marvellous quote from The Iron Lady, I don't know if it was from She Who Must Be Obeyed, Thatcher herself, but it was "It used to be about doing something, now it's about being someone."
I think we can go one step further, that now and maybe as in the past, what we do is who we are. I once read an obituary of a young solicitor who had
died at the age of thirty-six and the entirety of that piece, as long as this post, could be summed up as so. “She was a solicitor, a very good solicitor, she worked here, she
could have gone on working here, her colleagues will miss her.” It made me so
sad for her for reasons that had nothing to do with her death and everything to
do with her life. She shouldn’t have ended her days a lawyer and nothing more.
And I know that isn't the whole story but it's what was newsworthy. And 'tis sad.
But not knowing what we want to do or where we want to go is not sad. This is a great and wonderful world of choice. Let me tell something to you in the voice of that Latino penguin from Happy Feet. Chou are taking the time to think, ho'kay? Es nothing wrong with this. Es good. You work, you work for forty, maybe fifty years. You maybe marry, make babies, have homes, have the worries. Now, today, you have only decisions. And now today no worries about what you have become. The worries tomorrow or never at all. And I like the fifty-fifty odds...
That got very Dr Phil very quickly! Elsewhere, beyond the advice giving, I need only tell you life goes on at home. That reminds me, we rescued a little baby bird. It can't fly yet, but it will. I have taken to him á la Brookes and Jake in Shawshank Redemption. Our little sheep dog is unable to understand why he has been usurped in the cuteness arena and has taken to whining and pawing at my feet in a blatant attempt to curry favour. It worked.
"Oh yers, oh yers, oh yers my little puppy! Who's a good doggie? Oh yes it is you, it is you!! Rolly over, rolly over...Good boy! Gawd, you have us all eating out of the palm of your...paw. Dinner handed to you, pets galore, snoozing in the sun. Talk about welfare and benefits. Dog's life. But here, how can you have a dog's life but the dog days at the same time?"
And there I think we must leave me, sprawling out on our front porch talking to a tongue-panting, tail-wagging cutie who looks like he is nodding sagely to every word I say. Later on I may take a spin down to the seaside and get me a baby cone with chocolate sprinkles and a flake in. I'll eat it in the car, looking out at the place where the dark mountains sweep down to the sea. And I'll have the windows down and Macklemore's Thrift Shop thrumming from the speakers. And I'll sing along as so; "Walk into the club like what's up, I got a big hello community support officer." And she will ask me to keep it down and think of the older residents. Rebel without a cause innit.
This has all already happened, I am using another narrative device. But it is a lovely ending.
And so next time I can hear London Calling just as surely as it called The Clash and I hear the streets are paved with gold. I shall set off, like Dick Whittington before me, and with the god's good graces I shall have a tale or two to tell when I get back.
xo
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