Kicking and Screaming

I don't want to do it. One of the main reasons I went on that bike ride was because I was so thoroughly fed up with the one I used to do. When I came out of the interview I said, to no one in particular, 'I really don't want to do that. Please, please don't offer it to me.' Instead of checking my phone constantly in the following hours, anxious I might not hear it and miss 'The Call', I left it in another room. They phoned the house phone, cunning bastards. I can't ignore that one. They offered it to me and seemed slightly perplexed by my less than enthusiastic reaction.

I tell them I'll phone them back and spend five minutes pacing the living room, trying to work out how I can conceivably turn it down. I can't. We need the money and I can't continue this life of retirement at 30 for much longer without it becoming exceedingly unfair on my other (fully employed) half. I haven't 'worked' conventionally since 3 March 2007. One whole year off. Sadly, on Monday 10 March, I will be gracing the corridors of my new employers and sitting at a desk to do Admin Bollocks, probably asking myself how I managed to end up there again, in a place that is both new to me but also strangely, depressingly, excrutiatingly familiar.

I'm trying to look at the positives and have been consoling myself by walking around town observing vocations I am thankful I don't have to do. Today's happy conclusion was that at least I don't have to work in Greggs.

Goin' Round Shop

The shops that serve most of this estate are a three minute walk from the house. They look, from the outside, a bit like a derelict crack house. The only shutters up during opening hours are the ones covering the doors, the rest are left shut. They are, of course, all covered in graffiti. Bad graffiti.

The large shop is run by an asian family who keep at least four family members in the shop at a time, presumably in the likely event that someone's going to start some trouble. The patrons seem to be a mix of teenaged mums with prams, drunken 40-something year old men buying cheap export lager, drunken 30-something year old men buying cheap export lager, drunken 40-something year old women buying export lager and drunken 30-something year old women buying cheap export lager. You are likely to find hanging around outside at least one of the following: A large, ferocious-looking dog being inadequately restrained by a small child; a large, ferocious-looking dog on its own, completely unrestrained; a man with an open can of beer talking casually to an old lady; the local prostitute.

The chip shop is called...actually, I don't know what the chip shop is called because there is no sign. It's just a shop with a big metal frying unit and a woman behind it dishing out scallops, amongst other things.

Another hole in the graffiti covered metal wall contains the post office - an empty room with a glass screen running along the right hand wall, with a small, slightly scared looking girl working behind it. There's never anyone in it - they presumably get their dole paid straight into their bank accounts. I know I do.

Alright love?

We went to the pub last night (a rare treat for me these days). Karaoke was being 'performed' in celebration of Kaylie's 18th birthday, so a banner on the wall told me. I suspect she's been a regular for a good five years or so. The pub is about the size of a living room, full of people and thick with smoke. The barmaid stands proudly, cigarette in hand, infront of a 'Britain Goes Smoke Free' poster, put up, presumably ironically, behind the bar.

I take my Guinness coloured (but not tasting) drink to the pool table and play with my two companions. My attention is averted to the karaoke in the main bar as the first chords of an Oasis song ring out - I had wondered how long it would take. A large, hairy and clearly very drunk man has the microphone in his fist and he starts shouting the lyrics very loudly, joined by everyone else in the pub. Some people get up on their seats to sway along. I note, with a smile to myself, that he actually sounds better than Liam Gallagher, although that's not much of an achievement.

As we finish our last drinks (surprisingly they do have a closing time) a tall, middle-aged man staggers into the pool room. He has a large, red and bleeding circular wound covering a quarter of his face, over his left eye. It takes me a second to realise it's the same size as the drinking end of a pint glass. He looks around at me, my girlfriend's brother and finally my girlfriend. 'Alright love?' he slurs, wobbling on his beer-filled legs. My girlfriend ignores him and he staggers back into the bar.

I'm reminded not for the first time of a TV show I've seen once or twice - Shameless. I'm living in Shameless.

Scallop Butty

225 miles isn't, in some circumstances, very far to travel. On a plane, for example. In other circumstances it's a very long way. That would be about four days work in my old job and sometimes it felt like whole lifetimes were lived through those miles. For the purposes of this Blog, however, it serves as the distance between Southampton and Manchester, a journey I've made many, many times but never as permanently as I did at the beginning of this year - I've moved up here.

Leaving the weather, accents and price of beer to one side for now, they are still very different places. I shall demonstrate:

Go into a 'chippy' and ask for a scallop, what do you get? A small white blob of nicely pan-fried mollusc? No - a deep fried piece of potato. I had a 'scallop butty' the other day as a sort of initiation. It tasted like a big chip and not at all unpleasant.