For a Few Dollars More...

Return to Belfast is it, aye? Not fucking likely.

Predictably enough, you find me in a fairly strident frame of mind. Here I sit, with the flat in a reasonable state of repair at last, at half nine in the morning, with fuck all to do, and a little fire in my belly (along with some Nesquik cereal).

Since my last little missive I've been turned down for a gig in Teletech, the job equivalent of a Roma accordion player throwing your twenty pee back in your face. Cue an exponential increase in the applications being sent out - everything from window cleaner to shop manager, from sofa salesman to financial advisor- if there was a hole in a business in Liverpool, Belfast, or anywhere else, I stuck my oar in it. I thought I'd sniffed out a few promising leads, and was kind of half-way preparing to shift myself back off to Belfast.

But no. Every alley turned out to be a blind one. Never has one man been told politely to fuck off so many times. And with the landlord having the cheek to threaten legal action, despite the walls being the only consistently working thing in the flat, I was forced to pawn my guitar and bass. In all my years of dodging creditors, this was a new low. But I suppose there's no point having an electric instrument if it's getting wrecked in the rain as you sleep in the park.

I may well have skipped town at this point, and probably would have done if I hadn't signed a nasty little contract on the flat, which would have nicely shafted my new housemates. And just as I was about to steal a dirigible and start paddling, I got a call back off one of the sheaf of call centre applications I'd fired out over the last month. They told me to land down with some paperwork, and I'd have an interview that week. So pausing to thank whatever idiot spirit it is that smiles on me at these times, off I strut to a dole office in town.

Imagine my pleasantly surprised face as Blue Bill (one of my housemates - rampant Protestant but nice bloke, as long as you're not female and within fifty yards) sashays up for the same interview. Now imagine my look of can't-believe-my-lucktitude as the interview goes thusly:

Bint Interviewer: You done this kind of thing before?
Me: What call centre work? Yeah, I worked in-
B: Good. Have you got a valid passport and some National Insurance details?
M: Yeah, I-
(B stands up, and snatches my vaguely waved passport)
B: Good stuff, I'll just go and get these photocopied...
(B blusters out the door. I sit and twiddle my thumbs for five minutes, not moving much in case this is the Hidden Camera portion of the interview.

I started quite enjoying myself at this point, as I sat visualising myself rolling around in a big bath full of money, with my bass back, and a guitar I actually liked, with a bottle of Morgan's Spiced in one hand, and a sandwich larger than my head in the other. Full-time employment goes to my head rather quickly.

In she swings again, this time with a scowl halfway between confusion and indignation, like I'd just sneezed splatteringly over her dog)
B: This letter won't do at all, oh no. Haven't you got anything else?
M: But my housemate just landed up with exactly the same paperwork, and you said he was sweet-

Cue garbled conversation with many interruptions and talking-overances, which resulted in my having to naff off up to a different dole office to get a slightly different shade of letter from them. This proved difficult. Another cock-up had been made with my paperwork, and I wouldn't be able to get the appropriate letter until I'd submitted a form (which should have been done a month and a half earlier when I changed my address with the dole folks), which was likely to take a good week to process. Which meant the job was out the window.

But did I despair? Did I up and sell the rest of my furniture, and lope off to Belfast to hide? Not likely. And why? Because whenever you get a stroke of luck of this kind, you inevitably get a barrage of them, if you know where to look. Mine came along rather quickly.

As I sat in a not-particularly-greasy spoon eating a halal fry (how could I tell it was halal? No bacon, and beef sausages. Wasn't the best) I got a call from a number I didn't recognise. I answered tentatively. Over came a voice that suggested a forty-something divorcée with a short skirt and a smoking habit that ran into its second box by tea time. Could I make my way to Kirkby by the end of the day, she asked? No, I said. I hadn't a clue where Kirkby was, and was unsure about finding out. Could I be there by eleven tomorrow morning, she asked? I said I'd try. She husked an address to me, bade me wear a suit and bring a passport, and hung up.

I sat and sipped my mediocre tea, unsure what to make of this. Had I slipped into a Bogart film? What the hell kind of jobs had I been applying for? Only one way to find out.

The reality was a little less cinematic. The place was a call centre on the other side of Liverpool, with the feel of an airport- tight corridors, air conditioning, not enough natural light and a scrubbed formica cafeteria. It turned out I was right about the voice on the phone- she had strawy bottle-blonde hair, she'd seen far too much sun over the years, but she kept in shape. She took me to an office at the back and asked the standard call centre interview questions. I jumped through the hoops. I didn't even remember applying for this job, but I wasn't going to argue. Then she said something they always say on TV, but never in real life: "You start on Monday." I very nearly kissed her, but didn't like the thought of the sexual harassment suit.

That was a month ago. During that month I've sat and slogged through some of the most stultifyingly boring call centre training I've ever been a party to. The job doesn't seem that bad, but my classmates are idiots. Not just stupid people, the loud kind that shout over you and then blame you because they're not picking anything up. Must be hell teaching these classes, and that hell is reserved for a quiet mousy grandmother from the Midlands somewhere, who avoids passive-aggressiveness by being incredibly nice (actually unbelievably- no idea how she does it).

So what am I doing lazing about the house, with a very nice bowl of cereal, on a Monday morning, when by the terms of another nasty little contract I should be sitting wringing my hands taking my first couple of calls? Well for that you can blame banks. Generally a good crowd to blame if you're stuck, but this time may well be justified. For some reason Santander are refusing to give me the last twenty or so quid out of my account. This means I can't afford a bus, which means I can't get to work. Which is nice. And may well lead to me sitting about the house like this more often on a Monday morning. Either way, expect more of these scribblings over the next while. I'll give myself carpal tunnel otherwise.

In the words of James Brown, "Uuunnnn"

-J