Read all about it!

I know life's pretty boring around here lately.  There aren't any travel stories, or photographs of hobbits.  All you get is some petulant whining instead.    

Well, get thee over to the Women's Colony, where from now on you can read my travel-related tales.  There's a new post there regarding our (three-day) hiking swansong before leaving New Zealand. There are mountains, and scenery, and we suffer physical discomfort.  What more could you ask?  

When a new post goes up at the Colony, I'll let you know.  If you genuinely want to read about my bad hair days in various countries across Indochina, you can click through.  I'll still update here with other, non-travel-related, minutiae.  

Also, if you've been traveling and you've got a tale to tell, feel free to submit it to the Colony.  It's a growing community! 

Ludicrous Job Title Awards: III

...and the winner is:  "Female Exiting Prostitution Worker".  

I don't even know where to begin, folks.  I do know I wouldn't want that job title on my business card.  

In other job-hunt related news, my father-in-law saw fit today to lecture me about my job-hunting skills.  Have I thought about looking at working for government departments?  No, that major career-path escaped me, despite the fact that I worked in one myself during the 18 months prior to leaving New Zealand.  No, I didn't know they advertise jobs on their websites.  

Perhaps, he continued, I could consider accepting a job which doesn't exactly match my specialisation, but would possibly pay me more money.  I don't care about the money, I said, and besides, I can't find a job within my specialisation at the moment.  What are my chances of finding one outside it, do you think?  

Yes, I need some kind of salary, but I would rather temp that accept a crap permanent job for the sake of having a permanent job.  It's just a crying shame that even to register at a temp agency these days, you have to send them a CV and then if they deem you worthy, they'll call you within 7-10 working days.  Hello, limbo.  It ain't like it was in the old days.  

At least I won't suffer from clandestine ageism, he said.  That's true, I replied, merely sexism (being a woman of child-bearing age, with no kids, and if fortunate enough to get a job, likely to be paid far less than a man doing the same work).  Also, as a younger adult, I can kiss any prospect of a state pension goodbye, while watching my only capital asset decline dramatically in value, safe in the knowledge that 

a) all the jobs I'd like are taken by people with more experience (read: older) than me; 

and

b)at some point the world will become unlivable thanks to the climate change brought about by his generation's unparalleled growth in earning potential and consequent consuming.

Yeah, we young onions don't know we were born.  

This man is now retired, having held the same job for the entirety of his 45-year working life, and it shows.  After today's conversation, I don't think we'll talk again for a while.  

Dino, in the UK

Yes, I did. I imported a vintage car into the UK. Here he is outside Cowboy's brother's house.

You see, we have no off-street parking at The Bolt-hole, and parking him at the kerbside in London would be foolhardy in the extreme. Thieves would be able to make off with him in their arms. Additionally, he's delicate and he really should be in a garage lest droplets of rain cause unsightly rust.

Cowboy's brother has some undefinable job in the city, so he can afford three garages heaped to the brim with children's plastic crap. They kindly cleared a space for Dino, and there he resides. The long-term plan is for us to move out of The Bolt-hole and into a house, and then we will have space for Dino ourselves.

Since our container arrived, with him in it, Dino has been at the depot awaiting instruction. You see, he was supposed to come in a separate container a few weeks after the primary shipment. This would have given us time to sort the tow-truck necessary for a car that's not road-legal. But the shipping company found that they could fit all our possessions, and a car, into one 40ft container. I think they were as surprised as we were. So he arrived early.

I've often written that everywhere Dino goes, people smile, and it's true in the UK too. We paid him a visit at the depot to check he started up (he did, fifth try! not bad for a 42-year old that's spent 3 months in a shipping container). It only needed one person to come down and hand us the keys, but a troop of three came to witness the engine in action. Be-earringed shaven-headed craggy old blokes, they grinned from ear to ear when he fired up, and we talked at length about his history.

The tow-truck driver was likewise fascinated. He described it to my sister-in-law, who took delivery, as "a memorable day". I love that he makes other people happy.

Enquiries had been made by visitors to the depot as to how much we would accept for a sale. We're accustomed to this - once we were accosted at a set of traffic lights in NZ with the exact same question from someone who said "I'm serious! How much?". He is not for sale. And not only because Her Majesty's Beancounters will charge us tax on the import value if we sell him within 12 months.

Which fact gives an indication of how much my head swirls with paperwork. Dino must pass his MOT (test of road-worthiness in the UK), and though he is 42 and thus exempt from many modern requirements, I am concerned. I have good reason to believe the MOT is harder to pass than the Kiwi equivalent. We shall see.

Once he's passed his MOT, he needs to get registered. The form requests many pieces of information, much of which I do not understand, such as "Particulates (pm) g/km or g/kWh", and "HC g/km or g/kWh". It's OK, I thought. I speak Government. I'll get the helpful leaflet giving guidance on how to fill this in.

The helpful leaflet refers to something called the CoC form, without anywhere explaining what this is. No matter: I shall persevere. Happily, eventually he will be allocated an un-used license-plate number from 1967 and is entitled to the white-on-black plates from that era too. This is a bonus, because I know the lurid flourescent yellow modern UK plates would clash horrifically with his pale green hue. Being Italian, he might never fire up again, in protest.

There's also another issue, unrelated to paperwork. Where Dino lives, so do two very small and destructive children. He is the biggest excitement in their lives at the moment. The kids don't understand that he's worth quite a lot of money and that if that indicator-stalk snaps off it's going to be extremely difficult to replace.

I had to breathe very deeply and calmly, because they have not been brought up to understand that adults are not joking when they say "please don't touch that". They are not my kids, so I can't unload at them when they actively disobey, though I did come very close a couple of times, as the handbrake was wrenched and the windows wound down too vigorously. He is under a dust-cover, but the kids know exactly how to take it off. If you're not very careful, you can scratch the paintwork doing so.

I would like to impose a rule that they can look but not touch, but that's never going to happen. Cowboy has quite gently said to his brother that the car is a bit fragile, and not a plaything, but that's as far as he feels he can go. It's nice of them to let us store him there, for free, for what is likely to be quite a long time. In the case of major breakage, he is fully insured.

In the meantime, all I can do is wish him luck! Good luck with the MOT, Dino! Good luck getting a decent license-plate number! Good luck evading little hands!

The Ludicrous Job Title Awards: II

I've been trying to make a trophy-style cup for these, but I am old, and my talents with arty software are not what they once were.

I'll continue to attempt it, in between attending the Job Centre PLUS to be asked what 'advocacy' is and how to spell it, and asserting that it's just possible that the government's job-finding resources are less effective for those of us who can't fit their expertise into a four-digit SOC job-code. Every two weeks I must attend the Job Centre so we can together trawl joylessly through my 'job-seeking' log while neither of us is listening to the other.

I wouldn't mind, if there was a pot of actual cash money social security benefit at the end of this rainbow of drudge, but there isn't. I've been working abroad for the last two and a half years and I've been disentitled to state benefits as a result of not having paid my 'National Insurance Contributions' in the previous two tax years. I've also got too many savings to qualify for income-based job-seekers allowance, but that doesn't stop The Man requiring me to visit him regularly so he pays my National Insurance Contributions during my period of unemployment.

In the meantime, I urge you to enjoy wondering what a Resistant Materials Teacher is.

Is it, for example, a man wearing a musty-smelling cardigan, who is supposed to be teaching teenagers about fabric but who can only utter "I'm not doing that, and you can't make me" while looking up at the headteacher from under a furrowed brow? Is he the man who starts a petition to halt the proposal that morning break-time be changed from 10.15 to 10.30?

Is it, rather, a fabric teacher who is capable of repelling projectiles aimed at her head, using only the power of her laser-beam eyes? Like an educational super-hero, she cowes the most violent animal urges of the inner-city youth, and privately regales her friends with tales of how much she adores teaching in central London! She is Resistant-Femme!

Photo of the Week

Two days after I landed back in Blighty, I was guilted into going to Eastbourne* to visit The Provincials, who were holidaying there, having timed their visit to exactly coincide with our arrival back in the UK.

Those of you who have travelled non-stop for seven weeks, and know the pain of a 10-hour flight, will understand that this news was not greeted with quite the joyous raptures I believe were expected. So much so, that my sister-in-law (praise be!) assertively told them that their presence the VERY SECOND we stepped off the plane might be a little too much; that we would be extremely tired, and that we would have a lot to do. So they took themselves off to nearby Eastbourne for a few days, where they shot rays of guilt at us from within a SAGA-approved Benecol-serving B&B.

"Come on", whined Cowboy the next day, "They haven't seen you for two years!".

I repressed the urge to let him know that it had occurred to me that he could go on his own but won't, because he can hardly stand the company of his own father (which situation, I realise, is awfully sad) when I'm there, let alone having to handle it himself. I further choked back the words which were on the point of noting that I haven't seen my own parents in a year and a half and yet I appear to be being asked to prioritise seeing people I actively dislike. I also refrained from screaming BUT WE DIDN'T ASK THEM TO COME HERE AND IT'S 36 HOURS SINCE WE GOT BACK AND I"M STILL JETLAGGED AND ARE YOU REALLY SERIOUS?!

So we went. And the only saving grace of the entire day was the opportunity to take this photograph of a fat man lighting up on the pier:





*For those of you who don't know, Eastbourne is where old people who have spent their evenings watching ITV** are sent to drive their mobility scooters until they die. Which is just fine if you're an old person who likes to talk endlessly about the weather, but it ain't so much if you've just been travelling around Asia and you need to go to London ASAP.

**ITV is the televisual equivalent of a withered intellect. The resident comedians are unfunny, and the programming includes many second-rate 'talk shows' reminiscent of a less clever Jerry Springer.

New Regular Feature: The Ludicrous Job Title Awards

I am job-hunting. This is, as we all know, an activity which is slow and grinding, to the point of physical pain. It's been difficult so far, not only because until now I've been without an internet connection at home, but also because one application just took me the better part of two days to complete and sucked my soul completely dry.

I wonder if you can really refer to a period of time as 'a day' when you wake up at 9.30am and don't get down to anything before 11am? Anyway.

As my eyes tracked slowly down the list of employment opportunities on the Guardian jobs page, a way to make this activity feel marginally less like slowly shutting down my cognitive capabilities occurred to me.

There are some job titles which should never have seen the light of day. I can only assume that the human resources job title generating software was on the blink. Either that, or a real human being never went to school, somehow secured a job, and then came into work drunk.

Today's Ludicrous Job Title Award goes to Surrey County Council, for advertising the scintillating role of 'Youth Prevention Worker'. I mean, really. What does that involve? Mixing drug cocktails which act to ensure that all humans are born aged 25 or older? I have an image in my head of groups of octogenarians wearing lab coats and cackling over test tubes full of bubbling green liquid. "The Youth of Today..." they intone repeatedly as they perform the ceremonial walking-stick-battery dance.

No, it turns out that the job is really about preventing youth from falling into a life of crime and debauchery by finding them some other constructive things to do instead. Is someone of the impression that the condition of youth causes crime, and thus the way to eliminate crime is to eliminate youth?

Suggested candidates for future awards may be left in the comments. All applications will be carefully considered in accordance with my Equality and Diversity in Recognising Stupidity policy.

Stewed Migrant

Ingredients:
7 weeks backpacking around Asia
1 shipping container, with all personal possessions, delayed for no good reason
1 vintage car, ready for import, and assorted bureaucratic requirements
4 weeks of staying in someone else's house
1 9-day bad head-cold
1 sporadic internet connection
1 wedding in far-off Wales
2 small children, aged three and four years
1 flat, damaged in multiple small but irritating ways
1 attempt to buy a second-hand car for almost no money
3 family-member's birthdays

Method:
First, remove one backpack's worth of personal items from the shipping container. Ensure that the clothing items are suitable for tropical heat and austere clothing requirements of Asia, but will make you feel like a frozen version of Grandma Flump when walking around the stylish streets of London. Choose carefully, for these items will need to see you through the next 12 weeks.

Next, fly home the long way round, and arrive in the UK to stay in a variety of other people's houses. Move around every five days or so, one day ensuring that you travel 7 hours on 5 different trains, because you will not have a car until you can find one to buy. The cold is developing nicely now, so sprinkle that in.

Add in two small children, and make sure their birthdays occur within the first five weeks of your arrival. Make sure your mother's birthday is the same day as one of the small children. For extra flavour, add in parents-in-law and a visit of several days.

Divert the shipping container via Antwerp, but make sure you have less than 24 hours notice of the diversion, thus invalidating, at considerable cost, all the careful planned-and-paid-for arrangements you've made. Add the vintage car to that container. Ignore what you've been told about it arriving separately several weeks after the main shipment: that's a lie. Consequently you will have no time to sort out the required vehicle paperwork, as it's all in the same container as the car. Reading the government regulations manual will not help you, so I advise against it.

Mix well. Now, just as the shipping container is finally due to arrive, throw in the wedding in Wales. You knew it was coming, but because of a variety of circumstances beyond your control, it's now located at exactly the worst time for you to have to bugger off for two days. You'll need a car to get to Wales: spend two and a half days locating and purchasing a boring Ford Focus. Try not to dwell on the fact that the very thought of a Ford makes you feel depressed: it will be cheap.

Finally, check in to see how the flat is doing. It's been roasting nicely for nearly three years, and the snagging list is a mile long. Try to get as much done as humanly possible before the shipping container arrives.

Continue to breathe deeply: this too will pass.