Interlude

My mood has been swinging around like a rugby player's scrotum in a wild scrum over the last few weeks and this morning my mood seemed to reflect the day. I got up a little after 8:00am and the sky was blue, the sun was shining and it looked too good to be true and after I suffered another (what are becoming more inconvenient than anything else) minor asthma attack - I just had to calm down and allow my tubes to open - things could only really get better after that.

But as the wisps of cloud started to build I started to feel ... apprehensive. I did have an interview for a job later in the day, but that was 7½ hours away; so I ran a bath and generally pottered about. I then did something almost worrying, I was supposed to go shopping this morning and I knew this, so after I finished my breakfast, I went upstairs and allowed myself to procrastinate and then completely forget about the shopping. I even did some hoovering, which I had decided to do later and then didn't, do it later I mean. There was this dawning realisation at about 10:24am that I was supposed to be somewhere else.

I spent best part of the 17 minute drive to Duston and the Land of the Living Dead trying to talk myself into turning round and going to Morrisons, which in itself was a bad idea (because I needed veg and you don't buy veg from Morrisons because it goes off in about 9 hours). I don't think it was the prospect of the Zombie Supermarket that was making me indecisive, I think it was the mood I was gradually easing myself into and true to form by the time I was loading the car up with the shopping, I had fretted about money, prospects, the job interview and various other things and bingo! I was borderline incandescent with rage. Couple that with several examples of fuckwittery by drivers who obviously got licenses by performing sexual favours on driving examiners - one Yaris driver actually caused an accident but pootled off without a scratch and was probably completely ignorant of what he (and it was a he) had done. [Sainsburys was, on the whole, pretty painless, but I started to scowl by the flour aisle so I think the zombies just gave me a wide berth.]

When I got home, I eventually wandered into the garden a little after midday and had to rid the new borders of at least four lots of cat shit (before Marley could find and eat it) and as I was by now a cross between Victor Meldrew, Jason Statham and Harold Steptoe, I was bemoaning the fact that, as a dog owner we come in for all kinds of criticism and pissy by-laws about dog shit (which I have always picked up - using a bag, naturally) and yet cat owners cats essentially can go and shit wherever they like but because you can't really follow the cat into peoples' back gardens you can't really stop it and, as we all know, cat shit has actually got a lot more toxins in it than dog shit (or human shit for that {faecal} matter). I am the first person to acknowledge that controlling a cat's arse is a bit like expecting Gideon Osborne to give a shit, but, for want of anything else to say that's constructive, I shall just go RAH RAH RAH RAH RAH RAH several times, (try to) take a deep breath and move on... [remember this last bit*]

Or back, as the case may be... On the plus side, everything is starting to grow (except my dwarf beans) and despite the semi-Arctic conditions of late, the lawn needs mowing more than once a week, suddenly, already. I had an uneventful walk with the hounds - Marley is muzzled at the moment because of her obsession with anything she can eat - and got to Wellingborough (where the interview was) at 3.20.

I had a great interview. I sort of went into it with the opinion that I wasn't going to get it; I only get interviews because I tick the disabled box and they're just obligated, and I'm now too old and no one really wants to give me a job. This is/was all part of this black cloud re-descending over me and, you know, if I could have kept that focus, that slight detachment, I might have got the job. I don't know if I haven't got it yet, but I'm pretty sure I haven't and here's why: halfway through I started to realise from their body language that they liked me and I suddenly thought 'Shit, I can get this job.' and proceeded to allow nerves to take over. The second half was nowhere near as good; I waffled; I harped on too much about inconsequential things and I think, no I'm pretty sure, I managed to talk myself out of getting it.

So I went down the pub. I met my old boss from the YOS and he proceeded to tell me how there's a good chance the already minuscule jobs market for my area is about to get smaller and at the same time flooded with more redundancies and the effects of more budget and funding cuts [Remember this point.**]. Oh happy day...

I then came home, had some dinner and watched that programme on the London Underground and said at least three times, 'Well, I never knew that.' The wife went to bed and I was at a bit of a loose end. Then I had a penny drop moment. * I have done a lot of serious yawning in the last three or four day; it just came on. Except it didn't. The series of minor asthma attacks I've had have all been very similar to when I recovered from my last chest infection - the one where I think I realised I had COPD long before I had the tests. The yawning is quite simply there's not enough air circulating around me at the moment - I mean, it might be that I'm just tired because I'm not sleeping particularly well, but I don't think so. I'm getting the very mild version of what killed my mother and will most probably be the death of me.

I actually came away from my afternoon revitalised, but the reality of everything often comes crashing back in, especially when you're suffering a little from depression. You think you've bounced out of it or have managed to get on with something and put it out of your head for a while and then something happens and it comes crashing back in, with trumps.

So, after the wife went off to bed and I was about to come up here to my office and procrastinate some more until the yawning got too much and I eventually went to bed, but Question Time started and the first question was about Europe and I sat and watched for a while until some young lady in the audience started to embarrass herself by sounding utterly naive and stupid (and she sounded absolutely like a bonkers possible future UKIP candidate because she was so bullish about getting out of Europe I thought she was going to hit someone ** and then another penny dropped. The Tories are probably looking at UKIP and thinking 'you beautiful people; you fucking moronic beautiful people'. You now think I've lost it, don't you? Nope, not a jot. Me - compos mentis.

The economy and the vilification of the poor was at the forefront of a lot of peoples minds prior to the local elections and for the first time in ages social class, the poor and the undeserving at being disenfranchised were heavily in focus and then the subject of Europe took over and grew and grew to the point now where the first 25 minutes of QT tonight was talking about Europe and they were still drawing the last breaths from it when I came up here to write this. Suddenly (and I don't like using that word and avoided it earlier when it was appropriate) it's the only thing everyone is interested in. Private Members Bills, referendums, pacts and what might have been Cameron's secret desire - all about Europe and the UK pulling out of it and everybody has stopped talking about the economy and the unemployment and the injustice of 2013 Great Britain. Genius politics. Can't win a debate? Change the subject.

I get loads of spam. I get 15 a week from someone called Adriana - one always says "Hey You" in the subject line and the other, which comes once for every five 'Hey You' emails is 'Are You Getting These?' Which is quite amusing in a spammy psychological kinda way. Tonight I have a piece of spam in the junk folder from a dating site; they appear a lot nowadays offering me unfettered and guilt-free sex tonight with a married woman who wants it BAD. I could say all kinds of inappropriate things here, but I won't. But I do have my own married woman and I don't actually have to pay her and she does exist. I mean, back when he was a young'un that Wayne Rooney fella liked shagging grannies - that's kind of apropos of nothing but I wanted you to have the following horrible image burned onto your mind for a few days: jumpers for goalposts and Wayne Rooney writhing around on the belly of a naked 70 year old who needs ironing and has a chain running from one nipple to her clitoris, which, because she is 70 is now like an old man's ear.

I need a job...

I actually think most Spam is just manufactured to make people laugh; like a meme delivered to your junk mail box; you don't have to look at them but if you do you'll remember that I was talking about another piece of spam from an earlier paragraph that I appeared to forget about mid-sentence, which is also not unusual for me. [This better be worth it...] This dating site spam is from a religious place; it's for Christians to meet and have none contact sex with each other until Jesus says they can marry. Now I glanced at the email and had to do a double take as I thought I was being offered Christian Minge, but then realised it was actually a Christian Mingle, which on Planet Phil sounds not too dissimilar.

"I mean what about Christian Minge, is it enticing, I mean what's the story?" To paraphrase a line from a very strange song.

Have I mentioned recently how I hate Chelsea and the Fat Spanish Waiter? Well, I hate them even more now. I hate football and at about 5pm on Sunday I shall hate it like I've never hated anything ever. I will then hate football all the way through the summer and right up until the start of next season when, like a smoker who can't quit, I will buckle and allow my life to be ruined by it, yet again. I just want to stand up, shake my fist at it and tell it how much I hate it, but it'll sidle up to me and whisper in my ear that I love it really and I want to have its babies and I'll roll over and take it like a girl...

I found another 20 CDs that I missed when I had the big download chuckout [sic]. I think this can be called a reprise rather than an encore.

Anyhow, it's gone midnight on what is now Friday morning. I'm telling you this for two reasons. The first is that there's a lot of stream of consciousness stuff above and in the glare of thick cloud, wind and rain tomorrow it might read like a retarded chimpanzee with a billion typewriters or I might just delete this line. The second reason is I'm going to local MP Michael Ellis's Jobs Fair at the Guildhall, at some point and for some time between 12:00 and 1:30pm. I have to get something signed to prove I was there and I'll be dipped in rancid spoo if anyone thinks I'm going to spend 1½ hours with a Tory MP and a load of minimum wage employers who wouldn't have a suitable job for me, they're probably right because I expect some twat somewhere will ensure that people who haven't served the full 90 minutes will have some of their benefits stopped or a finger amputated. But yeah, by 2pm tomorrow when I decide to upload this it may well be something completely different.

But it wasn't. The jobs fare was heaving; but there were no jobs that were suitable for me and apart from someone suggesting I do some volunteer work to boost my self-esteem, who I asked, very nicely, how volunteer work and better self-esteem were going to pay my mortgage, they had no answer for me. I stayed about 30 minutes; thought it was some pointless political stunt by some chinless wonder, who probably feels all important and big in the trousers as a result. I really wanted to throw some socialist invective at him, but he was nowhere to be seen. Probably because there were so many unemployed scumbags there, he didn't want to stain his suit...

So that was it.

Good luck to the Cobblers on Sat'dee. I'd like to see them win but feel that a season in League One with the squad and money they have might be slightly humiliating. Good luck to the Saints the following week against those bastard Tigers (I'm actually more optimistic about this than the Cobblers). Good luck to Brackley Town against FC Halifax (also on Sat'dee) for a place in the league just below League 2.

Is Bradley Wiggins (sir) a bit of a wuss? I only say this because two days before he pulled out of the Italian cycle race with a 'chest infection', the Guardian suggested he might pull out of the race because he had no hope of winning it and wanted to be fresh for his (unofficial) tilt at the Tour to see if he could retain it.

I gotta take the dogs out.