Not the best of weeks,


After Monday, I had the voice of Mr Waits going round in my head reminding me that when we're riding high in April, we are often seriously shot down in May. Terrible day, made worse by  being observed and having to perform some extra and long winded process based nonsense that just made an already overcrowded and tetchy group session all the more difficult. I just couldn't get it together and as the day progressed, I just wanted out of the whole thing. Funny how sometimes, you can have a really good run of something and then it just turns and becomes hell on earth. It didn't really help that some of the participants were a little unresponsive to my practical and as I thought, helpful advice on their apparent lack of luck in getting jobs. I wish I'd have just kept my mouth shut and agreed with them. Anyway, done now and thank God for that.


On a different note, but somehow connected, something that made me sit up and take notice has been the discovery on YouTube of a country song that goes by the name of Made in America. I say sit up because it did more than point out something that concerns me about how one thing can lead to another when issues of a Patriotic nature come to the fore. 


Things that sometimes come under the banner of Patriotism or whatever, call it want you want, I just don't get them.They always feel wrong. We live in a world where we know Politicians and Governments to be less than truthful and quite prepared to do what ever they want to maintain the good times. Recent events have shown though that  isn't as secure as it was once thought to be. 
For some who were at the front of the race, stumbling has occurred and brought about the need for a rethink as to how things actually are on the big world stage at the moment.
It seems to have upset some and their reaction to the current state of affairs is one that's slightly worrying. 



Flag waving and singing  while showing slow motion film of good old American Mid West families and assorted other stereotypical everyday average Joes standing in corn fields and  sitting in barns, whilst  staring into the middle distance and looking slightly upset and abashed because America is now full of "foreign cars" running on "gas that isn't ours" and then reassuring us that they aren't being prejudiced about all this it's simply the fact that  these people are "made in America" and these other things, being made somewhere else, are causing the problems for those that are. At this point I started thinking is that not being prejudiced like when someone tells me they're not being funny but...


 So, what is the problem then? the rest of The World encroaching, the unexpected erosion of a way of life and an economy once thought indestructible or the prospect of things having to change because guess what,nothing stays the same?


Welcome to the rest of The World... It happens to all of us.


Change in how the things around us work can be upsetting. The shift in where we stand in the running of things even more so. Assuming that these things aren't going to happen is something we can do as people. When they do, we can either rally against  them and run the risk of becoming something we don'r want to or see what we can make of them.
Either way, one thing we have to understand, no matter what colour our flag or our feelings towards any change,  nothing is ever "ours"... not really


And technically, isn't everyone in America, in some way, actually made somewhere else?

I wish I had something witty and rye to write. Some colourful collection of anecdotal whimsy that would make me sound clever and as though I  spend my days living a life full of endless shananagins  and the kind of excitement that would make skydiving sound like a trip to B and M Bargains...but I don't.

Today, I found myself yet again in an office block with those who were either nonplussed  by that which was going on around them or someone who was a manager, facilitating the  ever increasing stress filled atmosphere, by somehow being able to  make it look like they didn't actually agree on anything but did it anyway .
As I slowly get closer to the stage of my working life, that stage where Dave who I used to work with would fall asleep during staff meetings and NOBODY would say a fucking word, I am slowly realising with dread that it might not be as exciting a life as I once dreamed it would be. 

Ah you say  but you only get out what you put in, you know what shut up... just shut the fuck right up before you even go down that path. I haven't spent almost 40 years of my life being excellent at idleness and the knack of doing nothing and still having a rich and rewarding experience from it on a daily basis to be told that old  load. 

Just because we don't show it don't mean we don't think it, it's all in the head.If you have an imagination, moving around and getting career promotions don't really matter..what does matter though is just being left alone. I can't explain if you don't feel this way, you'll just see it as uncooperative behaviour. It's just something about having your space invaded, a feeling more than a sensible reaction. Honestly, I am really expected to give one about a company logo on everything? do I want all the notice boards in the building to look the same?  

To be honest though, I had my photo taken for the wanted list that hangs in reception and even I didn't realise just how far in to the kingdom of the "I don't care" I'd actually traversed. Far from the amiable chap I am, a countenance not unlike a Serbian war criminal stared back at me from the shiny photo paper. I look like someone that appears on Crimewatch or similar late evening worry making programmes. It's the beard. I shaved a while ago through spouse pressure but as my natural bent to not really give a shit about it kicked in again, I neglected my promise to keep clean. I have now gone through the merely unshaven to the possible trouble maker stage, a beard suggests crimes of free thought and that just won't do.

 It's typical. In an environment where the individual journey and development of someone is something I'm encouraged to bring about, the idea of any individuality with anything else is somehow always swept away in a sea of corporate indentikit  thinking, where it struggles for breath and slowly sinks beneath the waves of everything should look the same .

It's difficult to write sometimes,


Stuff gets carried around inside my head but can't make its way out. 
It feels like I have  a washing machine stuck on my shoulders  but there's no water in this tub, only thick wire wool.


The drum isn't completely full, there's enough space for the wool to roll , freely, so all it does is fill my head with noise of its scrape, makes me uptight and angry with the world. 


I can't think straight, all is jumble and frustration  .
Add the fact I have to sit through a short meeting about an inspection and I'm on spin cycle. 


bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!


I have to get out, be away from it, wait for the grey spun sharpness that the flat 2D world fills me with to soften, lose its sharp feeling.


Let me connect  with  the all elusive flow again.... 

Shut up...


I hate to think about it but the world I work in has a really strong corporate side.
Why would I dislike it so much, why would I be surprised about this? after all, I knew the world I was moving into would be very different to my former one, more grown up, more responsible.
The essence of it is this. I do what I do because of the people I help. 
 I don't do it so that I can be without a personality and an imagination.
Inspections, the instruction that no personal things can be seen when being inspected , the insistence that all is the same.....this really does it for me. 
They might as well say that the inspectors won't be able  understand anything that doesn't have our name and logo on it, they'll  mark us down if you act like yourself, everybody stand in front of the company banner and sing.. Jesus.


Who am I kidding though, this is what the real world is about. The actual and the pretence.
The actual is what happens when nobody is threatened by the big bad inspection wolf and the money rolls in, pretence is when they want you to save every body's ass , especially theirs.


That's when this cog wants to stop and go backwards, feel the sharp judder of the machine backing up and stalling. It's a depressing fact that everything is increasingly  aimed at making money for boards and shareholders, the real reason for doing things has been lost somewhere 


My attitude and thought process do of course give me cause for concern. Why react in this way, why feel angry and uncooperative about all this. Really, the answer is simple, I don't think this way. I've never had a corporate bone in my body.


I do have  a want to meet and help people and a curious mind that makes me ask people about how they got where they are and what their lives are like and what they really need to get out of the shit they're in.


I don't need corporate mentality for that, just my own mind.


Now, everybody...sing

Interview Techniques...



I have to go back to work on Monday. I've been away from the fast paced and exciting world of training for a week and to be honest, I've only missed the people I work with, not the job. 
I'm envious of those who have always known what they wanted to be. I wanted to be a soldier at one point but thinking about it now, I was more in love with the look of the equipment and the idea of going on solo secret missions than the actual reality of army life. The perils of an over active imagination and  being a single child with time and plenty of space to use it in. 
The fact that at around 18 I started to grow my hair and fall out with the majority of society perhaps shows  my real character and not the one I thought I was.The hair is short now but I'm still pissed off at most of you, that hasn't changed.That said though, it did give me some idea of what to do when I find myself stranded after a plane crash in a forest.

 It's that drifting thing, not having any real ambition, well, not for anything run of the mill and having a naturally philosophical bent  that's the killer.Although I've done my job for 10 years, I suffer from the perpetual drifter/dreamer syndrome, at least that's my excuse. I know there's something in there, just waiting to find the thing that's going to make me go "Ah, this is who I'm meant to be" and everything will be fine, I'll have found my purpose, my quest.  I am terribly lazy though and continue to suffer the day in and day out, the mind numbing paperwork, the overwhelming details and foolishness of moneymakers who treat peoples' learning and support needs as a piggy bank .
Being a lazy Idealist is a terrible thing. You just feel out of joint  with everything sometimes and  when you can't be arsed to do anything about it, it's a double bubble nightmare.

Some may say that working with people who are in the situation that the people are that I do is a quest enough, maybe they're right and I just don't see it. Admittedly, there are moments of  unbridled joy. I can come across someone who gives me that feeling of purpose and I'm firing on all four, going on instinct and full of encouragement. Others just make me want to adopt the pose that Mr Thompson is above, show them the door, tell them"There is nothing here for you, I'm counting to three...good day".
 But that's the point, I keep doing doing it because of the ones who need it, the truly lost ones, the ones who are in some way....broken. 

Other than that, perhaps I should  just start shooting shit, see if I still care about purpose then...

I'm more convinced than ever  that The World needs something other than this worn out photcopy of a system we've made for ourselves. 
Right now, I'd welcome anything other than this living death we call "economic recovery"
rewind and replay.....
I am beset by empty lost souls who have little hope or have been thrown to the lions in the name of progress 21st century style.
 Not the problem of those who progress.


Everything about the material  world feels flat, grey and increasingly pound note shaped.


I need the beauty of  stars, the magic of the wrtten word and time with those I care about


Thank God I carry  them in my head...

Another weekend,


This one  will find me braving the elements in the north of Wales.
I keep hearing the words torrential, gales and most of rain. 
This matters little. 


Not matter what or where we find ourselves, we may well never have this time again, well, not here anyway.


Enjoy your freedom....others  would die for it