I had a feeling I should write a blog. And I'm sat here not quite knowing what to write about in the break between Corrie and Corrie, on TV.

The very fact I am watching two episodes of Corrie should reveal to you in themselves what I believe to be a truth about me. That I am quite undoubtedly beyond doubt quite boring. And yet, some people seem to have an idea that I'm not. I'm really not sure where that's come from.

I know what I can talk about. I just went downstairs into the kitchen and discovered a new can of Oust. You know the stuff - it claims to get rid of even the pongiest of pongs using its unique ocean scent. Instead, it meerly suffocates you until you're forced to leave the room. Thereby removing the smell from where you are! Fantastic idea.

Well, that was fun wasn't it.

Really entertaining.

:)

Nx

School receptionists are a breed of their own. They come in many forms, from bossy and controling to old and lovely, it'll often depend on the school you're at, and its type, as to what kind of receptionist you get.

And in my job (ha, I call it that) I get the privilege of speaking to quite a lot of the lovely things. And you can almost always put them into one of two areas that I outlined above. It's almost as certain as Gordon Brown creating a problem and then claiming to be the one who solved it or another Daily Mail scandal over Jonathan Ross making love to a puppy on air within the next 6 months.

The nice ones tend to be very helpful and do their best to help you. But they tend to work for the kind of school which allows a receptionist to be like this. You can talk to the Headteacher about your course, but he's not sure what a computer is and if you offer to send him an e-mail you may as well offer to write a letter to a vegan using blood on a piece of rare-cooked beef steak.

Not much point trying to sell them a web design introduction course is it?

The other kind of receptionist is a bit more difficult to deal with. She's in charge, she's a woman in the know (although what she knows is so secret even she does not know what she knows), and she's not letting anyone pass. In any normal business, this is the kind of PA an important man needs. But Headteachers are only important within their own little group of people. In the wider scale of thing, one Headteacher is just another human being. They are a pack animal outside of their normal habitat, and if left alone outside in the rain they may get crumpled, stained, or even be stolen by a passing group of mothers who aspire to form a PTA.

You know how it goes. You call the number, and the obligatory push-button answering system is there to give you the options. Sure that you don't wish to report yourself absent, talk to the PE department or discuss an issue with the bursar, you must press zero or in some cases wait while the telephone system decides which of the 15 cupboards fitted with phones and no people it will divert you to.

"Hi there, I'm calling from a training company - can I speak to the Headteacher or his PA please?"

This is a critical point. This is where you find out what you've got. The next word will decide everything you know about this school's receptionist, and therefore everything you know about the school and its leadership. And whether or not you can sell them the very thing you're calling about.

It's a bit like you're the Old Man on his 85th day. You know you're going to be lucky. But everything rests on the next few moments. The next words.

"No. Can I help?"

You've got one. Your Marlin. The receptionist - woman with the power - is going to deal with your problem. She will make the decision, and ensure that she takes a message and passes it on to the appropriate person. Who, I'm sure, will only be giving the answer that this receptionist would have given herself.

Sadly. The sharks are soon to arrive, and with little hope you must listen to what she says.

"I don't think we'll be interested but I'll pass the message on."

You never. Ever. Hear back from that school.

Nx

(to be continued)

Costa has one of the most simple yet confusing systems for money management, as part of our "everything is controlled by one system" system, which incporporates two systems into one. Making it a total faliure in my opinion as a single system.

Irrelevent of this, when new people learn to cash up the inevitably get distracted whilst trying to think about whether or not they shaved the cat and walked their beard this morning, pending their soon-to-be departure from the store having created at least 3 months worth of work for me, by failing to succeed in the very simple task of copying something from the till, into another box on the till.

I admit, disabling copy and paste was a foolish move, but still. It's normally only four digits.

The cashing up procedure, if you imagine our till is a person goes something like this

You: "I'd like to cash you up please,"
Till: "Are you sure?"
You: "Yes"
Till: "Really tho?"
You: "Yes I am absoloutely sure"
Till: Ok. Do you want to cash up then?
You: "Yes, I do"
"There are still people here. You are still here. Would you like to ignore this?"
You: "Yes please. How else would I be cashing up if I wasn't here?"
Till "Ok. Wait there a second while i contemplate your presence"
You: "OK."
Till: "Ok, count all the money in the till apart from the notes - then make me equal £150.00 please?"
You: *counts money* .... *removes money* *types into machine*: "Done".
Till: "Are you sure?"
You: "Yes."
Till: "I printed something. OK?"
You: "Yes. I need that peice of paper"
Till: "I printed another copy for no apparant reason. OK?"
You: "Yes, I know. Why did you do that by the way?"
Till: "Tell me about the rest of the moneys!"
You: *counts and types*: "Done"
Till: "Ok, now you've counted all the cash here's a quick look at some figures you don't need to see."
You: "Those figures I can't change are absoloutely fine."
Till: "Here's a screen telling you you haven't spent any petty cash today."
You: "Well that's not a problem is it?"
Till: "Here's everything you just told me... Done?"
You: "Yes, I am FINALLY done."
Till: "There's something wrong with CASH"
You: "Ok. What's wrong?"
Till: "I'm showing you these boxes again. They don't really explain anything, but you can click on a button somewhere and re-enter things?"
You: "Well I'm not sure what's wrong, so I'll hit ok again"
Till: "Ok, I figure you're not having a good day. Did you press this button by accident or would you like to ignore the thief with the bag of SWAG currently running away?"
You:" I think the only prudent thing to do is ignore it."
Till: "Ok, bare with me while I have the windows equivilant of a stroke and then I'll be back with you."
*long wait while everything looks broken*
Till: "Here's the longest reciept you've ever seen in your life."
*flashes again, and opens odd looking screen with a slip number and amount field*
You: "What do you want me to do?"
Till: " "
You: "Well?"
Till: .....
You: "I'll just type some number in here. Maybe I'll copy it off this hgue receipt."
Till: "Thanks. Goodbye!!!"
You: *Walks off*

You can see that it's not the best system to have ever wanted to have used. And maybe my longing to make this post incredibly long has lead to me writing a little bit too much there.

But essentially, you tell the till things it already knows, then it tells you some things you don't need to know, then tells you off and offers you an escape. Then it prints off a list of things and asks you to input something that it just printed to tell you.

It's quite simple.

And yet, when you get it wrong you create money that doesn't actually exist and the till ends up £4,500,000 down. And I'm left to sort it out. God...

Nx

So it seemed like a perfectly ordinary chat about pretty much anything you can think of. The parents had been to look at sofas in the mind that they may as well support the economy.

And my mother was telling me about this: "So did you find one then?"

It's better to at least pay an interest in things as boring as the end of the universe such as the purhcase of sofas. So I thought I'd better ask. To be honest, it's more like my parents to go out for a sofa and come back with a bag of logs, and go out for a bag of logs and come back with a subscription to a service which provides you with a 3 course meal served by a rare breed of horse every night when you get in from work; so I was expecting that we'd got a husband for Daphne the cat.

"Well we did, but we decided it wasn't sensible to do anything at the moment."

I can understand the decision: "Why? Because there's like no money to spend?"

But no, it was not an overriding need to be fiscally sensible that had made this decision. It was yet another pressure point into the topic that we all know I'm writing about because the picture at the top says so: "Well not that so much, more that you haven't made your bloody mind up and we dunno how that's gonna go do we?"

It's only a mother who could link these two topics really, so I kind of assumed I'd mis-understood and went in for the near-fatal thing...I asked for confirmation: "Made my mind up?"

"We can't buy a sofa if you're going to Univeristy can we?" Right. Because the number of people sitting on it will be less? "So they're going to repack it again."

I presumed she meant the old one.

"So if you could give it some thought please."

I will do that. Definetly on my list of priorities. Because I mean they must know soon if they are to buy a sofa or not. I'm calling COBRA to order tonight.

Nx

Ah shits. It's Sunday night and I'm writing a blog post about going back to work.


I dunno about anyone else, but tonight feels like the night after the end of the school holidays. Apprehensive about what's changed, you suddenly realise you don't know where your pencil case is, where you sit or who your best friend is. And you've forgotten all that important stuff you learnt last year.

But as soon as I'm back tomorrow, I'm sure it'll all be back to normal.

There'll be John, reading his Daily Mail with his 160*F Latte, with chocolate on top: and he'll tell me in no uncertain terms that the recession will get worse and that I'll have a flood of applications coming into us at Costa, because it's "one of those jobs."

I'd love to know what kind of job he means. I mean, clearing out the caves that dinosaurs live in in a zoo would be "one of those jobs," if you know what I mean.

And I'm almost sure, wiping Prince Charles' arse is "one of those jobs," too. I mean, even working for John could be considered "one of those jobs."

But as I'm sure he'll inform you if you ask. He's lived through one before: "and it will get a lot worse before it gets better." So he must know what "one of those jobs" is, I guess.

Oh how I've missed you Costa.
Nx

So thanks Bill, you've highlighted how much I am wrong when I say "How often do I actually use maths in a day?"



Thanks. Thanks so much.

I noticed my task bar just after I opened Calculator.

So after writing the last blog post I decided to become a maniac and write a whole new load of code to produce a new section of the site.

I had just decided that the menu bar was looking a little bare, to be honest.

So - anyone not using Internet Explorer can now see the full new "UCAS" section, aptly named and just a consideration rather than a prejudice, I'll have you know. I'm not running a GMTV phone line on this one.

But unfortunately, this sudden urge to code has left me awake at 4am. Lovely. Especailly when I'm due in Hereford tomorrow morning, and that involves getting up at a proper time. Rather than a useless one such as 10am. Which is nice. But useless.

Damn it.

On the plus side, I think I'm going to get into bed with the lemony goodness of life (lemsip) and a few very cheap, almost alcoholic, mince pies. I'd warm them but I think the microwave ping might wake someone up.

Night night,
Nixx

It's not easy to make life changing decisions. Mainly because they change your life. Decisions I'd class as being in this category of "difficult" are actually quite few.



I mean, 'Do I have a Sex change on Thursday' is obviously quite a decision to make. It's one I wouldn't take lightly. Just like the question 'Do I move to Redditch?'. It's just something that could result in you being looked down upon, and being featued in the papers when you get pregnant. Only with the latter, it's in the court pages after you steal a pushchair from the Mothercare that the Kingfisher centre doesn't have.

But the decision I'm talking about is one of having a hard time working, and getting somewhere in the world, or going for three years of very little work, partying and drinking in Brighton. As you can see, it's on a par with changing from a man to a woman, or changing your postcode from (frankly) anything, to B97.

Unfortunately, I'm not very clear on this decision. It's something I think I know where I need to go. But also somewhere where every single person you talk to is extremely biased towards their final answer, right to the point that people feel compelled to insult you over your indecision or buy you plentiful quantities of books about people who made it without a degree.

Down to the point that when you open the present - as greatful as you are at the sentiment - and I really am - it makes you want to scream out loud, and wonder if the only way to succeed without a degree is to write a book which gives you a lot of money about how you became quite succesful without a degree.

Anyway, you can look forward to that over the next few days.

In other news, I bought mince pies from Tesco which had been reduced to 84p a packet. They're Tesco Finest as well, they've even got congac in them. I was well chuffed. Alternatively, downstairs you can also attempt to try and come to a conclusion why someone decided to invent a chocolate mint sauce filled dougnut, while you chobble away on the thing.

And then burp chocolate mint for the proceeding 4 hours. As I have been doing. And, *burp* just did.

Fetch me a mint?

Nx

What the hell do you do with a WH Smith gift card?

I'm sure it's a question many people have been asking themselves recently, what with Christmas pleasentaries and people being all difficult to buy for and stuff.

It's certainly a question I had to ask myself because for my birthday (yesterday, those of you who didn't know) I was bought a £15.00 WH Smith gift card.

It's an age old question. What does WH Smith sell? They're a bit like Woolies (well, they were) in that they don't sell anything in particular... They're just a sort of "stuff shop".

Weird places, they have the atmosphere of a book shop - all quiet and peaceful. It feels wrong if your phone goes off, and if you don't stand around reading a book about the obsecure ends of Norwich in the factual section; but the style of a pound shop - with things everywhere, signs falling down and a carpet that's so in need of cleaning you get stuck to it as you stand reading the book about Norwich.

But they provide ample amusement because they attract a unique kind of job-searcher.

Aside from the teachers, that'll be the middle-aged "been a mother, but decided to go back to work" style of women. They've had a normal life, until they got excited, got big and then got smaller again about 9 months later - and now they have no idea how to function in the real world, and call everyone over the age of 35 "dear".

"A woman has just called me, June, saying that she hasn't had the right magazines this morning. She came and picked them up but she says you didn't give her all of them."

The manager had just taken a call on her tatty looking phone.

"Is it the lady who's got the hat?"

"The one who comes in every day?" the manager is understanding this weird line of thought, "yes, it's the one who comes in every day."

"She's a bit forgetful. As far as I'm aware, I gave her all her magazines"

"Could you just check for me please?" the manager says as June retreats from the filing cabinet where all of this information is kept.

"As far as I'm aware I gave her all her magazines." The woman seems adamant she will not check the filing cabinet for the information, and instead states something completely irrelevent.

Several centuries later, and having read the entire book about Norwich, and one about Fife as well, it was my turn to be served.

"Oh dear," June says to me, as she scans my Family Guy DVD - "it's come up as the wrong price."

"But it's cheaper? Can't you just swipe it? I know the label says £14.00 but the till knows what DVD it is and it says £12.00"

"As far as I'm aware, it should be the label price. Just hold on a second"

They are unique!!

So what do you reckon would be the coolest job to have in the world?

Lots of power? The ability to turn people into a vampire squid simply by saying the phrase "I wish the bins were collected more often," three times in a row to them? Or just to be the Queen?

No, my friends. The best job in the world is indeed one at tarrot.com, who send me regular e-mails informing me that later on in the day someone will speak to me using words, and that at night it will get dark. And that maybe, at some point during the day, I may go to the toilet!

You can tell I've been planning some time off for a while...

So when driving about, I have noticed a van.

The van amused me greatly. I would NOT have called my company after myself, and I think this man's parents are both amusing but also incredibly cruel.

It's almost as cruel as parents of Wayne, Mr and Mrs Curr. Ahh...

clicky