Curse You, Coffee Republic
"I like it when people use each other. It's one of the only instances they get to the truth for any sustained period of time."
Wednesday started badly. It started, in fact, at nearly two in the morning, when I found myself stomping around the kitchen, wrestling manfully with the childproof cap on a bottle of Night Nurse. I had to be up and at 'em by six, and sleep was not planning on paying me a friendly visit. It was frustration and desperation, the next best thing to simply lowering my head and charging at the nearest wall like an enraged bull. Yes, I was going to medicine myself into unconsciousness. But only if my tired mind could figure out how to open the cap on a bottle of medicine used so infrequently that the syrupy liquid within had congealed around the top, rendering it nigh on impossible to negotiate the childproofing.
I got there in the end. I got to sleep, too, but not until nearly three in the morning. Needless to say, I did not exactly spring from my bed like a gazelle when my alarm went off several hours later. No, my first movements were closer to those of an elderly slug on valium, and my first words like the wailing of the undead. I crawled across the landing to the bathroom and managed to get up onto my knees for long enough to switch on a harsh light that burned my eyes and set fire to the cobwebs that filled my mouth and lay like a shroud over my mind. Like Willem Defoe in Platoon, I raised my hands and face heavenward in a gesture of surrender and supplication. I may even have screamed in agony and horror. It was going to be another one of those days...
Right. And I have neither the time nor the patience to twist my entire Wednesday into another one of the strange tales I keep throwing up on here lately. It's too long and dull, and the only really entertaining part of the whole experience was when I scalded my tongue with a tall cappuccino from Coffee Republic. I still can't taste anything.
Anyway, the reason I was up at such a hideous hour was to travel across London in order to take part in an 'assessment day' for a fairly large company in the home entertainment business with a name I'm not going to mention for the time being. The idea was for them to learn a little bit about the candidates and vice versa. Amusingly, the 'assessment' consisted of a short written exercise demonstrating how we would prioritise tasks in a typical day spent managing a store for this company. This was followed by a group discussion in a sort of roleplaying scenario, where we had to pretend we were a committee responsible for rescuing a group of people in extreme peril from down a big hole. After that, your common or garden interview.
I think it went okay. Apart from having to demonstrate the hideousness that is my handwriting in part one, there was nothing that really troubled me. I quickly made myself chairperson in the group discussion (to the obvious horror of the other candidates), and I could do one-on-one interviews for a living. So here's hoping. I wouldn't say I have a burning desire to work for these people, and I wouldn't say it was a spectacularly good job, but if I get it I'll have a little more autonomy and a lot more money than I have had, and that's a good thing.
Not much else going on at the moment. Jennifer's gone home, which sucks, but she may be back sooner than I thought, which rules. I'm (hopefully) going to see Henry Rollins do spoken word in Hammersmith on Saturday. That particular evening will also mark the four week anniversary of the last time I smoked.
Now, if I can only free myself from the grip of this terrifying financial crisis, all will be well.
Wednesday started badly. It started, in fact, at nearly two in the morning, when I found myself stomping around the kitchen, wrestling manfully with the childproof cap on a bottle of Night Nurse. I had to be up and at 'em by six, and sleep was not planning on paying me a friendly visit. It was frustration and desperation, the next best thing to simply lowering my head and charging at the nearest wall like an enraged bull. Yes, I was going to medicine myself into unconsciousness. But only if my tired mind could figure out how to open the cap on a bottle of medicine used so infrequently that the syrupy liquid within had congealed around the top, rendering it nigh on impossible to negotiate the childproofing.
I got there in the end. I got to sleep, too, but not until nearly three in the morning. Needless to say, I did not exactly spring from my bed like a gazelle when my alarm went off several hours later. No, my first movements were closer to those of an elderly slug on valium, and my first words like the wailing of the undead. I crawled across the landing to the bathroom and managed to get up onto my knees for long enough to switch on a harsh light that burned my eyes and set fire to the cobwebs that filled my mouth and lay like a shroud over my mind. Like Willem Defoe in Platoon, I raised my hands and face heavenward in a gesture of surrender and supplication. I may even have screamed in agony and horror. It was going to be another one of those days...
Right. And I have neither the time nor the patience to twist my entire Wednesday into another one of the strange tales I keep throwing up on here lately. It's too long and dull, and the only really entertaining part of the whole experience was when I scalded my tongue with a tall cappuccino from Coffee Republic. I still can't taste anything.
Anyway, the reason I was up at such a hideous hour was to travel across London in order to take part in an 'assessment day' for a fairly large company in the home entertainment business with a name I'm not going to mention for the time being. The idea was for them to learn a little bit about the candidates and vice versa. Amusingly, the 'assessment' consisted of a short written exercise demonstrating how we would prioritise tasks in a typical day spent managing a store for this company. This was followed by a group discussion in a sort of roleplaying scenario, where we had to pretend we were a committee responsible for rescuing a group of people in extreme peril from down a big hole. After that, your common or garden interview.
I think it went okay. Apart from having to demonstrate the hideousness that is my handwriting in part one, there was nothing that really troubled me. I quickly made myself chairperson in the group discussion (to the obvious horror of the other candidates), and I could do one-on-one interviews for a living. So here's hoping. I wouldn't say I have a burning desire to work for these people, and I wouldn't say it was a spectacularly good job, but if I get it I'll have a little more autonomy and a lot more money than I have had, and that's a good thing.
Not much else going on at the moment. Jennifer's gone home, which sucks, but she may be back sooner than I thought, which rules. I'm (hopefully) going to see Henry Rollins do spoken word in Hammersmith on Saturday. That particular evening will also mark the four week anniversary of the last time I smoked.
Now, if I can only free myself from the grip of this terrifying financial crisis, all will be well.
posted by Michael at 10:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home