Unemployed?
Howayiz?

I was never technically unemployed as I went on one of those government-run courses but I got the same paltry amount of money every week, my self-esteem plummeted and I was very, very bored.

The course was partly interesting in that we found ourselves in a dusty old room in a decrepit office building in a cemetery entering the contents of the huge dusty death-tomes into a rudimentary database.

Keeping records of what people were dying of in19th century Dublin was surprisingly interesting and it was better than doing fuck all or the other part of the course which consisted of learning basic Microsoft computer courses, attending the odd lecture and learning how to pick stuff up (manual handling).

We also got access to the National Library of Ireland, a beautiful Georgian building with an amazing dome, which was usually reserved for proper researching university types so we spent one day per week in there supposedly researching a project, the gist of which I have no recollection of as I was in fact trawling through WB Yeats diaries and reading books on the occult which he had noted.

I had moved back into my parents’ house so the accoutrements of despair were all in place. I would pretty much just crash out on the couch at night and watch the comedy channels to synthesise cheer.

If I had any money, I would generally just drink myself to sleep before starting over again the next day.

My parents hated me for that.

My youngest brother was in his early teens and deserved a better role model than the useless lump I had become lying there on the couch more or less incommunicado.

Thankfully it was only a few short months before I got a proper job and moved into a flat and got laid and started shaving again and drinking beer out of a bottle and all of those other symbols of a normal healthy functioning member of society.

If I ever had to be proper unemployed, I think I would probably…

I don’t honestly know.

Frankly, the idea is terrifying…

…and all too ominous.

I work in a bank.
We caused the recession, kind of.

My boss and various colleagues tell me all the time we are lucky to have work but they still somehow managed to give us a small raise and bonus.

I’m not doing any less work, that’s for certain so we’ll see.

Me littlest bro is coming to visit this weekend.
I’m his hero still in many ways as for the last few years since that brief but awful time, he has had a fortune out of me and is spoiled utterly rotten both financially and in terms of the cultural phenomena I can make him aware of.

EG, He’s 18 years old and he is a John Martyn aficionado who has seen Tom Waits, Tool and Radiohead live, can tell his Alan Moore from his Frank Miller, has read the likes of Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley and knows the heady thrill of the scent of a freshly popped cork from a Cote De Beaune Villages as well as how much you should tip your waitress.

How things change!

rafter
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 15:43, 1 reply)

I'm loving this QOTW.
How come I never noticed how well you write?
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 23:05, closed)