Life And Other Battles...

Well I have almost caught up with all the Quincey episodes I missed owing to being only five or so when they were first screened, but apart from that, unemployment is a tough old game.

If you are not applying for jobs, you are looking for openings, sending speculative applications to possible openings, trying to keep up to speed with various knowledge and training in your field and signing on at agencies, the whole caboodle - aware of the growing competition all the time for each post as more and more people come onto the jobs market.

Then there are all the annoying side-issues to deal with such as battling the council and DSS just to prove you are who you say you are and entitled to the entitlements you have paid your taxes to receive (the council have now had two copies of my bank statements and two copies of my rent book/documentation, yet are still finding excuses to delay my claim).

And yes, I have considered becoming an MP for an easier life, free of having to justify myself all the time! I found it most interesting to read that Mr Brown amended the 2003 Income Tax (Earnings & Pensions) Act to exempt MP's expenses and allowances from tax! Nice work if you can get it indeed, though hopefully things are set to change for the more honourable following the current scandal.

Another battle is with my mobile phone company who are refusing to let me out of my 18 month contract after 6 months without massive penalties, despite having such a pants signal that I am scarcely able to use it and many complaints to their Indian call centre since I've had it, the staff of whom are perfectly polite and helpful within their strictly limited scripts, but evidently living in terror at losing their jobs by 'allowing' me to cancel my contract, even with the penalty they insist I would have to pay. Apparently the poor b*****ds are all on 7 week contracts! Finally at their request I returned my handset to the Glasgow repair centre to be checked, which I did via the Oxford 3 shop rather than risk it in the post. Two days later the repair centre e-mailed me with a picture of a broken screen saying that my contract did not cover repairs! So someone has either accidentally or deliberately damaged my handset. Luckily it was personally checked by the Manager of the 3 shop for physical damage and forms signed on both sides before they sent it away, so I doubt they have a leg to stand on in claiming I sent it in that state.

Separately to this I ordered an item from a printing company some 4 months ago which never arrived, despite the company insisting they dispatched it twice. Now they are asking me to send me their bank details by e-mail??!! I don't think so.

It is said that life is sent to try us. I have often joked that if ever I pen an autobiography it will be entitled; 'If Things Don't Get Any Better In Six Months, Then, I'll Kill Myself', the joke of it being that it's a rolling six months, and by the time I got round to killing myself, I'd be 95 anyway!

But I realise there are people worse off than me, and that if I stand on one leg with my neck craned at 45 degrees in a certain room of my house I actually get a perfect signal on my mobile and it only cuts out occasionally!