January 11 (Tuesday): The Power Is On. Again this morning I set my alarm for 7AM, it is my new (pointless) declaration and I guess my new year’s resolution.

This morning I receive an early email from Andrea the lawyer asking me about my situation and potential case. At this stage, I don’t want to pre-empt strikes (nor run up a bill!). I’m almost cagey when describing the situation to her, attempting to change the subject/focus onto her.

This morning another new employment agency gets in touch with me. As basic as the services seems to me, they always find different ways of wording things. I come to the horrible realisation that this is the seventh such agency I have spoken to in two months, a fact/statistic that would make the best intentioned person jaded and cynical. Again this man does not specifically mention the position I applied for, making me wonder if half the jobs on the internet actually exist, they more seeming like a way of hooking and fishing candidates in. I never envisaged getting a new job would ever be this difficult.

Plans for today do not quite go to plan, when I find myself only getting around to reading my English book at around 11AM. Again I find myself really enjoying reading the book but it is somewhat predictable whilst also very touching but it screams of the Woody Allen movie September, surely the writer must have seen it and thought “right, I’ll write a book about that”.

Around lunchtime, the star accountancy personnel agency from yesterday phones again. The man is suggesting that I go up for a temp vacancy just to get me “back in the game”. It means taking a slight drop on an apparent hourly rate but it would do me. The man even suggests I might be able to start this Thursday, which is music to my ears as all writing aspirations fly out of the window as the bills/debts mount up.

Today is sign on day at the Job Centre and to celebrate this fact, I have a bath (ha ha). If these people are to continue giving me money, I figure giving them some hygiene in return to be a sound investment (ha ha).

Today’s St Trinian’s movie on Channel Four is Blue Murder At St Trinian’s. This movie isn’t as star studded as the first movie (shown yesterday) but it still boasts Terry Thomas, George Cole, Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell and Lionel Jeffries with a turn by Terry Scott. This film is much better than the first film but its kind of interesting to note just how all the men in the movie are trying it on with the schoolgirls and how the headmistress is trying to farm them out as an earner (the St Trinian’s Marriage Bureau?). Surely this is paedophilia and child trafficking for the sex trade, especially when exporting them is a consideration. And Clacton beach/pier gets a mention early on as a girl poses for a saucy picture/photo. Well, I guess it was 48 years ago.

In the afternoon I email Staff and Allen with various requests before heading off to the Job Centre to my thing there. I get parked up pretty easily and wander into town for the first time this week. I’m getting bored of Colchester now it seems, which might explain all my recent trips/visits to Clacton. As I head to the Job Centre with the expectation of flack to come from the enquiry over the ending of my job, I find myself becoming really paranoid as I think I see an ex-work colleague, one that would have taken the dimmest light of the blog (other than management). Stupidly though, the lady turns out to be a poor lookalike at best, suggesting that all this stuff is playing much too much on my mind.

I get to the Job Centre and wait upstairs, awaiting my fate. Next to me sits a guy that looks dead, or past out at the very least. This is not my environment. I get called over for my third bout of job hunting explanation and today I have a lady interview instead. She actually seems to take some interest/notice into developments, actually asking me questions about my activities (shock horror). I tell her this, tell her that but as usual it all seems to fall on deaf ears as the lady seems to concentrate more on filling in forms on her computer screen. At least though, she doesn’t patronise me by calling me “mate”. Today I go in armed with an envelope of questions though, mainly what happens if I’m lucky enough to get temp work and what about my mortgage insurance. I don’t bring up the enquiry/review into my dismissal, I wait for her to bring it up first. This does not happen though. She changes the time for my next appointment and very quickly it is all job done and I am able to go and happily claim again for another two weeks.

Before leaving the Job Centre I check on their computers for accountancy vacancies and I look in every possible line of work and there is absolutely nothing, zero, nada. I was lead to believe January would be fruitful, especially with the self assessment tax deadline coming up. What’s going on with the world if I can’t get employment?

I stagger around for a while, getting something copied in the library to send of with regards to my dismissal. I notice that the library is getting a coffee shop installed in the gallery area/section it seems. What’s that about? A sure fire money spinner but this is a library! A library is supposed to be inhabited by geeks, the unemployed and the elderly, a coffee shop is a setting for Friends and Central Perk types. The times are changing too much.

I get home around 4.30 and decide to attack the cupboard of demos left over from Gringo that inhabit (ruin) my kitchen area. I waste far too long on these CDs, most of which look awful making me remember why I put them there in the first place. Indeed, none of these artists have ever gone on to anything. Maybe, if I get enough time, I review them for a website. Then again, life really is too short.

Richard And Judy comes on around 5PM and they are reporting that Germaine Greer has walked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house. She was actually coming over as one of the best people in the house and was probably well out of place by appearing to be a real, intelligent and genuinely funny person. Whereas Kitten last summer represented liberalism in the worst possible way, her representation of liberalism came over as the opposite of a ranting and raving lunatic and at the end of the ridiculous Queen royal task, she just cut through the nonsense and called for it to be knocked on the head. Ultimately, she came over better in this than she does on the Late Review.

After dinner and the Simpsons, I get back into the book and finish it on the dot for 9PM. The book turned out to be pretty predictable and generic but I enjoyed it all the same, the writer made it very readable and rarely do I find myself able to read books at such a pace (Nick Hornby being the only other reader I can recall reading so fast). It stands me in good stead for returning to class Thursday I think.

In between, Dad briefly speaks to me on MSN as well as Racton but I really want to finish the book, so I’m probably a bit curt with them.

At 9PM I watch the Auschwitz programme on BBC2. I always get suckered in by these documentaries, it is as if I want to depress myself. I had never heard about block 11 before though. These poor people always stir me.

At 10PM, episode two of Shameless series two comes on and tonight I am less than interested by it, for reasons none to no one. During the show, MSN beeps and Tom has invited me into a three way with him and Sam B. And then Tom promptly disappears, leaving it to me and Sam B just to talk awkwardly (Tom is our conduit).

Late late and Tom plays sets me and him up to play chess on MSN via Chess Club (his jokey take on Fight Club). I want to play though and we end up getting into a really good hour long game. I turn out better than I would ever expect and by the end I am several pieces ahead of him by playing gradual and defensive (but nowhere near as intentionally tactical as that statement might suggest). I think I am about 6 pieces to his king at the end of the game when I go and make a foul stroke (for reasons unknown to the pair of us) and the game ends a draw. It was good fun though, please someone come along and challenge me to a game.

Later on TV, I watch the Germaine Greer exit interview on Celebrity Big Brother, then realising at the end that I have been missing a programme about the Comedy Store in London on BBC.

I fall asleep watching Angel Heart on ITV, which sucks because I was really enjoying the movie.

At 1.30, my computer beeps and it is someone on MSN trying to get in touch with me but instead just waking me up. I suspect it is Tom, asking for a chess rematch. He is the most notorious night owl.

np: Big In Albania - Bigboote