... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Thursday, November 04, 2010

105: afternoon shifts, students and Kryten 2X4B-523P

An afternoon shift at work is no way to enjoy a relaxing morning.  The ringing alarm causes a panic of oh no I’m late followed by a relief of oh no I’m not followed by a disappointment of argh today isn’t a day off.  It’s all so confusing, but tomorrow I have a genuine day off when hopefully I will be feeling better and able to get some work done on a painting and some fiction editing. I could be doing some of that now, but the looming afternoon shift, the blog and the relentless sequence of cliff-hangers provided by Homes Under the Hammer prevents me from thinking properly.  Who will buy and what will they do to the property; stay tuned to find out later.  OK, whatever you say.

Speaking of buying and selling houses, it occurs to me I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about this.  Is this to be judged as an indicator of adulthood, or lack of?  I can’t drive either.  There are seventeen year-old children who can operate heavy machinery.  Are they more grown-up than I am?  Or, as is much more likely, is there no single indicator, and is being an adult not all it’s cracked up to be.  Whatever, I’m not really interested; it was just a passing thought, and currently The Wright Stuff is getting more attention than the words I am writing.  Oh, here we go, advert break; quick thing of something to write about.

Even though this isn’t exactly award-winning stuff, getting it done now will provide me later today with the fantastic feeling of knowing the blog is already done.  I can fall asleep when I feel like it, and not when the blog tells me is acceptable.  It will silence the persistent voice – write me, write me, write me, write me – beginning as a whisper and then raising to a scream as I get more tired.  But ho ho not today!  I’m going to have a cup of tea; would you like one?

Is it fair that someone on £45,000 salary should pay back six times as much of their student loan as someone on £25,000?  This is what they are asking on The Wright Stuff, and I’m inclined to say yes it is.  Basically there are a hell of a lot of entirely pointless university degrees out there, including the one I did, that people should be discouraged from doing.  Perhaps this isn’t the best way of doing it, but why should you have paid for me to spend three years getting drunk, playing X-Box games, and doing the occasional bit of art which I was then impelled to justify using post-modern relativist bollocks.  The whole thing was a waste of time and money, and perhaps it should have been clearer to me that it was my own money I was wasting.  Fortunately the degree left me with no employment prospects, no discernable useful skills, no work ethic, and no ability to concentrate at all.  This is fortunate because there seems to be no prospect of ever having to pay back my loans.  Unless I get my BBC job, get a decent income and then pay off my stupid loan for my stupid degree.  A drop in the national bucket maybe, and if it’s the BBC paying my wage that would be public money too, but at least I’ll have earned.  

Good old Robert Llewellyn, “Can we just have our world back, you religious nut bags,” he announced on The Wright Stuff.  And now perhaps it’s time I started getting ready for work.  Must not forget to eat.

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