So I suppose I should stop being so desperately lazy and update this. I never was very good at blogs or suchlike. Still, I'll try and cram it all into one nice long post otherwise I'll never catch up. Sorry for the approaching waffle.
Starting from where I left off, the weekend before the one just gone was spent in Nottingham. It was pleasant, if a little odd. The driving took a bit longer than usual due to queues and so on, but the edge was taken off the boredom by Mr Smallridge's company both ways and his growly musical tastes. A quick detour to pick stuff up from Melton on the way there resulted in a gift of too much food and steak for the BBQ from mum. I am particularly enjoying the white stilton with cranberries. Boo yeah.
The BBQ itself was good fun. I broke my no-drunkenness bend that I've been on of late and of course was entirely too open and friendly with friends who I wish to keep. Oops. Oh well, I think they'll forgive me. That said, I really shouldn't play 'Never have I ever-' with wine. Happily, my abysmal memory doesn't facilitate my remembering what I or others admitted to. This is most likely a good thing.
The next day was spent clearing out and cleaning my room. The clearing out went remarkably quickly by my standards, possibly as I was keenly aware that I had to get back down to London early enough for Peter to get home before midnight. It was sad to see the house looking so barren, and I still feel pretty guilty about skipping town instead of helping the others clear up the communal spaces. I shall have to make it up to them with wine/whiskey/Xbox stuff or something in the future. But 339 is now very much free of our presence, and it's weird to think that it's no longer home (or even an option for sleeping arrangements), as it were; what with my patchy memory, the great majority of my university memories are based from there.
Still, onwards and upwards. The last week (last in both senses) of work experience got a little silly, with the company introducing a large whiteboard on the office wall documenting what we'd each achieved on it. I was decidedly nonplussed, but it didn't turn into a competition, thankfully. I think this proves what pleasant and laid-back people the other three loggers were. They also asked us to take home DVDs to log if we had to leave early. I did this once then slyly avoided it. Logging at 11pm whilst trying to eat your dinner is pretty shit. But, after going to sign on at the job centre (god, I hate that place already), I got to go sit in on some editing on Wednesday. This involved me sitting and watching the director and a lady who looked like worryingly like Future!Rny stick together and chop videos up on the screen to make the program proper. I found just watching to be quite fun, loser that I am. I guess this is a good thing, seeing as that's the path I'm currently puttering down. I then got shown round the editing facilities by a nice girl who has the kind of job I'm looking for. She was very helpful, and potentially gave me a heads up on a job, which proves that yes, this business is all about who you know.
I followed said job hint up on Saturday (I am so keen) by going round to the company in person and handing them my CV. This achieved (I am far too good at just walking through security measures), I tried to find a Lush to buy some henna. This took me two hours because Google does, apparently, lie about some things. Like shop locations (and bank locations, fuckers. But I'll come back to that). These two hours involved navigating Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street on a Saturday lunchtime. I've got a tactic for dealing with crowds around there now, though; don't go there. I got stuck in a sea of children outside Hamley's toy shop because they were all too enraptured by the wizards duelling to the Pirates Of The Caribbean soundtrack to move their tiny, breakable, underfoot feet down the street. It turns out that Rny when irate and in a hurry does not play well with other children. Nonetheless, I got to a Lush eventually, and looked so utterly dishevelled that they gave me some free samples as a reward for my marathon. I was placated. I am becoming so material. I'll fit right in here in another month or so.
The rest of the weekend was spent lounging about sewing and churning through lots of film & TV, much like the second half of today. However it's been marred somewhat by a lack of cash (no ice-cream for me) and the return of what I shall dub 'Boat-disease'. It basically has been showing up sporadically for a couple of months now and its main symptom sees me stumbling round like I'm on a boat in a storm. Friday was the worst day so far, and saw me fall, entirely unprompted, from my chair in the office sideways into a stack of cardboard boxes. This knocked aforementioned whiteboard off the top of them. I caught it once it bounced off my head, but when I tried to stand up to replace it I dragged the computer halfway across the desk and nearly garrotted myself by still being attached to the PC via headphones round my neck. Marvellous. The others actually wept in hysteria as I tried not to pass out. Then the lovely Glynis untangled me from my mess and gave me celebratory 'You're leaving!' (in a nice way) cake and champagne. Yes, because champagne was going to help. It took a lot of concentration to stay upright until I got home.
For this reason, and because nobody's going to employ someone who can't walk in a straight line, I've spent nearly four hours of today trying to get an appointment with a doctor. Bloody useless all round. Despite there being two practices within half a mile of my flat, I have to go to the one half an hour's walk away because of post codes. I also needed to register, which involved proving my address. I can't, as it turns out, as I've received no mail here and have no tenancy agreement yet. So I figured I'd walk to the bank and get them to print off something like a statement to prove where I live. Cunning, I thought. Hah. After being misdirected to HSBCs that closed a year ago around Archway for nearly an hour I stormed down the Tube to Camden. Apparently they're not allowed to give me a copy of my own address. So I then spent half an hour in an O2 shop changing my address and getting something off them. Back up the Tube, hop on a bus up the hill to the GP's (I was feeling pretty ill by now) and I get there at 12:35. They apparently shut from 12:30 to 13:30. For god's sake, what kind of surgery shuts for an hour in the middle of every day?! And then, after slowly drinking coffee in a pub for 55 minutes and filling out a lengthy registration form, they tell me there's no appointments unless I ring up really early until the 20th. The 20th?! That's over a fortnight away! If you weren't wasting six hours a week eating sandwiches and twiddling your stethoscopes and smiling blithely at people like me swaying outside your locked doors then maybe you'd have a reasonable waiting time! I am pretty pissed off, as you can tell; perhaps I have been spoiled by Cripps' usual 'We've got a slot in 30 minutes'. Still, if I ring them up early tomorrow I may get one within the week. If I don't I may go throw up in their waiting room and shout about swine flu until they see me.
If I'm not sorted soon I anticipate this coming week to be a struggle; Going round to companies I've targeted with a suit and CVs, puttering down to the Wallace Collection, messing about down at the Job Centre, etc. Also, I'm supposed to be going re-enacting at Sutton Hoo come the weekend, which will happily involve over seven hours of driving and an entire lap of the M25 from north London to go north-east because I'm a retard. Unfortunately, I'm not comfortable driving when it feels like the world is rolling from side to side, so fingers crossed they get it sorted.
So, now that the white text on black has given you irritating venetian-blind retina-burn, I'm going to find some more Paracetamol and stagger off to make dinner. Love love.
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