Wednesday
morning, reacting to DWP contact. Universal Jobseekers Allowance journal entry,
unaccountably forgot to get a signature on a travel warrant to Edinburgh for a
job interview,
come in and sign, please and thank you very much. Waste of time and place and petrol, usual rain and dreich Jobcentre Nonplussed time to be had, spitting with rain and misery. Park in Asda, take some library books back, then round to Heroin House, 10B Unwellside Place. Had been told the warrant to be signed would be waiting at the front door for me, but no, of course not, have a seat in the Afterlife Waiting Room from Beetlejuice. Sit on a garish ouch-eyes red couch opposite a morbidly obese, bespectacled woman silently pushing a pram back and forth and back, soothing amniotic motions, uncurious face, end of all hopeful certainties. Crossed-leg guy sitting a few feet to her left boredly jigglejigglejiggles his foot, nervous angry energy harmlessly dispelled into the unemployed air. Wander over for a look at the job board. Every position on it is at least three weeks out of date. ARE YOU LIVING WITH BIPOLAR? A leaflet screams at me. Nope. Sigh inwardly, shake my head slightly, back down, cross arms, wait for nothing but whatever. After a few minutes, glance across at the woman opposite. Her eyes are creepily glued to my crotch. She sees me looking at her momentarily, and her gaze flicks upwards after a cock-grazing beat, not quite fast enough. Nothing I’ve not seen from women a hundred times. Maybe she was thinking about ways to get more child benefit, who knows. A few minutes go by and she gets called, perambulating off pushing her child. The action never starts round here. Overweight bouncers, dads and granddads, decent men one and all, belly-extended white shirts and straining black trousers, glide listlessly round the front door. In any real altercation with a half-decent fighter they would be knocked out in seconds, their presence purely symbolic, an acknowledgement that people are angrier these days than they used to be before. Bouncer randomly walks up and hands two thirty-nothing junkies sitting at a computer around twenty feet away some form or other. “Thaaaaanks veeeery muuuuch” says the ginger-stubbled, drug-damaged guy, stretching each syllable into infinity and beyond, tragic space cadet communication from a heroin-burned tongue. Guy slooooowly logs into a computer and starts to one-finger-peck at the keyboard, concentrating, maybe regretting the braincells he wasted on escape from nothing but impotent small town madness. His dyed-red-hair female partner, too much makeup, face as red as her hair and jacket, heroin chic combo, smiles on pretty vacantly at his handiwork. A line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas occurs to me about her as I occasionally glance over at them, Hunter S Thompson talking about how his passed-out Attorney’s “brain had gone off to that campground beyond the sun.” It seems sadly, painfully appropriate. But she seems quite happy in her emptiness, so the Hell with it. After quarter of an hour I get called, sorry for any inconvenience, sign the form, and get out of there, thanking fuck I will be starting work next week. After all, there’s only so many campgrounds beyond the sun a man can handle in one constant-horror-drenched finite lifetime.
END
come in and sign, please and thank you very much. Waste of time and place and petrol, usual rain and dreich Jobcentre Nonplussed time to be had, spitting with rain and misery. Park in Asda, take some library books back, then round to Heroin House, 10B Unwellside Place. Had been told the warrant to be signed would be waiting at the front door for me, but no, of course not, have a seat in the Afterlife Waiting Room from Beetlejuice. Sit on a garish ouch-eyes red couch opposite a morbidly obese, bespectacled woman silently pushing a pram back and forth and back, soothing amniotic motions, uncurious face, end of all hopeful certainties. Crossed-leg guy sitting a few feet to her left boredly jigglejigglejiggles his foot, nervous angry energy harmlessly dispelled into the unemployed air. Wander over for a look at the job board. Every position on it is at least three weeks out of date. ARE YOU LIVING WITH BIPOLAR? A leaflet screams at me. Nope. Sigh inwardly, shake my head slightly, back down, cross arms, wait for nothing but whatever. After a few minutes, glance across at the woman opposite. Her eyes are creepily glued to my crotch. She sees me looking at her momentarily, and her gaze flicks upwards after a cock-grazing beat, not quite fast enough. Nothing I’ve not seen from women a hundred times. Maybe she was thinking about ways to get more child benefit, who knows. A few minutes go by and she gets called, perambulating off pushing her child. The action never starts round here. Overweight bouncers, dads and granddads, decent men one and all, belly-extended white shirts and straining black trousers, glide listlessly round the front door. In any real altercation with a half-decent fighter they would be knocked out in seconds, their presence purely symbolic, an acknowledgement that people are angrier these days than they used to be before. Bouncer randomly walks up and hands two thirty-nothing junkies sitting at a computer around twenty feet away some form or other. “Thaaaaanks veeeery muuuuch” says the ginger-stubbled, drug-damaged guy, stretching each syllable into infinity and beyond, tragic space cadet communication from a heroin-burned tongue. Guy slooooowly logs into a computer and starts to one-finger-peck at the keyboard, concentrating, maybe regretting the braincells he wasted on escape from nothing but impotent small town madness. His dyed-red-hair female partner, too much makeup, face as red as her hair and jacket, heroin chic combo, smiles on pretty vacantly at his handiwork. A line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas occurs to me about her as I occasionally glance over at them, Hunter S Thompson talking about how his passed-out Attorney’s “brain had gone off to that campground beyond the sun.” It seems sadly, painfully appropriate. But she seems quite happy in her emptiness, so the Hell with it. After quarter of an hour I get called, sorry for any inconvenience, sign the form, and get out of there, thanking fuck I will be starting work next week. After all, there’s only so many campgrounds beyond the sun a man can handle in one constant-horror-drenched finite lifetime.
END
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