Week Two

Another week begins. And another day it is of hard working tax payers money.

On the whole I've not been having a good day. I've not only got a biro out of them, but also a nasty illness. The running nose seems to have gone off but it's been replaced by a splitting headache. Still, you only get five sick days on this course and I'm rather hoping to use them all to turn a thirteen week course into a twelve week course.

I wasn't the only one who's not entirely healthy. Sonia was also ill, in a manner of speaking, but she used it as an excuse to make an anti-male joke of the "sick men whinge too much" variety. It's appropriate that she was whinging herself when she said this, but I didn't quite see the humour. Still, I kept my mouth shut.

Sonia isn't her real name, I must remember that. I was sent for an interview with a view to a placement, unpaid labour that is, this morning at a charity shop and when they asked her name I very nearly said Sonia. I imagine Sonia is feminist. Apart from the above joke, she seems the sort. She has a degree, for starters (I've never had any respect for educational qualifications, I'm proud of not having any). She's very posh. That was this morning, as wasted as usual. More busy work, but even that's all finished now so tomorrow might just be sitting around doing nothing all day. Even today I've spent quite some time sitting doing nothing. Today is monday, of course, so there was a new intake of people, most of whom I'll no doubt never see again. As a result of this I was shoved in with the short-course people and given a set of papers to read headed "INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES - PREPERATION". I wonder why they never seem to use a spell checker.

Still, the late part of the afternoon was productive, or as productive as anything on the New Deal, and unreasonably expensive to the taxpayer (which is the sole source of income for A4E). We went bowling. I've never been bowling, and I can only hope that I never go again. I'm not good at bowling, but that's neither here nor there. Still, a load of taxpayer money down the drain is no skin off my nose. I didn't realise they had barriers which pop up along the side of bowling alleys which render it impossible to miss. There were five of us bowling. Two women, who used this cheat, and myself and another man who had never played before either. And, of course, Bob the course tutor who does it every fortnight and easily beat even those who were cheating. Women cheating, men not: standard.

My Housing Benefit has come through. £50-ish. Taking the piss, it is. One more thing: I have been lambasted in the letters page of the latest Fortean Times (the 60 years of UFOs special), under the name of Stephen Morgan. That's what you get for criticising the free-speech hating anti-conspiracy nuts. I'll have to write a reply when I can get together the vitriol. I would have done so already but I haven't been able to afford this monstrously expensive magazine until this last week.