Ok so I'm not actually a superhero but that isn't the point. I went to Peru recently. Which was great. Amazing in fact. Anyway not to sound too pretentious but while I was there atop the Andes I did things I'd have never dreamt of doing whilst in dreary England. Some of them were genuine wow factors that will contribute to the collection of stories I will one day tell the grand kids.
For example I climbed, well clambered, up some of the Andes. No it wasn't a rock climbing event. We'd actually been horse riding and had the misfortune of being tricked into doing a pretty fucking dangerous walk. The walk involved climbing up the side of rock faces which were pretty much bordering on vertical. More over the rock we were climbing up happened to be limestone.
If you aren't familar with limestone it's a sedimentary rock and it's weak as anything. Meaning it literally would crumble in our hands. If we didn't make the leap on the first go, the chances were the leap wouldn't be there to make the second time round. It was like playing an impossible video game and only having one chance to do so.
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| Super-meat boy. A fucking hard game. Imagine this with one life. |
There were a few stories that while they won't be contributing to the tales for the Grandkids did contribute to my overall sense of invincibility. Try having food poisoning develop whilst on a two hour train and then a 2 hour car ride with the most deadly taxi driver known to South America. That's 4 hours of throwing up and attempting to not let anything happen the other end. It's a challenge, trust me but once you've done that. You feel like you are unstoppable.
I returned to England with a sense of exhilaration. I was invincible I'd swam with piranhas! That would work in my favour when looking for employment. I'd wow prospective employers with my travelling tales. I was all ready and all fired up.
A couple of days after my arrival I immediately got into the swing of things and applied for a few jobs. I also applied for job seekers allowance to tide me over in my quest.
This was the first pitfall. My introduction to the Job centre was not a pleasant one. I had an interview that day and the woman with the pseudo smile was running late. It meant I had to move my Job centre appointment to another time. When I returned two days later I was greeted by the same woman who at the time I believed was quite friendly. Only it turned out her "friendliness" was just her being patronising and condescending When I told her that among bar jobs and retail jobs I also wanted to look for jobs in the journalistic field she gave me a look and told me to be realistic. I found this comment to be abhorrent and unnecessary. I was being realistic. I was looking for anything but I was more interested in the journalism field having you know studied a relevant degree at University. I left the job centre filled with rage and a bleak mind.
My second encounter with the job centre was equally as poor. I had been given my own personal advisor and he started off okay. Till he told me I probably wouldn't get anything and then told me off for absent mindedly tapping. Okay the tapping was annoying I'll grant but there is no need to be an arse about it. Just tell me in a polite person to person manner. Not like I'm some child who just stole candy from Woolworths (RIP). I left that day ranting and raving and filled with anger.
Luckily the second time I went to my advisor he had started to take me seriously and actually turned out to be as useful as the job centre can be, which by anyone's standards isn't very high. I know it isn't their fault, its the systems, but I don't understand the system enough to know what it is in the system to blame. Damn that system. So cunning and clever. Always hiding from the blame by putting innocent scapegoats in front of it. Todays choice of goat being the job centre employees. Poor goats.
