Repairs and stares

There's a great deal of nothing going on when you're on the sausage. But in my case there's three counts of something going on, both left right and centre.
Today I took my unemployed self to Boots to order some prescription drugs. That's living.
It was the middle of the afternoon so the place wasn't too hectic (Faversham's hectic once a week; Saturday morning. At all other times it's quiet, peaceful and medieval).
I handed over my papers and waited a while. The chemist, meanwhile, stepped out of the back door to go play cricket for half an hour. I knew he did. We know they do. We knew that before Stupid and Stupidder showed us on their unfunny tv show.
When the pin roller returned he asked if I'd be paying for my prescription. This had slipped my mind - BONUS! That's £21.30 back in my pocket!
I had to mask my glee because another customer had approached. Made my day though, who'd have thunk it?

Rockin' the sausage roll

For the past four and twenty years I've been a loveable employee of the government. Quite a considerable way down the food chain mind, but a local government employee all the same. I never planned to end up on such a heap of corduroy and knitted jumpers, things just panned out that way - coupled with my instinct to be lazy and settle in where I'm comfortable.
Throughout my time collecting a wage slip from the employer of the greatest concentration of insecure over-sensitive and compliant union-worshipping backstabbers I pointed my aspirations at crime and disorder. Not the making of it, personally, but the theoretical reduction of it. This meant I worked closely with community plod, groovy right-on leaders of local groups designed to see the greater good in everyone and, of course, members of the many and varied churches across London. On that last point I say 'varied churches' but, I think we all know, churches is churches; it's just the same old bobbins dressed in suitable and culturally sensitive clothing.
Anyway - Mr Cameroon and his other biscuit-faced chums, as part of their nonsense-parade they call Big Society, have elected to remove the majority of local government crime and disorder assistance from the nation’s rozzas. This is because we're all supposed to muck in and save our own communities from crime. Or, as it used to be called, 'kill anyone what don't come from around here'. This has left a large hole in crime curtailment across Britain; a hole which will undeniably manifest itself as a significant reported rise in crime. The people of Britain will then undoubtedly panic and The Daily Mail will point a finger at cultural cross-over and suddenly everyone’ll be out in the street massacring groovy right-on community workers.

Still, perhaps this is what we all want? If violence is to hop on the exponential increase train, let's jump aboard and let loose some of that inherent Tory-fuelled frustration by kicking the shit out of each other in a Buckfast Abbey monk-manufactured cider-fuzzled rage?

So now I'm unemployed. To celebrate I called up the Jobseeker's Opportunity and Knowledge Emporium line on 0800 055 6688 to register my intentions.
My man Jamie answered the call. He wasted no time in explaining that he had a series of questions that he had to ask me, and from which under no circumstances was he going to deviate, hesitate or repeat anything. Parsons would be proud. I was to pay attention and this part of the call should last about 25 minutes. Christ in 25 minutes I could drive to my nearest TK-Max and be halfway into a new pair of redundancy trousers.
Still this was for free money right? Free money I'd paid my dues over the years to gain such expedited entitlement to. I wanted to jump through every hoop Jamie would hold up in front of me until this sorry little segment of my life was through.

The questions came in like an action movie about an undercover cop who somehow infiltrates an underworld subculture of Los Angeles street racers looking to bust a hijacking ring, and soon begins to question his loyalties when his new street racing friends become the prime suspects. Subtle.
We thrashed through them, Jamie and me. Although I was nervous I could tell Jamie thought I was doing really well; he even shared a laugh or two with me at the inane structure and barefooted wanderings of what he was actually asking me. Bless.
Before long we were done. The first section completed in less than fifteen minutes! It must be a record? I was so pleased and thrilled; especially upon learning that Jamie felt proud of me.
He told me to wait. Just wait for a while as he went to prepare the next section. Just wait, he said, “Wait there and keep the phone to your ear so you can hear when I come back”. Ok. I thought nothing of it - after all why would Jamie want to do anything to hurt me?
Time passed. It passed like a turgid stool with jagged edges. I felt abandoned; my mind wandering back to being kept waiting in the queue in Boots while the ‘doctor’ goes to sort out your prescription - back to when I thought they were outside playing swing ball while I was left to wait. That in turn reminded me I'd had that thought way before Armstrong and fucking Miller slapped it up on their ruthlessly smug and unnecessarily bloody jolly comedy show. Comedy Airmen? I shat them when I was eleven years old.
Time passed and I remained in place, sat like a schoolboy waiting for the parent of a girlfriend to fetch her from her room where she's kissing one of the older boys, and from such a game she won't be disturbed.
Time passed and I was so alone. The phone in my hand became a slender mechanical object; a small semi-automatic hand gun, held to my temple. I moved the end of it so its muzzle rested in my mouth and squeezed the grip hard as my finger stroked the smooth face of the trigger - Jamie spoke, "Sorry to keep you, not too long I hope?”

The rest of the interview proved to be as hassle-free as I'd suspected. If, for one moment, I'd challenged any element of the script and the absurdity of the patter, I'd still be there now.
My application was processed - wooo I'd made it through the first round. Next up: The Eliminator. That final stage is booked and will take the form of a one-to-one face-off with the Jobseeker Panel, or end-of-level-guardian as they're known within the circles I now sink.

Sadly for Jamie the recent wave of cuts in local government will bring him and his colleagues a factor of pure time-warped and institutionalised dumbass never encountered before. A tsunami of self-loathing hard done by beige folk who know nothing of the world outside their once beloved Council. The telephone script is being re-worked as I type this. March sees the reform of benefits and the like. A streamlining process is being cascaded across the country - sounds familiar. They're going to shed the expendable parts to make room for better processes and automation. If your needs don’t fit the template pack your bags. Exile is looming. Re-watch Judge Dredd to see how to get back to the city once you’ve been canned.

Let’s not forget too that even after his four and twenty years helping job seeker types back to work Jamie shall end up phoning in to see if he's eligible to hold a metaphorical gun to his head while the computer at the other end of the line goes outside to arrest some drunk and disorderly Brits for bashing the next nationalist media target.