Tomato Catchup

Admit it, the title of this post is a stroke of fucking genius.

So as my condiment themed header suggests, this little post is designed to fill that big gap between my last post (the surprisingly successful live blog) and today. I'll be honest, not much has happened so this shouldn't be too tedious.

First up was those annoying inconveniences that are end of year exams. Doing a course in journalism often means you end up studying for things you never thought; it's sort of like a greatest hits album made up of different courses. Last year I was studying history and politics, this year's edition of Now That's What I Call A Degree was law, which is feckin' dull. It's a pompous over-complicated subject where lawyers and judges feel so aggrieved about anyone else taking up their profession that they seek to make all material as complex and unnecessarily over the top as possible.

Some bits were admittedly interesting, like finding out if you sing 'Happy Birthday' in a restaurant then technically you are in breach of copyright and can be sued by Warner Bros. (so remember that next time you think about bursting into song in Frankie & Benny's). But that was about it. Most of the time in law I set about rediscovering my artistic skills, and when I say 'artistic skills', I actually mean setting art-based challenges, like imagining the lecturer in Cubism form.

So after spending about two weeks holed up in the library and experiencing smells I didn't even know existed, my exams were over and naturally I rewarded my liver by beating it senseless.

Then began my summer holidays. I'm not sure how I ever coped with just a four week break for summer when I was at school. I've got a load of things to do over summer and even the three months given to us doesn't feel like enough time.

The big aim for this holiday is to find a job. I've never actually had a proper job as such, which is for two reasons. The first reason is refereeing was always a much more appealing proposition. When I was 14 and I was earning £60 a weekend for refereeing three matches I had more money than I knew what to do with. As I got older I couldn't really be bothered to get a 'proper' job that paid slightly better and like a dog with brain damage, I much preferred to be running around outside.

The second reason is that for some reason or another, there's always one big problem with the job I apply for. Whether it's applying for Christmas work at Uni only to find I'm then going home for Christmas, or then having the worst interview of my life, I always tend to hit a little snag that has meant my employment record resembles that of a Jeremy Kyle guest.

Yes, the 'worst interview of my life', I can tell you're intrigued. I'm good at interviews. I have huge bullshit reserves stored in the back of my throat and I can normally waffle my way through life. In the first few weeks of uni I had an interview at a nearby Odeon. I thought chatting about films all day would be my perfect job so I was optimistic about impressing during the interview, especially when I saw the other candidates were a 40 year-old Asian man and a woman who dressed like she'd been shot out of a cannon through a charity store.

I'm not quite sure what happened when I sat down in the chair, although I'm pretty sure my brain just closed the curtains and said 'goodnight'. Some of the answers I gave must've given the impression I had been beaten as a child, although my answer to the question 'What film character best represents your personality?' pretty much put the final nail in my already burning coffin. At that point all other films other than 'Gran Torino' vacated my head, leaving me to explain how I was like Clint Eastwood's character Walt. If you've seen the film, you'll know he's an senile old man who calls the Asian characters 'Gooks' and hates just about everyone else. Not even my bullshit reserves could rescue me from that. So naturally I wasn't surprised when I got a letter saying 'there are other people better suited to the position'.

Welcome to the Odeon, you sons of bitches.

Since then I've had virtually no luck with jobs. I'll apply two days after a vacancy disappears or because I've had no other job to speak of, employees will naturally assume I'm a criminal and so burn my application form. What is the point of having grades and the charm of George Clooney (haa!) when those looking for work naturally assume I've been on the dole/sponged off the rents for the last six or seven years?

And so my job hunt goes on. Like Sauron hunting down little Frodo to get back the ring, I'll probably find a job too late and then end up at the back of the queue at the Job Centre like all the other plebs in this country.

On that particularly uplifting note, I'm going to stop typing.