Its my blog and I'll cry if I want to

foreword: having chatted about this stuff at the weekend, myself and mark unbeknownst to the other, both wrote about it for the blog today. Apologies for the double post if you're seeing it.

Pt. 1 - Jill
I've to go to an orientation for the un-named entertainment complex on thursday when i've finished stuffing envelopes for the day. I've been offered a busser job -I'm not sure how much orientating I need to learn how to empty an ashtray and pick up empties, but what the hey, I don't even know how much the pay is yet, so I should find out some useful stuff. It's not particularly a job I want, its out of the way, it's not the kind of place I'd go out to, but there's no harm in checking it out. If I decide to go with this job, I really will need to pick up a second-hand bike, because the public transport there is dismal, and its there's a bit of a scooby doo old abandoned industrial estate feel to first 20 minutes of the walk home.

So, with this in mind, I submitted an application form for the HRC on saturday. I went in asked for a form, which i was invited to fill out there and then at the bar, or bring home. I sat at the bar, where a cartoon biker barman with a heart of gold and a lot of badges on his leather waistcoat (or pins on his vest as I suppose they'd say here) assured me the male staff would be stealing my number off the form. He poured me a complimentary pop, and rats, I only had a couple of $20's in my wallet. See I wanted to leave a couple of bucks tip on the bar for him, I suppose I could have asked him to make change but I only think of those things after of course - I'm absolutely sure it's part of the vetting process. What kind of potential server doesn't tip the barman? So thats probably that job out of the picture. Besides which, I wrote the cringiest things on my application, which I can't even bring myself to recall and repeat here. Who knows though - the corporate heads there may love my feigned enthusiasm.

I am gonna drop my cv into more bars and restaurants in the downtown area, but because we're going away for 4 weeks, its kinda crappy to say 'here's my resume, but i'm not available to work until 6 weeks from now, june 13th'. On the other hand I don't want to wait til then to start handing them out, because, well any potential positions could be filled by then by the eager young student pups that will have arrived for the summer. Rock and hard place. We were in a bar on friday evening, being served by Barbie. She kept getting orders wrong, and would smell the pints on the way over to see which was beer and which was cider, and still get it wrong. We didn't say a word, we were a bit incredulous. (though i might ring Mattel and complain) I know I could do a better job than that. But I don't look like Barbie, or even Skipper.

Mark thinks I'm miserable here. I wouldn't say miserable. But I'm definitely not making the most of it, I know that, you know that. I hate to use my Dad's death as an excuse for anything, but it has changed me. I've never been homesick a day in my life before this trip. (And I hadn't cried at Beaches the last 5 times I saw it before last night. I mean hello! fromage) I don't care about the people I work with, they don't care about me. I've become more introverted than before. Nobody in the land except Mark knows anything about me really. And thats a long time to go without having a 'proper' conversation with anyone but him indoors. I know Mark is a very short fuse away from telling me to snap out of it, as I send him another monday morning email detailing the things my friends did at home at the weekend.

I've never been particularly good with strangers left to my own devices. Its not that I'm not friendly, it just seems to take me a longer time than most to trust people, to open up, to be comfortable in their company. It took me a year and a half of secondary school to make everyone else realise that I just couldn't settle there and wanted to move to another school. (I still can't explain fully why I wanted that so much, but I know it was the right decision) It took me about a year and a half of college before I settled into a groove and made the friends I still have now (regretfully doing some bad things along the way) I haven't got that long in Canada. I have some people I'd tentatively - and would like to continue to - call friends. I'm in a bit of a rut, and I need more interaction dammit! I know I'm not great at being a temp so thats why I'm hoping to get into a hospitality job for the summer - I need to work with people that don't get in their cars and drive to suburbia to their 2 car garages and their families every evening.

So now you know. I cannot WAIT for 4 weeks off.


Pt. 2 - Mark

I am inspired to post today, probably because I have of late been trying to write again. I stopped writing when I left Belfast in 2000. Not that what I was doing there could be considered writing in the artistic sense. Contributing 200 word website reviews to a best-of-web guide forced one to come up with interesting ways to say 'this site is great' and 'this site is pants'. But the fact remains that I was published. I have no evidence of this though, OHB and KK will remember the summer of our thesis project when I switched on my trusty ibook to find the dreaded flashing question mark that occasionally plagues Mac users. I lost everything that was on the computer and the site (a-zleisure) has long since disappeared. So here I am with slightly pathetic aspirations to write again. And I think I can, a bit. I know Jill definitely can. She has certainly made this blog her own. It was her idea and to be honest, I'm to lazy to post regularly. Some of you may know that Jill kept a diary when she was a nipper and still did up until fairly recently and I'm wondering if 'alfie' has taken over.

Jill and I were exchanging emails this morning on the subject of being here, in Toronto. I think it's safe to say that we both love this city but the first 6 months or so of this trip have not been quite what either of us expected. The winter was - I can not stress this enough - a pain in the hole. Before I remember anybody really talking about seasonal adjustment disorder my mam used to talk about the sinking feeling brought on by the onset of winter. I was fine for December, we were just hanging out having fun and spending money on ourselves. Then working and January hit, and the evenings started to take on a familiar shape: dinner, TV, bed. I was sure I'd pick up some semi-stimulating work over here, and to be fair to myself I nearly did. I was offered a job that I never thought I’d get as I didn't have the requisite experience. Alas I didn't take it for reasons I now believe to be fucking stupid. Jill was in much the same boat with a few promising interviews that ultimately came to nothing. So consequently we've both been stuck in temp job hell since January.

Office work is the same no matter where you go or who you work for. Over here the only thing that distinguishes one from the next is the brand of free coffee provided to the drones. My current job pays pittance, but does have a number of redeeming features. The people are decent, I can listen to the radio, nobody is looking over my shoulder (I'm in work as I type this), and they pay overtime after 37.5hrs which they don't by law have to do. But I'm bored to tears! How do people spend the better part of their lives doing this kind of work? It stiffens my resolve to educate myself further to make sure I never end up in a place like this for longer then a few months. Jill is in much the same boat, minus the radio and decent folk, but she's on better money.

A wise mate of Jill's pointed out to her recently that its no accident that lots of people who travel choose to work in the service/hospitality industry. Office 9-5ers do their job and sod off. They have no interest in being your friend, and if they do it's probably because they are socially inept. (i disassociate myself from that opinion - jill) Those in the service industry tend to bond more because the jobs lend themselves to social interaction. My 3 years in London have left me with one friend I see semi-regularly, Sarah from Tullamore, who I met while working in a bar in Covent Garden. So this summer Jill and I have decided to apply for full or part time work in various bars about the town, as much for increased social interaction as for the extra cash. It’s weird how being in an unfamiliar city without your close friends can alter you priorities. And I arrived in Toronto with a bit of an unfair advantage over my girlfriend. As soon as we decided that we were coming here, I was making rock plans with Graham. I kind of walked into a small community of musicians that Graham has been hanging out with for a few years.

So, just shy of the halfway point of our Canadian adventure, what's the deal? After years of watching people head of to Australia, Thailand, Paris and other exotic locations it was exciting to be the one packing up and heading off. I was glad of it too. Last year was without a shadow of a doubt, the most eventful and tiring I’ve ever lived through. I lost my Grandmother, toured the UK, recorded and released the second Large Mound album, double gigged around Scotland with the Mound and The Dudley Corporation, played some more gigs in the UK, toured Europe, played loads of gigs all over Ireland, changed jobs, did loads of nixers and moved to Canada. And while all of this was going on, Jill was watching her dad fight a losing battle with leukemia. I don’t mind saying that I was really looking forward to the rest I was sure this trip would give Jill and I. Turns out it’s not as simple as heading off and having the craic. It was folly to think that Jill would have her grieving done by November 24th, so she is doing a lot of grieving in Canada with only me for company. She misses her dad. She is missing Ella McGrath’s first year. 2004 cast a long shadow.

Jaysus! Heavy stuff wha..? Well have no fear; I would compare this post to playing tennis in your back garden during Wimbledon.

Current eating: Prosciutto ham, OH MY GOD, its amazing.
Current listening: The Wedding Present, The Mars Volta.