Last weekend I went to York for the Jorvik Viking Festival. It was a good weekend. I learnt many useful things. I began my tuition in wood carving and leather working. I learnt a bit about the manufacture of arrows and longbows. I learnt about the care of wounds with hair, yarrow and puffballs.
I hope I get transported back in time soon or this will all turn out to be pointless.
I am appalled. I want to send letters to the newspapers signed “Outraged of Middlesex”. Members of the British Parliament invited Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament, to show his anti-Islam film in the House of Lords. Now the Home Secretary has used her discretionary powers to refuse Wilders entry to the UK. This is absolutely disgusting behaviour. How dare she refuse entry to an elected representative of a friendly country? How dare she refuse entry to someone who was invited by our own parliament? I feel ashamed to be a British citizen.
Besides the moral turpitude of this act, it appears to contravene EU law (Directive 2004/38/EC) and contradict the views expressed by ministers as recorded in Hansard for the 3rd of April last year. Our government is legally and morally bankrupt.
Thanks to Samizdata for bringing this to my attention.
I have decided that I simply cannot cope with office jobs. None of my recent jobs have been particularly terrible. My last job was dull but well-paid and not at all stressful. I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted (I went weeks without doing anything more productive than watching YouTube videos and reading and writing blogs) and I took long lunchbreaks in the pub. My current job is considerably more stressful and often involves long hours and working over the weekend but for all that it is at least quite challenging and interesting.
However, I just can’t stand offices. I hate sitting in an air-conditioned box with fluorescent lighting. I hate commuting to and from the same sterile building every day. I hate the repetition, the inhumanity of the whole construction.
Repetition. That is the key to my misery. When you work full-time for one company you always do the same bloody thing every day. Of course there is variety within the limits of the job – I frequently change projects and work for different clients – but it’s always essentially the same job. I never walk into the office on a Monday morning to be told, “No computers today, we need you to nip down to the British Library and research Merovingian legal codes.”
I’ve given up trying to find an acceptable office job on the grounds that there aren’t any. I’m going to work from home or not at all. I’m going to work remotely (that is, from anywhere with an internet connection) and I’m going to work part-time. I will be poor but I won’t be living anywhere as expensive as London. In my free time I shall write, read and dress up in tenth century clothing.
I am not destined for greater things, merely other things.
