it took one day of being back on the job hunt to knock me back on my arse again. back in London and from out of nowhere the tourists have appeared, clogging my usual haunts around Trafalgar Square with over-excited, camera-waving, stopping-in-the-middle-of-the-footpath exuberance, forcing me to duck, dodge and dive through them all like a rider heading the wrong way down a Malaysian freeway on an aging Chinese moped. the whole world seems to have gone insane and sent the worst of it all here on holiday.
Saturday was one of those nights that ended early, but didn't finish until late. by the time i met Louise at Clapham South Station i was swaying slightly on my feet. she had her friend Margeaux in tow, both dressed to kill and drunk enough to make Boris Yeltsin blush. after having a few drinks at Rhodora's house nearby the expanded party made its way to a loud, busy club in Clapham called Infernos where people danced while i cockblocked random sleezeballs until Louise lost her phone and decided she'd had enough at around midnight - just early enough to miss the last tube out by seconds and have to find the bus to get back to base-camp. we spent Sunday bumming around the house watching Star Wars movies, comparing notes about the last week and generally keeping our heads down, and the next day i shook my arse into Bite with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
my good mood lasted for about 3 hours - i called all my contacts in the pimping community to say: i'm back from holiday in Scotland. yeah, it was lovely. no jobs, you say? well shit, and cruised the job sites until it was time to meet Louise in Covent Garden for tea. as far as anti-climaxes go, Monday was right up there. nothing to apply for, nothing going on, no positive word in any direction. Louise was effervescent - she'd come out of the funk she'd been in for nearly a week and her grin lit her face up like the London Eye. i, on the other hand, sat there eating good indian food feeling flatter than my naan bread, so for the rest of the evening our roles were reversed and it was her job to cheer me up for a while.
Monday was very much a "hit bottom" sort of day, and i didn't just hit: i carved a nice deep crater on impact. see, i went off on walkabout to get my spirits up again and shake off the despair and frustration. one afternoon of adversity and it all came crushing down again and it broke me... but when you're broken and defeated it opens up a lot of options you wouldn't have considered otherwise. it's also the best way i've ever found to really Give Up, and while i sat there staring into space i decided well, fuck it.
once you've seriously Given Up a lot of things stop mattering. when a pimp calls you up and asks if you've X, Y and Z skills, but your Y's a little lacking you don't explain the intricate details - you just say yes, absolutely. this job's good enough? meh - apply for it anyway. i've taken to telling them that i love it here and i want to stay forever and ever. it's not strictly true. but why should that matter? it's a contract for 3 fucking months, not 3 years! do i have any holidays planned? no - i just got back from one. they don't need to know that i'm off to Amsterdam on Friday, and looking at going to Egypt for most of April. call them white-lies, call them filthy-mistruths, but frankly my dear, i don't give a damn.
i've taken to applying for all sorts of odd jobs. i applied for a job in recruitment because... well, why the fuck not? i've been putting in for all manner of weirdness, emailing friends and asking if they have any contacts, firing my CV all over the internet like an over-enthusiastic male porn star trying to get the record for World's Messiest Moneyshot. i was sitting in the office in Leicester Square yesterday when a new face walked in. i finished off my phone call, looked over and said hello, before explaining that yes, i DO swear a lot, i am an ANGRY motherfucker and i hoped he'd understand. he laughed and said that when he'd walked in he'd been impressed by my phone manner, so this was a bit of a shock by comparison. i laughed, flattered, and told him that you do what you have to do, but in the meantime i was going to make a fucking coffee.
by this time on Friday night i'm going to be on a ferry to The Netherlands. when i spoke to her from Inverness, Louise had said that she really wanted to get out of town for the weekend and was considering locations in Spain that she was happy to wander around alone. i suggested that i'd be mad-keen to head to Amsterdam if she'd consider that as an alternative and she went for it, so on Monday night we booked the trip. the system's really quite awesome: for a reasonable fee you get a train from Liverpool St Station to Harwich, transfer to the ferry where you have a sleeper cabin, arrive at the Hook of Holland early in the morning and catch another train to Amsterdam, arriving at 10ish. this means that not only do you not have to be at Gatwick at WTF in the morning, but you don't get to your destination way late at night and have to pay for a hostel, either. maximum use of your weekend time, and actually cheaper than flying (without having to book weeks or months in advance). young Daniel will be there this weekend - he's got a job interview on Friday and will be hanging around until Sunday, so the plan is to get in, drop our crap at the hostel and run rampage for the day. we're both really looking forward to it - it's the first time we've both left London to go to the same place at the same time for a start, so it feels like we're making good on the whole "we'll go explore Europe" idea we came over here with.
in the meantime i'll be continuing to spam pimps with my CV, using every trick i know to get noticed. for some strange reason there's a feeling around our little shared room that there's Progress being made and regardless of the reality of the situation i can't help but make the most of it. one way or another, catching a boat over to the continent for a weekend of depravity screams "adventure" and i'm massively looking forward to it. one thing's for sure - i just know i'm going to wind up eating a whole lot of things i can't pronounce, and that's almost always guaranteed to be entertaining...
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