Gardens are evil

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I, Dinnie the Pooh have had a fleeting forage in the world of gardening recently (not by choice I hasten to add) and have come to the conclusion that, as I have always suspected, gardens are evil. Pure evil. 

Exhibit A: My poor, poor papa has cut his finger off and by this I don't just mean a cut that could use a plaster or even a few stitches, oh no this little piggy has been beheaded, severed, mangled...whatever you would like to call it...so only a stump remains.  evil

Exhibit B: I fell into a pile of nettles. No description necessary really. However getting someone who has absolutely no balance to carry a humongous load of cut grass down a steep uneven path is a recipe for disaster. MILD TRUNCAL ATTAXIA!

Exhibit C : I dropped a stone on my foot. Again this needs no description but it really hurt and I was limping around for at least half an hour afterwards. Again evil

Perchance a picnic

Nothing quite says British Summer time like a jolly good picnic, so that's precisely what we did. Laden with quiche, couscous salad, scotch eggs, sausage rolls, salad, brownies, buns and sweets we ventured into the grounds of Harewood House to a nice shady tree looking towards the house and laid out our feast. Being very civilised (with cutlery and plates what what) we enjoyed the views of the magnificent house but our tranquility was disturbed by a pesky duck who decided that he wanted some quiche too.

 

Mr. Duck was alas to be disappointed as he ventured closer and closer to our picnic rug and was denied any food. He made his displeasure clear by pooing next to us before flying off. Charming

The day that we decided to visit Harewood House happened to be the same day that the BBC were going to be filming 'Death Comes To Pemberley' a sequel of sorts to Jane Austen's Pride and Predjudice. Starring Matthew Rhys, Anna Maxwell-Martin and Jenna Coleman the three part drama based on the novel by P.D James has been adapted for screen by Juliette Towhidi. (Calander Girls)

Due to the filming, the house and servants quarters shut at three so we were just able to squeeze in a quick look around the kitchen before we were sent packing. If you have ever been to a stately home (and if not, why not?) you come to expect the rooms to be laid out like they were in yesteryear, displaying the furniture and instruments used. The kitchen and pantry were in keeping with the stately home ideal but turn the corner to go into the next room and there was an exhibition of modern art. Confused much.

The adventure continued with a trip to the bird garden to see the flamingoes, pheasants, geese and have a good giggle with the laughing kookaburra. Our visit coincided with feeding time and we watched on with amusement as a gaggle of ducks followed the bird keeper everywhere he went hoping that they would get some food too. 

 Our fun day out was concluded by eating strawberries and cream and watching Wimbledon, not at all stereotypically British. Anyone for a round of the national anthem?

Tights or the time when I really wanted the ground to swallow me

You would  think that the humble pair of tights is not really the subject of much adventures but there my friends and strangers alike is where you would be wrong and I mean this in a totally PG rated sense.

I'm sure we have all had the annoying experience of putting on a new pair of tights and then five minutes before you have to leave the house they ladder, well I'm sure the ladies who are reading this have but maybe a few of the men also. There was also a time when I mistakenly put on a pair of tights that were far too small for me and ripped every time that I moved; sat down, stood up, did a little dance, it didn't matter. These bad boys would rip, right down the middle. Suffice it to say that by the end of day I 'looked like a hooker.'

Alas the embarrassing moments caused by tights does not end there as one day (it was yesterday) I forgot to put the obligatory pair of pants on on top of my tights (to stop them falling down or training to be a superhero, I haven't yet decided which ) and as you can all imaging that was the day when they would deem it necessary to answer gravity's call and there begins the adventure.

Hands up who performs the 'help my tights are falling down' dance on a regular basis. Although I have found that there are some situations in which this dance is simply not acceptable etc. in a packed supermarket or anywhere really busy really, at work or on the bus or other form of public transport. However there comes a point when your tights have fallen so far down that they are past saving and you end up having to walk home from the bus stop waddling like a penguin with a pair of tights around your knees.

Oh No Not Another Rant About Jobs.

After having gone to a few graduate/career things (two, I’ve been to two) and filling in countless job applications (literally I have lost count of how many there have been. I tried to keep track by saving the rejection emails but I have stopped getting them so there goes that system) I thought with my lengthy ‘experience’ in the area it was only fair to share some hints of what to put on applications or not.

But first a quick interlude onto the subject of finding a job application form to even fill out. Scrawling through website after website looking at the current vacancies and when you finally find something that sounds vaguely doable you take a look at the person specification and it’s like nope, nope, nope, can’t do that, can’t do that, can’t do that. And you’re back at square one.

Did you ever experience the terrifying feeling when you are  sitting down for an exam at school and the first question asked you to write your name? A feeling of pure terror courses through your veins as you panic ‘what even is my name?’  Well its good news kids because that never goes away. The first question on any application or form that you are going to have to fill out is most likely to ask for your name. 

The second thing that terrifies me about job applications is when it asks what the date is: Ok so it’s six months into the year and I still find myself typing that it’s 2012. 2012 is just an easy number to remember not even starting to mention all the things that happened in 2012 to make it memorable; it was the year of the London Olympics, Felix Baumgartner’s world record breaking free fall jump from the edge of space, it was the year of the misconstrued Mayan Apocalypse and who can forget the phenomenon that was Gangnam Style. 

Whereas 2013, what is remarkable about this year? How am I supposed to remember this year? Besides the fact that this is the first year since 1987 to be composed of 4 different numbers, this year has been full of violence; Shootings and gun attack , the Woolwich murder, Syrian crisis and to add to all the doom and gloom Prince Philip had to have abdominal surgery. So excuse me for wanting to blank this year out of my mind and we’re not even half way through yet! However on a much lighter note, today is my half birthday so Happy Half Birthday to me.

So back to the topic of job applications and forms, I have noticed that the first section often needs to be filled out in block capitals. It's like I'm shouting my personal details at people!  
So have we all now completed the ‘personal details section’? Well done, although apparently you have  completed the ‘easy’ part. Wait what? 

As a woman I find it as hard as the next person to sell myself, although I guess hookers may be quite be good at this. I’ve heard it said that men will often excel in the parts of the job application where they have to talk about how amazing they are whereas the females who have spent most of their lives scrutinising and have other people point out their flaws (yeah thanks for that) find this task slightly harder. Am I the only person who absolutely dreads the question ‘why I should I hire you rather than someone else?’ Anything that you could possibly reply to that suggests that you think you are better than the other person and therefore makes you sound big headed and arrogant.

So feeling suitably sick and terrified of the application that you still haven’t completed four hours later we will move onto the equal opportunities sections. These bits actually quite amuse me because I spend a good five to ten minutes trying out different ethnicities. Although having still not mastered an Irish or Afro-Caribbean accent I think that I wouldn’t able to get away with it at an interview nevertheless if I even got the job. Also the slight problem of having pasty white skin restricts my choices somewhat. I would highly advise you not to pick a ethnicity to be at random because, like me, you may be white-British and for a laugh decide to say that you are Irish and then get invited for an interview and start talking in a broad Yorkshire accent. (I haven’t actually done this but how hilarious would it be if this happened.)

At the beginning of this post we talked about feelings of blind panic at being asked your name if you can cast your mind back.(I know it’s hard, it was a long time ago) You can therefore  imagine what I was thinking when I was asked on page seven what role I was applying for. Is this a trick question?

The most annoying thing about job applications is that you can’t just send in your CV and hope for the best, no you have to write out a specific cover letter for each position you want….ain’t nobody got time for dat. What is the point of even having a CV when nobody wants to see it? Even when you send in a stellar application that took you the majority of a day a lot of people never reply back to you. Well cheers then. 

Expectations vs. Reality aka the Tale of the Ice Cream Shoes

If there’s one thing I have learnt in my 22 and half years of being on this earth (good god I’m old)  it is that life NEVER turns out like you expect. 

Expectation: Have a high flying career, quite possibly as an actress in a hit TV show and star in films on the fly. Be really successful, rich and famous and live in a gorgeous home with a corner sofa a wood burning stove and an aga.

Reality: Outside sweaty lugging great big chunks of wood.

When I was 6 or maybe it was 8 or 9 I don’t remember I apparently wanted to be a fashion designer. I have a folder floating around the house somewhere filled with my ‘designs’ and I use the terms ‘designs’ loosely here. Amongst my portfolio there’s a design for ice cream shoes which I recently learnt has been pioneered by a collaboration between Melissa and Karl Lagerfeld- I knew that I should have got a patent on that idea.

Here’s a picture of their shoes but I can’t for the life of me find my version. If I ever stumble across it I can send it you. 

The fashion designer idea didn’t last very long because according to my Ford House (junior school) yearbook my allegiance had turned to becoming a beautician. However I don’t think this career plan would pan out very well because I can’t even do my own make-up/nails properly never mind anyone else’s.

Next on the line of career goals was an actresses and to this day this dream is still going strong but in reality when faced with any rejection or criticism I just burst into tears. Seriously I would be useless on any reality TV programme. 

But back to the present and I am moving chunks of tree trunk, well I was about fifteen minutes ago right now I’m typing. If you asked if I ever expected in a million years that I would be carting wood to and fro in a wheel barrow I would have just laughed in your face. Neither would I have expected that a whole year after graduating university to still be living at home, unemployed and well on the way to becoming the forty year old virgin. Scratch that, I kind of thought that last one might have become a reality.

Yet enough about me, I’m sure that the poor child in Africa never expected that it’s parents would die of Aids and leave them to look after it’s younger siblings and the house or should I say mud hut at the ripe old age of six. The nearest source of water is 10 miles away and the water has to be carried the whole way in a bucket balanced on their head. Even though the water is filthy the children have no choice but to drink the infection and disease infested concoction. Meanwhile while the oldest is carrying the water back from the well his younger sister gets bitten by a mosquito and contracts malaria and dies before she can be transported to the hospital. Yes I’m sure that’s how the child expected that their life would turn out.

Hopes, dreams and expectations often go hand in hand and whilst you may want your life to pan out one way, in reality it rarely ever does. So what can we conclude from this post? 

LIFE SUCKS

The Perils of Costume Shopping

Today I speak to you dear reader over a foamy cup of vanilla latte whilst I recover from my ordeal at the costume hire.

You might well ask what I was doing at the local theatre's costume party so let me just give you all a bit of a background. At the end of the month my friend Sophie and I shall be volunteering at a Tudor feast and we will, of course, be dressing up for the occasion. I had initially thought of trying my hand at dress making and sewing my own: kirtle, (the dress bit) undergarments, bodice and all but then I remembered what I was like on a sewing machine. Suffice it to say that I am useless.

Hiring a costume was considered the safest option and in theory the simplest. All I had to do was stroll in find my costume, reserve it and walk out again. Alas nothing in life is ever easy. Cue me an hour and a half later hot and sweaty in the changing room with my arms stuck in a kirtle.

The theatre costumes are all made to measure so none of them have  any sizes listed. You literally have to try everything on in the vain hope that something...anything might fit.
However in the time spent over at the costume department I learnt that actors/ actresses or whatever the politically correct term is are all stick thin, I on the other hand am not.

With only ten minutes left before closing time and still no dress or skirt that actually fit in sight I hastily gathered up all the (too small) garments littering the changing room thinking that I will have to come back another day. I did however manage to locate the right size undergarments so if all else fails at least I can go to the feast in my petticoat.

Try, Try, Try Again

Further to yesterday’s post about the unforgiving nature of the job market I want to talk about how I have been trying to make myself more employable. I thought a great first step in this was to go get a degree but as I have found out that wasn’t really much help. Having a degree is the norm these days and few employers will even consider you if you haven’t got some letters to your name.

Secondly (here comes that magic word again) I tried to gain some experience in the working world. Yeah that was fun. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up in life even if that involves answering the phone and getting yelled at but there is nothing you can do because you are just the receptionist.

Another tactic that I have tried to make me more employable is to do a course that will broaden my skills. A wide variety of jobs out there are in web design and computing so I thought I know I’ll learn how to do that and then I can apply for those jobs. That was a mistake.

The online web design course that I’m trying to do is ‘Excel with Business’ and shall we just say that it isn’t going that well. The syllabus is divided in 18 different sections of which I have completed 7 and understood a grand total of zero. This my dear readers and friends has not been out of a lack of trying, I have read over the same PDF files maybe 5 times and I’m still none the wiser, I have tried all the practice sheets but as soon as they mentioned the difference between HTML and CSS I was completely and utterly lost. I have thought about just throwing in the towel and accepting the fact that web design is just one of those things that I cannot do (this list is getting quite long) but no I shall persevere even if it kills me.  As the well-known saying goes ‘if you at first do not succeed, try, try, try again’ and if that doesn't work sink your head into a pillow and scream.

Not all sunshine and daisies aka still unemployed

So it’s been an entire year since I graduated from uni and like the vast majority of graduates in this country and further afield I am unemployed. (big woop) As readers of this blog may know that is not because a lack of trying but let’s just say that it’s not been easy sailing. However with the job market being so over run with people looking for work and so few places I have often found that the odds are stacked against me. The vast majority of people have degrees these days….even if they are in Mickey Mouse subjects so employers may look in other area to find the right candidate and here I’m talking about the one word that every graduate dreads: EXPERIENCE

In a previous post (here’s the link) http://dinniethepooh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/we-regret-to-inform-you-that.html I concluded that job interviews are really just pot luck. 

Shall we examine the evidence that shows that luck is CLEARLY not in my court? (all these reasons are what I have concluded myself, for a list of what the actual interviewers said my shortcomings were see the link above)

1. I did not get a 2:1 (or higher) in my degree (I got a 2:2, two measly marks away from a 2:1 but evidently still not a hallowed 2:1) The minimum requirement it seems these days for a large variety of jobs is that you achieve a minimum of a 2:1 in a BA degree. However there is nothing really to say what subject the said degree should be in, of course it would make sense that you would have a degree in a similar topic to what job you were applying for. Nevertheless you could have got a second class degree, higher division degree in a very taxing subject or maybe have still gotten the same grade in a Mickey Mouse subject but a 2:1 is still a 2:1 which is seen to be better than a lower mark, even if the lower mark is 58 instead of 60.
2. I didn’t do a masters. So you’ve spent three long years of your life slaving away to get a piece of paper and once you have graduated and mumbled to yourself ‘I’m never doing that again’ you learn that the whole experience was not worth the time and effort because you don’t have a masters. I have lost count at the amount of job opportunities that I have not been able to go for because I didn’t do a further degree and write a 20,000 word essay. (That’s twice the amount a dissertation!)
3. I don’t drive. This is the point in the post where everybody stares at me like I am some sort of alien and asks ‘but it’s the 21^st century how can anyone survive without being able to drive’ I think that my potential employers may also have had thought this when they read my applications.
4. I don’t speak Welsh. I didn’t think that it would make any difference either but apparently if I wanted to take a job in visitor experience in Wales I’d have to speak Welsh.
5. And last but certainly not least is my favourite shortcoming of them all: experience. 

The job/experience cycle is one of the most head scratchingly confusing conundrums when it comes to job searching; you need to have experience to get a job but you need a job to get experience. However if this weren’t confusing enough you need to have relevant experience. So if say you wanted to apply for a managerial role you would have to have experience in management. If a bin man for example or someone with a completely unrelated job role woke up one morning and decide ‘I’m going to be a manager’ the odds are that they wouldn’t even get as far as an interview. Even if they had an impeccable CV with a 2:1 in (let’s say) English they would fall at the experience hurdle because the experience they have gained is not relevant.

Another point that I would like to pick up on (if I may) is about getting stuck in a rut. In the constant battle to gain experience so that we are able to strive for our goals are we not endangering ourselves in becoming stuck in dead end jobs or going down career paths that we never planned having got lost on our way to get the required experience it takes to get the job that we want. We might be wasting the talent of top managers by having them work as bin men!! We might never know, with the job market as it is these bin men may always end up working as bin men.