Friday, October 20, 2006

This Is The News

Bit voyeuristic, this..... but I typed this email to my friend Andy and realised it made rather a good blog entry.

Kind of had to mention it was a email first, otherwise Andy, upon checking the site may start to think I had taken to replying by simply copying and pasting blog entries into return emails.

Which of course would have been very lazy.

Anyway, I have edited it down, removing all the private chat and compromising information and have left you with the important news:



This is a long email. Go and get a mint tea. Or a smoothie. Whatever you Londoners drink these days.

Apologies for lack of comm. Things at this end have been er...busy. More on that later. (Who Am I, Moira Stewart?)

Speaking of Kristy, I her emailed her to ask her if she remembered that one of the last things she ever said to us was that we could look her up anytime.

She was as sunny as ever and emailed back in 18 minutes.

"Hi Phil,Long time no hear. Glad to hear you made it to Tokyo. That is great news!!good on you! How is andy? Has someone else moved in after you left? Didyou finally find a replacement for me!! :)

I will probably still be in Sydney. You definately have to come and visit me if you make it over here. I now have an english guy living here, he just moved in. Cant seem to get away from them!! heheh just joking!!!"


This brings me on to my last point. I am handing in my notice. Number of reasons.

The hours are making me ill. I know, know. I am a gay, you are rock and roll etc.

But this 6 day a week malarkey is ridiculuous. Last month I had 3 six day weeks and two days holidays taken from me for "training".

This month was meant to be easy. And I've already had one of my days taken off me. I haven't had more than two days off in a row since the first weekof August. And 90pc of them have been floating isolated days.

Never mind, I thought. I'll book a week off in November. Literally, as I was thinking this, a fax was buzzing its way out of the machine. It said"no more days booked off until Christmas - by order of the management".

I can't tell you how knackered I was on Wednesday. Actually I can. I had to drink three cups of McDonald's rocket-fuel coffee just to function. Needless to say the next day (yesterday) I didn't know what day it was (soit might not have been yesterday after all).

Called in sick two days on the trot, legitimately I might add, because I was totally exhausted. Don't have time to do anything, or see anyone. Would like to get to meetsome local women, but too knackered, could only see them once, maybe a max of twice a week.

All this for 14k a year? No fucking thankyou. I know this wasn't meant to be a holiday, but I didn't think it would be the Burma Railway either. I could be earning 14k for doing far, far less.

As I see it, I've nearly done here. I've walked down their streets, eaten their food, watched their TV, spoke to countless people about their lives, been up some towers, travelled on some futuristic transport, visited some temples, seen Mt Fuji at sunset and learned one of their alphabets. The easy one obviously.

I've just dinged a bell and gone "OK. Next"

Am now going to extricate myself ASAP. Come back to England, recuperatefor about for a month. Then go to Oz, or NZ or Canada in the New Year.What do you know of Montreal or Vancouver?

On a completely different subject I have now seen three episodes of the new series of Extras on YouTube. I deem them to be of a very high quality.Much better than the first series. But a real big nod to Curb Your Enthusiasm with the whole self-referential, is-it-the-real-me-or-is-it-not type stuff.

That is all

Please reply.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, big step. So are you going to come home on the train like I just did?