Peter Cribley Goes To A Job Interview

Clambering out of the car and into heavy traffic, I dodged between buses and tried to keep my tie straight. I was on my way to an INTERVIEW. A real one. As a peon for some marketing firm, as was my understanding. Using my incredible powers of comprehension, I had also come to the understanding that it would be door-to-door. Which is pretty much submitting oneself to the most degrading experiences outside of media or advertising or the well-paid end of the legal profession.

"Twat!" some bald passerby screamed in my face as I mounted the kerb, skipping merrily out of the way of some other bald chap's BMW. I nodded an affirmation, a cross between a shrug and a mumbled "Yeah, I know." The response? An angry glare.

Settling into step behind a rather portly polyester person, I realised that was my last opportunity to have gotten out of what was soon to turn out to be a suicide-mission. I could have made a violent scene, encouraging the pedestrian to stamp on my signing-on hand with gay abandon. I could have thrown myself under the efficient German cars that swayed in and out of the bus-lane. I could even have just inhaled very deeply and hoped a catalytic converter had failed, thus preventing me from talking (and, possibly, breathing).

Turns out Polyester Paul was going to the same interview. As were about thirty perspiring and twitchy looking business types, pulling their most sincere and earnest faces. Which made everyone look a little constipated.

A 40 inch TV blasted out Radio 1 and I got treated to the transition between Moyles discussing breasts and Cotton discussing Lady Gaga's non-existent penis. Meanwhile, a Norn Iron receptionist made her best audition for the last chapter of Ulysses. Everyone in the office was treated to everything to enter her head, up to and including: yellow paper, stickers, home and bargain shops, art store shops, shoe shops, shoes, pairs of shoes, immigration, a farm in Hull, a hypothetical farm in Norn Iron, the trouble with planes, her trouble with immigration, her trouble in Cyprus, her trouble with health insurance in Cyprus, the price of alcohol in Cyprus, cows, vegetarianism, her bedroom, her sheets, her housemates, her housemates using her bedroom and sheets, duvets, pasta, vinegar, X-Factor, Dara O'Brian, Mock The Week, whether anyone was doing anything fun later and the gradual corrosion of wear, tear and free-radical oxidisation that was gradually causing us all to wither, degrade and die.

You know, basic entropy talk, the aural equivalent of CJD designed to unravel the brain.

And then I was finally interviewed by Ben Laws, local representative of the rather ominously named Cobra Organisation (door-to-door footsoldiers for Bond Villains?). The following are things I didn't, but should certainly should have said:

- No, no. I quite understand that I don't fulfil your criteria. After all, they require and are in total, what? Three Cs at GCSE. And I didn't get any Cs. There's that pesky degree, for sure, but no Cs.

- What does the "Related Literatures" in "English and Related Literatures" encompass, you ask with a smirk? Well, SMARTARSE, Norse. Islendsk. Some Irish. Basically. Want some more? Like translated French texts? Or would you like me to detail the fascinating irregular properties of Old Icelandic? No. Then shut up.

- Yes, it does turn out I already knew your name. Because I did online research and now know more about your parent company's concerns than you do. Because I'm clairvoyant.

- What am I doing later? Going to another job interview somewhere better. Alright, so that was a lie but what do you care?

- Yeah, you just go on and write a big old "UNEMPLOYED" in that box where I wrote out myprevious experience. I don't mind.

- You want me to write out again by hand the CV I brought with me already? Uhm. No.

- No, I'm sorry. I can't be a "Human Commercial TM" since that would mean being a door-to-door salesman and I'm not ready to be Willy Loman just yet.

- (Addendum) I've read Death of a Salesman. Know how it ends? He dies.

- All things considered, this job would actually be a significant step down for me and I was already so low I was considered the ground the pay-ladder rested on in the first place. Why am I applying? Why do humans do anything: desperation, fear and sweaty shame.

Instead, I mumbled confidently about debate experience and a can-do attitude and told him I'd get back to him, but then left a "...but probably not" as a parting shot.

Less than an hour later, I felt dishevelled and filthy. But at least I'd gotten a second day of wear out of my funeral clothes.

In Heaven, Everything is Fine. You Got Your Good Thing...

... and I've got mine.

London was a barrel of Thai-flavoured, rum-sodden laughs, and morbid to boot. Death has made itself my companion, but in a sort of jokey, friendly way: think Final Destination meets Garden State*. While kicking about the remora towns of Southend, waiting for a bus, a hearse balances on a cannon and pulled by four black horses paraded past. It was evidentally some deceased policeman making the most of a bad day in the pimpingest style available, but he could only afford two riders for the four steeds so the progress got a little off-kilter. Later in the day, helping pick a cousin up from some no doubt Grange-Hill-esque black-eye shenanigans, I saw someone graffiti up a memorial.

The Smoke was no escape. Commuters were mislaid, dismayed and delayed when a fellow went Underground in order to lose the game. In the Good Mixer, making a rather awful mix of flu medication and alcohol, further tales of somewhat indirect death abounded. Other family conversations were equally cheerfully moribund:

"Your uncle is an alcoholic again. That's why he sleeps on your Nan's couch."

"Is that why I saw him eating Nan's apple-sauce surpise through a straw? What set that off, then?"

"Well, I can tell what DIDN'T set it off: his ex-wife having cancer."

As for the actual service, it was quite utterly perfect, enough to make me re-consider Catholicism seeing as how the funerals are always pretty damn epic. Free Funeral Firm For Friends. An operatic singer. You'll Never Walk Alone accidentally left on repeat and about 48 bars of Tina Turner's Simply The Best. And, of course, a free bar in the heart of Greenwich whereupon the stereotypical Cockney gangster rubbed shoulders with the Guinness-swilling priest and the long-haired poncey rum-sloshed interloper.

Then, two days later, a totally different uncle had a heart-attack. On my grandmother's 81st birthday.

Apparently, this is genetically hard-wired. Hurry up, medical science: I came with a sell-by date.


Next? Peter Cribley Goes To A Job Interview. In His Funeral Suit. Glee.

* Two pretty dire films, admittedly, though it does provide one delicious image: Zach Braff being murdered by an ineffable design in a variety of inventively gory ways.

So far in terms of ailments, aside from failing to find employment, my laptop has broken (precluding further updates) and my neighbours have decided that their new house won't be complete until we are broken shells of human beings with only tinnitus for comfort. So I'm almost relishing the chance to go to London for a few autumnal days, if only to escape the din.

Last night, they were drilling into the wall connecting to my room for about six hours. They finished around 12, but probably only because their power-tools needed charging. I'm starting to get the impression that we now live next to meth-riddled home-improvement addicts, twisted on crank and obsessed with wall fittings. They've built a BALCONY, f'r Christ's sake. Overlooking a meagre back-garden, the decaying remains of a tennis pavilion and their other neighbours gargantuan and ungainly wooden decking (built with enough timber to repair the Mary Rose).

To escape this situation, and avoid Poe-esque nightmares informed by the noise of circular saws, drill bits and the beeping of pipe-finding apparatus, I'm diving off to the Smoke for a few days. A peculiar reversal of the last episode of season two of Black Books. And for what delightful task? What could possibly be a more glee-filled way to avert the encroaching winter grey?

Why, a funeral of course. Some relative or other whom I probably never had the pleasure to meet is to be buried somewhere in Greenwich.

I'm still chipper and counting my blessings, but I'm yet to think of a more grim reason for a holiday.

Oh, alright: subsidence, asylum...there are plenty. But they don't all require you to be clean-shaven and nattily dressed.

So many pop-culture references, so little life.

You know Gilmore Girls? That hideous liberal-agenda Capra-fest that saw me through the darkest afternoons of uni? There's a reason it ends with Rory'sEnglish Literature graduation. An episode set in the midst of the early days of the current crisis (which one? Financial, probably. Hard to keep track these days), Rory ends her time in university, goes to her home town and makes a pledge to follow Barack Obama on the campaign trail, like a cutesy Hunter S.. Real journalism can come later, she says. There's always time.

If there was a follow-up episode, we'd see her arrive at the press table and then get told that her job didn't exist, having been handed to someone with less qualifications but who was already in the game. Then she would have gone home, over-eaten and started paying parental rent (parent-rent-al?) by painting local fences.

Wait, that last sentence was about me.

Anyway, everything has gone all Tom Sawyer, yet again. Expect a mad-lib version of my covering letter soon. Why? Because I've been typing, like, three a day and have forgotten how to write anything else...

Berlin

The ultimate stop in this saga of sojourns European was Berlin. Berlin is a city that, upon arrival, makes you very immediately aware of how harshly the Allies stomped on it at the end of that film Downfall based upon that brief skirmish sometime during the mid-20th century. There are still bulletholes in the Brandenberg Gate, but that was apparently more of a 1920's thing (Freikorps, Communists, people who liked taking potshots at historical monuments).

It has a well-deserved reputation for never-ending events which makes the public transport even more impressive. This is by comparison to the six night services that used to take me home in Liverpool which no longer exist. More Liverpool comparisons abound: Berlin has a club/bar called Magnet which was once a "Jazz-Hole". Liverpool has a club/bar called THE Magnet. It used to be a jazz-hole, too. Due to the vicious stomping, both cities have an architectural mash-up that make a mockery of the human retina. Both are on the verge of media developments that will eventually destroy any hint of a soul that either city has. And both cities have a population who pronounce book "bu-CKH".

The Templehof airport once fired Nazi planes like winged sperm into a fertile sky, but now is owned by fashion designers who rent it out for festivals. I am now convinced that the best way to rescue and re-imprint such a place is festivals. Festivals and orgies. And bitching tattoos, which every resident of Berlin seems to be born with.

The gulf of difference between East and West Berlin is quite noticeable and can be summarised thus: the East has all the interesting stuff (squatters, art, culture, a massive TV tower, museums, Hitler's car park/bunker) and Charlottenberg is basically a giant shopping centre. While the East was messing people around and squashing human rights, the forces of capitalism conspired to appear more appealing by making marble monstrosities with no cohesive architectural theme or discernible character.

Gigantic edifices designed to emphasise political superiority aside, Berlin is a creative hub. You know this because the place is filthy with graffiti. In a good way. Probably. Also, people emerge from behind corners/out of windows/the sewers to remind you. And really, they can't be faulted for their desperation. Clinging onto a collective identity that hasn't yet been co-opted will no doubt become more and more difficult as the strange ride that is Berlin rolls on through more and more world crises.

Also, hyper-active metal detectors and hyper-tight airport security for a city with a relatively relaxed police force. True.

Bruges/Brussels/Belgium

Dear Lord. Where to start with Belgium? Belgium is the death of the soul. The dulling of the senses and the sapping of the spirit. In 2001, Belgians consumed more paper per person than anywhere else on the planet. How? I'm guessing in the form of subscriptions to junk mail and the King James Bible (which is, in itself, just another form of junk mail I suppose). Belgium has no official language and, for a short period of time and up until recently, no official government.

Bear all of this in mind. These are FACTS. They form the basis of an opinion, sure, but we are being objective here in the observation that Belgium is beyond redemption. Where in the northern Dutch states (the Netherlands) they embraced humanism and capitalism and independence from Spain, in Belgium they willingly threw themselves under the wheels and heels of Catholic Spain embracing bureaucracy and paperwork.

Also, Bruges is the worst city in the world to have a hangover. A series of churches peel with bells every five minutes in a variety of four-minute long folk songs. ALL. THE. TIME.

And it is oh-so possible to get a hangover in Bruges, a city the sights of which can be seen in twenty-five minutes. There's a type of beer with "gold" standard which indicates a 10% super-strength. Then, somehow, they invented ULTRA-strength 12% beer and were stuck with precious metals so it ended up being "platinum". The IRONy of this being that precious-metal beer is only drunk by the four tramps of Bruges who are daily run out of town. Also, there are two bars that serve the rather repressed youth population of Bruges and never seem to close.

That's everything there is about Bruges. Oh, there's a bell tower. Obviously.


As for Brussels? Brussels develops as a headache that comes on with the slow grace of an unfolding piece of crumpled paper. As the train pulls in to the more urban areas, one feels nothing but the bleak depression that one is in Brussels. Some ultra-Catholic hangover means that everywhere is shut on a Saturday, a Sunday and even a Monday. Upon leaving on the Tuesday, I noted a few galleries had opened, swamped beyond capacity with tourists looking for something to look at. The centre of Europe scarcely unified in wealth, military paranoia and petty squabbling. As a result, there aren't so many beggars in Brussels but a higher than average number of street drunks (judging by the evidence beneath every bench).

Two transport issues. Firstly, for the location of the headquarters for the EU and NATO, airport security is incredibly lackadaisical. The passport booths weren't even manned and a security official looked genuinely surprised as I proffered my passport upon ingress to my flight.

Secondly, the underground rail system in Brussels has been recently renovated. This seems to have gone underway and been entirely conducted from planning, development and final implementation without any regard whatsoever to the aesthetic. Or, Brussels breeds rapid, efficient, clean, sparsely populated and exceedingly ugly trains. Brown and grey are the twin colours that saturate every item attached to the underground, except for one station where there is something scrawled in black marker on the white tiles. At first glance, you'd think it a rather hurried and unfinished piece of nondescript graffiti but closer inspection reveals that this is, in fact, the name and motif of the station.

Apart from this tedious exception, they are all identical. This fact sums up the whole of Brussels twisted mess of concrete and disdain for those mortals cursed with functioning vision.

Two positives? I found a vinyl shop. There was some hardcore. But not a lot. And there was a Japanese restaurant that served excellent sushi in fascinating surroundings. It announced itself as all things J-wards, from tip to top. I suspect, however, that the owners and staff were Korean, judging by the T.V.

The airport is adorned with Tintin. They WORSHIP him in Belgium. And, if you've ever read the adventures of Tintin, you'll know that he spent most of his time trying to get the hell out. His first adventure saw him traverse and infiltrate the iron curtain on a severely under-equipped whim rather than stay in Brussels. Certain death held no fear for him or Snowy when he considered the world he'd left behind.

And as for my escape? Berlin.

Interdlewd

New and USED? Shudderful.