Misfits Mid-Life Crisis Adventures in East London, and Croydon (The NEXT Chapter).

Week 115 Saturday 27^th August until Friday 2^nd September 2016.

  A nice way to spend a Thursday morning.

This week’s blog was mainly written in Café Nero Reigate, after I had taken my nephew and niece to nursery.  After I had popped in to the local Sci-fi shop and bought a few old “Doctor Who” novels (I used to have the entire collection but that’s for another time).  After all of this I finally found myself in the coffee shop writing this rubbish.  Why do I mention this because this all took place on a Thursday morning?  A time I would normally be found sitting behind a desk in an office.  This week was the end of another chapter of my mid-life crisis.

    I called the 5th floor home until the middle of this week.

Since I returned from Africa in March I have been working in an office in Croydon.  The same one as I worked in last year, this meant there were no shocks when I walked in and remembered that it was a call centre.  This is a problem as I really hate telephones; I would actually go as far to say that I suffer from “telephonophobia”.  Maybe I should explain, in real life I hardly use the phone as a phone I would rather use smoke signals than speak in to the mouthpiece.  My problem is I sound so terrible over the phone and often get called the “wrong thing” (gender) which I won’t lie always hurts.  I freely admit to flicking the “V’s”, or muting the call and calling whoever is on the line something unpleasant.  I have really hated the last few months, there have been a number of times when I have really wanted to put the phone down pick up my bag and walk out never to return.  But I was brought back to reality by the colleagues around me and realising that I needed to earn a crust.

  These people kept me sane over the recent months.

Of course I realise that most jobs are stressful.  However I can only talk about the one I have been doing, which was very statistic driven we were expected to do a certain number of contacts (phone calls, letters/emails) per day, I actually thought it was 36 but recently I found out it was 40.  Every time I did a phone call or worked on an email I pressed a button which started a timer so that when I had completed the enquiry I knew how long it had taken.  I did cherry pick e-mails and letters to work on, this was because in the back of my mind I knew this ticking time bomb was counting the passing seconds and I didn’t want to get pulled up over the amount of work I had finished at the end of the day.  There were only a couple of occasions that it was mentioned by management that I had either not completed the required amount of work or my calls were taking too long.

  The metroplis that is Croydon.

As I mentioned earlier it was only because of the lovely people around me that I managed to stay the course.  I look forward to keeping in touch with Eileen, Jo, Mary, Jill, Colin and the lovely Rogers.  These people are really the only reason I kept my cool.  I never want to work in revenues again or a call centre ever again.

 The board of doom, informing us of how many angry people were waiting.

During my last day I didn’t care about the ticking clock or whether I had done the amount of work that was required.  In a strange way I enjoyed my day in fact at 4pm I was not in a rush to race out of the office as I normally did.  I did confuse a couple of people by the fact that I was still there at 4.01pm.

   Fun on the South bank, a little culture by the Thames.

Writing this while drinking a slightly expensive bucket of coffee in Surrey I have no idea what the next chapter of this Mid-Life Crisis has in store.  The first thing is to look for a job, in a perfect world I would love to be doing something creative.  But there is no such thing as a perfect world; I know my future is either in another office or a shop.  The creative side of me will never amount to anything I suspect, I will always be a frustrated, writer, comedian, painter, actor.  Whatever happens I have to remember the real goal, I want to return to Mozambique in January 2017.

    L to R, Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker, The Craze sound checking, then suited and booted for the performance.

In other news…..

Walking around Richmond on a sunny day with MOZ, I pointed out a shop and said “Muriel’s Kitchen that was a good film”.  MOZ looked at me disapprovingly and said while continuing to walk “That was Muriel’s Wedding”.

  Richmond on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

On a train a group of college boys were sitting talking about “boobs”, “girls” and “drinking”, I was sitting near them with headphones on.  Suddenly one squealed like a girl because of a flying insect as he jumped up to escape the menace.  This group might think they live a “Skins” life but they wouldn’t have made to the end of episode one.

The Mid Life Crisis Conts……

This week I have mainly been watching:   “Are You Being Served”, (2016).  “Black Books”, (Season 3, ep 1).  “Home From Home”, (BBC Pilot 2016).  “Horizon: Sports Doping-Winning At Any Cost”, (2015/16, eps 12).  “Lost Sitcoms:1, Till Death Do Us Part”, (2016).  “Monsters Inc”, (2001).  “NASA TV: Various Progs”.  “NASA TV: ISS Live, Spacewalk 195”, (01/09/16).  “National Theatre Live: One Man, Two Guvnors”, (28/08/16).  “Night Tube: The First Weekend”.  “Operation Ouch”, (Season 4, ep 7 & 8).  “Our Ex-wife”, (BBC Pilot 2016).  “People Just Do Nothing”, (Season 3, ep 3).  “Porridge”, (2016).  “Raised By Wolves”, (Pilot 2013).  “Ripper Street”, (Season 4, ep 1 & 2).  “Robot Wars”, (2016, eps 6).  “The Chronicles Of  Nadiya”, (ep 2).  “The Coopers vs The Rest”, (BBC Pilot 2016).  “The Great British Bake Off”, (Season 7, ep2).  “The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice”, (Season 3, ep 2).  The Out-Laws”, (Season 1, eps 7).  “The Wizard of Oz”, (1939).  “Tomorrows World”, (Season 22, TX 22/01/87 & Season 30, TX 23/01/95).      

This week I have mainly been listening to:  “Iain Lee: TalkRADIO (Bonus)”, (31/08/16).  “Iain Lee: TalkRADIO (Highlights)”, (26/08, 29/08, 31/08/16).  “Iain Lee: TalkRADIO (Live)”, (01/09/16).  “LBC Podcast: Mystery Hour”, (01/09/16).  “LBC Podcast: Nick Abbot (Mid-Week)”, (31/08/16).  ”LBC Podcast: Nick Abbot (Whole Show)”, (28/08, 02/09/16).  “The Angelos & Barry Show”, (12/12, 02/12, 25/11, 20/11, 12/11, 04/11, 28/10/14).  “Toby Hadoke’s Who’s Round”, (No 1, Jan 13) & (No2, Jan) & (No3, Jan 13) 7 (No4, Jan 13).  “Morrissey”, “MGMT”, “The Bangles”, “ABBA”, “Barry White”, “Nico”, “Jamie T”, “Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker”, “The Craze”, “Kasabian”, “The Divine Comedy”.