Top Fives I

I've just watched High Fidelity again and have decided that top fives are the way to go. To start here are the top five reasons why it's a total nightmare trying to find your way as a recently qualified graphic designer in London.

1. There are hundreds of thousands of you. You're in the pub - look around you. One out of every fifteen people there is a graphic designer (this rule may not apply in the Overdraft Tavern where at least twelve of them probably list their occupation as 'thug' or 'professional drunk').

2. Agencies won't touch you with a bargepole. Their clients pay them a fortune to hire someone with a videophone and shoes that cost more than your car who uses terms like 'interfacing' without giggling and strangles puppies for fun at the weekend. Probably.

3. Many, many people in London are wankers.

4. Without experience you can't get a job, without a job you can't get experience. Do you see the problem here? If you'd just take a damn look at my portfolio, if you'd just meet me and see how friendly and enthusiastic I am you wouldn't doubt for a second I can do your job. I can do the job!

5. Smallville. Ok, that's just a reason why I find it difficult to motivate myself to leave the telly and go hunt for jobs, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So here's the new gameplan - I'm going to take some mindless position, preferably in a nice shop selling nice things but probably behind a telephone for a couple of weeks until that comes along. Then I'm going to spend every spare second of my time printing out examples of my work and sending them to random companies whose designs I like. Then I'm going to use days off to tour design companies with my portfolio and be forcefully friendly to the reception staff until someone, even if it's the janitor, looks at it.

Give me two months. Then we'll think again.

More than Wads

At the weekend I visited 'The North'. I had never been before and was therefore a little wary of the possibility of it being 'grim'.


The weather was indeed so. I have yet to be convinced that it doesn't snow all year round. Dave tells tales of times when he has been 'sweltering', but if this is so I suspect it applies only to one freak afternoon of his childhood. Or perhaps 'sweltering' means something else up there. Like the innuit have a heap of words for snow, perhaps Dronfieldians employ a hundred unusual phrases for 'a bit bloody nippy'.

Fortunately, apart from the temperature, Dronfield is not grim. It is quite pretty, full of pubs and apparently populated by Dave's mates, cool looking old men and sexy young mums. Having enjoyed a little of all the above it was with a substantial hangover that we set off for the (un?)enviable task of nettle picking for a beersperiment. We were thwarted by the nettles, who stubbornly refuse to grow until spring. I don't blame them. So we headed to Castlesomething and drove around some peaks and then collapsed in front of the television.

It was a weekend of 'worst ever's on music television, the most objectionable of which was the 40 Worst Ever Number Ones in which American F-list nobodies slagged off the lyrical content of their least favourite chart toppers.

"You want me to blame it on the rain? Uhm heLLO! Take some responsibility"
"Is it me you're looking for? Ew, creepy"

We spent an enjoyable hour or two shouting abuse at them all, mostly because about half the songs weren't that rubbish. I find it very sad that anyone in this day and age can still hold anything against Mmbop. And Extreme did good harmonies. And I'm Too Sexy was ironic. Ok, I'm really sad.

Sunday night saw us haul our curry stained selves down to the local for live music and diplomatic negotiations. Chris Waddle's absence had driven Tetley to an alchohol-fuelled frenzy of dancing and heckling, leaving me, Dave and Wayne to build bridges between North and South, lad and lass, LH1 and PL11.

The ambassador for Crafthole donates a highly decorated traditional firemaking instrument to the people of LH1. Chris Waddle is not present.

On the bus home nobody speaks English and I fall asleep to the babble of a world of dialects mumbling into their mobiles. I arrive in London and it's bitterly cold. It's grim up everywhere.

Se7en

Wood has 'tagged' me with some questions.
Don't laugh, it's your go next.

Seven things to do
Get a design job before I run out of money, learn to forage for food and grow my own vegetables, learn Spanish and spend a few months in South America, volunteer for something, buy some space, write an album or novel or children's book or the like.

Seven things I can’t do
Drive, keep a tidy bedroom, wear nickel (I'm allergic you know), settle in one place for a long time, snowboard (but oh I want to learn now I've seen Colin Jackson having lessons as part of the Olympic coverage), bake a cake (or even light a gas oven), understand what's so good about Predator.

Seven things that attract me to my mate
Two of them would be his thighs, and one would be his ethics. I shan't put those in order of importance or tell you any more (I can't post things I haven't even told him) but there are lots more than seven.

Seven books I love
The dictionary, Ian McEwan's a child in time, Willie Russel's the wrong boy, Antoine de Saint Exupery's le petit prince, all my graphic design books whose names I can't remember because they're still on the way back from new zealand, JD Salinger's catcher in the rye, Big Willy's hamlet.

Seven things I say
"Have fun", "Yeah yeah yeah", "I want a goat and you can't eat it", "pint of guinness please and some bacon fries", "do be quiet you silly little man", "where have I put my cocking ...", "Shut up, I'm adorable".

Seven movies I’ve loved
Casblanca, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Bright Young Things, Dancer in the Dark, Withnail and I, O Brother Where art Thou.

Seven people to tag
Dan, Saz, Sharon (I assume someone's probably tagged her first though), Dave, Sue, Emily (start a blog Emmalou!), someone else. Now let's see who really reads this.