I forgot to tell you the highlight of my time in Canada. One day whilst walking past Cowboys, Calgary’s most truly heinous and horrible bar (to wit: if any of the barmaids want a boob job, the company will pay half. No joke. Talk about a medical plan), I happened to glance at the sign advertising upcoming events. The following three acts were listed and, as far as I could tell, would be playing on the same night: MC Hammer, Vince Neil, and a former member of Styx (whose name escapes me because Christ, who cares?). What a spectacular and terrifying lineup of pathetic, shamefaced, washed-up hacks! Ideally there should have been a hawker outside the bar encouraging passers-by to come see the freakshow. “SEE! The one-hit rap star who squandered his fortune on fancy cars and extremely large trousers! SEE! The horrible monster who ate the rest of Motley Crue! SEE! Uh, some guy from Styx! Two bits a gander! Three bits if you want to poke Vince Neil with a stick when he passes out!”
Excellent.
Last night I went to my very first football match! Queens Park Rangers vs. Leeds – I’m fond of QPR for no rational reason besides the fact that they’re underdogs from northwest London (just like me!), but SiC was VERY upset when I cheered for them as he is a rabid Leeds supporter (for no rational reason at all that I can discern – he’s certainly not from Leeds, thank god). (Just kidding! Leeds is great! Go Leeds! I don’t want a divorce!) We even got to watch the match from a box, thanks to a very generous associate of SiC’s, carefully keeping our contraband beers well away from the glass to ensure the Hoi Polloi didn’t see us drinking and start a riot. It was all very exciting, and the match was great, though I’ve watched football on TV so much that every time something exciting happened I automatically expected to see a replay. “Could you do that again please, Mr Healy? And then in slow motion and from a different angle? Ta.”
So I’ve started my new job, nominally at least. I showed up on Monday in my ‘grown-up professional lady’ costume, complete with button-up blouse and high heels, two of my most loathed fashion constrictions. Every once in a while I imagine that since I’ve become older I’ve somehow magically inherited the female ability to walk in high heels. But every time I put my hypothesis to the test, the result is not so much ‘model on runway’ and very much ‘Bambi on ice’. Drunk Bambi on ice. Last Thursday I braved Oxford Street for three hours and came home with a totally fierce pair of mary jane wedge heels. So very cute! So very not-painful in the thirty seconds I wore them in the store! But oh, SO VERY VENGEFUL AND CRUEL! By the end of my shift yesterday I’d given up hope of walking gracefully and was simply trying to maintain forward momentum, with only partial success; by the time I got home my toes looked and felt like they’d been pummelled with a meat tenderiser.
At least the job is OK. Except wait…hang on…no, no it isn’t. When I arrived Monday morning, I waited in reception for ten minutes before being collected by a bored-looking woman. In the elevator, conversation went as follows:
“So you’re Irish?”
“Canadian, actually.”
“Ah.”
[long pause]
“So did the agency tell you about the organisation or the kind of work you’ll be doing?”
“Unfortunately no – they didn’t give me much information.”
“Ah.”
[long pause]
Then she showed me to my desk and gave me some handover notes to read, and that was pretty much that. Nobody seemed to have any idea what to do with me. I read the company’s annual report for a while (flinching visibly when I came across the so-called word ‘incentivising’) and spent the last two hours of my shift correcting the grammar in my handover notes. Since then, I’ve done a bit of filing and made a table in Word. My skills, they are sorely tested!
On the plus side, the office overlooks the Thames, which is a bonus since I think I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few weeks staring blankly out the window.