No Compassion Without Suffering...

How much change can you deal with?

2007-07-01T08:57:00.000+01:00

Time for my roughly bi-annual update. A great deal has transpired.

Since my last entry here I have had three months off from the Outreach job with stress and decided not to return to it for the sake of my prolonged health and sanity. Tellingly, after the first month of resting at home, the problem with my shoulder pretty much sorted itself (although a lot of thanks should go to the ladies providing sports injury massage and physiotherapy). I do feel that stress levels and constantly tight shoulder and back muscles played a big part in my prolonged problem though.

A bit of background about what led to such insanely high stress levels:
In the middle of last year my (now ex-) organisation were on the verge of bankruptcy so they 'merged' with a much larger organisation. In this process there was a re-think in terms of job structures and it was found that we had too many people for too few posts. The solution to this was to jettison everyone on a temporary contract. The Outreach team work on a yearly rolling contract for Bristol City Council, renewable depending on targets being met. My contract had just been renewed so I was spared by two days. The rest of the team, however, didn't have a full year's service and were ditched. The manager decided that enough was enough and found another job too. Two team members left immediately, finding other jobs or training, which left me and one colleague who stayed to the end of his contract. We were joined by two fill-in staff who were very dedicated and professional, and we had a fill-in manager who was quite hands-off, filling two roles at the time.

I already considered my organisation to be piss poor in terms of providing support for staff in an obviously difficult and stressful role, and the way my colleagues were discarded made my mind up about having to eventually move. The team (apart from me) had all initially received letters stating that their positions were safe and they shouldn't worry. Two days later they received letters saying "Ah. There's been a rethink..."
The other problem I had was that I knew who the new manager was going to be. A very different prospect from the old boss, whose consideration and support for her staff team were what kept me there for so long. The new boss was not, to quote The Who, "Same as the old Boss". The words 'arse' and 'broom handle' are involved here.

There were other elements involved in my decision to leave. The job was only superficially about providing support for Bristol's homeless population. The Government handed lists of statistical targets to the Council who passed them on to us. Unrealistic expectations created by a complete lack of knowledge of what is going on at ground level. That old chestnut. Our brief from the Council was "to keep the number of visible rough sleepers below double figures". This is a cosmetic exercise, designed to stop the City looking shabby and the tramps scaring away potential shoppers bringing revenue into the city. Many of the clients, in my opinion, constitute an entire lifetime of work and support, not ten minutes to fill in a form with them and then shovel them into a hostel they're not ready for.
A rehab clinic was proposed in Clifton Village (posh bit of Bristol) and several of the residents polled said "why don't they put it in the city center where those kinds of people and problems are?" I could have shown them where all of Clifton's rough sleepers are, and a couple of dealer's flats too. Needless to say, the clinic is not being built.

When we moved office last year we had to ditch a load of old client files, and some of the names went back over a ten year period. The same people stuck in the same cycles over and over, with staff setting up the same support with the same deficiencies, failing to target the real problems due to a lack of effective communication between the organisations involved, or just a dodgy approach to the problem in the first place. It takes a MASSIVE amount of patience and an equally MAHOOSIVE amount of optimism to keep doing the same work with the same person over and over, hoping that it will one day stick and the client will be able to move forward with their life. It also takes excellent support for the staff to stay sane.

I had a revelation while chilling the fuck out. Picture a Buddhist Priest in old Japan/China, wandering down a country lane in his orange robes and carrying his staff with little jingly bells on the end. He comes across a village in which several of the young men are being unruly and creating nuisances for the villagers. The priest walks up to the young men, jingles his bells, mutters a prayer and then beats the shit out of them with the non-jingly end of his stick. "Get in there and clean that floor you ungrateful bastards! You will work for your food!" Etc.
Now I'm not saying that I'm advocating beating homeless people with sticks, but in my experience you can lavish all of the attention, patience and care on a person that you can manage and it will do absolutely nothing, in some cases making the problem worse. It takes a lot of insight into each client to get a good understanding of what will work on an individual basis. Different things work for different people and some people need a good metaphorical (and in one or two specific cases physical) slap to get them to see things from a different perspective. There are programmes in the US that use shock tactics, cathartic experiences, to get the clients to start the process of change. The UK is reluctant to adopt these methods. I think it's because the people who are caring generally don't have that nasty streak in them required to put someone through a cathartic experience. They might spill their coffee down their cardigan.

An idea that I have chucked around since I first got into the business is to do a counselling course. Now is the time. I'm hoping that the qualification will allow me to continue to work in a support role but in a much more controlled and productive environment. The key difference to the Outreach job is that people involved in counselling have to actively engage in the process for it to work. They have to want to be there.
I'm ninth on the waiting list for the course at the University of the West of England. Not very promising. However, I'm also applying for a place on the new counselling Foundation Degree course run by Bristol Uni, so fingers crossed.
So, how to support myself for the three years either course would run for? I'm applying for another hostel job... This one, however, is run by a different organisation, has only 20 beds with plenty of staff, and they tend to 'cherry pick' their clients to ensure that they're getting people who are motivated to move forwards and get on with life. The manager may well be willing to work out the rota to give the day off per week that I'll need. It does mean weird shifts again, but if I get my counselling qualification I can move on to better things. I may do a Stress management diploma and a massage course too. Isn't it all wonderful and fluffy?

My fuck-nut stress-out happened just after my birthday in march, and I had received 'In Praise of Slow' which I proceed to read. Slowly. My aim is to adopt as slow and stress-free a lifestyle as I can manage without winning the lottery. This slow living thing is very Italian, and given my genetics it's no wonder it appeals so much.

My brother emigrates to New Zealand today. I miss him enormously already. However, I'm glad he's getting out of here. He's going to be teaching over there and I think the prospect is much happier than the thought of continuing to struggle against yet another bullshit nonsupporting system here. He's quite an old-fashioned chap and I think the 1960s time warp that is NZ will suit him well. I've impressed upon him the importance of maintaining a slow-living mindset. Damn I miss him. I hope I can get the cash together to visit soon. If I get enough holiday I might try to fit in a side trip to see dataphage in Oz too.

Bob and I jointly own mum and dad's old house here and so we're splitting the rent 50/50. This gives me a small financial buffer with which to pursue a slower lifestyle (although, for Bob's sake if he reads this, I will be saving as much of it as I can, due to things like leaky roofs and exploding boilers).

The life plan is there, it's just putting all the pieces together and making it work. That's the next bit. Maybe I should have a talk to a counsellor? To be continued...

Did I mention? I really miss my Bro.

Twitch twitch. Squirt.

2007-01-31T09:06:00.000Z

I just had to post this at it amused me so much. I was in (ptui) Ikea recently, and after going partially mad from lack of natural sunlight and sensory overload I partook of one of their delightful hot dogs. In the elevator on the way down to the car park a militant veggie teenager was berrating her parents, who had also had a hot dog each.
" You know that it's minced up pig's eyes and trotters and testicles don't you?" The strained expressions on the parents faces were glorious. I couldn't help myself and muttered "Mmm. Hog fat." She turned and looked at me. I then said " If you minced up a human and stuck it in the pig's trough, the pig really wouldn't care. The mafia used to get rid of people like that." Luckily the lift doors opened at that point and I legged it. Teehee.

Limp. Rattle. Limp. Rattle.

2007-01-31T08:48:00.000Z

This Blog is not yet dead. Limping badly and having severe breathing problems, mind you, but not yet dead. Time is very abstract indeed at the moment and I either don't have enough of it to post or haven't got the headspace left at the end of the day.
Work is arse-clenchingly bad and whilst I'm assured that my job is safe (my contract had been renewed two days before the 'merger' was announced) the jobs of my colleagues are not. This means that very shortly I will probably be supporting an entirely new team and a new manager and trying to get everyone up to speed. If I fail, the statistics drop and we face losing the contract with the council. To be honest, I don't trust my employers as far as I can shit, and am looking for alternative employment anyway. Hopefully something rather less stressful so that my health might improve a bit.
This Blog will twitch again shortly.

Pictures

2006-09-03T19:07:00.000+01:00

I'm still organising photos from Disney and Japan. Jebus, there's a lot of them. I'm managing to find the odd hour here and there but it's going to be a while before I can make them available for people to see. But don't worry, I'll get there in the end.

We're moving to new offices at work, which is nice. I'll have my own desk, and will no longer be stationed above the Day Centre. We're not letting the insane clients know where we are and will go and find them instead. This means that they are much less likely to try to kick our front door in, which provides for a much less stressful workplace. The company is being merged with a bigger one, so I'll (hopefully) be getting a raise too. All good.

We have the technology

2006-08-10T15:31:00.000+01:00

I've recently bought one of those "Guide to Blogging for the hopeless dumb-ass" type of books. Hopefully this means that when I get back from my ten days in Japan I'll be able to post pictures, add links, and generally get over my feeling of Blogging inadequacy. I'll also post stuff about the Disney trip, which I'll probably have to break up into installments. My girlfriend just finished putting 1266 photos into albums. And that's not all of them yet...

Where was I?

2006-04-09T10:56:00.000+01:00

Ah yes, stress relief

My girlfriend works for a financial company and during the run up to the end of the tax year she putting in some ridiculous hours - 7:30 am to 9:00 pm. As a result she wasn't eating or sleeping properly. She was also unable to take any annual leave during March. At all. Getting a day off for her Grandmother's funeral was not made easy.
One evening she got home at around 8:30 pm and I mentioned that I thought I still owed her some money for rent, food, etc. She went loco. She started chucking her bank statements all over the lounge and shouting about how she would never get any peace or rest, etc. It took a while to calm her down. Then I asked her if there was anyone at her workplace with whom we could discuss stress issues. It turns out that her company's HR department consists of one person, who is a member of the board... Not ideal really.

I was going to trawl through various stress management websites and try to encapsulate what they're on about, but I just couldn't be bothered. Some of it really is just bollocks. Here's a fairly comprehensive list of stress sign from www.mentalhelp.net :

Psychophysiological responses--muscles tight or aching, nervous tics like in the eyelid, hands unsteady, restlessness, touching yourself repeatedly, clearing your throat, frequent colds, pain, upset stomach, sweating, skin problem or itch, stiff posture, holding things tightly, strong startle response, headaches, high blood pressure, ulcers, heart disease, colitis, hemorrhoids, rashes, diarrhea, or frequent urination. These are somatoform disorders.
Behavioral-emotional signs--hyperactivity, walking or talking faster, in a hurry, irritation with delays, panicky, blushing, getting tongue-tangled, avoiding people, nervous habits (strumming fingers, eating, smoking, drinking), changing habits (becoming less or more organized), poor memory, confusion, stumbling over words, inattentiveness, excessive worrying, preoccupation with a certain situation, holding a grudge, irritability, crying, obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, outbursts of emotions, bad dreams, apathy, etc. These are anxiety reactions.
Tiredness and lack of energy--general lack of interest, bored, watching TV and falling asleep, humorless, sleeping a lot, insomnia, can't get going, sighing, and moving slowly. (Or, sometimes, too much energy, as mentioned above.)
Anxiety intrudes on our consciousness or cognition in many ways: excessive preoccupation with the threatening person or situation, a desperate striving to understand why someone behaved the way they did, repeatedly obsessing about the upsetting event, unstoppable pangs of emotion (loss, anger, jealousy, guilt, longing, etc.), excessive vigilance and startle reactions, insomnia and bad dreams, aches and pains and other unwanted sensations. Plus all the words mentioned above in the introduction that reflect the subjective feelings we have, including nervous, up tight, scared, apprehensive, etc.

Here's some stuff with a bear in it at www.teachhealth.com:

Which of these is stress?

You receive a promotion at work.
Your car has a flat tire.
You go to a fun party that lasts till 2:00 a.m.
Your dog gets sick.
Your new bedroom set is being delivered.
Your best friend and his wife come to stay at your house for a week.
You get a bad case of hay fever.
All of the above.

ALL OF THESE ARE STRESS

If you are used to thinking that stress is something that makes you worry, you have the wrong idea of stress. Stress is many different kinds of things: happy things, sad things, allergic things, physical things. Many people carry enormous stress loads and they do not even realize it!

WHAT IS STRESS?

We are all familiar with the word "stress". Stress is when you are worried about getting laid off your job, or worried about having enough money to pay your bills, or worried about your mother when the doctor says she may need an operation. In fact, to most of us, stress is synonymous with worry. If it is something that makes you worry, then it is stress.

Your body, however, has a much broader definition of stress. TO YOUR BODY, STRESS IS SYNONYMOUS WITH CHANGE. Anything that causes a change in your life causes stress. It doesn't matter if it is a "good" change, or a "bad" change, they are both stress. When you find your dream apartment and get ready to move, that is stress. If you break your leg, that is stress. Good or bad, if it is a CHANGE in your life, it is stress as far as your body is concerned.

Even IMAGINED CHANGE is stress. (Imagining changes is what we call "worrying".) If you fear that you will not have enough money to pay your rent, that is stress. If you worry that you may get fired, that is stress. If you think that you may receive a promotion at work, that is also stress (even though this would be a good change). Whether the event is good or bad, imagining changes in your life is stressful.

Anything that causes CHANGE IN YOUR DAILY ROUTINE is stressful.

Anything that causes CHANGE IN YOUR BODY HEALTH is stressful.

IMAGINED CHANGES are just as stressful as real changes.

Fuck me. There's no escape from insidious bastard stress. There's even 'good' stress.

I'm trying to work out, keep a healthy diet, and do all the other things that are supposed to keep you healthy and happy. It's bloody hard work. Quite stressful, in fact. Most people in the UK seem to use booze to manage their stress, some more successfully than others.

My work still being rather stressful (like when a rather confused and angry fellow tried to get into our office by smashing a large hole in our front door with a slab of concrete), I'm grateful for a boss who can tell when I'm getting stressed out and who will take me out of the office for a coffee, and discussion about the situation. I had a chat with her the day after dealing with my girlfriend wigging out, as I was rather distressed by it all.

I've been seeing a chiropracter about my shoulder. I still can't decide: either he's on the level and very good at what he does, but my shoulder is so knackered it won't fix anytime soon; or he's learned a few parlour tricks and is suckering me into paying off his mortgage. My mum said he was very good and I think he is actually quite professional and knows what he's doing. But when you're stuck with constant pain and the stress it causes, you just want it to go away. After nine sessions it's a lot better, but it's not fixed. Bah.

I can't afford to see him at the moment anyway, after the recent trip to Disney Florida. Anyone who knows me - Yes, Disney. In Florida. I'll tell you about it in the next blog.

Load another dolly into the pram-based howitzer

2006-01-17T16:47:00.000Z

Stress is a very unpleasant thing. I know when I'm suffering from it because my eyes become very sore. And my eyes have been stinging for about three weeks straight. Essentially a very high-stress job has gotten on top of me, resulting in my last rather AAAARRRRGGGGHHH post. I will still be taking a while between posts I suspect, as I still feel completely exhausted and want to investigate cause(s).

After a nice chat with my boss I have discussed ways of preventing stress build up, which has already made me feel better. I also feel spurred on to investigate stress more closely, and you will hopefully see my findings in my next post.

Here endeth the Blog

2006-01-14T23:42:00.000Z

I can't be arsed with this any more. Whether I do any more in the future will depend on if I feel any less exhausted during my free time than I have done over the last however many months.

I feel low quite often, especially during the winter months. The reason I do the job that I do, a job that most people tell me they would be unable to do and don't know how I manage it, is that I can identify closely with feeling vulnerable, lost, depressed and many of the other feelings associated with my client group. I am not trained in counselling, housing support, or any of the other skills I need to do the job. Counsellors and shrinks have their own counsellors and shrinks. I don't. My employers probably feel it would be too much of a financial burden to actually look after their staff. Our training budget, per head, for the whole of 2005 was £60. That's one-third of a day of training in total.
I was using the blog as a forum to try and write about and explore my state-of-mind whilst engaging in quite a head-fuck job. To get home from work feeling like I really need to hit something quite hard and then have to sift through needlessly rude comments to my posts. Well. I just don't need the added stress.

I think that most people don't want to know about life's under-belly anyway. The council pay me and my colleagues, not to help the homeless down-and-outs, but to keep their 'visible numbers' at 10 or less. 10 or less. For fuck's sake. You should see how many people use the day centre during the week. What it's really all about is Joe public not wanting to be bothered by them whilst out shopping. Selfish, consumer cunts. The gulf between the haves and have-nots widens every day, and most people couldn't give a fuck so long as they are in the 'have' category. You think the street homeless are scum? How many have you actually spoken to? How much of the picture are you actually seeing? One of my most recent new contacts used to make up to £1000 per week as a manager of various hospital departments. He got attached to a girl with a habit, which he helped her feed until he lost his family, his job, and everything else. I'm trying to help him rebuild his life, starting with a roof over his head. It could be you next. Try to remember that from time to time.

Fecking OOOOWWWWWW!!!!

2005-12-08T18:51:00.000Z

I've just had a piece of my ass removed... Large, black, misshapen mole that the consultant didn't like the look of. The thing was only 6mm across, but the scar left on my ass is 2 INCHES LONG. At least it was a female doctor who performed the operation. I wouldn't have liked to say that a male doctor has had a piece of my ass.

The new job at Outreach is ok. I just haven't been there for much of it so far. I was off most of last week charging around getting other moles looked at, to find out if I needed more of me removed. And this week I've been off work hobbling round the house going "Ow. Fucking can't pick anything up. Ow. Can't sit down. Ow." I have, however, fortunately discovered that my office chair makes my arse go numb, which is a great help. Lots of computer gaming time as therapy. Who'd have thought it?

No real excuses for slackness with posting on this blog, except being proccupied with health generally. Funny looking at Dataphage's posts, i.e. "The C Word". For me the C word has a whole different meaning. The sizeable chunk of my ass sitting in a lab waiting to be looked at for possible cell mutation has given this whole Compassion and Suffering thing a deeper perspective. Results in a couple of weeks. Stitches out on the 20th. If they find any problems with the sample they open me up again and remove even more tissue. Ho ho ho.
No more Bifters for me. Oh no. Strictly cakes from here on in.

I'm lined up for my health insurance to cover physiotherapy on my dicky shoulder. The shouder problem is on the same side as my recent excision (my left side), which means I'm generally half fucked at the moment. Heh.

Work. Hmmm. Some real cold bastard weather in Bristol has coincided with the late night/early morning rough sleeper head counts I've volunteered for so far. The weirdest one so far involved driving to the other side of Bristol to pick up my co-head counter, at 6:45 a.m. in a blizzard. On the one hand I was thinking "Cool! Snowballs and stuff!" On the other hand I was thinking "Vagrants buried under snow drifts. Do we have a shovel to go with the thermos of coffee?" In the end the snow melted within about three hours, and Bristol's regular homeless bods are savvy enough to have bolt-holes for this type of weather. I did nearly smash up the pool car by skidding on black ice though. Fun.
I seem to spend most of my time keyworking people I dealt with previously at the hostel. Which is kind of frustrating. I am dealing with a few new punters though. A French guy who came to Bristol to talk to his girlfriend after she dumped him, with five pounds in his pocket and no return train ticket. After consulting with my more experienced colleagues it was decided that he should bugger off back to Paris. We're letting him sleep rough in freezing conditions for a couple of nights to reinforce the validity of that option (the alternative is that he gets stuck in the system...). The other guy I'm dealing with is a real problem. Mental health stuff. Nowhere to put him kind of thing. Oh well. Sometimes there just aren't solutions (although this probably has a lot to do with my distinct lack of knowledge in this field at the moment. I'm sure all of the time off I've been having really helps...)

Hopefully my ass will have healed sufficiently for me to include regular jogging and suchlike as part of my New Year's resolution. Need to eat healthy stuff and stay well. I may even invest in a 'sunlight box'. A guy at work has one and its really good. Jebus. I'm getting old.

Total degradation

2005-10-30T13:57:00.000Z

I suspect that the stress imparted upon me by my chosen line of work is accelerating the deline of my body. I have a cold which seems to be stirring up my guts in a similar way to my previous bout of gastritis. This in itself is bad enough, but on Friday I took the day off from work and crashed out in bed for most of it. I must have slept in one of those weird illness-induced positions because when I woke up my neck and shoulders were tight to the point that my head felt like was going to pop off. This is an old neck injury caused by helping somone in a hostel move his stuff down three flights of stairs, around a-year-and-a-half ago.

I'm tempted to go and see a practitioner of alternative medicines instead of visiting yet another chinless, conveyor-belt quack. Perhaps some carefully placed needles? I may even, when I have the spare cash, pick up a Q-link.
Apparently these things contain a microchip which can be programmed with your body's health frequencies, which you then wear as a pendant to ward off Bad Vibes (mobile phone emissions, etc.) and promote low stress and healthiness in yourself. If they're good enough for use by elite military units and pro sporters, I might try one. Not cheap at £99 mind you...

Funny how it goes

2005-10-21T23:58:00.000+01:00

Tonight was my last shift at the hostel. My last ever keyworking session there was with the fella I mentioned in October 4th's posting, "AAARRRRGGGHHHH!". I was fully intending to receive his tirade of paranoid ravings and then tell him to go away in no uncertain terms. However (as I generally suspected) I still found myself trying to reason with him.
And with the insight brought to me by the knowledge that I would never have to deal with him again, I found that I actually got some sense through. He only threatened to shoot everyone in Social Services twice, and I eventually got him to agree that it might not be a good thing to be viewed as a terrorist by the service providers that are trying to help him. I even got away with goading him about religion for a bit. I was tempted to play on a previous comment he made about all the staff being "children of satan"* for a laugh, but I left it.

Hopefully, now that I'll be working 9-to-5 hours I'll get something of a social life back and will be able to post about things other than hostel/new job (outreach worker) encounters. However, due to the current absence of a life...

There was a big metal acro-prop holding up part of the stairs in the hostel for the whole 18-odd months I worked there. It was taken away yesterday as it was found that the slight lean of the prop was pulling the banister away from the stairs, thus giving the bottom step nothing to rest on at one end. It was quite interesting/alarming to stand on the flight under those stairs and watch our heavier residents challenge the building's structural integrity.
Thinking about it, that would have been an interesting Darwin Award. "Hostel worker crushed by fat bloke and half a semi-derelict building".
What I was getting to with this part of the post was that whenever I leave a place, job, whatever, they immediately spend some money somewhere and improve things there. At uni they put phone lines and internet connections in the halls of residence just as we moved out. At the first hostel I worked at I was pissed off with the gaps in building security due to lack of enough cameras, and just after I left they got a new digital system which does it all. And in the other hostel there is now a distinct lack of metal pole to make nervous jokes about when visitors are shown around the building. The place looks vaguely normal.
Then again, it's possible that the staircase will collapse without the acro-prop and they will have to close the hostel down.
Or maybe nothing will happen at all and that bloke's paranoia has just been filtering into my subconscious. Only time will tell.

*My girlfriend helpfully pointed out that if you know your bible, Satan would only sire one offspring - the Anti-Christ. Of course I made this point during a keyworking debate, but he just wouldn't listen to me. Apparently I'm damned.

Oh, the fun I've had...

2005-10-11T18:17:00.000+01:00

As I draw closer to moving on from the hostel and starting my new job, I've been reminiscing about my favourite moments there. One resident I have particularly fond memories of keeps springing to mind.

I keyworked him for around three months, and every time I saw him his pupils were like pin-pricks, he was sweating cobs and spouting nonsensical gibberish (a sure sign of opiate abuse. Or too much daytime TV). He would regularly come down to the office to phone his family/probation officer/dealer etc. Whether he had a hearing problem or was just a loaf-headed twat I'm not too sure, but he was constantly shouting "HUH?" into the phone.
He also had this habit of coming into the office and proudly showing me what he'd just shop-lifted. I was always having to point out that since I was his keyworker, and not one of his slack-arsed Chav mates, I would have to call the police and let them know about it. He seemed quite hurt by this, but it didn't stop him from showing me stuff. The police never came to the hostel to investigate because they were stop-searching him every other day anyway and couldn't handle the extra work load.

Eventually he was offered a flat. 30 doors from my own home... During the viewing of his prospective home a neighbour witnessed him shooting up on the doorstep of the property before the arrival of the housing officer, and then burgling the other neighbour's shed after the housing officer had departed. She reported him and the offer was withdrawn. The possiblity of having to advocate for him if he appealed the decision posed something of a dilemma. The situation resolved itself when, during a room search carried out by police, we discovered a fecking huge sack of drugs paraphernalia and evicted him.

Ah, happy days. I'll post more musings when they surface from my repressed memory.

Old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. Pay heed, Dataphage.

Back to Black

2005-10-07T19:56:00.000+01:00

I chose the Minima Black template when I originally decided to do my own Blog. Then I looked at the title of my Blog and thought "people will think I've hit rock bottom. Make it look happier." I've now reversed that decision. "Trust your feelings Luke", etc. Also, the only other vaguely decent schemes are currently being used by Dataphage, Goat San, BY (who's modified his, the flash bastard), etc.
I like the high contrast stuff. I have waning eyesight as well as thinning hair (dataphage...) and I find the white on black thing easier on my squint.

I am still no closer to working out this HTML bollocks. I have neither the time or patience to keep re-writing bits of it and then preview my work to find that it has done absolutely nothing. I will either ask a small child to do it for me and then hide in shame (or eat the child to hide the evidence), or set dataphage up as an administrator and then sit back and watch him bastardise my Blog and fill it with pornography links.

Suggestion to Goat San - without being excessively crude, I'd be interested to hear about experiences of Japanese filth. I've heard about the vending machines dispensing used female underwear, and disposable hand-shandy devices for men to use on the tube, but I'm not sure how much of what I hear is kah-kah. I find it interesting that such a polite, charming ordered society could be quite so horn-ridden (see Goat San's Blog about the festival involving massive cocks...)

Japanese carpenters are famed for their skill. They spend sometimes a third of their day sharpening and polishing their tools (fnar) as a form of meditation and focus. This has allowed them to create wooden palaces using no nails - the joins they make in the wood are sufficient to hold the building together in an earthquake.
I have tried to bear these facts in mind whilst trying to respray my airsoft rifle from a dodgy urban grey to a nice shiny black. However, the number of times this week I have found myself staring at a thumb print in the drying paint, or a bit of clag that has stuck to the underside when I've put the thing down... "AAARRRGGGHH! BASTARD!" and all the other ususal DIY curses. How do the orientals do it? Surely somewhere in Japan there's at least one bloke who, whenever he tries to do anything around the house, destroys it through lack of patience and then disturbs the neighbours with his wailing?
Bula's DIY tip for the month: When rewiring the electrics in your home, don't have you phone in a belt pouch set on vibrate...

AAARRRRGGGHHHH!

2005-10-04T22:54:00.000+01:00

I am not really at liberty to discuss too much due to client confidentiality and suchlike. However, I am so completely frustrated by the situation I find myself in that I feel I should share it with others to gain some sort of foothold on sanity via their comments...

I am currently keyworking a man who cannot, for a variety of reasons, see that he is ever in the wrong about anything. Ok, there are many people we know like this - uncle roy; the bloke who preaches at people very loudly from the middle of Broadmead; you when you're drunk, etc. But this guy is disagreeing with the opinions of a whole variety of health and housing professionals, on the basis of a handful of YTS certificates that apparently make him qualified up to world leader status. Oh, and if you should directly call his actions or words into question he'll take you to court (or at least threaten to. Repeatedly).
Part of my current job is to sit with this man for an hour per week and discuss issues which relate to his re-housing. When he turns up and goes on about how everyone is against him, and it could lead to his untimely demise, and he wants all their names so he knows who to blame, well... It's reached the point where I feel like saying "You know what? I'm not surprised everyone is against you. Where do I sign up?"

He has been passed from organisation to organisation. We all phone each other to discuss issues and when his name is mentioned we all go "oh, him (sigh/chuckle)". Nobody knows how to handle him or what to do with him. And now I have him.
I have tried reason. It hasn't worked. I have tried confronting him with various harsh realities. No joy there. I'm on the verge of not making any keyworking appointments for him at all until I move jobs. Lots of suffering and an increasing shortfall in the compassion department. I have until the 21st when I move jobs to try and work out a solution or come to terms with dumping him on someone else. *shrug*

In a semi-related item, I bought a new airsoft rifle last weekend. The stress relief gained by running around an airsofting site shooting a lot of other gun-toting psychos is not to be underestimated. My arsenal is now quite large (7 items) and I plan to by around 5 more while I can - before the Government push through the Violent Crime Reduction bill and stop anyone from buying any more. Rather than me start spouting vitriol about how the nanny state is persecuting upstanding responsible citizens and failing to make laws that are already in place work to stop Chavs from using replica weapons to terrorise shopping centers (ah, too late), take a look at www.saveairsoft.org
I would gladly submit to registration, etc. But it looks like they're just set on knackering the whole thing. Bah.

God, I'm so compassionate...

2005-09-23T21:03:00.000+01:00

New job starting in a month after today's successful interview. I will be moving on from sitting in the office at the hostel and waiting for situations, keyworking clients, etc., to come to me. Instead I will be roaming the streets looking for homeless people so I can provide support/be assaulted/(insert your own mishap here). There will also be the late night/early morning head counts of rough sleepers. Hmmm. Forgot to ask at interview how often bodies get found...
The regular 9-5 working hours each week (besides the odd head-count shift) means I can socialise again. Maybe. If the house doesn't need yet more stuff done to it. I can also resume regular Aikido training. I seem to have become one of the many who disappear from the Dojo after getting their Black Belt. I can't really afford to stop training though, what with putting myself in harms way and all.
Hopefully the regular shift pattern will mean I can also surf the inter-bollocks for amusing and bizarre web-links that my friends find for their blogs. Just working out how to customise my own would be a start.

Ah, why not?

2005-09-22T02:13:00.000+01:00

Since most other people I know seem to be positing their opinion and observations upon me via the medium of inter-bollocks, I thought I'd send some ether-based crap back to them. Better out than in I suppose.
Which reminds me... Last week I was off work with Gastritis. I found myself foolishly trying to get to the bus stop at 7am, whereupon I vomited into the gutter infront of a half-dozen commuters. Raising a hand I said "It's OK, I work with homeless people" and then nearly shat myself laughing.