How High the Moon

I happened across a Guardian blog last night, it was late and the painkillers were wearing off. There are some benefits from being on benefits; for example free NHS dental treatment. For years I had free dental insurance, came with the job, but now I’m getting the basic service.

Basic means simple crowns and extractions, no hygienist, no fancy bridge work. And my choice was quite simple, do I persist with an abscess that’s been plaguing me for years or have it pulled. The abscess lived under a root canal filling, so was hard to get at. Antibiotics brought it down, but then it would just get infected again and come back.

My dentist, when I was on the insurance, suggested an extraction and bridging work. But with my new status, all I get is the extraction. So for want of a better alternative, I bit the bullet and had the tooth pulled.

Because of my condition I was also witness to the dental nurse explaining to the dentist why she had adrenalin on hand. The practice had misplaced my notes, so my heart condition was not necessarily apparent to a busy dentist. But his nurse must have a good memory.

During the procedure the thought of my heart stopping or having another attack did cross my mind. And when he was done, the dentist said you’re sweating. It was only later after the drugs had worn off, and the persistent flow of blood became uncomfortable, that I took some more pain killers.

As my mouth was filled with a gauze bandage, a friend called the doctors to see if paracetamol was ok on top of my drug cocktail. And luckily, my medicine cabinet of a body, can accept a few more pills if need be.


By the time I got to midnight, the soreness was back, but the blood flow had subsided. I was getting ready to turn in, but took one last look at the news. Follow the volcanic ash clouds progress, check out the election. I came across a huge blog with hundreds of posters. Considering the first post was after 6, it had stirred up a hornet’s nest of activity all night. Now I was into the next day, and still the posts were coming in.


The blog was about David Cameron’s promise to cut the benefit of people who refuse to work. The first query I had was, well that’s already happening, so what’s new. I did not read every post, some were the usual – I don’t want my taxes supporting the unemployed; some were humorous; some were spot on. Like the person who pointed out that Labour has already implemented this policy. They also pointed out that people like me, who’ve worked all their lives are given the same as spotty teenagers, how can this be fair?

An architect who had trained for six years and practiced for eight pointed out that when the Jobcentre offers him a burger flipping opportunity, its unlikely someone with his CV will get past the slush pile.
I got to the last comment; there were still clots of blood in my mouth, and a dull aching pain. And there was an overwhelming feeling of sadness, of wasted energy. On another day I may have commented, pasted in the URL of this blog. But instead found myself with nothing to say, or rather nothing new to add.

Today I see the unemployment figures have risen to 2.5 million. I have an interview coming up next week at the Jobcentre. So when they ask me, how hard have you been looking for work? I will say How High The Moon.

Jobsearch #1

In another life I was Magnum PI. Magnum was the chat handle given to me by people I worked with. We all had names; it added a different dimension to the day-to-day stuff. I bare no resemblance to the actor Tom Selleck who played Magnum, but I can see where my co-workers were coming from. Dark hair, slightly older, colourful shirts.

Jobsearch #1 is so named because it’s the first interview I’ve had since the Dole Wallah blog started. Thanks Mr Jobcentre Plus for pushing me over the edge.

An e-mail with the company’s address and a checklist of things I would need was sent. All I had to was turn up at quarter to five and take my clothes off.

Magnum PI was often seen running down a Hawaiian beach in trunks, and I was supposed to do something similar in Shepherds Bush.


Sometime back in April last year I registered on an extras website. There’s a couple of photos, my height, body measurements and age. And for the past year I’ve had no extra work. I applied to be in a binge drinking video for the NHS, but nothing came of that.


In the life before that other life I’d done a little bit of extra work. Reconstructions, when budgets were big. I remember a programme about arms dealing actually using a real 747, and a lot of money going missing in Rwanda. But that’s another story.

At the weekend I prepared like a method actor. The jobs a game show, not Shutter Island or Green Zone; but I take my work seriously. I’m supposed to be Britain’s Hairiest man, that’s the brief. A celebrity will interrogate the clothed me. And I’m supposed to have some witty retort up my sleeve. I’m supposed to let my personality shine through; the Production Company’s words not mine. The real hairy man, will be in the line-up too.

My first thought was Genetics. Mr Hairy UK will have inherited his hirsuteness. So I invent a Great Grandfather. Great Granddad Hairy was the Hairy Man from Afghanistan. A Victorian fairground attraction. His skin was swarthy and some boot polish was applied to enhance the darkness. He occasionally sported a turban and charmed snakes. In the extended biography his name appeared on the poster that inspired John Lennon to write For The Benefit Of Mr Kite. But I ditched that as too obscure a fact for a TV celebrity.

I Googled Britain’s hairiest man, he’s from Gateshead and it takes four towels to dry his body. Sunbathing is an issue too with all that hair. I appropriate these two facts for my method-act.

The Hairy man will be writing a memoir, Hair To Stay. I resort to Google again but get a hirsute ladies porn site. So the name is changed to My Hairy Life.

The Production Company’s e-mail asks me to wear shorts underneath my trousers. But makes no other clothing stipulation. I select a Fleet Foxes tee-shirt. There hairy blokes, so I’m showing solidarity with other hairies.


For a Dole Wallah I have a surprisingly busy day. I post an amplifier to Italy and a Guitar Case to Bath, and I run to the post office to send off a Ted Baker Jacket. After some press-ups and shower I’m off to Shepherds Bush. It’s raining and I arrive dishevelled. A group of 3 men sit in the reception; a young girl is asking them questions about their lives. For a moment I assume they are auditioning for some fitness programme – maybe as the new Mr Motivator. All three are gigantic body builder types. Then I hear the crucial question, so are you hairy.

When I sat down the young girl shot me the briefest of looks, she looked over again a couple of times. I let her lead them into the audition room, wait five minutes, then ask the receptionist what’s happening with my appointment. I know of course and the young girl is despatched to pull me in. The hulks have finished theirs, so I fill in a questionnaire and a release form. One question begs for an interesting answer, which celebrity do you look like. I’m tempted to write Magnum PI, but the bright young things will have no idea who he is, so I leave that section blank.


We’ll be in touch they say, and I leave. I feel an unusual empathy with Woody Allen. The Tom Selleck resemblance recedes; it’s replaced by the forty inch chest guy, who's no muscleman. The lift does not come, so I take the metal stairs. They are exposed to the rain, and I slip and slide my way down five floors. An old Elvis Costello song, Pump It Up plays in my head.

Everybody's Free

If you’ve ever had a spell of unemployment, you will know the money covers basic subsistence and nothing else. Forget about your five-a-day, or takeaways, or nights out. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable as a Dole Wallah.

Now stretch that spell out into a year, and you start to take extreme measures.

I’ve sold my guitar for a pittance, sold a tee-shirt I bought back in 1998. I’ve considered selling my body; it’s not in bad shape. But heterosexual male escorts are as plentiful as decent jobs. So forget about being the male belle de jour, unless you fancy men or fancy being conned out of money (those sites on the internet or those classified ads are pure fakery). And you can forget about earning cash from home and modelling work, and just about all the other get-rich-quick schemes out there.


Reality is horrible, and sobering, and a pain in the ass.


I have no plan B. But I’m always open to suggestions, always on the lookout for something that pays more than the minimum wage. I’m looking into teaching, not in the school system though. I’ve lived with quite a few teachers and know it’s not for me.

Back during the last recession, I taught unemployed adults for a year. It was quite dispiriting because the training company were cynically exploiting people down on their luck. I faked exam papers to get the poor unfortunates through, it was positively encouraged. The more NVQs the more money for El Crappo Training Enterprises.


The company selected the best students and made them into unpaid teaching assistants. They hired some, paying a shocking salary. Like the orchestra at Auschwitz, the former students played along, faking results, putting up with shoddy treatment. They were desperate and the company knew that.

I met decent people there. Some Nigerian former boy soldiers, an ex Civil Servant who had been jailed for dope possession and lost his job in Whitehall. An Irish girl who had come to England for an abortion. An ex Pop Star, who had blown his record company advance.


Training company’s do well in a recession. Who needs to know how to re-jig a CV or shine at an interview when jobs are plentiful? I’ve been sent on two such back-to-work courses by my jobcentre. And I play the game, and ask questions, and even write fake comments on their questionnaires. But most of the time, my minds back in EL Crappo Training Enterprises, in a different recession, on a different side of the classroom.

I drank a lot during my time at EL Crappo, drank at lunchtimes, and even taught a class half drunk. Now that was embarrassing. After work I would drink with the former Pop Star and Irish Girl, The Whitehall Dope Fiend and whoever else was around. I drank more as autumn became winter; I drank into the spring. At night I would talk to complete strangers outside Camden Town Tube, or fall asleep on the train and find myself in South London.

And when it wasn’t drink, it was drugs. Rave music was still quite fresh, Ecstasy plentiful and popular. I remember siphoning off drinks discarded by e-d up builders in our local pub, and going in search of an elusive club called The Love Lab. When we gate crashed a South London Poly student bash, I danced with the Nigerian boy soldiers to Rozalla’s Everybody's Free. It was Christmas and the training company closed down for a couple of weeks.


A blur is all I have of January through to March. But in April, things changed. Or rather I changed things. I stopped going to the pub and joined a gym. I had a trainer and drank protein shakes to bulk up. With my freshly cleared mind, I looked into PHD Scholarships, and fantasised about becoming an academic. Except my heart was not in teaching, and my enthusiasm took a nose dive. I soldiered on, faking NVQs, reading out of text books to my more able students.

On my birthday the director of El Crappo Enterprises called me in to his office. I was sacked on the spot. It was called redundancy.

He did me a great favour, set me free. And for a little while I felt the same about this redundancy. Except the current recession feels deeper, and my reserves are depleted, and I’m that much older, and Raves already been revived once since Rosella sang Everybody’s Free.

Holidays in Cambodia

Congescor 1.25mg Tablets

Bisoprolol hemifumarate

Cardioselective B-blocker.
For treatment of stable chronic heart failure.





I have a vision of me, emptying out the plastic bag that contains my pills over the desk of my Dole Office tormentor . But in the vision, all I get in return is the blank stare of an idiot.

I read the obituary of Alex Clinton today . He died of a Heart Attack.

The object of life should be to live in peace. But there are people out there who gain pleasure from destruction. From inflicting pain. I’m certain the ignorant person, employed as a Civil Servant (he was neither civil or a servant) has never read the works of De Sade or the thoughts of Pol Pot (if they even exist) . But he has close fellowship with Dennis Nielson who worked in a job centre less than a mile away. He may not boil the heads of boys he has picked up for the evening. But he works in a job centre and has little empathy or humanity.

Well you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son:.

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

POL POT, POL POT , POL POT, POL POT, POL POT, POL POT…..POL POT.