Hackgate, schmackgate.

Yeah, right. I don't think I've ever wanted to be in London MORE than I have today. Talk about feeling on the periphery of the periphery. And I missed the pie-in-face moment because only minutes before my boss had caught me with the non-work related contents of my computer screen. 

Wahhhh.

The art of boredom eating.

I just checked and realised that due to a combination of getting something vaguely resembling a life and general laziness (rather more of the latter it has to be said), it has now been a whole nine days since I last blogged. I would apologise as seems to be the protocol of any blogger worth her weight in words but frankly I'm under no illusions about the importance of my sorry little blog in the big, bad blogosphere. Desperately refreshing the page every minute in the vain hope that God will deliver you the salvation of a sixth instalment and bless you with the knowledge that life can go on if only you keep the faith? I didn't think so.

Unfortunately however, my days of getting something vaguely resembling a life are now over and I find myself sitting here with a long weekend of nothingness stretching ahead of me. Now, out here in the sticks exciting adventures don't just drop into your lap the way they do in the city: there's no walking out of your front door, bumping into someone you know and suddenly finding yourself at an arctic-themed BBQ, drinking moonshine and talking to someone from Tuvalu about the merits of communism (nah, that's never happened to me either). Indeed, if you want to spend your weekends doing something other than sitting around watching yet another repeat of The Gimore Girls you have to make it happen; you have to plan for it.

Not making any advance plans to fill my weekend, that was mistake one. Mistake two was not making some last-minute ones, however desperate and tragic those plans may have been. Going on a solitary bike ride on a broken bike in the pouring rain? That was something I could have got down with. But no, I now find myself sitting here with nothing to do except eat myself out of my self-induced boredom. Yep, that's right, my name's ***** and I'm a boredom-eater. And once the boredom hits no cupboard, no fridge (we have two, I wasn't just grappling for another food-storing facility to add to my three-point list), no brother's lunchbox-from-their-school bag will lay unturned. No matter how out-of-date it is, I will eat it; even mould hasn't been known to stop me.

Now all this boredom-eating isn't necessarily a problem except when the thing I want to eat isn't in the house, and when this happens things can turn ugly. You see, once I get a craving for something that craving just won't go away until I have eaten anything and everything in sight in an effort to cure it and along the way made myself feel suicidally sick. Take this morning for example: I woke up and all I wanted to eat was a bagel and cream cheese. That's fine I thought to myself, bagel and cream cheese, we've got both of those. Except when I went to the fridge I found that no, we didn't have any cream cheese, none at all. No doubt one of the cavemen of a brother had taken the last of it. But I had the craving you see and so, hunting high and low, I searched for a worthy substitute.

Five minutes later and having dismissed a mayonnaise bagel as an eatable option I spied some Quorn chicken-style slices. Hmmm, I thought to myself, I'm sure they could work in a bagel. It very quickly dawned on my however, that yes, they WOULD work in a bagel - a bagel with cream cheese on it. So, still minus the cream cheese, I searched for another viable condiment to accompany my fake chicken and bagel. And that's when I saw it: the big fat jar of organic peanut butter, sitting there all shiny and smooth and ready to be drafted into my boredom breakfast fantasy. Peanuts and chicken work in satay chicken, I thought to myself, so why not peanut butter and chicken-style slices in a bagel? Yeah, in hindsight that logic makes no sense to me either.

A chicken-style, peanut butter bagel. Don't make this at home kids, it's disgusting.

Maybe if I hadn't used organic peanut butter....

***

And for those of you wondering what ever happened to that waitressing job I applied for with the overly political owner (see The suburbs gets political), yes I did get a trial shift and no, I am not still working there. I would love to go into further detail but unfortunately there is only one French cafe in Leigh-on-Sea and the last time I checked that wasn't a high enough number to protect you from getting sued for libel. Back to the job hunt drawing board. (Don't worry, it won't be anywhere near as exciting as you're probably imagining.)

I need a dollar (or on second thoughts, several thousand of them please).

Two jobs in the bag(ish) and I'm still £12,955 away from my £13,240 target. This is going to be one loooong summer.

The suburbs gets political.

               

"So what's your stance on the Israel/Palestine situation?"

Shit. I had three options: lie, tell the truth, or give some vague, non-committal answer involving words like 'peace', 'love' and 'mutual respect'.

So I went with option two: tell the truth.

"Hmm that's very interesting", came the reply. Shit again.

I could have been sitting in an interview for a master's in International Relations, or passing through immigration at Ben Gurion Airport. But no, I was in fact applying for a part-time waitressing job at a small French cafe in Leigh-on-Sea, Southend. Turned out the owner was an Algerian Arab with a passion for politics - and Middle Eastern politics in particular.

Now this very surreal experience may not have been quite so surreal had this cafe been in London say, or some other vaguely cosmopolitan city, such as Leeds. But in Leigh-on-Sea, the Notting Hill of Southend (or at least the Southend equivalent of what I imagine Notting Hill to be like in my head), it was a bit of a shock to the system. Although radically left-wing by Essex standards, this suburban village by the sea remains largely white and middle-class - more Liberal Democrat than revolutionary. Indeed, while Big Issues and hemp products do a good trade in Leigh, these markets aren't a patch on the let's-sit-out-on-the-street-with-an-espresso franchise that's busting out on every street corner in sight.

And the Middle East question doesn't go well with such Parisian-inspired posturings I can tell you.

To follow the dissection of my views on political hot potatoes there then came a reading over of my CV with a fine tooth comb. In all my time of CV-bandying -and let me tell you, there has been a lot of bandying over the years - I have never had someone congratulate me on my A in Critical Thinking. Nor, come to think of it, even LOOK at my A in Critical Thinking. I felt as though my entire life had been leading up to this moment.

"Well, let me perfectly honest with you - in all my time here I have never interviewed someone so intelligent for a waitressing job and I would love to have you come here and work for us; I am pleased just to be sitting here talking to you now. But there's one thing I'm worried about, one hurdle shall we say."

Here it comes.

"You live in Rayleigh."

Jesus. All that and the one thing that's letting me down is mere geography??

After much to-ing and fro-ing, and an admission of utter desperation on my part, it was eventually decided that I might be suitable for the job but that they would have to discuss it first.

"But go back to your mother and tell her that she should be proud to have raised a daughter like you."

That's the suburbs for you: just when you think you've got it pinned down and put away in a box labelled 'boring', it jumps back out and surprises you.

A piece of suburban loveliness.

Photos courtesy of the Moonlight Colourthon.

Underwhelmed by my first day at the new job, and distracted by feeling oh-so-very-sorry-for-myself, I forgot to mention a rather amazing event that I was involved in on Saturday: the Moonlight Colourthon 2011.

Though run by the ever-so-sexist Round Table (but don't worry girls, there's a 'Ladies Circle' just for you), this little drop of sunshine taking place in an otherwise rather smoggy Southend-on-Sea each year is a great event to take part in, bringing together - rather ironically given its conservative roots - all the very best bits of a Gay Pride march and grafting them onto the more traditional sponsored walk. 

For indeed, while there may be a lot of things that the suburbs does very badly - tolerance of asylum seekers, immigrants and anyone with even the slightest left-leaning political disposition to name but a few - something it does very well is fundraising: think rainbow colours, tutus, glitter, glowsticks and fairy wings plus 1,000 Essex ladies and gentleman, all marching together by the light of the moon to raise a total of £109,000 for 223 local and national charities.

All this for what is essentially a long walk around the block in the dark. On second thoughts perhaps the thing the suburbs does best isn't fundraising, it's PR.

***

This year, for the second year in a row, I walked the half marathon Colourthon with my Mum and Grandma to raise money for St Luke's Hospice in Basildon. We have so far raised an amazing £263.00 and are still accepting post-humous (can I say that?) donations.

To sponsor us please click here: http://www.justgiving.com/MoonlightColourthon2011

First day blues.

Today was the first day of my new temping job. Ten minutes in and I very quickly realised that 'admin' was just a posh name for data entry.

Five journalism placements, two political internships and a year-long editorship under my belt (not to mention the £28,033.74 education) and all I'm good for is reading facts and figures off a sheet and typing them into a computer.

Well that's good to know.

***

Just to brighten up my day though a lovely bus driver decided to charge me an additional £2.50 for a 30 second journey because he said my daily travel card didn't stretch far enough. What a nice man.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/british-government-plan-play-down-fukushima?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/30/brad-pitt-interview-terrence-malick

Until this morning I had never had any real intention of starting a blog. Sure, as a very recently retired member of the student journalist world I had thought about it a lot, but until this morning I had never found a topic worthy of the cause. But then, at around 10.30am (10.22am to be exact),I found myself saying those dangerous, and, let's face it, quite frankly yawn-inducing words: 'I might start a blog'.

What precipitated this sudden spiralling of events was nothing more than an early morning trip to buy the paper. Now, in Leeds, where I have just moved from, or in London, or indeed ANY CITY in the UK, such a trip would be painless. A two-minute stroll to the local newsagents made all the better for the glorious sunshine sent down to bear upon us at 10.22 this morning.

I am not in Leeds anymore though, and nor am I in London. No, however much I may wish it to be untrue, I am in fact in Rayleigh, Essex. A small town boasting a windmill, Dutch cottage, ye olde church and a place in the Domesday Book. And an unwavering passion for the Daily Mail.

Such is this passion that my simple trip to buy a paper - brought about by a beautiful dream of reading the Guardian outside in the sun, a cup of steaming hot coffee in my hand and sunglasses on my face - resulted in a one-hour trek, involving crossing borders into the next town and enduring wolf whistle upon wolf whistle from the white van men who rule the mean streets of Essex. Oh and being splattered with mud from a case of underground drilling along the way.

For while newsagents, corner shops and petrol stations in Essex are always overspilling with copies of the Daily Mail - the creation, incidentally, of one of my predecessors at a certain student newspaper - they are always Guardian-barren. Indeed, of the four shops I eventually visited in my search for the Holy Grail of newspapers, two did not stock it at all with one having the audacity to allocate not one, but THREE stands to the Mail alone. What is more all four stocked EVER OTHER NATIONAL PAPER except for the Guardian. Even the Indy and the i got substantial look ins.

If it hadn't been for my sun-drenched, garden-coffee-sunglasses-combo vision, coupled with the tantalising promise of a front page Government cover-up scandal and Brad Pitt interview, then I might have let it drop, but I instead decided that I would stop at nothing to realise my dream of holding a Guardian in my hand. It's my own fault really, I shouldn't be so stubborn.

It was as I was moaning to a friend,

"I'm just not made to be in Essex"

that it suddenly dawned on me. I now had that much-needed topic for a blog: SUBURBAN ANGST.

It was not until I arrived home at 11am, triumphantly clutching my battered copy of the Guardian only to find that we had run out of milk for coffee however, that I really began to think about giving this blogging thing a go. What better way to vent all my rage against the many trials and tribulations of small town living?

So, here we are, embarking upon a project that I hope will help to ease my summer pains and eventually help me to find some contentment amidst the turmoil of suburban life. Here's very much hoping. 

(I eventually got my milk by the way, just in case you were worried.)