People often ask me why I dislike London so much. It’s the pretentiousness and arrogance of the place.
Take this morning. I received an email from the TDA trying to persuade me to get into teaching. It has announced its new pay rises for newly qualified teachers. From £20,627 to £20,155 marks a whopping 2.45% pay increase. That is of course unless you happen to teach in London, where starting salaries rise from £24,168 to £25,000, making a rise of over 3.4%.
If people are so drawn to London, why do they have to give bigger pay rises to people that would otherwise be there in the first place?
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Well the exams have passed. Now it’s a waiting game for the results. It wasn’t a great exam. Everything I had studied on Monday had pretty much vanished from my short term memory… perhaps occupied by recent events. I relied on my long term memory which thankfully wasn’t too shabby as usual, so I should have done enough to get a half-decent mark, though I suspect it won’t be as high as I might have expected. It’s all rather unfortunate.
But I haven’t been allowed to feel sorry myself for too long. I am getting constant reminders of what should be my current preoccupation: finding a job. And I am still being too picky. I’ve decided I won’t work or live in London. I really don’t like the place and I cannot see why so many love it so much.
I am thinking of becoming a personal tutor again: and that is no easy option. I need to seek some advice on that score. In the mean time, I do have a couple jobs that should see me through the summer at least.
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I have returned — I have fixed the problem I was having, which seemed more to do with my host than WordPress itself. A lot has happened since my last post.
I’ve been told that I have been rejected a place on the PGCE course, to my extreme annoyance. It seems the reason for declining my application was because I am not a teacher. The feedback suggested I ought to get experience teaching for a length of time before applying again. However, getting a decent run at teaching a class of secondary school pupils is hard to obtain: you need a teaching qualification. For much of the PGCE course, this is exactly the experience you get. So it feels like I can’t do the course because I haven’t done the course before. It’s a shame.
I guess I am a fool for applying to Newcastle University again. It seems a ridiculous reason to turn away what would have been a committed and enthusiastic student and a talented teacher. I suppose it also serves me right for chasing after a position doing a thankless task. It used to be medicine. Perhaps I ought to chase after self-glory, easy wealth and the supposed lure of the City. There seem plenty faceless, ruthlessly competitive financial jobs there, but they just don’t interest me, and as for London…
I suppose I’m too picky. I want a job with pressure I can handle; I want to be creative and to be able to apply all the skills I have collected from a wide variety of disciplines; I want to be an important member of an organisation so I can feel committed and settled. These are few and far between.
We get the Evening Chronicle every Thursday for jobs: the number of jobs available is getting lower to the tune of around 100 a week. There were less than 500 this week. Most of those were either teaching jobs or those that request a ridiculous amount of experience for the wage they offer. They aren’t even willing to buy experience; they just expect it. Every receptionist job going wants three years experience "in a similar environment". Why bother? I may as well look into self-employment.
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Today was a peculiar day (mind, aren’t they all?!), largely down to the BUPA Great North Run. It reminded me of my desire to raise money for charity – making myself useful. Nick jokingly said I should cycle from London to Newcastle, which I did momentarily consider.
I courted the idea with a few friends, and inevitably they were skeptical, and I felt the organisation and preparation would have been too much. Then James texted me, asking me whether I had taken part in the Great North Run – I’m guessing jokingly. I then found myself making plans on entering the run next year. That was unexpected.
So now I’m looking at gym prices, but it hardly seems fair to pay to be led into a dictatorship. So, once I have running shoes, a sweaty t-shirt and almost-revealingly-short shorts, I’m going it alone! Pass me a banana.
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Well my dear readers, I shall be away to Japan tomorrow! Well… that is if you count getting the train from Newcastle to London ‘on the way to Japan’!
Part of this epic journey will be to navigate myself across London to get to Heathrow on the last tube. I realise there is an element of risk involved here: my train arrives nine minutes before the last tube leaves. I am rather depending on the fact that GNER isn’t a complete arse tomorrow night (it isn’t usually, but if some twat attempts suicide, I shall be rather upset and – even worse – stranded in London). I am also depending on the fact that I can get through the turnstiles in London without too much bother. I shall be lugging around my suitcase, so this isn’t too promising. If anyone spots me, I would appreciate a cup of tea by this point!
But I’m looking forward to going. It’s been a short-lived dream for me. Short-lived because it’s coming true not long after dreaming it! Jonathan Ross’ Japanorama went some way towards creating that dream (and indeed realising that dream, since Weiran is also a fan), and a new series has just started. So if you want to see how mad, passionate and to some degree perverted Japan has become, be sure to watch the programme!
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Well this has put me in a bad mood: in announcing the European leg of their tour, The Police neglected to visit Newcastle.
Not a mention is made that Sting has skipped his hometown, which seems peculiar but nonetheless, it seems the UK has done well with four whole dates, at London, Manchester, Cardiff and Birmingham. The Police will be playing in Hamburg on my birthday (hint hint!) but the opportunity to see them live went before the dates were decided.
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A random conversation led to Waz suddenly asking me “Wanna come to Japan with me?”. I was initially rather dumbstruck! I haven’t seen Waz in just about 3 years now, which is really rather shocking!
The main stumbling block is cost. The cost of travel in fact. It will cost the best (read worst) part of £500. And there will also be the travelling to London, and travelling within Japan.
I am also fairly sure that neither of us have actually been to Japan, and my knowledge of the spoken language would only sustain conversation for less than five seconds, and my ability to read kanji and kana forms will only allow me to write my name…
So I’m not sure whether these plans will follow a similar fate to poogasm.com, but it would be great to go to Japan!
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I left Newcastle fairly early on – the bus left Central Station at 7am. We made fairly good progress and stopped at Sheffield’s Meadowhall Interchange. Our bus had more people on than there has been whenever I’ve been on, so perhaps that is why we didn’t swap buses as per the usual rigmorale for the journey south. Instead, we swapped drivers at Sheffield for a bold Yorkshireman that cracked jokes for the rest of the journey.
After arriving at Sittingbourne by train from London Victoria, Nick picked me up from the station and we ended up visiting the Sheppey crossing and stopping at King’s Ferry Bridge to watch some barge go by. Nick’s family fed me (thanks!). And then to the Tap ‘n’ Tin…
I reckon that night cost me £80. But it was a bloody good night. That was apart from Nick’s silly drinking games… Met Will, Al and Laurie for the first time. If I’m right, then Will plays for James’ and Louis’ cricket team, Al is the guitarist in James’ band, and Laurie is Al’s girlfriend. Will got rather sloshed apparently – hope that didn’t have too much to do with the 8% Biddendens I bought him… I also tried to avoid the subject of Center Parcs because Matt was there, and I wasn’t sure whether or not he knew that we were going. That was easier said than done.
Louis, Carly, Al and Laurie left comparatively early – we stayed until rather close to 2am. When we did get out, everyone (bar me) went to get something at the kebab shop and then we made our way to the train station to get a taxi. James had been ringing up taxi firms trying to get a six-man taxi, but to no avail. So… Nick decided to walk it. The AA makes the distance to be 11 miles. So Russell and Matt decided to follow. Eventually they made it to Toys ‘R’ Us and got a taxi from there. James, Will and I were sensible enough to bite the bullet and get the taxi to Sittingbourne, which was about £10 each I think. Not bad. End of day one!
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