Rainy Bank Holiday Monday.

As is traditional it rained Monday. It always rains bank holiday Monday (as far as I’m concerned). By some convoluted logic my company allows those of us with six months continuous service too be paid for “religious” bank holidays, but you need a years service to be paid for “non-religious” bank holidays. This particular bank holiday was not a “religious" bank holiday, I was on the rota to work. No amount of arguing on my part that, as a Pagan, all bank holidays are actually religious to me, would allow me the day off.

So I did the usual, up at seven out of the house by half past to be in work about eightish. These people are allowing me to work myself to death. Thirteen hour shifts four days a week and the odd eleven hours on the fifth day (actually Mondays). The little they pay me means I have to take what overtime they give me, and that’s overtime at basic rate, the gods forgive if the possibility of me working overtime on an occasion where I may earn more (say a bank holiday for instance) should occur. You see I can work as much overtime as I need, as long as it doesn’t give me the opportunity to actually benefit myself.

Much the same with the new position. We have to “prove” ourselves before they will consider even offering us more money. So they have four high class data analysts for half what it would cost them to actually employ them from the open market. Supply and demand will overcome this situation because I only need them as long as it takes me to get another job. The fact that they were the only people to offer me a job in a position of need, for that please read “back against the wall desperation”, is a small point.

I just feel as though I have fallen through some time warp and ended up twenty years ago (if it were not for the fact they all wear modern clothes I would think I had undergone a similar situation to the main character in “Life on Mars”).

I miss my bank holiday Mondays. I own most of the “Carry On” films on DVD. Actually from the point that during my deep days of depression I needed something light and inconsequential, as apposed to the not too surprisingly dark feast of angst and depressingly dark horrific fare that is the majority of my film collection. Nothing better than to sling on a “Carry On” and fall asleep to memories of mum cooking Sunday lunch and the rest of the family slowly drinking ourselves into a sherry addled stupor in front of the TV.

The flickering of the neon light in the gents reminds me of so many scenes from various film noir.

The down trodden hero’s profile starkly outlined against the intermittently flickering neon sign (either a bar sign from the seedy dive they live above, or the street light intruding through inadequately closed curtains). The hero (sipping at whisky from a shot glass, smoking a cigarette almost carelessly, blowing random shapes out of the window), sits on the windowsill watching the city flow past below. Sip on the whiskey, long drag on the cigarette. The sound of a police siren in the distance. Exhale, long and slow, smoke billowing towards the heavens. A drunken brawl, mostly shouting, threats of what they would do to so and so, if they caught them. The forlorn cry of an abandoned lover as she pleads in a painfully coarse, and common, voice for her mate to return, and that her impropriety meant nothing honestly. Sip of whiskey, draw on smoke.The smash of glass down some side street, heralding some other fight, or petty crime, thuggery, or vandalism. Exhale. The large old clock on the wall ticking too loudly in the quiet of the room. The drifting lilt of music from some bar down the street. The too merry karaoke style drunken revelry as some group of regulars attempt to join in. Sip of whiskey, draw in the smoke. The occasional car whizzing past with that ever present Doppler affect on the note of the engine, as it draws closer, then the shift in pitch as it passes and recedes to the distance. Clock tick, whisky sip, draw on the cigarette, nothing is going on this evening. Nothing at all. Cats fighting in the alley. Cars less and less frequent. Rise in the ever present drone of the by pass in the far distance, a road that never sleeps. Top up the whiskey from the dregs in the bottle, too little left, Have I really drunken all that? Probably.

Slowly turning to the room. Not stumbling too much. Slight chuckle to self at how difficult the simple things are. Place the bottle on the table. Remove my shoes and slump onto the mattress. Finally fall asleep.

Technorati Tag: Film Noir, Humour, meekon5, Obsession, Depression, Bank Holiday, Dark.