Monday

Well as many of you may know, I've had a varied career and a new phase started yesterday, bon voyage, tally ho, all aboard the skylark and off we go!
In my early days as a Diplomat, I had many adventures, in many parts of the world, my experiences in the embassy in Niristan as attache to Sir Arthur Fang, would account for a small volume just on it's own. Sir Arthur was a little eccentric, to say the least and was apt to to go native. He once in a forlorn attempt to curried favor with a particularly stubborn member of the Niristani land agency, dressed as a erotic female dancer and having managed to gain entrance to the said gentleman's home, waited until he retired for the night and  proceeded to shake and shimmy erotically at the foot of his bed. Sir Arthur was surprisingly lithe for a middle aged representative of her majesties government and apparently excited the old boy so much that he had a heart attack and popped his clogs! Sir Arthur suddenly realising that the object of his gyrations looked very unwell and having a morbid fear of any kind of death, panicked and in his frantic attempt to leave as quickly as possible, tripped over the hem of his costume banged his head on a rather solid chair and knocked himself unconscious! Imagine then the scene the following morning when the butler opened the bedchamber to wake his master, to find a rather grouchy and groggy Sir Arthur, slumped against a chair dressed in a belly dancers outfit and his employer stone cold in his bed with a grin on his face and an erection which as yet had not deflated!
Well the whole incident was covered up and of course diplomatic immunity came in handy. fortunately no member of the ruling Niristani Government wished to report the whole sorry affair, otherwise it could have been a recall for Sir Arthur and curtains for his career and quite possibly mine.
A polite gap had gone by before I had the nerve to ask Sir Arthur why he did it. He snorted in that way of his, sat down, lit a cigar and taking a drink from the almost permanent glass of whisky, that was always by his side, said.
Sometimes you have to be bold and do the unexpected, I had it on good authority that he liked a bit of the old erotic gyration, don't you know, imagine his surprise when next we met to discuss that dam land purchase we required and I casually slipped into the conversation my knowledge of his late night entertainment, well I'm sure I do not need to draw you a picture, my boy, deal done, I think!
I learnt a lot from Sir Arthur.

Sunday 9th

Hi, its me.
Just your average man siting in his front room, listening to Sounds of the Seventies on the radio.
The sun is shining and the sky is blue. What have I done this week, what adventures have been thrust upon me? Well it, as always, it has been a mixed bag of good bad and indifferent! Details, oh no, no details, your imagination or lack of it will have to suffice, make it up, speculate, fantasize, prizes for the most outrageous or evil!
For instance on Tuesday I met with the Dali Lama for tea, he seems obsessed with being a Buddhist but I think I have finally convinced him that he won't be reborn, over and over, karma it's a bummer man!
Wednesday and brunch with David, (Cameron), he seems to think I have all the answers and of course he is correct but I keep telling him, Dave you've got to think for yourself your the bloody Prime Minister! Well you can't run the country for him!
Thursday, got a call from Don (Trumpy), he is worried his republican campaign is not going as well as it could. I told him Donny boy, let the hair do the talking and you'll be fine, you could have the first comb over to become President! Of course I've guided Trumpy for most of his career and thought I had finally got him to become the richest laughing stock in the USA, who new that people would take him seriously? Americans, you cannot trust them.
Friday, that geezer from the Bank of England,I can't remember his name, I think he is from a former colony, he popped over, I was not going to let him in but he slipped me a few quid, so I gave him five minutes. He droned on about interest rates, I stopped him and told him to man up and walk it off. Can't stand a man who whines in a nasal twang!
Saturday, after the week I've had the last thing I needed, was a request from HM, yes even Lizzie needs my input from time to time, I try to limit my involvement, let's face it her whole family are as mad as a box of frogs! She's worried about eventually popping her clogs and leaving the family business in the hands of Charlie. I told her not concern herself she will probably outlive him and besides it would not be the first time country had had a mad king on the throne!
Anyway Sunday so far has had no emergencies that I've had to deal with, though I have had a voicemail from some German sounding bird asking about loans and the Euro, I think she said her name is Angela or something like that. I might give her a call back later, got a feeling it's got something to do with Greece, not the musical, the country, oh well!


Life can be a burden

To be an author

Good day to the absolutely zero amount of people who will read this, is a great pleasure to not know you.
I write, secure in the knowledge that these very words will never be read by anyone but me and I know what they are in advance! The statistical count on my page informs me that it is not visited by, well, anybody. Of course that is not the sole purpose of such pages, they are as much about , self-penned therapy, as much as one publishes them hoping the page might be read by some stranger who then becomes a regular subscriber?
So does it matter if I get the spelling correct or the punctuation in the right place? Well, if like me, you love the English language and like to read it, written in the correct way, then it does.
English is a much used and universal language, not given to say the romance of Italian or French,
it is never the less rich in its lexicon of words and the intrinsic ability to convey meaning in a varied and descriptive way, that in my opinion is unmatched in the world of so many different languages.
I am not promoting English as the greatest language but is is up there in the top one.
Of course I am English and therefore cheerfully admit to an unashamed bias. Many works of great literature have been written in languages other than English but when translated,  by an expert, will almost always translate and convey the meaning that the author has written.
I aspire to be an author, they say there is one novel in everyone given the chance to express it, I have started many but never been able to write more than a few chapters. I consider myself to be a story teller but am unable or to lazy to sustain the effort.
These days every minor celebrity or anyone who believes they have a story to tell seem able to produce a volume (yes I know many are ghost written), book shop shelves and electronic media are groaning with the weight of all the words that are written and published every day. From chefs to Zoologists, there are books of every variety and stripe covering every subject that a human brain can concoct or think might sell and be interesting to a readership somewhere.
And that is good. Alright a lot of this blizzard of written words is crap but a great deal of it is entertaining, stimulating, life altering,informative, educating, moving, romantic, historical or just a great story, well told. It takes us to places we have never been, fires our imagination, makes us laugh and cry, sometimes helps in tough times.
A good read is exactly that.  

Recruitment

Well it seems that jobs interviews are like buses nothing happens and then they all come along at once!
I have emails and phone calls from a number of recruitment agencies and all of them want to put me forward for interview. So I am in a position in which, I can to a degree, be choosy and therefore I have rejected a couple of these opportunities, simply because I do not fancy them!
The last time I had to look for work the prospect of securing employment did not seem quite so good.
Why is this? Is it  that there is a shortage of candidates with the right skill set and experience, I suspect that this is the case. Have employers realised that a real history and long term knowledge is more useful than had previously been given credence too?
In my last search two or three years ago, my experience proved to be an obstacle, now it appears to be an advantage. An imagined change or a real one? Perhaps there is just more vacancies and as I have said in a previous blog, not enough available people of the right background to fill them?
Of course I still have to secure one of these opportunities but I am good at interviews.
I have noticed a trend in asking qualifying questions, which are so nebulous as to almost be insulting.
Give me a time when you provided great customer service?
What is your biggest regret?
What do you find the most frustrating aspect of working for some companies?
These are just three examples of questions that are designed to possibly eliminate you from the selection process but are about as useful as a one legged man at an arse kicking party!
The days of a straight forward face to face interview are long gone, its all role play and designer questions.
Frankly it is all meaningless and much of it will never be an indication of whether you are actually capable of  doing the job. It appears we have lost our capacity for normal human judgement without the added control of set techniques that some clever, highly qualified academics, have decided is the best way to assess a prospective employee.

Job Hunting

As I may have mentioned I am currently looking for a new job.
The job market is interesting and on the surface, buoyant. If you search the job boards on-line, there are thousands of advertised positions and that is just in my local area.
Dig deeper and you discover that many of them, no longer overtly, will immediately eliminate you based on the subtle way the job description is written. You can apply for all or any of them, working on the basis that by the law of averages something will strike a prospective employer somewhere!
It is of course easy to sit in your home online and apply for jobs or registering on job-sites, uploading your CV as you go. I would conservatively estimate that for every 100 applications you will perhaps garner two or three replies and one interview.
Agencies, as is their mode of operation, will also sporadically call but only if they have a positions to fill so as they can earn their commission.  
Thus far I have secured one part time job and been for one other interview which was unsuccessful. I have had a number of rejections from on-line applications, which is par for the course.
If there are so many vacancies, I ponder on where all the suitable candidates are to fulfill them? We often read and hear on the news that freshly minted University graduates cannot get employment and there are more of them than ever before. So are they all filled? What happens if they are not? Do these companies take people on and train them to do these roles? If they are all filled, whose getting them and why do so many advertised positions remain and new ones get posted everyday? It is a mystery!
I am in my sixties and therefore am not expecting many of the companies I apply to, too consider my application, in spite of the common prevailing attitude that age is not a factor! I also understand that that is not the sole reason for not being considered.
I am often told I am to "senior" with my past experience but that is just, a not so subtle, way of telling me I am too old.
Still I will persevere and continue to apply for any position I believe I am capable of doing. I am still a valid and useful member of society, with a vast amount of experience and personality, so someone with good sense will want me I am sure. 

Only because I have the time

Its 7.39 and unusually I am sitting in my front room typing this. I say unusually because up until two weeks ago I would have been out and about driving the roads of Britain.
As always in this life things change and it all came to an end and now I have time to write this blog. I forget my blog for long periods, which is an indication that it is not that important.
I understand that bloggers can make money out of this medium.
I have for many years been very computer literate, however I have not ever been able to use it to earn any income. Like all these apparent easy ways of earning, it is not as simple as it seems! 
The advice is self-serving and frequently leads one to a site which wants to take YOUR money.
Now I am far from naive, indeed I am somewhat cynical, I understand that in the world there is nothing like a free lunch but it is a difficult area to navigate your way through. As in all things that wish to entice the unwary, the headline is often far from the actuality. The proliferation of the internet is a good thing, as a repository for information it is unrivaled in its breath and speed in which one can find the subjects you are looking for.There is no such thing as a get rich quick scheme but even the genuine can be swamped in the morass of information that swims before your eyes, I suppose that Google really holds all the power!
I have used the internet since it has been available and that early excitement has long since faded into the distance.
Now it is nothing more than a tool, the days of surfing for its own sake are long past. Of course this is expected, when you have are used to something daily it becomes nothing more than another ordinary piece of our lives.
Inevitably websites have become more sophisticated and as time has gone on, they have become almost too clever and therefore difficult to navigate, building a level of frustration for the user, as the web designers seek to control your mouse and keystrokes ever more tightly.
The old idiom less is more, when designing a webpage, should be kept in mind.
I understand that the applications have ever more technical tools that can be implemented but it is not necessary to have to use them. To many sites seem to be about how clever the designers are and not enough about how easy it is for the average user!
So web designers think about the us, make it simple, I want to use your site but if it is to difficult or frustrating, I will leave your pages and thus waste all the time you took building the site.

It's some time since I have written a post on this page but I have more time on my hands yet again, having just been made redundant. So once again I am looking for work at the tender age of 62. 
I am quite relaxed about it, after all it's not the first time and it is pointless getting worried or anxious about these things, they are emotions that can drive you on but can also hold you back, best to eschew them!
Besides there are always things going on and people who are far worse off than I and for a myriad of reasons.
Live for the moment has always been my thing, I can do nothing about what's past and the future will take care of itself.
It helps that I have a very stable marriage and it is certain that without my wife Wendy, I would probably flounder! I also have two fabulous sons, nuff said!
What to do next? 
I need to earn money, not vast amounts but naturally will take the most renumeration I can achieve.
I am open minded, I can turn my hand to most things, after all I have vast experience and a great deal of common sense, something I find is sadly lacking in today's technology reliant world.
I enjoy conversation. I am interested in others. I have this thing called a personality.
Still it's persistence and tenacity which will get you furthest and I believe you should apply for anything and everything you think you can do. The law of averages must eventually come into play. Use any contacts you have, who you know is often better than what you know! 
Never believe your to old or not good enough. Emphasis your experience, it is a huge advantage.
So I embark on another phase of my varied working career, trying to keep everything in perspective and proceeding with optimism and confidence.
Hey ho