She She She Sign On

I woke up knowing it was the day to go to the job centre, an oppressive feeling which overshadowed the bright summer day. I knew I had to get up, things to do before the meeting with my “personal advisor” in that brightly coloured, heavily guarded place, but I put it off, hoping to waste the day into disappearing. When the sun beating through the curtains finally shamed me out from under the duvet, I threw on some clothes and moved to the next room and carried on my job hunting. Writing endless positive letters, tweaking my CV in infinitesimal ways in the hope that this final change will finally be the one that nets me a job and a way out of my empty days. I stay positive on the phone, I find new places online to discover that there are no jobs available, I do everything you’re supposed to and then, tired of my efforts at optimism in the face of reality, I give up and watch an old X Files on TV and pretend this is what I chose, that I wanted this freedom and a chance to rethink my career and watch re-runs on daytime TV. Pretend I wasn’t booted out of my last job with little more than a half hearted pretence that they cared whether or not the door hit me on the way out.
With things to do before the meeting, it finally reached the point where I could do nothing else to avoid the walk into town. I was everyone’s friend since I lost my job, having endless free time for favours and errands. I dropped off washing, posted letters and got kitchen knives sharpened, I picked up shampoo and something for dinner for the elderly couple next door. Finally, it was time and I walked towards the job centre, thinking about the last time I’d gone there, to make my unemployment official. That boy who called himself my personal advisor and who would have still been in primary school when I had started my career. He sat across from me looking self important yet uncomfortable in his cheap Burton suit and a tie only a mother could have bought him, his acne shining under the artificial light, telling me I might want to try the internet for job vacancies. I want to laugh in his face, but with each day that brings no news but failed interviews, polite rejections and deafening silence, I think the fear of this second meeting is that this makes it real, this is my life and it’s all I deserve.
Even before looking inside and seeing the crowds of the desperate and defiant unemployed - penned in together on deceptively uncomfortable, modern looking sofas - the people outside signalled what kind of place this was. Young men in tracksuits and cheap gold jewellery postured in a parody of manhood; tattooed, bleach-haired girls who don’t look old enough for a Saturday job pushing prams, smoking furiously before they head inside, swearing at their children to behave as Mummy needs to sign on, or there will be no Macdonalds later. I don’t want to look like I belong here, but I look down at my tatty t-shirt, cheap shorts and flip flops and fear that I probably don’t look any different to them. I keep my head down as I head through the doors and am excessively polite to the guards in the hope that they know, they can see it’s a mistake that brought me here. This is not my world.
I’m summarily ushered to a reception, which seems a grand title for an arrangement of three sofas and a rack of leaflets, and look around at my companions. Despite my best efforts at delay I’ve got here early, and immediately realise my mistake in not bringing a book. Next to me sits a young man so pale as to appear vampiric, an impression he does nothing to dispel with his dark heavy clothes and long hair swept across his forehead. He is obviously more seasoned than me, as he’s heavily into his book – American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. Although cheered by this potential sign of intelligence, I do think that it’s no surprise that this overgrown alabaster school boy can’t find work, he certainly doesn’t scream customer service to me. Next to him, taking up two seats on the sofa with his legs splayed wide was another young man, close cropped and heavily gelled hair. He’s on the phone, recounting drunken antics and telling anyone who calls he’s just signing on, fucking bastards keeping him waiting, he’ll see them in the pub in half an hour.
A name is called and a small grey man I hadn’t noticed until that point got up, taking a bulging folder of paperwork with him and starting up a lengthy debate with his advisor, loudly explaining how important he had been when he was working, and the many flaws that riddled the benefits structure. A young mum with a push chair took his place on the sofa, her daughter wailing and getting nothing for her efforts but an exaggerated sigh of frustration and sotto voce profanity. Names were called, people came and went, as did the time of my appointment. I want to ask someone what time their appointment is so I can gauge how delayed this whole process is, but I don’t want to engage vampire boy with my neck so exposed in a v neck tee, and the other guy is never off his phone even if would ever dare speak to him. I clutch my little pass book containing mysterious codes and try to think positive thoughts. I thought about what else I had to write in the job application I was working on, I thought about my yoga class that evening and tried to recall the sun filled days of my recent holiday, when I had felt so invincible and ready to take on the world and win.
“Miss Jones?”
Is it my imagination, or does the whole room sneer over that “miss” as I spring from my seat? Probably think if I made a bit more effort I could get a husband who would keep me in cheap fashions, cigarettes and gin, and then I wouldn’t have to bother these busy, important people at the job centre or take up an appointment which keeps so many others still waiting.
“Can I just check we still have the right address and you haven’t moved?” the boy asks, his tie a violent green which hurts my eyes. I say it is correct and feel a simmering anger. Why is he asking this? Where would I move to? I’m stuck exactly where I am until I get a job, win the lottery or leap from the top of a high building. He taps away on the keyboard, far more than necessary given that nothing has changed, and asks if I can also confirm my phone number is correct as he swings the screen round so I can see myself on their system. I nod and clutch my shopping.
“Have you done any work, paid or unpaid, in the last two weeks?”
I say I haven’t, thinking, thanks pal, rub it in. Isn’t that why I’m here? Like the questions they ask you in the airport about your suitcase, the whole process seems redundant, relying as it does so entirely on the honesty of people who should never be trusted.
“And have you been actively seeking work in that time?” he asks, still keeping up the infernal tapping on the keyboard. I take a deep breath and smile. I can show I’m not like the other people here, and I tell him about the interviews I’ve attended, the jobs I’ve applied for, the applications I’m still working on. That will jolt him out of his paperwork coma which stops him seeing his appointments as anything more than details to be checked and electronic boxes to be ticked. I talk about the new service I’ve joined which broadcasts my CV to recruitment agencies all over the UK, about the review of my CV I’ve just paid an expert £300 for and what this means for my job seeking.
“But as yet you have been unsuccessful.”
I can’t tell if this is a question or a statement, and I feel either way it’s an insult, and as I twist the handles of my shopping bag I catch a flash of the newly sharpened kitchen knives. Before I know what’s happened, I’ve pulled the largest knife out of the back and lunged across the desk so I can be sure I can aim it straight for this adolescent bureaucrat’s heart. I think perhaps it’s just the space where his heart should be as it slides in quickly, and as I pull it out, it slashes across his horrified face. I hear an advisor in the next cubicle scream as overweight security guards puff into action, their belts heavy with equipment they never expected to need, talking panicked into their radios and fighting against the stampede of people running away. Mothers run with buggies, those posturing boy/men show how young they are by pushing past women and children and crying as they rush to the door. Chairs are pushed back and the advisors rush to disappear behind a coded locked door as the guards approach me.
I fight with all the fury of the persecuted, releasing all the anger boiling under my frustration, and with each severed kneecap and bloodied limb I think of the unfairness of it all, of losing my job, of being here, of putting up with this monstrous place which has turned me feral. Through polyester uniforms, red is flowing like the tears I’ve shed these past weeks, and still they try to stop me. I swing my shopping bag over my head and fell two guards with a single blow from a frozen leg of lamb, use the coat hangers from my friend’s dry cleaning to scratch the eyes of a furious looking female guard bursting out of her uniform and clutching at her face, whimpering like a kicked puppy. When reinforcements appear from the mysterious offices upstairs - more guards, more radio chatter - I know I will be beaten. However ill prepared and ill equipped these uniformed jobsworths are for my anger, there are too many of them, and so I turn and face the approaching, cowardly shaking pack as I hold the gleaming soiled knife to my own throat.
“And if you could just sign here, Miss Jones, I’ll see you in two weeks.”
I nod meekly, and as I leave, the ashen faced boy remains buried in his book, and his provisional companion is still on the phone.

The Rose Garden

You turn the corner and there we are:

Dark red unconscious beauty and friendship
Yellow like fresh butter. Pink, a small girl’s bedroom,
Skipping round hopeful white in walled seclusion.

Circular paths built for the ambulation of romance
Held in arms from bud to bloom by remembrance
Benches and the ghosts of the couples who sat here
Quiet and united with packed lunches, and who loved this garden.

It’s a garden of first kisses and declarations,
Planted, cultivated colour in grey faceless streets.
Here the barest touch of an arm could bloom
Into moonlight dancing and I love you.

This is a detour on our way, a giggle in a library
A deliberate fall down the rabbit hole.
We never made our destination.