Payday with the Lovebugs

Pay day, the singlemost appealing couplet in the Western world.

Huzzah.

Work is interesting at the moment; I've been recommending some friends for jobs and have been sent out on errands across London. Although this DID lead to a situation yesterday where I had had a four hour round-trip to Romford in Essex and after walking three miles showed up soaked to the skin at the client's headquarters. That was......fun.

As I've been recently promoted (yahoo!) I have to work a bit more, but I've discovered that the earlier rise is actually pretty cool. The Tube is much less busy, for one. I can walk from my door to the Tube and get a seat within 5 minutes, and withing 40 I'm at my desk; all accompanied by my awesome iPod shuffle playlist, which was totally worth a beating to protect. I sat today, slightly dazed after a great sleep (with weird dreams) listening to a bizarre mixture of Patsy Cline, Rachmaninov, Kate Bush, The Rolling Stones and And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

I've been reading a bit more recently too. I finished 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut yesterday, and found it one of the best books I've read in years. It's a terrifying, hilarious, heart-breaking, poignant and most importantly, incredibly intelligent; dealing with the Arms Race, the misapplication of science, religion, lies and writing. Vonnegut has quickly become one of my all time Bad-Ass favourites and I can't wait to read the rest of his stuff. He's my sort of writer; ballsy, interesting and with an imagination that could light a sun. Excellent stuff, and with such a cool life.


So I felt really good about pay day today. Money isn't everything, I'll be quite adamant about that, but holy fucking mackerel it's nice to be able to buy stuff.


After work today there was a pool-pah of a commute home, and I had to meet Spark, my flatmate (and a recently engaged young groom-to-be) to get a suit fitted. I think it looks okay, it's a charcoal-grey three-piece and it's really comfortable.



What do you think? Yay or Nay?


Then, afterwards, Spark (Jude, the fiancée) and I decided to eat in town, and went and had a lovely meal. It was one of those great unplanned evenings that happen now and then where we were all much too tired (and happy to have an impromptu night out) to want to go home and cook, and instead had a great cheap meal, a bottle of good wine, and some kick-ass potent coffee. It's maybe the best espresso in London that I've had yet. It's short, extremely intense, and although bitter, has a nice aftertaste. It was a great meal, and a steal at £20 a head for a two-course with wine.



Spark and Jude. Awwwww



Then walking back to Bond Street to get the Jubilee Line, it was cool to see London at night. I see it all the time, but every so often you realise just how alive and interesting the place was. I think we're going to have more of these sorts of nights (even if I'm a MASSIVE bell-end third wheel for the Lovebugs) and hang out a bit more. The two of them make a perfect couple, and I kinda like being their rough-edge inappropriate friend, and it's cool to hang out with them, even if only to dispel my never-ending cynicism at the world. They're remarkably refreshing.

So, if you're a bit jaded, make friends with an engaged couple. And go for a walk in the City at night. And maybe go out to dinner once in a while. Oh, and try the espresso!


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Voice Work and the pleasure of one's own company.

The weekend! Huzzah!

End-of-days tiredness aside, this week has been pretty good.

I got promoted at work, which was cool. I'm now a Technical Delivery Consultant for the office stud (read: highest earner), Mack Daddy. MD's actually a really cool bloke, and is the old man (at 40) of the office, so he's a really laid-back guy and is helping me out. My new job is basically resourcing, and I spend most of my time either surfing the web on jobs boards (like Monster or Total Jobs) for candidates in the public sector. MD deals with social housing and social renovation, so the projects are sort of interesting, and vaguely in the 'I don't feel bad about my job cos people are getting jobs and building homes for people with no jobs' job spectrum of jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Steve Jobs.


Also there's a wee bit more money, which will help me buy heroin, and keep the struggling Drug-counsellor-and-methadone-manufacturer Sector afloat.

That's right, I'm saving the economy. Steve Jobs.


I also did some weekend work! Some videogame company had me in doing a bit of voicework (for v/activated software, not an acting role unfortch) so it was nice to be doing some of that without it being in the fuggy realm of soft-core audio erotica. Had breakfast at Borough Market in Southwark (near work) and then went home to spend the rest of the day writing.


So two wee anecdote-ettes about yesterday.
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1) I met a friend of mine in the Market, she's from back home and is training to be an opera singer. She's extremely pretty. Anyway, I was walking along, eating little free samples of everything from ostrich meat to passion fruit muesli, when I passed her in the queue.

Me: "Hi _____"

She: "Hi, Con, what are you doing here?


She: (looking around behind me) "Are you here on your own"

Me: 'Yup, I just came down for a spot of breakfast"

She: (unsure) "Oh...cool"

And soon after went on my way.

My question, is it weird that I like to spend a lot of time on my own? I mean, I go to the pub on my own occasionally, and like to eat at restaurants on my own with a book when I can, but is that one step away from complete loner-dom, or is it natural. What do you guys think?


2) I went in one of my favourite coffee shops, Best Italian, beside the market, because I'm secretly in love with the waitress there. She's French, and of course when I found that out, I spoke French, and made an idiot of myself. I went there with the Polish girl from my office (the Tank Commander one who taken on a big-sister role) and she almost frog-marched me up to the counter to ask the girl out when she saw me looking at her. I didn't go up, and somehow managed to stop her going up too, but when I went back in yesterday and saw her again, I wasn't sure at all, for some reason the entire vibe or athmosphere or whatever of the place and seeing her didn't lend itself to the pervy droolery of the day before. How variable is the old visual attraction these days? Wow. Obviously she's a stone-cold fox and out of my league anyway, so it just became a scientific observation, but it's interesting how a tiny set of variables can affect something like attraction.


ANYWAY:

My lil broheim is over a-visiting with his pixie girlf Beccy, so I've been showing them some of the sites (pubs) in WHamp and Kilburn. It's really good to see him, even if he is the annoyingly good-looking one and much much cooler than his older dearthair (he's studying to become a music producer and sound technician) it's nice to catch up. The three of us got absolutely shitfaced last night, then had a vid-chat convo with my girl Lopez. Good times.


I'm going to write a separate post about Valentines Day now, because I feel like ranting a bit.

Stay classy.

You are my sunshiiiiiiiine

So I've had far too much coffee today, and I'm just back from a job interview. Here's what maaaaad insomnia mixed with maaaaaas caffeine addiction looks like. All while dressed in a suit. Huzzah!

You are my sunshine from Conor Darrall on Vimeo.

In which I inadvertantly join the sex industry, win an award and pimp a wheelchair.

Right, so this definitely not a Happy-go-fucking-lucky McPositive post. The last two days have been rather weird.

As you may (or more like may not, and don't care) be aware. I have been unemployed now for about a month, after the whole boss-getting-me-drunk-and-cheating-money-off-me thing, and I've been a bit...bored. Well, as a tonic to that I went to the jobcentre in Kilburn yesterday to sign on (free money = ka-ching!) and start as a 'jobseeker'. I hadn't slept in like 30 hours when this happened, so yesterday was fun.

Now first of all, the whole dole thing is depressing. Very depressing. They ask you a million questions ("Now Mr D, when was the last time you shat on a toadstool" etc etc) that make you think about how broke you are, then they patronise the fuck out of you. ("Can you read? Oh, you can? Good for you") in a manner that clearly says "Well, I have a job, I'm better than you".

So, after three hours of that, I walked home, and decided to stop in the bank to open an account. The lady who I was dealing with was a beautiful Iranian lady called Shihraz, and she had a wheelchair. I didn't even notice this, as she was busy telling me about the Super Deluxe Multi Omni Hyper Gold-plate Account. I'm not sure how, but we began chatting about how it would be great to be wealthy, and me, trying to be funny, suggested that she could pimp out her wheelchair. That did it, forgetting the account, we went into a fifteen minute conversation talking about how great she could make her wheels, with platinum plating, sub-woofer speakers, bling. The works. It was the best bank-trip ever, and she's my new bff bank buddy. She spent the whole time giggling, and is the best bank person I've ever met, so I'm opening an account there.

Also, I did a shift in the pub last night..while almost crying with tiredness....fun.

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Yesterday was also a great day for me (tiredness and unemployment aside) because, the ever-cool Novelista Barista has given me an award. Ironically called the Coffee Cup Award I'm very honoured for the recognition and would like to thank NB for her words, she's very kind! Also, as a complete coffee addict, it's very gratifying to know that my future massive heart attack will be caused by something that I love so much.












Now, the porn thing. As part of my attempts to find work, I applied to loads of radio stations and voiceover companies; hoping against hope that someone would pluck me out of the ether and give me a prime-time breakfast slot. Well, they didn't. The only people who got back to me were a specialist fiction company.

Here's what happened :




(ps - by looking at the screen, I'm not trying to be intense or anything, the script is on screen at the time of recording)

So yeah, I've accidentally become a sex-worker. The pay's not atrociously bad, and I can dress like an unshaven bum but...here's the question...does that technically make me a form of hooker, or is it okay for me to do that and keep my head on high?? Responses please. Also, my laughably bad attempt to sound sexy is bound to return to haunt me at some point.
We'll see...


Anyway, I hope you're all well, what've y'all been up to?


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Coffee Cup Giveaway...

My uber-cool galpal over at the Novelista Barista is having a giveaway!

Go leave a comment, and you could win some free cups!

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