My last post was more than a week ago. This is because, as I said in my last post, that this week I would be revising for my resit exam for my certificate in basic policing course and under taking a employability skills course at the behest of the Job Center. This was after I moved hostels on the Monday.
On Monday I did manage to move hostels just fine by using the buses to ferry my things from one hostel near Hyde Park over to another in a London borough called Islington.
This was a smart move on my part because unlike where I was staying this new hostel has better showers, is quieter, has a fridge and residents who don't steal food*, and best of all, in house wifi which permits access to torrents and a large common room with tables where I can sit and type and isn't ever cold.
*At least this week I've kept food in the fridge and, apart from a misunderstanding about labeling which resulted in my bag being placed in the staff fridge until I asked where it went, no one has stolen so much as the butter I've been eating all week.
I mean, seriously, the people here don't make noise, are really polite and it's a very nice place to stay, which is damn odd considering that I was staying in a hostel just off Hyde Park in central London with the next best thing to a collection of animate slime molds. Move two miles out of the city center to a hostel in an obviously poor borough and pay less rent, and suddenly everyone from the staff to the guests and the accommodation goes from harsh thieving thuggish scum to friendly warm easy and nice human beings. Go figure.
That however is where this week stopped being positive.
Tuesday I attended the first session of the employability skills course my job adviser at the job center put me on in spite of my certificate in basic policing course and my application to the Metropolitan Police Service, which I considered at the time to be a stupid act because I needed to revise the materials for the start of my police constable training and anything beyond that would be simply be a pointless waste of time.
He, my adviser, and the company who runs the course however told me that they would review my skills and abilities and then put me in direct contact with appropriate employers who would then hire me in the next couple of weeks. It's the sort of thing I always imagined the job center would do - take unemployed people, fine an employer and match them up - before having contact with the job center who see people as numbers on a spreadsheet, rather than as human beings.
Each of the sessions for this course were to take place 3 hours travel from where I would be staying - the new hostel I'm currently sitting in - but I only had 1 exam left and thought I could attend the course, revise in the evenings and take the resit at the end of the week. Once I pass this final resit I would then get my certificate, hand that MPS and get my full time paid training start date, job done, or started as it might be.
Thing was that the course lasted 6 hours per day, from 10am till 4pm. I had to get up at 6am to dress and travel, 4 hours total, to where the course would take place. Then it would take 3 hours to get back and another 1 for dinner. So in total that's 14 hours, less 8 hours sleep means I had 0 hours for revising, so I got about 4 hours sleep a night trying to get revision in.
Additionally the bus costs about 3-4 pounds back and forth in travel credit, even with an Oyster Card.
By the end of the week I had burned through all the money I had buying lunch whilst out and travel credit. I had also gotten so tired I started making bad choices and not watching the time and failing to revise.
Tuesday was the induction to the course.
For some reason I thought this would take place in something like a college class room setting with computers and desks and things in an office style environment.
The class took place in a community center of a bough located deep in a residential area, and looked like a wartorn pile of brick that would look at home in the live-action movie of the Fallout nuclear apocalypse roleplaying and combat game series.
Wednesday morning the course started in earnest.
I woke up to find my debit card missing. I had been using it to pay for my travel costs on the bus [contactless payment method] so I had to walk to Elephant and Castle and then take the train for free to a nearby station. For some reason they never installed security gates in Elephant and Castle shopping center or at my intended destination so it wasn't an issue to use them seeing as I would've paid if I could but couldn't. Point is that I still had to walk for several hours to get there on time and back again.
When I got to the class was where I started to become enraged with my situation because we spent the morning building 1m long bridges out of folded paper and paper clips in groups.
...
Just let me type this a few more times to really let it sink in.
We spent the morning building 1m long bridges out of folded paper and paper clips.
I attended a job skills recruitment program to hang around with people who can barely read written English under the orders of the job center who are responsible for keeping me alive and getting me as quickly as possible back into full time paid employment instead of being permitted to revise for my final exam which once passed would get me full time paid employment with a public service, and I spent literal hours making a bridge out of paper and paper clips.
I SPENT HOURS OF LIFE MAKING A BRIDGE OUT OF PAPER AND FUCKING PAPER CLIPS BECAUSE A HUMAN BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR GETTING ME INTO PAID EMPLOYMENT TOLD ME THAT MY CERTIFICATE IN BASE POLICING COURSE AND MY APPLICATION TO THE METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE OF LONDON, ENGLAND, WASN'T WORTH ANYTHING.
...
Thursday. On Thursday I was so tired and so angry about Wednesday that mostly I sat in the class and thought about killing my job adviser, especially after the tutor of the course said 'I'm here to help you get into work'.
I'm a patient guy, honest, harmless really, unless someone actively tries to hurt or kill me anyway whereupon I disable the attacker with stupid ease and maximum ferocity. I want to be a policeman because I want to protect those who cannot protect themselves. I can be swift and deadly and dangerous, but I'm only a threat to those who harm others.
However in the course of my application the following happened which made it harder for me to get the work done. Things that others didn't have to deal with:
- I got a chest infection, my first illness in 10 years and my last since, a week before I took a fitness test with the MPS, which I still passed despite not sleeping for 24 hours due to revising for a Certificate in Basic Policing Exam, and not eating for 16 hours due to lack of coin. Plus the fucking fitness examiner bulled me during the mother fucking test! If I ever see that bitch again I'm going to make her fucking pay.
- When I went to do the coursework for my certification course, my PC broke, and the college was closed for the summer and refused me entry to use their computers, I was forced to use my 8 year old iPhone to get 75% of the coursework done.
- And then at the end of the course, 5 minuets from victory, my first full time job in about a decade of being ignored by employers, the job center, the people who are supposed to exist to get me full time paid employment, or at least stay out of the way and let me look or get educated so I can get employed, called my attempts pointless and essentially disabled my ability to finish them off after I had done 99% of the course.
It was all fantasy. I haven't and won't lay a finger on him. There is a vast difference between wishing someone dead and killing them. I wish him to suffer for what he did, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cause it.
I left there at the end of the session, even more angry after I requested Friday off to spend the day catching up on my rest and revising for the exam and being denied. I told my college tutor about this circumstances and he told me to do half this week and half next week, which sounded like a good idea. But they refused to give me Friday off, citing that the job center had to sign off on it. I admit I didn't ask my job adviser for the day off. He didn't know the course content of the employability skills course, he's never seen evidence of my knowledge and abilities, he never asked for confirmation I was enrolled at college or the letters I've received for the police regarding my application. He put me on the employability skills course and prevented me from completing my college course in total ignorance. I was angry. I wasn't going to go ask him for the day off. He would say no. Then he would die after I tore out his throat with my teeth.
So I went home. Whereupon I took the train. Went through the security gates without worrying about paying because I was too tired and angry to really notice the world around me at that point. And of course the train company and police was checking for tickets at the gate. With no debit card I had to provide them with my name and address and national insurance number and will receive a letter shortly ordering me to pay a £20.00 fine. Because of my job adviser. All because I did what I had to because of one man's ignorance and stupidity.
Friday, I gave up.
I got up and got half way to the employability skills course location, stopped for a drink of water, and...broke.
You don't disobey or argue with the job center. Because if you do they issue sanctions. Sanctions mean your housing benefit stops [you get evicted onto the street] and your job seekers allowance is cut in half [so you can eat, just, but you're sleeping outside].
There aren't really words for my physical condition by mid Friday morning at 9am.
I had run out of travel credit and couldn't afford to buy more [the buses are no-cash based, and the amount of credit you can buy at minimum costs more than I had, so eat I could, travel I could not]. I had to walk for 3 hours to get home. I had been getting 4 hours sleep a night for several days. I hadn't been eating properly. I hadn't showered as I needed sleep more than cleaning. I was a walking wreck of a human being, mentally, physically, emotionally.
I dragged myself home, slowly because my limbs simply didn't have the energy in them that they needed to function. Got in, ate, slept for 4 hours, ate some more, and then started arranging a solution to this mess.
The solution I've found is that I needed to update my address with the job center, which I never did because it's tied to my housing benefits and my address hasn't stayed stable and the cost of rent has been anywhere from 80-120 pounds a week over the last few months. However, by doing so this will remove me from the employability skills course and it will take them a couple of weeks to get me onto a new course, giving me just enough time to take my resit and get that to the MPS.
The downside is that this may result in not being paid my housing benefits for a couple of weeks and not being able to pay my rent. So it's not a perfect solution by any means, but it's better than getting sanctions for not attending the employability skills course.
This is in process and on Monday I'll be going to the job center to finalize the transfer of my claim over to the local offices. Hopefully my housing benefit for that week will still come through so I can send my medical forms to the MPS.
It's now Saturday and I feel a hell've a lot better.
Got 10 hours sleep last night, got up and showered and shaved, then went and spend the last handful of coin I had left for this week on ham, bread, coleslaw and milk so with the apples I have a bit of everything to aid recovery until after this weekend.
Seriously though, I'm a hard guy, a bad ass, with scars in places you don't want to get scars, and I work out, and I know pain, but this morning and occasionally this afternoon I was feeling so much better by comparison to yesterday that I was laughing like a mad man. I mean, cackling laughter which cracked around the edges with the sound of a brain's sanity sloughing away.
All I know right now is that I've eaten well today, I've slept well last night and will get some more shortly, the TV is good, I'm not cold, and it doesn't hurt anymore. And I've got a chance to finish my course and get into training.
And I hate humans.
The next time someone issues me an order I don't want to do, regardless of the consequences, I won't do it. If the local job center to here orders me onto a new course, I'm not going to attend. If they sanction me, I'm going to report the adviser who does it. If that doesn't fix it, I'm going to sue. If I can't, I'm going to post the above in more detail [it's worse than I summarized] on Change.org and start a petition for change.
Fuck you human. Fuck you and your entire fucked up fucking species who keep trying to cripple and damage me. No. More. I've hit my limit. Next round, I'd rather be DEAD than take any more of this.
I mentioned a while back about gears and how I stripped one and went ape shit at my college course tutor. Well, I haven't stripped one gear. Most of the gears have broken and shattered over the last week. Now it's time for the world to change.
Going to install MS Office on my laptop, organize the 3 books I'm writing, and then go get some snooze. Tomorrow I want to organize my exam revision. 08/11/14 is when the resit is. 2 weeks later is when I'll get the results. Anyone tries to stop me from being prepared to pass the exam, I'm going to ignore them and inform them that they can burn in hell.
My final word for today is that Papa Roach is pretty damn good. The slightly older stuff is better than the newer stuff. Not that the newer stuff is crap, but it's not quite as good in my view. Getting Away With Murder, 2004, was excellent. The Paramour Sessions though, not so much.
DONE.
