050509 On the dole again

I want to write, therefore I shall. What would Joanne Umley do?

Been back from India a week (and a bit, but in denial due to diminishing bank balance).

I am officially a dole-ite. Again. But it’s been a while, and last time didn’t really count seeing as I was awarded £2.60 a week, and I walked in the dole office and my piggy feet auto-marched me straight the hell outta there.

Hm.

Can’t have really needed the £2.60? I hear you tut.

I play the Part fairly well; I mean I’m really trying to get into the scene. I’m a WRITER you see, an artiste, not like the rest of 'em.

Today I found it slightly difficult to continue this philosophy. Even with the blinkers on, as I left number 13 in my six-year-old-three-quid-from-mark-one tracksuit bottoms, (I kid you not), I thought I’d head for the library.

But first, one must venture down the centre of commerce in Hove known as George Street.

Flashing back to a Simon Pegg film, the street appears full of yellow-toothed zombies. There’s a fruit and veg stall for God’s sake. But Wetherspoons prevails.

I walk past a red polo-shirted girl, one of her legs crossed over the other in her polyester black trousers, twirling her hair whilst on the phone in an imaginary tea break:

“Yeah, and then he didn’t even………………………….”, I walked quickly past, dreading my ears hearing the woeful tales of bank-holiday abuse.

*ASIDE*
I wonder if the girl who lives downstairs is on ben-e-fits (pronounced ben-ee-fits with a squint on the ‘fits’). This ponder is based on the fact that if I am toileting at night my bathroom smells of burnt-on fish fingers. The golden food tells all.

Anyway, after the delights of Boots (adult with learning disability reads smoothie ingredients out loud whilst I queue to bask in the brilliance of my BMI – swift exit), I also grace Superdrug and Savers with my presence. I’m looking for hair dye, (Cannes next week, can’t look like Rajhastani gypsy at the roots don’t you know).

I love my idle price comparisoning. I buy a useless bunch of stuff including an extremely foreign-looking fake choc dip. Which was disgusting, but not much fat – be it delicious palm oil n all that. I cannot, however, remember which colour I dye my hair. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, don’t make that mistake Zoe. Not again.

I do, eventually, make it to the library. I toss my out-of-date temporary membership card at the man behind the counter. I am now a full member! I have a leaflet that tells me my allowance. Excellent. And I’m armed with a whole treeful of useless local publications. That’s the spirit. Apparently I can enlist on a course in Egyptian Dance on a Tuesday morning with Sheila, that’ll get me back into work I tell ya.

I go up to the IT suite (ahem, go with it). There are all SORTS of undesirables in here. A girl with her mum/sister/pimp looking at flushed pictures of a sweaty holiday. The thing next to me on a dating website. Yes, in a public library. He smells of sperm or suchlike. Another spitting angry girl takes up residence the other side. She is either bipolar, or my twin.

Low blood sugar forces me to hunt out a salmon sandwich, but on my merry way I chant the mantra ‘toilet books sandwich’, ‘toilet books sandwich’. On the way to the toilet the rancid security brushes past me. Eurggh. I find a Vonnegut and a Palahniuk which’ll do for now, and decide to use ‘self-scan’. Or not. Mr Security guided me through the magical electronic process.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo, Kurt Vonnegut, sci-fi!”

“It’s not”, I growl.

“What is it then if it’s not sci-fi. Look, it says sci-fi on the cover.”

“Have you read any Vonnegut?” I spat. And with that I was owf to Tescos, absolutely mortified by this contact with an apparent library employee.