Coastalblog

Cat, meet pigeons. Pigeons: cat. Notice handed in. Lots of angry people mystified as to why I would voluntarily give up a perfectly well paying job for no (to them) readily apparent reason. Lots of pressure being placed on your humble correspondent to rescind his decision. Lots of talk about money and how I won't have any.

Does the phrase "job satisfaction" not mean a fucking thing to anyone any more?

Well, things at work, which have been bubbling along nicely, are about to come to a head.

A brief precis:

Employee A handed his notice in. So Employee B was asked to fill his shoes. Employee A changed his mind but big boss C was having none of it, having been wanting to get shut of employee A for quite some time, and preferring the talented and charismatic employee B anyway. Unfortunately big boss C made a couple of oversights vis a vis his business cash flow, and was forced to sell his business to evil amoral fucks D and E. Evil amoral fuck D is, surprisingly also quite a fan of the dashing, handsome employee B, but evil, amoral fuck E, who does the hiring, is not (due in part to an incident some time ago involving evil, amoral fuck E's assistant manager, egregious lickspittle F and the courageous, upstanding employee B. The owrds "upside your head" were involved). It seems likely that Evil, amoral fuck E will choose to retain the services of employee A.

At which point I'm walking right out of the fucking building and never coming back.

Of course, I could be wrong, in which case I'll spend a period of time working for evil, amoral fuck E, before walking right out of the fucking building and never coming back.

So there are three options: take an extended period of time off. This has the downside of draining my bank account somewhat, but the upside of being able to finally finish writing that bloody novel; get another job, tempting, but I really could do with the time off, or take a part-time job, thus defraying the slow depreciation of my assets.

Place your bets kids, what should I do? Answers on an e-postcard to the usual address.

The Chapel Street arsonist is, to my mild surprise, front page news in the Guardian. Sadly they can't be bothered with such a level of detail, confining her crimes to "ormskirk". Coastalblog can, however, scoop Fleet Street by exclusively revealing that two of her arsons were committed here on dear old Chapel Street, and one on Bridge Street. And that there's a baby arsonist copycat who left a nasty scorch mark on the bonnet of an old Datsun Sunny that's parked down the end of the road.

First the Ormskirk Model Boat society fail to get planning permission for a Model Boating lake in the middle of the park (seemingly unaware that no-one gives a monkeys. This was front page Advertiser. I shit you not) and now this. Surely these are the End Times.

Right, sorry about that. I only fully realised the full physical impact of my lengthy stint yesterday. Mrs Coastaltown and I had a full day planned, heart-starting game of squash in the morning, followed by trip to Clitheroe to stock up the wine rack. Then a spot of nice dinner and maybe a pint or two. The perfect way to relax. I made it as far as the end od part three before exhaustion rolled right over me. I was in bed by ten. This does not happen very often. Clearly I was saving it all up for a day off, cos I didn't feel that bad whilst I was actually in the midst of the stint. But yesterday, wow.

The obverse of being in bed by ten, however, was that I bounced out of it bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Vim, vigour, joys of etc. And so back to a boiling hot word processor to crack on with actual proper work, not just that stuff that brings the money in. I faithfully promise that by the end of today there will be at least three new Ormskirk short stories up. I also promise to have eaten my greens and written a letter to my dear old nan. I may even find time to get stuck into that worrying pile of cheques to be sent to various locations, but one step at a time Martin, one step at a time.

Sorry about lack of updating here and on OSS, there's a bunch of stuff in the pipeline but I'm just flat out at work at the mo (manager's on his hols). Normal service will resume shortly.