(no subject)
Had a terrible sleep last night. I was so tired I fell asleep at 9.30, only to wake up at 1.30 and doze for what felt like a couple of hours. Then I woke up at 8.30. So much for the Sunday morning lie-in.
First week at work has been odd. I don't think I can consider it to be a standard week. There are more people who have been hired, but I've started first because I harrassed them about giving me a start date. I wasn't doing it because I was so excited, they just didn't get back to me for a week and I was worrying that I'd miss my start date or something. They've let me go early each day; the latest I've stayed is 3.30, which isn't very useful for measuring how long it will take me to get home. It tends to be about an hour and a half from hospital to my house, but I have no doubt that will be longer at 5pm. I haven't even figured out what time I need to get the bus in the morning in order to be there by nine, because they keep telling me to come in late. Each time I get the bus the traffic conditions seem to change, and getting a bus ten minutes later or earlier makes quite a difference in when I get there. But starting tomorrow I think I have to work standard hours; something about someone important coming back and having to log my hours. Which is going to be tedious. Even in my last job I was sneaking out at 4.40.
This week I've been listening to a lot of Elbow, following their Mercury win. I dug out their old albums and my opinions have completely changed. I used to like their first album the most, thought Cast Of Thousands was a bit rubbish and quite liked Leaders of the Free World. Now both Cast of Thousands and Leaders of the Free World are great, and singles aside, I'm not too fond of Asleep in the Back. Leaders of the Free World has excellent lyrics, especially in Great Expectations. I'm a bit annoyed with Guy Garvey because of it. Be less good!
Yesterday I bought The Seldom-Seen Kid, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Is it a better album than Do You Like Rock Music? Well... yes. I'm not going to complain about that decision. Highlight is The Bones of You, definitely. Annoyingly my CD does not play well in my computer. Winamp completely refuses to play the first two tracks, and Windows Media Player has the first track as 59 minutes, as it has the entire album in it. Track two does not exist, and the rest is fine, which is particularly galling as The Bones of You is track two! At first I thought I had a dodgy CD, but it plays fine on a normal CD player, and also on the PC downstairs. So I don't really know what I'm going to do about that.
Yesterday at Oxfam an aging gentleman with white hair, glasses and a nice jumper came in and bought a talking heads album. It was vinyl, so I had to get the record out from under the counter. When I produced it, he gasped and said "it's brand new!". It was quite lovely. I also had an annoying man buy several tapes; our policy is two for 99p, but if you buy one it has to be 99p. This is because 99p is the lowest price we sell stuff in the shop, and we get loads of tapes. When I told him this he refused to pay, utterly outraged that we would do such a thing. Apparently 99p is too much to pay for a twenty-year old album on cassette. Exactly how much would he be willing to pay instead? This is completely ignoring the fact that it's a charity shop and the point of selling things is funds for Oxfam's continued existence. I put all his stuff back on the shelves, as he just left it on the counter, and later he came back and bought everything for the correct price, saying "I know it's not your fault." How good of him. People have no concept of the value of things these days.
First week at work has been odd. I don't think I can consider it to be a standard week. There are more people who have been hired, but I've started first because I harrassed them about giving me a start date. I wasn't doing it because I was so excited, they just didn't get back to me for a week and I was worrying that I'd miss my start date or something. They've let me go early each day; the latest I've stayed is 3.30, which isn't very useful for measuring how long it will take me to get home. It tends to be about an hour and a half from hospital to my house, but I have no doubt that will be longer at 5pm. I haven't even figured out what time I need to get the bus in the morning in order to be there by nine, because they keep telling me to come in late. Each time I get the bus the traffic conditions seem to change, and getting a bus ten minutes later or earlier makes quite a difference in when I get there. But starting tomorrow I think I have to work standard hours; something about someone important coming back and having to log my hours. Which is going to be tedious. Even in my last job I was sneaking out at 4.40.
This week I've been listening to a lot of Elbow, following their Mercury win. I dug out their old albums and my opinions have completely changed. I used to like their first album the most, thought Cast Of Thousands was a bit rubbish and quite liked Leaders of the Free World. Now both Cast of Thousands and Leaders of the Free World are great, and singles aside, I'm not too fond of Asleep in the Back. Leaders of the Free World has excellent lyrics, especially in Great Expectations. I'm a bit annoyed with Guy Garvey because of it. Be less good!
Yesterday I bought The Seldom-Seen Kid, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Is it a better album than Do You Like Rock Music? Well... yes. I'm not going to complain about that decision. Highlight is The Bones of You, definitely. Annoyingly my CD does not play well in my computer. Winamp completely refuses to play the first two tracks, and Windows Media Player has the first track as 59 minutes, as it has the entire album in it. Track two does not exist, and the rest is fine, which is particularly galling as The Bones of You is track two! At first I thought I had a dodgy CD, but it plays fine on a normal CD player, and also on the PC downstairs. So I don't really know what I'm going to do about that.
Yesterday at Oxfam an aging gentleman with white hair, glasses and a nice jumper came in and bought a talking heads album. It was vinyl, so I had to get the record out from under the counter. When I produced it, he gasped and said "it's brand new!". It was quite lovely. I also had an annoying man buy several tapes; our policy is two for 99p, but if you buy one it has to be 99p. This is because 99p is the lowest price we sell stuff in the shop, and we get loads of tapes. When I told him this he refused to pay, utterly outraged that we would do such a thing. Apparently 99p is too much to pay for a twenty-year old album on cassette. Exactly how much would he be willing to pay instead? This is completely ignoring the fact that it's a charity shop and the point of selling things is funds for Oxfam's continued existence. I put all his stuff back on the shelves, as he just left it on the counter, and later he came back and bought everything for the correct price, saying "I know it's not your fault." How good of him. People have no concept of the value of things these days.