After just four hours with chidren I love, I’m exhausted. The thought of a lifetime is, well, unthinkable.

Here’s why.

A friend who has three girls (aged 7, 5 and 2) came to Edinburgh this weekend. We met up in Princes Street gardens this afternoon. After a lot of hide-and-seek/chasing around, the 7-year-old announced that she needed the toilet, so I was left with the other two, various handbags and jackets while their mum took the 7-year-old across Waverley Bridge to the toilets in Waverley shopping centre.

After about three minutes, the 5-year-old announced that she needed to go to the toilet too. So I gathered her sister and our belongings and shepherded them out out of the gardens towards the shopping centre. I’d been told that this was an urgent visit so I didn’t dare wait to call the girls’ mother to tell her what was happening before setting off. Ever tried to hold two hands, a few coats and make a call on a cellphone while waiting to cross a busy road? (No matter how desperate the calls of nature were, crossing Waverley Bridge before the pedestrian crossing let us was clearly out of the question.) If you have, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t, don’t.

In shopping centre’s food court, a mac-food-bot told us the toilets were on the level we’d just descended from and not at the food court. I was stupid enough to believe him. At the top of the escalator to the upper level, a security guard told me that we’d been misinformed and that we should return to the food court, where the staff would open the disabled toilet for us. (Presumably I couldn’t accompany the girls into the female toilet and even I would have qualms about taking a girl into a male toilet.)

Fortunately we met the girls’ mum on our way to the toilets. She took us all towards the regular toilets and then took the 5-year-old to the female toilet. After some cajoling, we thought she had done her business and all was well once more, so we returned to the gardens to enoy the sunshine.

Not long after the 5-year-old announced she’d had an accident because she couldn’t go earlier. So we needed to find somewhere to clean her up and some fresh undies – all the clean clothes were in the family’s car over a mile away. So we gathered up our kit once more and headed across Princes Street to H&M while trying to withstand the 7-year-old’s incessant demands to know exactly what had happened and get not to announce to everyone in earshot that her sister had done something rather embarrassing.

At H&Ms checkout, I asked the assistant if she’d let the 5-year-old and her mum use the staff toilets because this was ‘an emergency purchase’. Customer-service gold star of the day goes to the assistant for giving a wry, understanding smile and leading mum and afflicted daughter away.

I was left with the 2-year-old and the 7-year-old. The younger one was easier to entertain – plonk her on train-shaped display which was obviously designed to entice and yet withstand children sitting on it. Not so the 7-year-old, who threatened to climb displays that obviously weren’t designed for this purpose.

We waited, me getting symapathetic looks from a dad whose daughter had joined us while he looked for clothes for her*, for what seemed an inordinate time. It turned out that 5-year-old, rather than wetting herself, had done ‘the other’ – necessitating a lengthy clean-up, which eventually caused the mother to vomit.
*she wanted a dress but refused to help choose it.

Like I say, I love these children and would stop bullets for them. They can get me to do anything short of theft or lies for them but 4 hours is enough! Why would anyone vounteer for a lifetime of this sort of stress?

Echoes – Pink Floyd

Reality seems to have continued unabated since I last posted. I’m still working at a well-known bank in Edinburgh’s post-industrial wasteland from late afternoon to night and looking for real jobs in the morning. On Thursday I was keying amounts on cheques while idly musing (to avoid feeling bored and sore, as usual) when I realised I was keying exactly £1,000,000.

I’m puzzled: why write a cheque for that much? Why not electronically transfer the money and be sure it gets to its destination safely and immediately? I helped my sister transfer some money from one investment to another. The receiving investment manager told her that her money had been transferred by cheque. What would have happened if it had got lost in the post?

On the other hand, each night there is a huge bundle of postal orders and cheques paid into a debt management company’s account. Many of these are for £1 or thereabouts. I wonder sadly about the debts these are paying off. I also wonder how the debt management company breaks even on these arrangements. I believe banks charge business customers for each cheque they pay in or write. I can see why – the bank has to pay us grunts, the engineers who maintain the machines that read and sort the cheques and for flying the cheques to the payers’ banks!

Oh well, roll on the complete electronicisation of money.

Enough!

Yesterday my hostess cleaned out her study while I swept the balcony. Today we’ve walked along the Water of Leith to Balerno. It’s really pretty – lots of blossom and a feeling that most of the time we were in the depths of the countryside. Now I’m sat in the lounge bathing my feet like an old grampus.

Tomorrow we’re going to see two-thirds of The Goodies at the Festival Theatre. Yum-yum!

Ahh, the wonders of working in a bank: I get wind of wonderful things. F’rinstance…

On Monday night, I processed a cheque written by the Ministry of Cake. I’m told that the Scottish Executive doesn’t have a counterpart. I wonder if the First Minister is aware of this appalling mis-match. Is cake a reserved matter?

You can read more about the MoC here.

I am reliably informed that yesterday (14th March) is written as ‘3/14’ by inhabitants of lands across the western ocean.* It follows that for the transcendentally-minded citizens of these lands, yesterday was ∏-day.
*I’m not so sure about the punctuation but the ordering of “month, then day” is the important point here.

My informant also told me that ∏-day is celebrated by the ritual eating of pie at 1:59 on this day. My informant wasn’t able to tell me what sort of pie is eaten. There’s more about this day here. In particular, it is not to be confused with National Pie Day, which is 23rd January.

a dig at elections in Iraq and the US

Reasons to grunt

• I had financial concerns caused by a government policy of making all landlords register with the council(s) in whose territory their property(ies) are to be checked whether they are ‘fit and proper’ to be landlords and the cost of a gas safety check being taken out of this month’s rental income, I was very relieved to receive a cheque from Fife Council refunding £200 council tax.
• I have no idea why and don’t want to ask too much in case they decide I wasn’t due this refund anyway! I’m also sure that only landlords who are doing whatever makes them fit and proper will register on the supposedly compulsorary scheme and that unfit ones will find all sorts of ways to avoid being noticed or registered so I rather resent this cost. I especially resent the fact that it’s non-refundable if the council(s) decide I’m not fit and proper.
• I think my camera might be on its way out. Still it did sterling service around India and Indonesia so I think I’ve had my £30 worth from it.

Reasons to smile

• Anyway, the financial concern is over.
• I’ve heard from an old friend for the fist time in ages and we’ll meet up soon.
• The work I’m doing trying to sort out my sister’s finances seems to be having results at last. We have a lot to do at a meeting with her main bank two weeks hence.
• I have a commission for a B&B website, a possibility of more web-work (and so a need to update my skills fast!) and the likelihood of other freelance publishing work this year. Not a huge amount of money involved here but I don’t want to be a bank-temp for the rest of my life so I need to keep my skills lubricated and updated.
• And finally, I’ve just had an enjoyable day walking up Arthur’s Seat and around Holyrood Park.

For the past month I’ve been temping in the cheque-clearing department of a bank in the Gyle area of Edinburgh. My working hours are Monday-Friday 4pm to 11·30pm and so I return to my accommodation just after midnight. It’s not a stressful job, although large amounts of data-entry causes some physical discomfort, and most of the time I’m indoors. I do have to go outside the building to collect deliveries of cheques about 10 times each evening.

There are around 10 temps from different agencies working in similar roles with me: most are foreign students (four are from Andra Pradesh, one is from Karnataka and one is from China). This makes for an interesting cultural mix, especially when blended with the permanent staff who are almost all born-and-bred Edinburghers – and most are over 40. (Sob – so will I be in less than a month.)

Of course I’m looking for something better: I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life, £6 per hour doesn’t really meet my needs and aspirations, and I want my evenings back! However, it’s so much better than working overnight attaching needles to threads in Livingston would have been.

I’ve spent most weekends this year seeing different bits of Edinburgh with my host. There’s a very pleasant walk along the Water of Leith into Stockbridge: I highly recommend a waddle along it, even if you’re not a duck.

I’m looking forward to catching up with the usual suspects in St Andrews two weeks hence and then visiting my family in Worcester the following weekend. Any further ambitions have been shelved – it’s too uncomfortable to think further ahead or plan anything more grandiose. However, I’m alive and fairly content: this will do for now.

How long have I been longing to use this heading? Well, my wait is over thanks to my hostess’ new 17″ PowerBook G4 (January 2005 stylee, aka ‘Burns’). You can see it hiding behind Pismo and keeping Windtunnel’s new monitor warm here and you can see the specs here.

Bah! Just realised the ‘pile of Mac’ photo is missing my hostess’ iPod.

Here’s a rough speed comparison: the seconds taken to boot MS Word and Excel (2004 and 2008 versions) on our macs:

This probably says more about caches, amount of RAM available and hard disk speeds than it does about number-crunching.

Today I went to Livingston to find out more about the job I mentioned in my last post. Livingston is worse than Glenrothes for roundabouts and numpties. After half an hour in the factory, I was in possession of two fascinating pieces of information:

• When I wear my glasses, my eyesight is perfect (according to the factory’s tests).
• The job is eight solid hours (no breaks at all, apparently), sitting at a machine, doing the following:
  1. holding a piece of sterile thread and a surgical needle together in a notch and pressing a pedal to make the machine join them
  2. move the joined needle-and-thread forward one notch, rotating it through 45° and pressing the pedal to make the match pinch the join to strengthen it
  3. rotating the joined needle-and-thread back through 90° and pressing the pedal so the machine stregthens the other side of the join
  4. moving the joined needle-and-thread to the front of the machine and pressing the pedal again to make the join curve like the rest of the needle already does.

I was told that skilled workers can turn out 300 units an hour – one unit every 30 seconds. I’m so looking forward to this job.

I won’t know whether or not I have the job until the end of this week – the factory is interviewing more potential staff. There are 36 vacancies to be filled. Please wish me luck.

I’ve been utterly shattered and full of headache for no good reason since Sunday morning. This rather dulled the pleasure of visiting various friends in Fife. I keep hoping it will go away but no matter how much I sleep, the tiredness and lethargy are still here.

Desparation
Assuming I can get to Livingston and pass manual dexterity and eye-sight tests, I have a good chance of being employed next year: working on a night-shift production line, assembling medical bits and pieces. This will be long-term temporary position, and I’m so looking forward to commuting to Livingston’s Kirkton Campus for 10pm each evening.

Pilgrim’s (lack of) Progress
I was looking forward to doing something constructive this afternoon before and after the interview for the above job. However I spent the time frantically searching for my passport to prove to the employers that I’m British enough to work in the UK. I’ve found my out-of date passports, including a UK one, and that seems to have been enough for this purpose. However, my passport with my lovely visa stamps for India, Singapore and Indonesia may well be gone forever.

Travelogue
I think I’ve at last caught up with scanning all of the souvenirs that I want to put on Random Bozo’s travelogue. The last piece to go on a page I’d already put up was an issue of an education journal on 6th June. Other scans will go up at the same time as I put up their days’ photos and text. I think I still have a chance of finishing it by the end of 2006.

I See You, You See Me – The magic numbers