EDIT This entry has been hanging around for a while but only today (11th May) could the ghastly truth be revealed.

This entry is probably of no interest to anyone apart from me but this is my blog about my life and you are welcome to read and/or comment if you wish.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be late on my final day, despite having many things to do that morning, needing to go shopping at Costorphine’s Tesco Extra and being congenitally almost incapable of work-punctuality. So leaving the flat after 3pm was only being true to myself and the zeroth law.*
*There are two sorts of data: that which is backed up and that which is not lost yet. (I’m not sure of the true name of this law but I saw it on an IBM bag once and it has been engraved on my cyber-heart ever since.)

Panic at the bus-stop when I see that there’s not a 12 (straight-to-Tesco) bus due for at least 12 minutes but a 26 bus (which stops 3 minutes’ run from the store entrance) comes soon enough. Run in, can’t find the aisle in which the items I need should be, ask assistant who provides yet more evidence that my memory is more faulty that I would like, queue at the 10-items-or-less checkout and hurl mental daggers at the people in the queue (a) for taking so long (b) for having the temerity to exist at all.

Run out, thinking evil thoughts about my inability to stick to sane schedules, towards bus-stop. On the way, I spy a taxi with its ‘I’m free’ light on in the queue for the roundabout at the car-park exit but don’t have the nerve to try to hail it. Get to my bus-stop: if the timetable bears any relationship to reality, I’ll just have time to take the next 12 bus, jump off at Lightning Roundabout (at the start of South Gyle Crescent) and immediately jump on a 22 bus to take me to my work’s entrance.

Of course, the 2 minutes I wait for the next 12 bus are filled with fear and self-loathing, the 22 bus doesn’t materialise the way I want but somehow I’m at my work with 30 seconds to spare. Even better, the security guard who has derided my lack of punctuality on days I deserve this, and has now taken to deriding me when I’m on time or early, isn’t on duty and so I’m not forced to wait agonising seconds while the comptrollers of the turnstile and two security doors make me even later. (I’m convinced they do this deliberately.)

At my desk, I find a wee envelope containing a ‘fare-thee-well’ card and a leaving present: a packet of Golden Virginia. I’m so touched. I was only a temp and was in this post for less than 4 months. Work itself is fine: screening bundles of cheques for staples and other extraneous material and keying data that the cheque-sorter can’t read presents no unusual challenges. However, there is a incident that I might have recognised as a harbinger of doom: the PC across from me appears to run very slowly, taking 5 minutes to boot the data-entry and cheque-balancing* software. The staff-member attempting to use this PC force-quits the software and moves to another terminal.
*For cheques received up to 7·30pm, if there is a discrepancy between the sum of the cheques and the associated credit, we have to find and correct any mis-read or mis-keyed data. If all the data is entered correctly, we have to complete a standard letter to the relevant branch telling them that they or the customer had made a mistake. I’ve suggested that the bank uses a standard email to save a lot of paper or time. It shouldn’t be too hard to attach the images of the cheques with which we work, although I’d lay money on the branches then printing these images before doing whatever else they need.)

By 7pm, it’s becoming clear that the deliveries from branches are running late and so we occasionally twiddle our thumbs while waiting for more cheques to screen or data to enter. I feel the anxiety rising in my supervisor, team leader and shift manager that we’ll not have this run complete for its 8·30 deadline. I offer to delay my break until the work is complete and we just make the deadline, or so we think. It appears that when the staff-member using the afore-mentioned recalcitrant PC force-quitted the check-balancing software, the items she had just balanced got stuck in the bank’s cyberspace. My team-leader puts in a call to ask the software engineers to rescue these items, another to the mainframe to say we’ve not quite beaten the deadline and reports the news to our shift supervisor. By now I’m twitching from nicotine-withdrawal, hunger and wrist-cramp so I escape for my break, hoping that the huge delivery of Glaswegian and Edinburgh business that arrives around 9pm is late enough that I don’t leave other collegues in the lurch while I’m munching.

When I return from my break, I find that there’s been yet another IT issue, possibly related to the earlier one. The whole system is down and so we can only screen the cheques. Normally, cheques arrive until just after 10pm, and despite data-entry going on continuously throughout the shift, there’s up to 1000* data-items to enter manually, some wrapping up** and final transmission to the bank’s mainframe left to the back-shift supervisor, team leader and shift manager and the few temps and staff-members who work past 11·30. Today we don’t start data entry until well after 10pm. I dislike the thought of leaving the backlog to colleagues with whom I’ve enjoyed working and there’s no nightshift (who clear cheques for another bank that hires this bank’s services but can also help with any overspill we have) so I offer to stay on to help clear it.
*more on Mondays and many more the day after a bank holiday
**including packaging cheques that have passed though our system and hence been credited to their payees’ accounts for delivery to the payers’ banks and hence debiting from the payers’ accounts. The hand-over occurs in Milton Keynes. I understand that the banks usually act on the numerical and image data we and our counteparts in other banks send to each other after the ‘out-clearing’ processes which have provided my living since early January. I can’t understand why the banks can’t store each other’s cheques and send the physical items to the payers’ banks only if they are needed. The transport of cheques seems a little ecologically-unsound and so I was pleased to note yesterday that Boots (in South Gyle) no longer accepts cheques.

So after phoning to ask my hostess if she minds me coming in even later than usual (it’s a small flat and I fear disturbing her), we say goodnight to the collegues who finish at 11·30 (and there are many friendly partings for me), two staff-members, a supervisor, our team leader and our shift manager settle into keying data. There’s over 6000 items to key. Foul vending-machine tea and occasional whoops from me as we clear individual runs keep us going until 1·05 am when I key my last datum (£2·56) and it’s all done. We don’t have to prepare cheques for transport so I chat briefly with my team-leader. We discover, thanks to my Aussie Floyd t-shirt, a mutual love of Pink Floyd and then it’s time to go.

The one colleague who is leaving now goes nowhere near my current domicile so I start walking. I leave the bank at 1·23am and get to Lightning Roundabout just in time to miss a night-bus. Nothing daunted, I follow the route of the N22 along Broomhouse Drive. Some of the denizens are sat on a wall across the road from me but doing nothing anti-social, not even drinking. A little further on, a police-car pulls up to me and the police-person asks me whether I’m OK. A little un-nerved, I tell him I’m fine and prepare to tell him that I’m on my way home after working late but he tells me that he’s received a report of someone on this road being covered in blood. ‘Obviously that’s not you,’ he concludes. I wish him luck and he drives away. A little further on, I pass a bus-shelter which has had its perspex crazed and shattered but there’s no sign of blood and I walk on.

Just as I reach Stenhouse Drive (around 2am), I hear a night-bus approaching behind me. I run back towards the bus-stop I’ve just passed, flagging the driver. He stops just by me and the penultimate part of my journey (to the junction of Westfield Road and West Approach Road) takes about 5 minutes and costs me £1·50. I walk past the brooding hulk of Murrayfield Stadium to the flat and wind down with LJ and a can of Irn Bru. I’m sad to miss my many pleasant colleagues, happy that I’ve been useful despite nearly jamming a lift, pleased that several of my colleagues asked me to come back if I can and a little nervous about the future.

The next 4 months are sorted, so long as I do nothing stupid, but after that? Up to me to work hard, widen my skill-set and then rely on there being enough demand for what I offer to the Scottish publishing world. I know I don’t really want to return to the traditional 9-to-5, that I love the variety of moving from challenge to challenge and the relatively unscheduled existence and perpetual emotional roller-coaster that freelancing will entail but I’m not sure whether I can rely on it to provide income and enough stability for me, let alone anyone else who might tread in my life.

Enough! Huge thanks to

• Antonio, Eshwara, Jim, Jennifer, Kalpanna, Martin, Michael, Reagan, Stephen, Santosh, Shri and Venkatesh (my fellow temps)
• Ann of the wicked sense of humour (I’m sorry I took so long to see it for what it was), Beverley, Carolyn (for inadvertently reminding me that I’m not all that bad), ‘wee’ Elaine, ‘tall’ Elaine, ‘runner’ Elizabeth, ‘west-coast’ Elizabeth, Jean, Joan, Kelly H, Kelly of the interesting lanyard, Laura, Lesley, Liz, Lorraine, Lynne, Madhavi, Margaret, Maureen, Rosalind, Rose, ‘early’ Sandra, ‘late’ Sandra and Sheila (staff members: hope I’ve not forgotten anyone)
• Lesley, Kathleen, and Sheila (supervisors)
• Kevin and Ian (team leader and shift manager)

for putting up with my sense of numour, lift incidents, occasional trolley-crashes and lapses in screening and keying. Look out May – here I come!

EDIT For all the extra work that night, I took home an extra £4·31!

Got home from my last day at the bank just after 2am. Slightly sad to go but it’s time to move on.

You may ask why I got home so late: I’ll tell you in the next post. Now time to finish my can of Irn Bru and then sleep.

(Feel free to improve the latin if you want.)

With thanks to for turning me on to this…

78% GeekMingle2.com – Free Online Dating

Don’t believe the hype!

Back to what vaguely passes for real life:

• I have only two more days left at the bank. I’ve been training my replacements the last two weeks. One will do well. Not sure about the other. I’ll miss my colleagues there: all (apart from one who seems always too busy slagging off everyone else, resting her hands on the desk instead of on the keyboard and complaining she has too much to do to actually do much work) have been pleasant and fun to work with.
• My brother’s going on another tour in Iraq ‘as part of the advance party on Saturday’. He’s been twice before, and was in Gulf War 1. Random swearing is almost certain to ensue.

Other than that, all is rosy.

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!

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.

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.

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.