I guess a page is turned

Today I have been made truly free! University is over. It’s scary, because of the looming question – now what? I look back on my time there with fond memories, particularly the last year when I lived in halls, in Brockley.

I lived on the fourth floor and spent a good amount of time on my friend’s windowsill sunning myself while we chatted.

We had breakfast at the breakfast place down the road, usually at 4pm nursing a hangover. It’s a lovely little place, that doubled as an art gallery. It was nice to see the pictures change, and talking about them made you feel a little cultured. It has three rooms, we had a favourite, the first one. An out-door seating area where once we sat under pub garden umbrellas even after the heavens had opened up on us, that day we even saw a rat scurrying around the garden.

The lamb chop place, that has the huge tropical fish tank that we could stare at for hours, watching the fish with the big lips.

The day we got the pet rats. We had two rats, a black one called Jack Daniels and a white one called Kebab Star, one big cage, a giant bag of saw dust, a big exercise wheel, exercise balls and other cage toys, and one big problem – no pets. The usual way to our rooms was through the main building, past the security guard to the lift. To avoid the security guard we went into the next building, lugged all the stuff up the stairs, through that building, through the connecting passageway into our building, in the lift and up to our floor.

The day we brought home traffic cones. Everyone at some point has done it – was my reasoning! For some reason the weaker girl, me, got the heaviest one! Making our way past the security guard ‘whispering’ to hide them and to keep quite very loudly.

The midnight fridge raid. We did this once! Hitting all four floors, each floor has two kitchens and each kitchen has two fridges! We were buggers for stealing food! But this was a massive haul! Alcohol, salami sausage, dried fish and anything weird and wonderful.

This halls had a garden, which is very plush indeed. I loved stretching myself out on the bench reading or sleeping in the sun. One day we went to the local Costcutter grabbed anything and everything and had a huge picnic in the garden. We had little plastic cups in the shape of cocktail glasses. We raced each other, crawling, along the grass.

Photos are of (hopefully) joke warnings that were put up in halls, Brockley

Thanks! I love lemonade!

I would LOVE to say a huge thank you to Rebecca Woodhead for the Lemonade Stand Award. It is given to people with a good attitude or sense of gratitude! It was really sweet of her to think of London Belle:

'I am giving it to London Belle as she has been supportive and she maintains an optimistic outlook despite the impossible employment situation in London at the moment of which she paints a vivid picture on her blog'

I try to stay optimistic and its great feedback that the optimism shines through. Also my wonderful friends have told me that my blog and writing are good - but they have too! So its nice to see people enjoying the blog.

Rebecca's fantastic blog: http://frombrain2bookshelf.blogspot.com/

Fun fair at Finsbury Park

A quote about the London underground map

Taken from Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island:

'the London underground map. What a piece of perfection it is, created in 1931 by a forgotton hero named Harry Beck, an out-of-work draughtsman who realised that when you are under ground it doesn't matter where you are. Beck saw - and what an intuitive stroke this was - that as long as the stations were presented in in their right sequence with their interchanges clearly delineated, he could freely distort scale, indeed abandon it altogether.'

'Here's an amusing trick you can play on people from' outside of London 'take them to Bank Station and and tell them to make their way to Mansion House. Using Beck's map [...] they will gamley take a Central Line train to Liverpool Street, change to a Circle Line train heading east and travel five stops more. When eventually they get to Mansion House they will emerge to find they hace arrived at a point 200 feet further down the same street.'

'Now take them to Great Portland Street and tell them to meet you at Regent's Park (that's right, same thing again!), and then to Temple Station with instructions to rendezvous at Aldwych.'

Pictures of a street performer taken on Oxford Street, near Oxford Circus tube, on a Friday night

Naked interview (phone)

Life still revolves around the job scene, or lack thereof! The small dentist that I busted a gut to get to never bothered to give me a polite thanks but no thanks.

The good news is that somebody has decided I'm worth a chance! (I'm trying to cross from retail to admin, with a nearly completed English and History degree, but the path seems to be guarded by hungry wolves). A nice lady emailed me asking to call me for a chat. We agreed on the Monday at 11am. The weekend passed. Monday 11am nothing. Half past nothing. I've started doing jobs around the house putting a load of washing on. 12pm nothing. She had forgot. I went for a shower. Washed my hair, rubbed shower gel on me. Phone goes. 'Are you okay to talk?' I've been jobless for almost a month. 'Yes' was all I could say. I stood there talking about myself and what I consider my self to be good at, naked, wet and covered in shower gel! I have a second interview tomorrow. Naked interviews rock.

photo of graffiti, in the staff section, in a shop I used to work for, on Oxford Street

Clapton Pond and Hackney

The urban jungle

The London job scene is getting more frustrating. On the news today it was reported that people seeking benefits has hits its highest rate. Yesterday a woman's personal story was told how, even though she is experienced that employers haven't even bothered to turn her down and just didn't reply. Apparently Britain might be the last developing country to come out of the recession.

Everywhere wants experience, even the jobs that 'meet the national minimum wage', no one wants to train you anymore or to take a chance. Transferable skills seem to be a thing of the past. All the applications on the internet state that they try to get back to people but due to receiving a large volume of responses it might not be possible. My best friend in my home town applied for a job she really wanted and was told that 100 people had applied as well, which is a lot from where I come from. The other day I attended an open session in application for a job there and was told that they had had 300 CVs. That's how desperate it is now, attending an open session. It was a tiny dentist, invisible without its two signs because it is above a kebab shop. Up a narrow poky staircase to a rabbit warren of turns to find a low ceilinged box of a waiting room. Multiple interviews were taking place at the same time, while the surgery was still open (the waiting room a mix of patients and hopeful applicants). I was able to hear at least three interviews and luckily like me they did not have experience of working in a dentists. The interviews were quick and I passed one that was taking place at the top of the entrance stairs. They said the people who attended the open session would have the highest chance of getting the position. There was no more than a handful and an hour in people had stopped turning up. What that means for the 300 CVs I'm not sure. But it would be sad to go to that effort only for an experienced girl (there were only women there for the role) that couldn't be bothered to turn up to get the job. How do you get experience if nobody will give it to you?

I had a phone interview to sell phones in Harrods and left feeling completely pounced upon. I have nine years of customer service, I speak English, have sold mobiles before and done other retail so felt confident that I could give this interview my best. I read on the website for the phone company, the only advice was to be yourself, and that you can hear a smile over the phone. So I laughed, smiled, was friendly. Even though the interview was closed and difficult. I researched the company, why I wanted to work for them beyond I need a job, phones and even their price plans. It was short and sweet, three questions all on the same line, the latter being 'when was the last time you thought creatively to solve a problem?'

Photo taken in Leicester Square