and the world turns

It’s strange how quickly things change in your life. After many months, well ok almost two years, of being a lazy good for nothing jobless student, I finally have a job and therefore an income, yeah! Two weeks ago things were bad and getting worse quickly; I had just about run completely out of money and thanks to a cock up with my university enrolment no student loan to rely on. Having to live of off just 30p a day is not fun I can tell you. It makes you think about all those people in the world that have to do just that on a regular basis and support an entire family on that as well, sometimes we forget just how lucky we are to live in the developed world.

So anyway I have now joined the world of the employed, well actually I’m just holidaying there as the job is only a temporary Christmas position but, hey, it’s better then nothing and it means I can actually pay my rent this month, so it’s all good! I am now a bookseller at the local Waterstone’s and so far it’s going well. The main part of my job is basically just till work and shelving books, so that’s nice and easy, but the best part of the job (and also the worst part depending on the customer) is when someone comes in with an enquiry about some random book they’d heard about. It actually means you have to start using your brain to hunt down and find the particular book they are after and sometimes it can take a while, especially if it’s an obscure book, but when you do finally track it down you get quite a sense of achievement, it’s like solving a puzzle or something.

Now here’s a funny thing, does anyone remember those old Yellowpages adverts where an old man is looking for a copy of "Fly Fishing" by J R Hartley? Today at work while I had nothing better to do I decided to search for it and yes it is a real book after all, who knew?! Well not me certainly! You can also get books on the art of fisting off of Amazon, now that’s just odd.