Beep beep

So, car insurance.

I am no longer a Young Person according to official statistics. The other day I had to fill in a form and it was with great melancholy I ticked the '25-34' box. As such, today's news stories about the car insurance industry technically don't affect me, as I am theoretically skipping into the world of 25+ married person car insurance. In theory I am stability itself.

So why, exactly, my premiums have gone up is a puzzle.

Cars are essential in today's world. I wish they weren't. I would love to get rid of my car and not have it as a necessity. Unfortunately, this would involve living in an area with decent public transport links, or indeed not working in the countryside. Both of these things are facts in my life, so I pootle on with my car. Mr DG cannot drive, so it's very definitely my car and my bills for petrol, for insurance, for car tax, and for repairs. Weirdly, I found these things slightly easier to afford when I was a student. All of the above bills have shot up exponentially in the seven years since I passed my test.

I have had very few jobs where didn't need my car to get too and from work, starting from pretty much as soon as I passed my test, which I passed about a month before my eighteenth birthday. I have a feeling that every 'group' of friends needs at least one person with a car, which has pretty much consistently been me. It makes finding work easier, it gives you a bigger list of places to live. I would feel a bit lost without my car, now.

I worry about people who have to jump straight into the new world of driving, and how they'll cope with the bills as they rise steadily. I can still afford to keep my car going, although that said my fan belt sounds like it's on the fritz and if it goes before the end of the month I'm going to have to sacrifice a pair of tights and make do. Hell, I can't afford to not keep my car going – there's no way to get to my work by public transport, and the walk would take about six hours on a good day.

I don't know if there's a point to this post, per se, other than to ponder if car insurance firms don't put out daft ideas like 'Make new drivers only drive during the day!' (so sucks to be 20 and work night shifts, then) to try and distract the rest of us from the fact that it's getting more difficult by the year to still run a car. I'm no Jeremy Clarkson, bleating on about my civil rights to drive cars at whatever speed I wish. I'm thoroughly aware of the environmental impact of cars, which if I walk and take public transport everywhere I can. But in this country, if you live outside a major city, a car is a grim necessity.

I wonder.

A-Level results day

Good grief, it's A-Level results day tomorrow. How the time flies. It's been EIGHT YEARS since I did that. Best of luck with that to anyone reading to whom the luck still applies.

To all graduates currently feeling very, very old - man, I feel your pain.

Quarter life crisis

I turn 25 in two days. I am trying very hard not to have a quarter life crisis about this. It feels like a tremendously big number, and my brain has spent the last few weeks punishing me for this. I've been finding myself ominously going through all the stuff I haven't done with my life; I haven't got that high-flying job, I haven't yet blossomed into a sinewy twenty-something with perfect skin and hair, I haven't got a cat, I've barely travelled in any meaningful sense, I haven't written a novel. Well, actually, I have done the last one, technically speaking, but I don't think that Lord of Rings fanfiction when your 15 counts. Also, I'll be spending my birthday at my parents so I can use their garden. The last birthday event at my parents? I was SEVENTEEN.

I've read a lot recently about turning 25 – what can I say, my generation really enjoys a bit of naval-gazing – and mostly it makes me feel wretched.

SO. Instead, I've been trying to make a list of all my achievements thus far that the seventeen year old me would have been proud of. Apparently this is the best way to think of it.

1. Passed my driving test and NOT KILLED ANYONE.

Now, there are people out there who wouldn't be impressed by this. These people did not see my driving lessons. Not only have I been driving for eight years, I have gone to and from Scotland more times than you can shake a stick at BYMYSELF. Once I drove a car from St Andrews to Cardiff. It wasn't my car. It was a borrowed car, and the seat didn't move far enough forward for me to touch the pedals the whole way down. And I still failed to kill anyone. SUCCESS.

2. I have a degree!

The title of the blog is a hint on that one, but it's easy to forget that having a degree is a really big achievement. To be honest, the seventeen year old me was just hoping she'd pass the AS-Levels.

3. I have managed to acquire a husband.

This is not an achievement, per se, mostly because in this one I've just been lucky and I don't think that 'being settled' is a universal achievement. Still, managing to organise a wedding is an achievement in itself.

4. I get to write sometimes.

Not that often. But I do get paid to write, both in my day to day job and outside of it. I manage to produce something for here on a semi-regular basis. I feel myself moving very, very slowly, to doing this professionally.

5. I have my own place.

Do I own it yet? No, of course not. But I've boomeranged and I've got out today. In today's world for people of my age, that's definitely an achievement.

6. I've managed to become a reasonably rounded human beings.

A true story, and one shared by many graduates: I was picked on at school. Horrendously. And once, Dad took me to one side, and he said: “Look. One day, you'll be driving past that lot in a car that you own, on the way to your nice job, and you'll see that lot queuing for a bus with hordes of kids, and they will look old. You'll have made something of yourself. You'll have won.”

He's not quite right yet. The nice job has yet to materialise. But occasionally I hear of the people who made my life hell, and, well, I seem to have improved since I was in high school. They haven't.

So fingers crossed, I will spend my birthday eating barbecue food, drinking copious amounts of red wine and feeling good about myself. Until the hangover, which is a totally different issue.

Disorientated Graduate: news edition!

I would like to have to measured, considered thoughts on the news, but mostly I am just baffled by it. Let's start with one of the major stories, according to the BBC, of the last few days:

Church of England claims that gay marriage will de-stabilise the country.

They also seem to be of the opinion that allowing two ladies or two gents to get married will ruin marriage forever. Unlike, say, divorce. It's perhaps worth pointing out at this point that whilst Jesus was quite vocal on the issue of divorce (i.e. bad) he was surprisingly quiet about homosexuality. This is odd, considering the obsession some modern Christians have with the latter rather than the former.

Look, I can't add anything to this debate that's particularly fresh. I am a lady who is married to a dude and we got married in a church which we were lucky enough to be able to do. If the church doesn't want to marry two people, that's their decision. It's got nothing to do with how the state chooses to define marriage. If anything, extending gay marriage is an inherently small-c conservative thing to do, bigging up the idea of stable relationships in an old-fashioned mould. I don't think marriage is for every relationship, or indeed every person, and that's fine by me. I also happen to think that civil partnerships are ace ideas for people that don't want to be defined as in a marriage. Let everyone get married to whomever they wish, or civil partnerships.

Government, stop pussyfooting around the issue and pandering to the bishops in the House of Lords who you should have thrown out years ago. Let straight couples get a civil partnership, and let gay couples get married. And if a religious organisation chooses to marry gay people – the Quakers and Unitarians very much wish to do this – then let them do that. Don't be dictated to be a church that was, from one perspective, set up in order to allow Henry VIII to get his end away.

Now we're done with equal rights, let us move onto the economy:

FTSE bosses' pay rose by 11% last year.

Really? Ah, good, we must be out of recession then, because surely everyone would get that pay rise, right, down to the cleaning staff and the lady that pushes the tea trolley? No, wait, that doesn't happen? And share prices are down? And the economy is still fucked? And yet, these people are getting obscenely richer whilst the masses struggle?

THIS SORT OF CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING, PEOPLE. IT IS TIME TO NOTICE THIS.

Now, to something about the alma matar!

It's a little early for the students of St Andrews at the 7am torch relay.

YES. THREE MONTHS TOO EARLY. IT IS THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS. I can't believe I've had to crack out the Sisko picture AGAIN.

I'm not even in St Andrews anymore and it makes me want to die as a statement for sheer fucking stupidity. Also, Harry Potter and Gin Society? I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, but I was president of the Doctor Who Society for two years and I drank like a fish, so if that society slipped under the radar then it must have been a little low on the whole publicity issue.

But yes. SUMMER HOLIDAYS PEOPLE.

That's enough ranting for now, I think.

St Andrews Memes

There has recently been a rash of university memes across Facebook. I would like it know for posterity that St Andrews, much like Facebook itself in the UK, DID IT FIRST. (That's right, UK - it's our fault.)

You can find it here.

ALWAYS WATCHING YOU

Going on holiday from work is deeply, deeply weird. Good, obviously, but deeply weird.

Holidays from school and university are different. Everyone goes on holiday at the same time, you expect things to be different, and things to happen to everyone. That's just peachy. Holidays from work are really, really weird because you go away and stuff... doesn't really happen. Everyone is sat in the same place, all of the same jobs need doing, and once you get over the morning of catching up with e-mails and your own little projects, that's about it. The luxurious holiday, or rejuvenation days, disappear into bittersweet memories as alarm bleeps at the same time and work continues on the same little treadmill.

OR ALTERNATIVELY you come back from work and discover this looking back at you from your desktop:

(Where there is some very bad paint spray was my last name. Okay, pretty much anyone can find out who I am, and I post links to this on my facebook wall, but let's pretend to retain an air of mystery.)

I went away for one day. Just one. I'm saving up all of my holidays to get married in, and taken the odd day for wedding preparation. Apparently a recent Friday in which I made myself absent was a very dull day indeed, because the buggars hacked into my computer and left this for my on the desktop. THANKS GUYS.

(Actually, I sat down, logged in, and howled with laughter before hastily taking it off my desktop because I couldn't bear the thought of him looking at me every day, but I did chortle. We don't talk about politics a lot in my office, but my distaste for Cameron is well known.)

Then, of course, things trundled back into the old routine, but at least things don't all stay exactly the same!

"Cheese, Gromit!"

I have buggar all willpower when it comes to food.

I love eating. Love it, love it, love it. I would pretend to be a foodie, but to be honest I'm too fussy for that. I'm not even a proper vegetarian as I still eat chicken and fish; I just don't like the taste of most meat. Or the smell. Don't get me going about bacon sandwiches, they smell like evil to me. However, if it's not meat I'll give it a go.

I love stodgy food. I love crisps. I can actually take or leave chocolate and puddings most of time, but hell, I'd rather take. Cheese. Man, I love cheese. And chips. Combined with cheese. Mmmm.

All of the above said, I'm fairly sensible about food, I think. I try to eat rounded meals, and not overly snack. I also try to walk where I can, although I do basically loathe exercise.

Office work completely floored me, in terms of food. You plan your day around food, and other people eating tends to set you off. People bring in snacks, and I love cooking biscuits for people. Takeaway occurs at lunchtime. All of this is combined with a massive decrease in exercise.

As a whole, essentially, the office gets fat together. As I said, I have buggar all willpower.

Despite all of my lovely statements about how New Years resolutions are useless (and I still believe they are), I was making a quiet decision to try and cut down on the snacking front. For some boring medical reasons I had to get weighed, realised with horror that I had put on A Lot of weight over Christmas and that I also have to be fitted for a wedding dress at the end of this month.

Which is why I am on Day 10 of the Special K diet. This involves sitting there at lunchtime eating cereal for lunch. I have managed to lose quite a bit of weight, as crash diets will tend to do, although last night I dreamed about eating pasta for lunch and to be quite honest if someone gave me the choice between murdering a nun or getting to eat a cheese sandwich I wouldn't fancy the chances of the nun. I get to eat a full meal at night. They're nice, let me tell you.

The office, though, has developed fruit overnight. Fred jogs into work every day. Every day! It seems that eating habits, healthy and unhealthy, spread throughout workplaces. Things you learn!

The Disorientated Graduate's Guide To Winter

The nights are dark, the days are cold and the high street is pushing Christmas like it's going out of fashion. It is, of course, winter, and this presents a new layer of problems for graduates. I am now in my third winter since graduating and feel I can now guide the average graduate through the terrifying world that is the coldest season and the surprising bright sides it can bring. No, really.

The Heating

There are not many times in this blog I'm going to write this, but when it comes to the heating: REJOICE! FOR YOU ARE NOT A STUDENT ANY MORE!

Like so many students, I lived in a houseshare. As energy companies are bastards, we couldn't afford to have the heating on all day. I lived in Scotland. As such, days at home involved waking up and having a very hot shower. When you were out of the shower, you put on your underwear. Then – and this is a knack I am proud of – you put on the wooly tights, then the vest, then the t-shirt and the pajama bottoms. After this came the thin jumper and then over that a hoodie. Add another pair of socks to the equation, and some slippers. Make a hot drink, and then sit in front of the computer with a blanket over your knees. Add a hot water bottle when appropriate.

That, you see, is SURVIVAL. Heating takes away money you can spend on important things, like vodka and cheese, and my student priorities were very clear indeed.

Living with your parents as a graduate is often pants, but it does mean that the heating is on during winter. Remember going home during Christmas, and sweating as you sat in your t-shirt? Well, it's like that ALL WINTER ROUND.

Moved out with people with a job? Possibly not at parent standards of heat, but I am currently sat in a flat with the heating on and it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Sure, we can only afford a few hours a day, but as we work roughly equal hours it means we can time the heating around it.

… and if you are unemployed and can't afford to put the heating on? Well, see my tips as a student for keeping warm. Let me tell you, they're cast-iron.

Time Off

Summer holidays are no more. Spring break is not for you. British laws and customs, however, mean that Christmas represents more of a chance for a little time off. Within reason, of course; many graduates work in businesses that do not shut over Christmas, or only shut for a day.

TIP: Many people do not celebrate Christmas which is all good. However, if you celebrate Christmas find someone that objects to Christmas. Not the type that just 'don't like it' but people who really, really hate Christmas. Jehovah's Witnesses are particularly handy for this, and frankly it's revenge for all of those times you get woken up by missionaries.

Okay, it's not the big amount of time off you had as a student, but at least you don't have to revise for Christmas and/or write a dissertation. Christmas dissertations are rubbish, although asking a drunk father to edit it on Christmas Eve is quite good fun. I don't think he even knew who Charles II was.

… and work

Winter can bring new opportunities for work, through an increase in seasonal labour. Sometimes this can lead to new longer-term opportunities, although I will be the first to admit that being a Christmas retail temp can be soul-destroying.

The weather, however, presents new and exciting challenges. If you are travelling by anything other than a transporter, prepare to add more time on to your journeys. Travelling by train? Buggared. Travelling my car? Buggared. Travelling by foot? Buggared. You will need to get out of bed earlier without a doubt, which is frankly pants.

And yes, it's dark ALL OF THE TIME. Wake up? Dark. Get out of the office? Dark. I cope with this by way of eating more cake and taking more baths, two of the pleasures of winter as far as I'm concerned.

Now wrap up warm and attack the winter! Or hibernate gently. Either way.

When push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love

I have always thought of myself as a generally organised person. I am the Queen Of The Filing System at work, keeping it alphabetised and everything in correct folders. My desk at work was organised according to fairly sensible rules.

Slowly but surely, the desk system has fallen apart in the last six months. I've taken on a frighteningly large range of responsibilities, all of which come with ridiculous paperwork. The office was reshuffled as well, leading to a reduction in overall desk size. As such, my desk filing system has slowly altered to a state of being in which it has four categories:

1.I'm Dealing With It
(It's currently sat on my desk and I'm ignoring it.)

2.I've Filed That Away
(It's in the bin under an apple core.)

3.That One Is Dealt With
(It's been shredded.)

4.I Have No Idea What You're Talking About
(No, really, I don't. I might have eaten it.)

As such, I finally plucked up the courage to ask for some filing trays. Normally asking for stationary involves producing a spreadsheet in order to prove it will increase your productivity, a small blood sacrifice to the pagan gods and bowing to the full moon over a period of six months. Astonishingly, though, my request was immediately granted, possibly because my boss is out of the country and the office manager is a little laissez-faire about such matters.

I now have a desk with some lovely coloured filing trays on it, and I am as happy as a clam. I can even see some of the wood on my desk. It's a very satisfying feeling, and frankly their arrival represented the bright spot of my week.

Make of that what you will.

Party like it's 2005

I have recently been to a few Social Gatherings – okay, boozy birthday house parties – of people that are mostly graduates. This in itself isn't too much of an interesting blog post, as all I can say is that getting absolutely plastered as a graduate is just like getting absolutely plastered as a student, with the exception that ageing in general means that the hangovers get longer and more painful. I don't think I can blame that one on being ill-prepared for graduate life. Alas.

However, at a recent gathering we were all sharing horror stories about being students, including the Spanish test in which I solemnly informed my tutor that my sister was a tall man. Or my old housemate who forgot in an exam whether North and South Korea were, in fact, different countries and went for “the two warring areas”. Amazingly, though, we got to the point where we were comparing our respective careers, and the difficulty of trying to explain our lives to people.

“Oh,” giggled one friend, who is training to be a solicitor. “You'd think mine would be straight forward, but a six year old asked what I did.”

“And?”

“She asked if being a solicitor meant I had to solicit people!”

There are worse graduate careers, we all agreed, before rolling off the sofa laughing. Then we played Articulate for three hours straight, wherein someone thought “Nice jumper, place in between Pakistan and India?” was in fact Arran rather than Kashmir.

Truly, our respective educations were worth it.

A-Level results day

Today is A-Level results day, and oh my, I still feel sick when I see pictures of people opening their results. My results were, frankly, splendid – this was back in the day when I achieved things, of course. Still, it was a horrible and dreadful morning when I pulled myself out of bed and prepared myself for having abjectly failed to get into university and having to spend the rest of my life doing the cleaning job I had picked up for the summer.

(In the end, as you know, I went to university. This blog would be the most dull internet hoax ever otherwise.)

Whilst I don’t envy modern students the higher levels of debt, or indeed the horror that must have been applications this year, I am wildly jealous of people preparing to go to university. I was unbelievably nervous about preparing for university – filling in forms about housing, confirming my student loans, buying an abundance of stationary. It was all worth it, though; I met a great group of people very early on, most of whom I was actually living with via the power of fate. It was all worth it in the end – I still wouldn’t trade my university days for anything.

That said, some advice if you are preparing to become an undergraduate.

1. All of the advice you will read will advise you to take tea and coffee making equipment in order to try and find friends. Everyone else has read this advice. EVERYONE. My new housemates and I awkwardly made tea for each other for hours until we realised this one. (The trick: biscuits. Everyone likes HobNobs.)
2. You know what you need? And you won’t pack? It’s a cheese grater, my friends. You’ll thank me when it comes to late night cheese toasties.
3. Finally, don’t pay too much heed to old fogeys like me bitching on the internet that being a graduate sucks. It does suck, but you have years to go before you get to that stage.

Enjoy it. It’s scary and wild and bizarre, but it’s an opportunity to be relished. Plus, you get to be excitingly disillusioned in about three years time.

Guardian Supplement - The Fresher

Minor hiatus

There would be a post about being a graduate here, reflecting on HSBC's job cuts and what a global market means to today's graduate, but I fell up the stairs in work last night.

On the positive side, I did not break the cups I was carrying upstairs to my employer and the people he was in the meeting with. DEDICATION YOU SEE. However I did manage to hit my not inconsiderable weight on my forearm and have quite badly bruised a nerve of some description, according to the nice doctor in the hospital last night.

Typing is currently too tricky to contemplate for a long time, so there may be no new posts for a week or so. On the bright side I have at least got a day off work with some quite exciting painkillers, making the Disorientated Graduate feel very disorientated indeed.

On Saturday, I went out with a few friends and Mr Disorientated Graduate. This is not unusual behaviour. Having recently moved to a new town that's slightly away from the base of our friends, I volunteered to drive, and spent the night drinking lemonade. It was a great catch-up, and even better not too late, as I'm not very good at late nights.

On the way home, passing through the country lanes that link Seaside Resort to the outside world, a thought passed through my mind. I glanced at Mr DG. “Do you want... you know..?”

His eyes lit up, possible under the power of a couple of cheap pints of lager. “Oh yes. Oh yes I DO.”

I put my foot down on the accelerator.

Stop it you filthy creatures, what I'm obviously referring to is going to McDonald's Drive-Thru on the way home and then vegging out in front of the telly. Don't let it be said our relationship is without romance. I then realised that having watching Mr DG drink cheap lager all night, I fancied a drink. I looked at out drinks supply. I shrugged.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I ate a McChicken Sandwich a small glass of port at 11.30pm on a Saturday night.

LIVING. THE. DREAM.

There is also a fascinating piece from The Guardian about graduation. Obviously this blog is superior. Ahem. But if you're looking for some real advice, it's not a bad read.

The Real World(tm)

The main problem with the real world is that, in a sense, you are protected from many of its little vagaries when a student. Now, as a student I had to pay bills, and one week I ran out of money so lived off a loaf of bread and a box of Tesco Value eggs. (Okay, that’s a tiny fib. I still had some herbs, and after three days a housemate took pity on me and gave me half a cup of rice.) At the same time, though, I didn’t worry about, say, council tax. That was nice.

The depressing part is that you don’t realise that you’re free of all this nonsense. In fact, you bewail how difficult life is and how completely fucking unreasonable British Gas are. That is still true. What you don’t realise is also how completely fucking unreasonable the council tax people are. And the water board people. And don’t get me started on that family below me with the child that’s teething. No one’s fault, sure, but the child seems to have an uncanny knack of stopping crying approximately 0.1 nanoseconds before my alarm goes off in the morning. If that’s not completely fucking unreasonable then I don’t know what is.

Before anyone comes in on their high horse and whinges at me that this is just the real world and what everyone has to put up with, and not everyone gets to spend four years faffing about on the government money ETC ETC BLAH BLAH can it please be noted that the above statement probably applies to everyone. At least I moved out at eighteen and learned about the whole British Gas thing, and that you can make a variety of increasingly desperate meals with naught but eggs, bread, and seven inventive tricks with oregano. My younger sister often tells me that I lived in fairyland or four years and never dealt with the problems of THE REAL WORLD and NORMAL PEOPLE. That might be true, but she still lives with our parents at the age of twenty-one and works part time in a takeaway. I was talking to my mum about water bills, and she piped up in genuine confusion that water was something to be paid for.

This is less a disorientated graduate problem and more of a disorientated twenty something problem, I realise. Still, university tricks you into thinking that you’re dead worldly and capable of taking on everything so it’s rather a shock when you work out that they really are all still out to get you.

Heads-up in the Guardian

Like so many graduates, secretly all I want global fame where the whole world knows my name and reads the things I write in newspapers and marvel at my wit.

I've managed to get a comment mentioned in the homepage of the Guardian liveblog for 'The Apprentice'. I post as 'hathycol' on the Guardian, and I'm pleased to see that a pithy comment I made regarding Inception and Jedi Jim was mentioned in the main page. Hurrah!

... yes, that's about the high point of things right now. Well, it's a start.