For all my discomfort about not being able to guiltlessly relax while unemployed, always feeling like there's something I could be doing, I still went to another daytime cinema screening today.
Monday, mid-afternoon, didn't expect to share the theatre with much more than a dozen. But there was actually good few score of people there.
Perhaps I'm being oversensitive about it, but even painfully walking through the modern day gas chamber of a musak-piped shopping centre I felt like I could detect the other unemployed. A less threatening brand of zombies; ghoulish, defeated, empty, why-me expressions indented on our faces.
I was only detecting the male unemployed for some reason. Sexist? They just appeared more obvious somehow, unshackled by infants - as most females seemed to be. Not that I actually qualified any.
One chap, exiting the cinema as I entered, wore a smart-casual suit jacket, as if it injected him with some semblance of self-esteem. And it did make him look better; more respectable. Our eyes briefly connected, a fleeting mutual suspicion exchanged, a shared embitterment.
Are cinemas doing a better trade at the moment?
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Last Friday I took up the offer of a grand tour around Westminster's corridors of political and media power from my much more successful older reporter sibling.
It was my choice. I'd asked. They weren't ramming it down my throat. But the difference between our statuses could hardly be more pronounced. The buildings shined a lot, reeked of history and grandure, and was rightly quite pleased with itself. All these people undeniably doing jolly important jobs for the good of the nation.
And me.. erm, well, not.
An hour or so afterwards I was in sunny Camden seeking a ticket to the urban live music festival. And failing. As it was sold-out I spent some time up there anyway, observing the diverse pedestrian traffic from the open window of a bar.
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