Employed by the Quine Organization

...and tomorrow the new regime at work begins.
 What has happened is this:
The company I work for - a charity telephone fundraising company, we shall call Icy Association, went into administration for about 45 minutes back in August. We were taken over by a company I shall call the Quine Organsition. The Quine Organisation had previously taken over another charity telephone fundraising company I shall call Hale and Hearty. Many things have been restructured at work. Most of the current management have been made redundant. All the employees of Hale and Hearty have now come over to our site (a crumbling cross between a crumbling factory and an abandoned hospital that had best be called Old Scotland House). The employees of Hale and Hearty all work in a room where IT used to be. Though we are working in the same building - in fact the same floor - the two companies are very separate.
The management of the Quine Organisation are a sinister faceless lot. They prowl the corridors looking like the Sontarans from Doctor Who. They have gone out of their way to be unnapproachable and unfriendly. Thanks to the ministrations of our staff reps we have, at least, managed to keep our wages as they are. Not that this will do us much good in the long run. New starters are going to be paid the minimum wage (and I think any company that pays their staff the minimum wage deserve all contempt and disgust that can be heaped upon them). This means that, I imagine, they will be eager to get rid of the old staff (on £9 plus an hour) as soon as possible. It will become a lot stricter, there will be a greater emphasis on statistics. It is through these, we all think, that they will find reasons to put us on disciplinaries (breaks too long! not enough pledges!) and eventually fire us. Tomorrow is when we shall adhere to the new ways of working - shorter breaks and longer shifts, and when the new management style begins to take hold on our already weary, haunted hearts.
All this makes me think of my last job where something similar happened, and within six months, a tolerable job turned into something hellish and I had to leave.
I really hope the same isn't going to happen again.

Melancholy Bus Ride Home

Finish work at 5:00pm. Head to the North Laine pub with work colleagues. Drink numerous Jack Daniels and coke. Melancholy bus ride home. Asleep by midnight. Sunday morning quiet. Half open curtains. Table lamp on. Reminds me of December when we need a light on all day. Cosy and depressing. I would like a winter twilight now though.

Viaduct

My days are haunted by viaducts. I watch them from the windows at work, I walk underneath them when I walk home. I imagine rooms in the brick, where through hidden windows, one could watch the late summer trees turn to autumn.
Sleeping on a mattress, brick-room lit by a lantern and listening to the wind outside.
Sound of cold roads and dark hills and deep sleep.

8:13am

8:13am.
Sat on my bed. I slept with the windows open last night. Pleasant shock of cold air on my face. I can hear the outside now - busy, but drifty morning sounds of passing cars, a childs voice, and other sounds I can't quite make out.
The first morning that feels properly autumnal.

This Blog is Deep with the Luxuries of Autumnal Suburbia

Sat on my bed. Still not dressed yet. Sore throat and temperature - both mild, but I feel ill enough to take the day off work.
Can hear an aeroplane, the sound of voices in the passage outside the flat. Everything very quiet. Twilight-dark of my room, curtains still unopened. Everything is very quiet here. A hush. An autumnal hush, and, finally, the humid heat of the elongated summer seems to be broken.

Hope work goes okay. We've been taken over by another company - this happened back in August. our pay rates are staying the same, though we will be working longer shifts, and it seems that everything will be stricter, more micro-managed. I don't do startlingly well (neither do I do startlingly badly) but I hope I will not be managed out. This is the happiest I have been at work since the halcyon age of Telegen, when I was first on the inbound campaign (January - June 2008). A couple of artists at work too. Hoping to do an exhibition with them sometime next year. Should be interesting.

Drifty-dreamy day. Suddenly feel like I might be being watched. Start thinking about windy roads, lost in afternoons and December table-lamps, switched on in the 3:00pm twilight.
Remember that? 3:00pm is the eeriest part of a winters day...? Wrote that in one of my first entries here. Can't believe this blog is almost five years old.
Seems a lifetime ago and only yesterday.

Right, going to call the absence line at work now.

Solitary Walks

Well, here we are two weeks into my 43rd autumn. A quiet Sunday afternoon - Em, who has been visiting the weekend is at work - as is Andy. There is a pleasing autumnal quietness to everything (though I am still craving that true autumnal chill) - I can hear the fridge in the kitchen humming away, low voices on the street, but these sounds are drowned out by the sound of my typing. Footsteps on the keyboard.

Two weeks ago - the last day of August - I arose from my Sunday malaise and decided to go for a walk. I often go for walks of course, but mostly around the urban environs of Brighton or the seafront. I decided that I would go for a walk across the Sussex Downs to Lewes, I had done this walk before with Em, but a number of years ago, and my memory was a bit sketchy as to details.
I took the bus to town, and then walked to the base of Bear Road. Dear lord, this hill is steep and unpleasant - particularly in the blazing sun. At the top of Bear Road, there is a small path that runs behind the houses of Woodingdean. On the left are the Downs.
Oh, the relief.
It was like suddenly realizing how thirsty you are when someone gives you a drink of water (or more likely in my case a can of diet coke or lucozade). It was the relief of being away from people, away from the city and its desert of straight lines and angles. No-one here but silence.
I walked over the Downs, slightly disappointed there were also other people enjoying the walk too, but despite this there was that overwhelming feeling of relief at being alone in the countryside. The walk to Lewes was too short and I caught the train back and was home by early evening.
I went for another solitary walk last week too, up Bear Road again, and then across the Downs to Rottingdean, then back along the seafront home. This walk wasn't quite as enjoyable as last weeks - the actual amount of time spent in the countryside alone was less than the walk to Lewes - but nonetheless had its moments; finding a burnt out van near that creepy blackberry picking place, eating my lunch on a stile by the entrance into the Uncanny Valley.
I need to do these walks regularly - solitary jaunts into the countryside - I seem to find some kind of peace out there - and it is a kind of peace, a recharging of the imaginative batteries, that seem to last into the week too.