Good afternoon lady and gentle readers, as I type this blog on a cold Wednesday in January I find myself in a rather befuddled mood. Allow me to explain, last Thursday I made the trip over to Cardiff for a job interview which I passed! This has turned into a fairly regular occurrence as I have now passed my last four job interviews, however I am still unemployed.
Allow me to explain, in October 2018 I signed with a company called Compass who had the catering contracts for the Liberty Stadium, Cardiff City Stadium and Principality Stadium. This meant that I was in the position of having a bit of money coming in to help with applying and travel to full time work. However during mid 2019 Compass lost the contract for the Liberty and Principality. I then transferred / applied to Sodexo who took the contract for the Liberty stadium and got it. Although truth be told it was more of a transfer than an interview I am classing this as an interview for ego purposes.
During mid 2019 as football and rugby matches were scarce I applied with Hap for festival and event work. Again I passed the interview although due to them taking their time at the time of writing I have only done one event with them a Stereophonics concert. During this time I have been applying for other work and its effectively become the same stuff you'll be familiar with from earlier blogs. Lots of interest that dries up the moment they realise I'm transgender.
Last week I passed an interview with Arc Hospitality which means I should be busy over the coming months. I'm enjoying hospitality looking forward to all upcoming shifts although the major problem is that being casual and mostly match and event day there isn't a lot of hours. However I'm getting good at it, management are training me and upping my skill set. Hopefully this might lead to permanent work in something like a hotel or restaurant.
Personally I'm in a good place right now and can see things getting better.
Wednesday, 22 January 2020
Wednesday, 8 January 2020
A Good December And A Rubbish 2019
Good afternoon lady and gentle readers, as I start this entry it is a dark wet Wednesday and the start of the second week of 2020. With a clear week between the present and the previous year I want to take a look back at 2019, reflect and see what I can bring forward into 2020.
2019 was a very low year for me personally, towards the end of 2018 I had joined a hospitality company who operated the contracts for the three biggest stadiums in South Wales. I shall be referring to them a "the company" as I signed forms that said I wouldn't mention them by name on social media and quite frankly I really enjoy working with them and don't want to screw it up. So even though I was unemployed I would have 4/5 hours a weeks work casual employment. At a low ebb going into this job I was enjoying my weekly trips to work but unfortunately it had little effect on my job hunting. Looking back to my diary January is littered with applications that looked positive until the employer realised I was trans gender then dropped interest in me.
This is the story of my year up until May, at that time I found out that the company had lost the contract for the Liberty Stadium as well as The Principality. Meaning I could only do matches at the ground of the Cardiff City which after travel and being taxed 63% of earnings as I'm on Universal Credit meant I'd be making about £1.00 a shift. Fortunately a new company took the contract at Swansea and I was transferred over. However as we were now approaching the end of the football and rugby season work was about to dry up.
I put my name down with agencies that I knew had contracts for venues in Wales but on hearing I was trans they would shelve my application or come up with blatantly made up excuses not to take me on. Eventually I passed an interview with a company that cater to events and venues all over the country. They were doing a good number of events in my area so summer should have been busy. However they shelved my application, after two months of phoning and making a nuisance of myself I was finally registered but at this point there was only one event left in Wales which resulted in me going a few months without work.
I'd love to be putting something else into this blog entry at this point, telling you about something amazing that I did or someone I met that would go on to have a significant effect on my life. But when the world decides to put you on the shelf it stops everything and at some point during this year I lost the will to do anything. I stopped doing the things that I enjoyed due to feeling low and cost - long term readers might have noticed there were less entries on this blog. But as the title to this blog points out there is a good ending.
At the tail end of July the football season started back and with friendlies fast approaching I found myself booked for a number of Saturdays in a row. Summer was in full force, there were faces I hadn't seen in months, new systems, a new company, a new menu and I threw myself into things. Typing now from two thirds into the season I've done every home game at the Liberty bar one due to public transport on Sunday mornings being non-existent.
Around October I was asked after a shift if I was interested in being a team leader to which I said yes. My hours were extended at this point coming in to help pre match on game days and a few other various things that I enjoyed. In December there were a lot of Hospitality shifts and I put my name down for all I could. Which meant for December it felt like I was virtually full time employed, during this time a manager happened to be nearby when I was briefing a team of mostly newbies and apparently I impressed them.
So what have we learnt readers? I for one am greeting 2020 with good vibrations, I'm keeping the positive energy from December, tearing up the rest of 2019 and throwing it into the bin.
Lets make this a good year...
2019 was a very low year for me personally, towards the end of 2018 I had joined a hospitality company who operated the contracts for the three biggest stadiums in South Wales. I shall be referring to them a "the company" as I signed forms that said I wouldn't mention them by name on social media and quite frankly I really enjoy working with them and don't want to screw it up. So even though I was unemployed I would have 4/5 hours a weeks work casual employment. At a low ebb going into this job I was enjoying my weekly trips to work but unfortunately it had little effect on my job hunting. Looking back to my diary January is littered with applications that looked positive until the employer realised I was trans gender then dropped interest in me.
This is the story of my year up until May, at that time I found out that the company had lost the contract for the Liberty Stadium as well as The Principality. Meaning I could only do matches at the ground of the Cardiff City which after travel and being taxed 63% of earnings as I'm on Universal Credit meant I'd be making about £1.00 a shift. Fortunately a new company took the contract at Swansea and I was transferred over. However as we were now approaching the end of the football and rugby season work was about to dry up.
I put my name down with agencies that I knew had contracts for venues in Wales but on hearing I was trans they would shelve my application or come up with blatantly made up excuses not to take me on. Eventually I passed an interview with a company that cater to events and venues all over the country. They were doing a good number of events in my area so summer should have been busy. However they shelved my application, after two months of phoning and making a nuisance of myself I was finally registered but at this point there was only one event left in Wales which resulted in me going a few months without work.
I'd love to be putting something else into this blog entry at this point, telling you about something amazing that I did or someone I met that would go on to have a significant effect on my life. But when the world decides to put you on the shelf it stops everything and at some point during this year I lost the will to do anything. I stopped doing the things that I enjoyed due to feeling low and cost - long term readers might have noticed there were less entries on this blog. But as the title to this blog points out there is a good ending.
At the tail end of July the football season started back and with friendlies fast approaching I found myself booked for a number of Saturdays in a row. Summer was in full force, there were faces I hadn't seen in months, new systems, a new company, a new menu and I threw myself into things. Typing now from two thirds into the season I've done every home game at the Liberty bar one due to public transport on Sunday mornings being non-existent.
Around October I was asked after a shift if I was interested in being a team leader to which I said yes. My hours were extended at this point coming in to help pre match on game days and a few other various things that I enjoyed. In December there were a lot of Hospitality shifts and I put my name down for all I could. Which meant for December it felt like I was virtually full time employed, during this time a manager happened to be nearby when I was briefing a team of mostly newbies and apparently I impressed them.
So what have we learnt readers? I for one am greeting 2020 with good vibrations, I'm keeping the positive energy from December, tearing up the rest of 2019 and throwing it into the bin.
Lets make this a good year...
Saturday, 4 January 2020
The Big Finish Catch-Up October to December 2019
For those of you new to this section of the blog, I started listening to the Big Finish Doctor Who releases when they started back in 1999, getting them as they were released up to mid 2002 and release No 33 Neverland. At that time I left Uni and due to being a bit busy with life and what not I only heard one or two releases over the next few years. I started getting back into them around 2008 and was 6 years behind at that point. Due to wondering off into the Lost Doctor range and a relaxed listening pace I fell further behind. In order to catch up I'm listening to two releases a month (or more when its a 60 min single disc release, plus without seeing the cover or knowing anything about the story) and my mission to catch up continues;
Lords of the Red Planet, was the first story in October from the lost story range featuring the 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. I'm not going to focus on this one as its a rare story that I didn't like and struggled to get through to the extent I fell asleep twice and have no idea how it ended. I'm not going to rank it and make a point to come back at a later date and have another go with it.
Farewell Great Macedon, came next also from the lost story range and featured the original line up. Whenever I hear a lost story I want to feel like I'm listening to a TV story with missing visuals and that is what I got from this story. It feels like the production team thought "oh Marco Polo went down well lets do another one" and it would fit in somewhere before the Dalek invasion of Earth. I was just hooked and it truly felt like I was listening to something from fifty years ago. Not only is this my favourite story in some time, I think it ranks up there with my personal classics from Big Finish as I write this it just might be my favourite 10/10.
Nightshade, started off November - I realised it was Nightshade within the first few minutes and smiling my little head off. This book has hung over Mark Gatiss career and he's never eclipsed it imo. It was as good as I hoped it was going to be, I never came away thinking that it didn't work as an audio. On top of that its so strange listening to a pre Love and War story featuring Ace, these stories foreshadow her actions so well.
Next up was Lucie Miller / To the Death the finale to the fourth season of the 8th Doctor adventures. Blimey this feels like the end of an era, first things first this isn't a story for you if you're dipping in and out of the range I'd recommend listening to this season in order and preferably listening to the range up to this point in order. This story feels like an epic and strangely most of the characters are this seasons regulars. When bad things start to happen in this story it feels more emotional than it usually does. This is such an emotional story and its a testament to the range and this season how much I cared about what happened in this story. 10/10 and I can't wait to see what happens in this range next.
Iteration of I started off in December, the final story in the Fifth Doctor box set featuring his original line up of companions. A very very good if slightly too wordy horror story 9/10.
Blue Tooth a companion chronicle starring Caroline John as Liz was next. A dark story set in the UNIT era doing interesting things with the Cybermen 8/10.
Auntie Matter, a fun throwaway story featuring the Fourth Doctor and Mary Tamms Romana. Very much Doctor Who does Jeeves and Wooster, lots of fun 8/10.
Another companion chronicle Frostfire came next starring Maureen O'Brien featuring the First Doctor, Vicki and Steven. A very good moody story that does interesting things with the format 7/10.
The final story of this blog entry is The Veiled Tiger, a freebie released with Doctor Who Magazine that Big Finish released in their Christmas sale. A fun bit of fluff featuring two opposing teams of companions Peri and Erimem Vs Ace and Hex. Good crack and a few laughs, highly recommended if you can find it 8/10.
Lords of the Red Planet, was the first story in October from the lost story range featuring the 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. I'm not going to focus on this one as its a rare story that I didn't like and struggled to get through to the extent I fell asleep twice and have no idea how it ended. I'm not going to rank it and make a point to come back at a later date and have another go with it.
Farewell Great Macedon, came next also from the lost story range and featured the original line up. Whenever I hear a lost story I want to feel like I'm listening to a TV story with missing visuals and that is what I got from this story. It feels like the production team thought "oh Marco Polo went down well lets do another one" and it would fit in somewhere before the Dalek invasion of Earth. I was just hooked and it truly felt like I was listening to something from fifty years ago. Not only is this my favourite story in some time, I think it ranks up there with my personal classics from Big Finish as I write this it just might be my favourite 10/10.
Nightshade, started off November - I realised it was Nightshade within the first few minutes and smiling my little head off. This book has hung over Mark Gatiss career and he's never eclipsed it imo. It was as good as I hoped it was going to be, I never came away thinking that it didn't work as an audio. On top of that its so strange listening to a pre Love and War story featuring Ace, these stories foreshadow her actions so well.
Next up was Lucie Miller / To the Death the finale to the fourth season of the 8th Doctor adventures. Blimey this feels like the end of an era, first things first this isn't a story for you if you're dipping in and out of the range I'd recommend listening to this season in order and preferably listening to the range up to this point in order. This story feels like an epic and strangely most of the characters are this seasons regulars. When bad things start to happen in this story it feels more emotional than it usually does. This is such an emotional story and its a testament to the range and this season how much I cared about what happened in this story. 10/10 and I can't wait to see what happens in this range next.
Iteration of I started off in December, the final story in the Fifth Doctor box set featuring his original line up of companions. A very very good if slightly too wordy horror story 9/10.
Blue Tooth a companion chronicle starring Caroline John as Liz was next. A dark story set in the UNIT era doing interesting things with the Cybermen 8/10.
Auntie Matter, a fun throwaway story featuring the Fourth Doctor and Mary Tamms Romana. Very much Doctor Who does Jeeves and Wooster, lots of fun 8/10.
Another companion chronicle Frostfire came next starring Maureen O'Brien featuring the First Doctor, Vicki and Steven. A very good moody story that does interesting things with the format 7/10.
The final story of this blog entry is The Veiled Tiger, a freebie released with Doctor Who Magazine that Big Finish released in their Christmas sale. A fun bit of fluff featuring two opposing teams of companions Peri and Erimem Vs Ace and Hex. Good crack and a few laughs, highly recommended if you can find it 8/10.
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