Well after waiting a few days over the deadline of when I was supposed to be contacted about my interview results, I bit the bullet and phoned them.
The best answer I got was that at one university the person I needed to was out of the office…
The second university gave me a straight answer, “Unfortunately you haven’t been accepted onto our PGCE course. We will send you out something shortly with an explanation of the decision to help you in the future if you choose to reapply, but looking at the notes in front of me it would appear the decision was made due to your lack of experience.”
Lack of experience? Now I’ll admit that in the last two years I haven’t been into a secondary school in the UK, but for one of those years I was in Germany, planning and teaching between 10-15 lessons a week. Also prior to that during my time at university as well as a job where I regularly worked with children from Bristol secondary schools I also managed to accrue 20-30 days placed in local secondary schools with most of that time being spent within maths departments and as if that wasn’t enough I have also spent 10-15 days on placements in primary schools.
In fact when you look at my hours of contact time with students in classrooms where I have been the one in control of the classroom I have amassed more time than someone who has completed their PGCE.
I wonder what reasons the second university will give for not accepting me? And more importantl, what will I come up with as a cuning plan B?
…And still no calls telling me I have been accepted onto a PGCE. Now I know statistics may have been my weakest area of maths, but I suspect I know the odds of me being a student teacher this year - Expressed mathematically they are:
My words as I finished work today say it all really, “I am a free man, unemployed but free”. No longer am I a call centre drone getting pissed off with stupid people and hoaxers. I am now even lower on the scales of society, which hopefully is where I shall be staying*.
My last day at work was spent pleasantly enough, I may have been answering the phones occasionally, but not frequently enough to really intrude upon the All, Allo marathon I had planned for today. if anything I had to break it up for myself as thanks to the DVD not having subtitles I had to play it quietly so as not to disturb others and strain my hearing instead.
I also managed to round off the day with a quintet of poems composed for various competitions that caught my eye on AllPoetry
also playing around on AllPoetry as I have been doing of late I was pleased to discover that one of my recent competition entries had managed to claim 1st place. It may not be my greatest ever piece, but it’s always gratifying to find out that someone not only likes your work, but actually prefers it to the efforts of others. Flushed with success I wound up entering four more contests thanks to them providing inspiration. Most were in response to pictures and were as ever for me short:
four sails propelled
along by a stiff breeze
going nowhere
—
wife waving goodbye
to dutiful husband-
punch bag
—
towards dancing queen
hopeful suitor approaches-
disco balls
The challenge was to pick a title from a list of options and compose a piece, the result for me was a song called, Vampiric Blues:
Vampiric Blues
Bitten by a vampire,
Two hundred years ago.
Eternity’s a long, long time,
And damn it’s going slow!
(Chorus)
Vampiric blues, vampiric blues,
I didn’t choose,
To be bitten by-
The vampiric blues.
I’m gonna live forever,
In the shadows of the night.
It’s true, I may not love the girls,
But I’ll take them for a bite.
(Chorus)
The nighttime’s nearly over,
It’s time to go to bed,
Before the sun, it rises up,
And burns me ’til I’m dead.
(Chorus)
I lie here in my coffin,
On earth from my homeland.
In trying to avoid my death,
I became one of the damned.
(Chorus)
My final effort was for a another contest; the first of a series based around the seven sins, the first one picked was wrath and ever the unforgiving type I entered:
Vengence Is Mine Sayeth I
Vengence is mine sayeth I-
Unwilling to trust,
A God to punish you.
Once I’ve finished making,
Your life a hell on earth.
You can go to hell,
As far as I’m concerned.
Incandescently indignant,
I will punish you and have retribution-
Tenfold over you.
An eye for an eye? Pah!
I’ll take both your eyes,
But I won’t stop there.
For the lies you fed me,
I’ll tear out your tongue.
I’ll show you but one mercy,
By silencing your screams,
When I burst your ear drums.
Then in your silent darkness,
All there will be is pain-
As I kick you whilst your down.
Despite all this though, my last day did hold one massive disappointment for me - I didn’t get a chance to tell a hoax caller what I thought of them, as although I had been asked to work until 11pm it was so quiet I got to go home before the hoax callers could get to me. I really wanted to have a go at a hoax caller, as normally we have to be nice to them and on my last I was counting on the fact that that even if I did something so spectacular that they fired me on the spot, I wouldn’t really have lost that much.
*Although I hope to swap my unemployed status for that of a student.
One of the things I am going to miss when I leave this job is the hoax calls.* After all how else am I going to get my weekly dose of being alternatively being sworn at and propositioned for sex?
Seriously though I just wish that the hoax callers would be imaginative rather than just abusive- It’s far more fun for both people then. For example tonight I have had the pleasure of on hoaxer who calls in every Sunday, but tonight they’ve managed to be semi-imaginative with their hoaxes.
Rather than their usual routine of collapsing into fits of giggle or telling me that they love me, they have opted to phone up claiming to be different people and so tonight I have been phoned up by most of the cast of Little Britain amongst others, although like Little Britain most of those calls weren’t really that funny. What I would have like to have seen is the caller try a few of the characters from The League of Gentlemen, after all I think answering the phone and getting an, “Ello, Dave. You’re my wife now!” probably would have cracked me up.
Anyways here are the highlights of the hoaxes:
Me: Hello and welcome to Hit Me With Your Best Hoax, our regular Sunday night phone in I’m your host Camera Dave and who do I have on line 1?
Them: I’m Catherine Tate, I’m famous.
Me: Well Catherine it’s a shame you can’t see my face right now, because does it look bovvered? No it doesn’t!
And then a little later I get Elvis on the line…
Me: Hello again and who are you this time?
Them: I’m Elvis. (Starts singing “Hound Dog”)
Me: Well thank you, a-thank you very much for that song, but as you’ve crossed the line instead of walking it, I’ll be terminating this call as a hoax. Please feel free to call back when you have a serious call.
*If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!
Yes, it may be the middle of a so called summer, I have been making mince pies this week thanks to an imulse buy of some reduced mincemeat and then realising that other than mince pies there is much you can do with it.
