After fifteen years of working at home, it is now official, I have had enough of it, it bores me to death for two to three of the days that I am either, sat in front of the computer looking out on lead grey skies, pursuing with my quest to finally not look stupid at the Sainsburys self checkout, or going for a lunch time work out at a gymnasium full of bored menopausal women who are striving for nothing more than middle class status or a new husband. Mondays and Tuesdays are okay as I am normally busy invoicing and doing wages, Fridays are okay too because I do some contract marketing and sales work for a building contractor, but from Tuesday lunch time until Friday mornings I need to find another part time job as I am not doing enough to fill the days up. How the perpetually unemployed cope I just don’t know, I must have a hunter gatherer instinct because I just want to get out and do something useful.

There was a time a few years ago when it was a good thing working at home, the kids were young and I was fortunate to spend a lot of time around them walking them to school and so on, but they are growing up now and they would rather walk to school with Fred West than me. The time when it was good to be at home has gone now and it really is not healthy for me spending the middle of the week polishing the furniture like a demented housewife trying to stay off the valium. It could be argued that I should be cold calling for new business during the quieter times, but I already have a select group of clients and the risk associated with taking on new business in dark financial times is one that I can ill afford. I have had enough companies go bust, I don’t need more thanks. I can’t afford it.

I also don’t think it is healthy not having people to bounce off and communicate with on a working day, not for me anyway, I need company. Earlier this year I did a very simplistic customer service job for a local company when I was really quiet with my own business and it was a breath of fresh air to be in a working environment with others. The money was crap, but it was not financial status I was looking for, it was a bit of sanity, and I must say I really enjoyed the thrill of having to be somewhere at a certain time again, rather than creating my own working day. It takes a lot of discipline to work alone in your own house I can tell you, being told to fuck off down the phone by a prospective client in your kitchen is a unique experience and one I have long since given up on. I don’t mind being told to fuck off in someone’s office, I am used to it, but at home it feels like an intrusion and I end up being rather unprofessional by telling them to fuck off back, which quite frankly, isn’t good for future business.

Fortunately in my quest to ease boredom, daytime TV does not appeal to me, it is a very disturbing load of utter dross that is almost beyond comprehension. I have tried it, but I soon realised that if you start drifting in to endless adverts featuring 1200% APR loans, Cash Converters and various accident claims companies, you are standing on the edge of the abyss. Instead of trash television and some might say equally disturbingly, I find myself experimenting with different forms of music downloaded on to my IPod as was the case recently with my latest failed attempt to understand Pink Floyd. This week I have moved on to Toots and the Maytals and The Men They Couldn’t Hang both of whom are further down my street, if not right up it. The problem is, downloading music is only cheap to a point, my collection is growing rapidly and sounding increasingly bizarre on random play. I recently had the one off sensation of  listening to Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel by The Tavares followed by The Black Angels Death Song by Velvet Underground. I bet no one has done that before.

Obviously another hobby I have when I am not busy is writing this blog so ten of thousands of you can enjoy the pulsating Rock ‘n’ Roll life style I have, even if it is one you are all gut wrenchingly envious of. Because I desperately promote this blog on Facebook and Twitter, it is quite remarkable the amount of visits I get per week and the type of people (apart from my friends) who read it, obviously with help of Google search engines. I do not need to tell you all that I am not very famous, so rather than a “Bob Lethaby” name search, many of the visits to my page come from basic search word formations such as “Cliff Richard Una Stubbs Gay” or “Chris Moyles Prick” giving me an instant reminder of the vitriol I have written in the past. Occasionally I get more bizarre searches such as “Cat Rape” which relates to an a blog I wrote on holiday in August 2008 regarding an email I received tempting me to partake in “Extreme Cat Rape” an invite that for the record, I rejected, even though I was single at the time.

However, and I find this most odd, the most visited page on my blog as a result of Google searching, is a piece I did on my first car, an Austin Maxi 1750 (Read it Here). If you type in Austin Maxi, it is actually very hard to find my blog because you will find page after page of tributes, suppliers, pictures and even T Shirts (I might get one actually) of this uniquely shit piece of engineering that rolled out of the doomed Leyland factory in the 1970’s. If the Maxi was something like a TR7 a MK3 Cortina a Capri or some other car that was iconic of the era I could understand it, but what the fascination is with a car that surpassed the Marina, Allegro or Princess with its total ugliness is I really don’t know. Perhaps it is just confirmation that the British remain the champion of the underdog because only the tank like cars of the eastern block were uglier. The Maxi was only iconic in that it signalled the death nail of the British car manufacturing industry despite later attempts to revive it with the majestic looking Austin Montego and Maestro that had the Japs and Germans quaking in their boots.

Anyway, moving quickly on, if any of you know anyone looking for assistance with marketing, sales or customer service for a day or two a week, let me know. Wednesdays and Thursdays would be good, sanity takes precedence of salary and working with people who possess a degree of intelligence and sanity themselves would be a definitive advantage.

Must dash George and Mildred is just starting!