And Breathe

Mark called me on Friday. Mark works in recruitment. Two days work over the weekend. Did I want it, he asked.

I could have kissed the man; things could not have been cut any finer.

Down and Out

Here’s a hint for the kids back home. If you ever want to go on the dole in this country, reconsider. Seriously. It might not be worth the pain.

It lands you about £60 in the pocket each week, a dismal sum which doesn’t even cover the rent. But with almost two months in dreary London and without a signed contract in sight, it was time to swallow some pride and grab a little change from the government coffers.

Being British helps. Last year I wrote about the dole in New Zealand, for Salient, feigning a need for government handouts so I could get a story. For all its mocking, the New Zealand system is efficient. Not only that, but their staff seem to be trained to empathise with the guys who walk through the door. It’s ridiculed and misrepresented in the media, but I’ll stand up for the New Zealand Work and Income. She ain’t the prettiest lady you’ll meet, but she’ll do you fine.

On the other hand, England’s dole is like the town tramp. After a forty minute phone interrogation, I was booked for a meeting with an ‘officer’ in the job centre department. A tube ride to Finchley central, and I walked into an office that could have looked hip about six years ago.

I was treated like a piece of produce. “You need to fill in this form,” my case manager advised. I skimmed it, and found it to be near identical to the questions the gentleman on the phone asked me several days back. I mentioned this, and got a ‘don’t mess with me’ glare for my troubles.

These forms reproduce faster than rabbits. One form turned to two, which multiplied to four. I wondered how often they really needed me to write the same information on different papers. There was even a separate form I had to fill in, “just in case the computer version gets wiped.” I didn’t want to ask why they couldn’t just hit ‘print’ and get a hard copy. This is the inane level of bureaucracy that I had to deal with. I was ready to write a metaphor about IHC and this bunch, but decided to scrap it: it’s way too cruel to the good fellas at the IHC.

But it's the culture of the place. I spent almost three hours in their offices, most of which spent filling in various forms. The answer to every question I had was tied into some form. I had to explain that I was a ‘habitual resident’, but no one could tell me what the phrase meant. I had to answer questions like: ‘Where do your friends live and what do they do?’ and other intrusive quizzes.

And it wasn’t the end of it. Forms to request a housing allowance, a form to backdate payments from when I first entered Blighty, a master form that had to be rechecked and signed, an amendment paper where I had to state that I went to University. I was on New Zealand’s dole seven years ago for two months and, get this, they wanted proof. It was almost a decade ago! I couldn’t think of a more infuriating system if I had tried.

I had to sign a declaration that I would hunt for jobs. No worries. And just like a convict on parole I had to check in to the office once a week and present a book with a list of things I’d done to get a job. This was ludicrous.

New Zealand suddenly feels like the land of plenty. People smile, some are even friendly. Walk into the WINZ office and you could get a cuppa for your troubles. When I chatted to WINZ, we joked around, and I talked to the strangers in the queue. They may have been hard done by, but they could still smile. But no, I had to jump ship and travel half way across the globe to arrive at civilisation.

Wimbledon

The first thing people should know is that it’s not actually in Wimbledon. The tennis thing, that is. I took the tube on Saturday and was told to get out in Southfield. Like clockwork, five minutes after following the signs I was thoroughly and enjoyably lost within its leafy suburbia.

It was a summer’s day, and the walk to the common took me past rows of townhouses and BMW’s. I had run a half marathon earlier that morning, but was still feeling strangely buoyant. After almost an hour of wandering, I arrived at what seemed to be a set of barracks.

Security. Metal detectors and bag checks to rival any major airport. I was frisked so hard I felt like I was in a gay porn movie. Honestly, there was little left to the imagination, and I was straining not to push the guy away when he went for my inside thigh. After my bag went through the conveyor belt, I was taken aside for a ‘random’ baggage check. Every pocket was emptied, my books were leafed through, and my wallet opened and inspected. It was sheer invasion. I attempted small talk. “You do this often?” I asked the burly security lady. “Every fifth person.” She robotically replied. They’re not exactly paid to be friendly. She spied a bottle of Fanta in a pocket. Handing it to me, she instructed me to, “Sip this in front of me.” I knocked it back, earning another grunt from her. Even when searched in Harare I didn’t have it this bad. Somehow I don’t think I made a friend.

But eventually I did make it through to the village. And my goodness, what a sight. Thousands of spectators walking around, security and administration staff everywhere. Multi-tiered restaurants and of course the two imposing buildings: centre court and court #1. I watched the woman’s finals on the big screen on the lawn with thousands of fans. Afterwards, I wandered to court #3 to watch a mixed semi-finals match with Murray & Jankovic.

My dad plays tennis, and in our largely vacant family folklore, we’d grown up with the tale that he’d been taught by an ex-Wimbledon player. It means that for better or for worse, tennis is in our blood. Growing up, Wimbledon had always been a fixture, the ultimate tournament. Right now, in fact, my dad would be taping each game, driving my mum mad with frustration.

Back to Court #3. I was cattled into the standing room bays, and ended up standing a spitting distance from the players. This is where I met my happy clappy tennis friend.

He stood next to me, a strange man in his late thirties. Pencil-thin, he was perpetually biting his bottom lip while staring at the match. He wore a Wimbledon baseball cap about a dozen sizes too large for his head, and it had lopped backwards, balancing at forty-five degrees, eagerly waiting to tip over. The real magic was whenever the crowd applauded. He would shoot his arms near his face, holding his wrists against each other and clap his palms together like the jaws of a crocodile. It wasn’t just his form, but moreover the length of his applause. As the crowd died down, he would merrily clap away, oblivious to the silence around him. Then like releasing a coiled spring, his arms would shoot down to his sides. I liked him immediately.

Soon enough other spectators turned to give him dirty looks. If my happy clappy friend noticed any of this, he wasn’t paying them any attention. Gaily he would patter his hands together after each point, clapping louder and longer if the applause were sustained. The match was wonderful to watch, but my friend made it all the more entertaining.

I spent the day wandering between courts, watching the tail end of the championship. The veterans match was amusing, simply because of one player: a portly American, upholding the stereotype with his long stringy hair, balding, but geared with the trendiest threads. He would loudly chat to his team mate, holler at good points he’d won, and generally stomp around like he owned the place.

And the day wore on. By eight, the temperature had dropped, leaving me shivering slightly in my shorts and t-shirt. It was time to head back to reality. My fourteen pound general admission ticket had served me well for the past five hours. While I didn’t see the big names, I was more than content to leave, knowing that I’d finally done it: I’d made it to Wimbledon.

Hitch yourself up

Simon doesn't like having attention thrown his way, which is mostly why I'm doing this. I mean, what are friends for, if not for personal abuse?

He's in Auckland now, while I'm in London. Less than a year ago we were drinking Pinot Noir in front of the fireplace with the rest of the flatties in Melrose. Rhys is now in Dunedin, Mikey's moving to New York. Chris moved out to tie the knot, and Murray seems to be following suit. Schmik's the only trooper left, but if things go well his number will be up shortly. Life just seems to take you to unexpected places.

The movie was taken by Si from his hitching trip from Wanaka to Wellington two years back. I lent him my camera and an empty memory card and he promised to fill it before he returned it. It's taken me two years to find the time to compile his trip into a narrative. Two years have passed like a breath.

How to (not) open an English Bank account. Done.

I should have posted this well over a week ago. Within days of applying for bank accounts, I now have two: one with Lloyds TSB, and one with Barclays.

Lloyds were first off the mark, with a debit card and cheque book in the post, while Barclays arrived four days later. The lesson? Well, aside from feeling all chocolaty inside, I suppose there’s the obvious: 1^st Contact may do a good service, but your options aren’t limited. If you don’t mind the wait, save yourselves the thirty pounds and you’ll have no problems getting your account the old fashioned way: for free.

Camera shy

You’ve probably all heard about the car bombs discovered in central London. Tiger Tiger, (for the uninitiated, the club one of the cars were parked by) is well on the beaten track, just off Piccadilly Circus. It’s a bizarre feeling, to see photos in newspapers of a place you tramped past two days ago. This just doesn’t happen in NZ.

The papers on the tubes were awash the following day with hasty speculation. The primary suspects of course are Al Qaeda, as if there were only one group with sufficient reason to hate the West and the moxy to pull something off. Much hot air was also passed trying to analyze the situation with the present scant evidence. Typical journo stuff.

But being London they’ll soon have evidence-a-plenty. Almost every patch of public space seems to be under the ever-present gaze of CCTV. An army of police were reportedly analysing the footage to track the vehicle to its source.

England doesn’t appear to be camera-shy. It owns up to having 4.2 million CCTV cameras in operation (a whopping 15 million according to Andrew Marr’s doco on Britain that screened recently, but none of my Google ‘research’ could verify that number). However, crunch even the most conservative figures and you’ll find that it’s almost a hundred days of CCTV footage filmed every second. If each second is recorded, then each day would accrue 360 billion seconds of camera footage. That’s eleven thousand years of footage a day.

London is one of the most camera-friendly spots on the planet. The Home Office reportedly spent three quarters of its budget for crime prevention on CCTV cameras in the late 90’s. With such a staggering amount of cameras, the capability exists for surveillance crews to monitor an individual’s progress through London from camera to camera.

Walk anywhere in London and you’ll see hundreds – hundreds of cameras. The underground is a popular spot, but only because they’re visible. Cameras have been installed on busses, on intersections, on the motorway (interestingly, they tag cars by automatically reading the license plates as they enter the city). Of course they’re also in many public areas. It’s enough to make you spooked.

It’s a regular surveillance society round these parts, which conjures the stereotypical imagery of 1984 and the like, but let’s briefly zoom back to last weekend. I was sitting in a train on the Piccadilly line, shooting northward the day after the attempted bombing. It was eleven at night, and the carriages were packed. As we passed by Piccadilly Circus, I had a surreal moment where it occurred to me how venerable I was. Sitting there, nowhere to move, I couldn’t figure out what I’d do in an emergency. And for just a moment, a few scant seconds, there was something reassuring about someone watching your back.

They’re here to protect you. The irony, however, was that they didn’t do jack in this situation. The car bomb was accidentally discovered by fire fighters. Crime figures have dropped significantly since 1995, but many people are questioning whether the saturation of cameras were the cause of this drop. Where they will be useful is identifying and tracing the suspects; detective work at the click of a button.

Frankly, I still don’t like ‘em. The real world isn’t a conspiracy-bound thriller, I realise. But if the cost of personal freedom is having some people with the power to covertly watch me as I stumble around the city, then the price ain’t right, and it’s more than just a little freaky.