And so, after completing one week with a company that I now consider to be 'my regular employer', I got called back for another couple of days at the end of last week.
It was an interesting occurrence for several reasons, not least that I got the call asking if I'd be available on the morning of a day when I was heading to that neck of the woods anyway, because I was buying a set of paintings from one of my former colleagues. I was almost tempted to mention that to the agency, in the sense of "I'll be there later anyway, would they like me to start today rather than tomorrow?" but I'm glad I didn't.
This former colleague and I met up in a little tea shop just down the road from the office. It's a strange little establishment, clearly trying very hard to be 'cool', but probably too small and awkward of space to comfortably accommodate the sort of crowds they surely long to attract. It's one of those places where people get together to have a private chat rather too loudly to believe it's truly intended to be private... One of those sitcom-type setups where trivial events are blown out of all proportion, and spoken of loudly enough that everyone in the 'audience' can hear, even though most of them probably do not wish to.
Actually, that's unfair - I'm only talking about the two women on the table next to me. Everyone else was speaking normally, or not speaking at all. I was particularly intrigued by the young woman on the next table, who sat down with a notebook, a scrap of paper (possibly a napkin) and two ink pens - one purple, one green. Had I not been there solely to meet my former colleague, catch up on the events of the three or four years since she left my team for bigger and better things, and hand over four hundred quid for a set of three of her awesome paintings, I probably would have spent a scary amount of time observing this other woman, in an attempt to ascertain the purpose of the two coloured pens.
Typically, my motor-mouth was running at nineteen to the dozen, jumping from subject to subject (and back again) with scarcely a thought for clarity and, if I'm any judge, this version of me - very different to what she'd remember - was quite bewildering to my former colleague... but she's a bright girl and managed to keep up, except when I slipped into weird slang. I should have remembered what a stumbling block that always was for her, but I guess exuberance got the better of me.
Hearing about her plans for returning home and setting up the foundations for focusing on her art in years to come was quite amazing. She was always very level-headed, never one to stew over things that were bothering her if talking about them would help, always adaptable... But she's a good few years younger than me, and her drive and focus put me to shame.
Still, she was very complimentary about my art, and I got a hug as a greeting and as a farewell. Three hours plus flew by in that tea shop, and I was very glad of the opportunity to catch up with her before she disappears off to another country for the next chapter in her life.
The next two days of office work were quite eye-opening, not least because I learned how to mail-merge in Adobe InDesign (Window>Utilities>Datamerge, then have your CSV file at the ready!), which would have been invaluable only last week, when I manually set up 77 certificates using the tried-and-tested 'cut and paste' method. Granted, doing it any other way would have required that I throw back the original data and ask for it to be resupplied (seriously, what is this fascination people have with originating lists as tables in Word?), but I did get to make a recommendation "for future reference" and then bask in the success of another hare-brained scheme.
Because, seriously, if 77 certificates are bad... how about 200+ name badges for a trade show? That's the kind of shit mail-merge is made for.
I also picked up four copies of the Report document I sent to press the previous week, and I have to say, without wishing to sound as though I'm blowing my own trumpet - which, of course, I am - it looked pretty fucking fantastic. It's weird but, looking at the finished, printed product, it almost doesn't feel like my work anymore. The final booklet looks like the kind of professional thing you'd expect to be made by professionals, not some back-room troubleshooter guy like me.
And it's so much better than last year's...
Those two days, more than anything before, reinforced the feeling I've had about that work placement, that the time between bookings is merely extended holiday in 'my job'. I feel completely comfortable there, and they clearly like having me - the moment my colleague announced she was pulling me back in, her already-stacked work inbox suddenly began to overflow with new tasks. Naturally, I was only to happy to attend to them, since just about everything I've done there has been an interesting challenge.
Of course, the 'triumphal return' (see what I did there?) I really wish to discuss is that of Doctor Who, for its seventh 'new' series. Where the writers of 'New Who' get it right, it's in dealing with small stories on a grand scale (as opposed to RTD-era, where there were too many huge stories that always seemed overly ambitious, and thereby horribly curtailed, for the 45-minute TV format... plus, they were all Doctor Fanwanky). 'Asylum of the Daleks' actually dealt with several small stories under the guise of something (potentially) huge. It wasn't about the Parliament of the Daleks turning to the Doctor to 'save' them (though, actually, I'm going to have to watch that episode again because I can't quite remember how that was supposed to work anyway), it was about what happened to Amy and Rory Pond (OK, Williams... but you know in your hearts that Rory is Mr. Pond for life) after they parted ways with The Doctor, and about the terrible things the Daleks have done, not only to other races, but to their own kind, too.
Some of it made for uncomfortable viewing... not just in the 'slightly squeamish' sense of Dalek eye-stalks bursting out of human skulls (though that struck me as odd, considering the Daleks are, technically, the biggest racists in the universe). The appearance of what were, in a way, zombie Daleks was rather disconcerting: the way they all seemed to be non-functional until suddenly they weren't, and the deep-rooted drive to 'exterminate' brought them, stuttering, back to life... And the gnawing feeling that Oswin wasn't all she appeared to be. It wasn't quite so epic and movie-like as it had been cracked up to be, but it was still better than a lot of television lately and, for genre television on the BBC, it was nothing short of brilliant.
But, there's the thing: Jenna-Louise Coleman was introduced to the world as 'the new companion' several months ago... and yet her appearance in 'Asylum of the Daleks' suggests we've been flannelled - yet again - by the Steven Moffat Misinformation Machine (note also his Tweet of 2.01pm yesterday)... So when he speaks of the impending demise of the Ponds, and says "I really mean it this time", I can't help but think of that teaser from an earlier series, where Amy and Rory see their future selves, revisiting the scene of one of their earlier adventures. I can't help but believe that the Ponds will escape with their lives.
But, let's face it, this is Steven Moffat. I'm probably wrong.
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