It is the privilege of morose middle-aged moaners like myself to sweeten a bitter outlook on modern life with fond and admittedly selective memories of a distant youth. (You might have noticed?) What occurred to me today as I submitted to the urge to eat a beef Pot Noodle, is that I was eating something which fully encapsulates the feeling that - contrary to New Labour's stolen D:Ream anthem in 1997 - things have only got worse. By 'things', I don't mean ALL things, of course. It's quite useful not to have to change plugs anymore and I guess the internet has some benefits; but most stuff is RUBBISH compared to before. Have you tasted a beef Pot Noodle recently? It tastes nothing like it did in 1989 and in that sense it is the ideal metaphor for the slow, inexorable descent into this abyss of rubbishness in which we reside.
For one thing, it is far less beefy tasting. There used to be the equivalent of a stock cube's worth of artificially flavoured powder, some of which you'd fail to mix in with the water properly and that allowed for a tasty treat at the end of your Pot Noodle as you scooped up a dried morsel from the bottom inside edges. Not even real beef tasted as good as beef Pot Noodle. Maybe the fuckload of salt they put in it helped; and that's another thing missing these days. Pot Noodle used to be a tasty meal to match those microwave roast dinners from the 80s or at the very least it was a hot snack, like having a packet of crisps, only warmer and with rehydrated peas in it. Sadly, I have to report that these days it is bland and unsatisfying.
Much like popular culture in 2019.
With such a range of means of broadcasting artistic entertainment to the masses it is little wonder that the 'quantity over quality' factor leaves us saturated with so much bland popular culture. Today's mainstream popular music - at the height of which stands Ed Bloody Sheeran - lacks beef favouring AND salt. It is watery, insipid, bland and sometimes so bland it just irritates you by the fact that it merely exists and you are aware of it.
My theory is that they've reduced the salt and artificial flavouring in beef Pot Noodle in a condescendingly misguided act of altruism in order to protect 'vulnerable' people with little money and shit diets (due to shit food shopping choices) from getting heart disease and clogging up the under-funded NHS. If I am being (even more) cynical about the link between NHS funding and keeping people healthier, it's worth noting that a daily diet of (salty, beefy) Pot Noodles in 1989 would give you a heart attack that would probably leave you brown bread; whereas now, people survive heart attacks and cost a fortune in after-care.
I myself ate Pot Noodles almost daily at university, mainly as a cheap (45p) alternative to getting up early enough for breakfast in the hall of residence, and managed to stave off a heart attack by balancing my diet with burgers, beer and cigarettes. Not just any Pot Noodle, as some tasted absolutely crap (Sweet and Sour? Fucking hell, that was a precursor for the blandness of all future Pot Noodles), but specifically beef, that chicken one in the green tub with soy sauce and equally delicious, but sadly no longer in production, Chedder cheese and tomato. Again, the disappearance of the Chedder one serves as a metaphor for much that has gone out of life since those days, you know, like the freedom to offend people without them calling you a Nazi or a 'something-o-phobe', or good manners, or people acknowledging when they're in the wrong, or a sense of duty over a demand for entitlement, or walking down the street without staring at your phone and expecting everyone to walk around you, or healthy arguments over issues without regressing to polarised over-simplistic soundbite opinions hurled abusively at each other, or people calling you 'sir' in a shop instead of 'Bruv', or virtues instead of virtue signalling, or trousers worn around your waist, or diving being perceived as cheating in football rather than an effective strategy, or MPs speaking with more dignity than 5 year olds, or pop music that had some bloody SALT AND BEEF to it. THAT is what I think about when I lament the disappearance of Chedder Cheese and Tomato Pot Noodle.
But I'll try not to be too nihilistic about modern life. Knowing that it would taste bland and unsatisfactory like the year 2019, I added salt to that Pot Noodle that I ate today and do you know what? It tasted just a bit more like 1989. So maybe there's some hope for society as well.
Next time, I'll add a beef stock cube as well.
Monday 12 August 2019
Saturday 10 August 2019
Bullshiting about your interests on your CV
I've had to write a different sort of CV recently, because I'm hoping to change career after 27 years in teaching; and the advice I've stumbled upon has encouraged me to add something that I have consciously neglected to include since I was in my 20s and that is a section on my 'interests'.
I think all of us find this aspect of a CV quite a challenge, sceptical that it could bear any relevance to a job we might go for, anxious that we'd be judged more harshly about what we like doing in our private lives than what we have achieved in our professional ones and self-deprecatingly embarrassed about the fact that our limited range of interests reads so pathetically on paper that we end up confronted by the sheer utter futility of our own existence.
I don't think any of my CVs as an adult have demonstrated any improvement on something I once wrote as a 7 year old at school (in a First Holy Communion Book, which I still have) in response to the question of what things I am good at. I claimed to be 'good at running, jumping, making people laugh and reading people's names.' But of course, these weren't interests. Ask a 7 year old what his or her interests are and you'll get a list of a hundred hobbies. Ask that person ten years later and you'll get 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films' and a puerile attempt to add something to mark you out from every other teenager on the planet, like 'Badminton'.
I played badminton possibly 3 times. I did, however, buy a racket, so I considered that evidence enough of a serious hobby. I could argue that this racket got regular use throughout each summer for many years, but to be candid about it, that was for swatting flies around the house rather than for badminton. When I started at university, I joined one club. With dozens of opportunities to exploit and broaden my interests, expand my horizons, meet new people, learn new skills, keep myself busy, etc... I chose to join just one club, the badminton club. And I went once.
Nonetheless, I put 'badminton' on my CV every year thereafter and I like to think that my first job in teaching was nailed not due to having interviewed well, but purely because I was an interesting person for having a hobby like badminton (to go alongside 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films, reading people's names, running and jumping').
I did of course have interests, but like I say, they would not have marked me out in any way from your common garden human being, not even if I added a minor detail or elaboration. For example, I enjoyed reading. Sounds boring. So I added what sort of books I enjoyed reading. On a couple of CVs therefore, I wrote, 'Reading about Irish history'. Given that my CV indicated that I went to a Catholic school, I eventually started to worry that a line of logic might lead someone to assume my support for the IRA. So I considered adding a disclaimer like 'by moderate authors, non-sympathetic to terrorism' but thought it best just to change it to 'Reading about history' and remove the line saying that another interest was 'making things with wires and Semtex'.
I also spent a stupid amount of time going to Highbury to watch Arsenal and in the years before the gentrification of football, such a hobby carried a stigma that Nick Hornby and SKY TV had yet to help reduce; so putting that on a CV wasn't doing me any favours. Later on, when I was writing for a fanzine and contributing comic strips, I felt I could add that detail as something more middle-class to rid myself in the eyes of potential employers of any misconceptions that I was just another foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded football fan. I was in fact all those things, because I contributed foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded content to the magazine.
Fearful of being found out if I lied on my CV about interests, by being questioned about any of them (which never happens), I avoided the temptation to fabricate excitingly unique pastimes, like sky-diving or surfing or ski-jumping or something wanky like that. I did once add 'travel' which we all do once we've had more than 3 foreign holidays.
And so, roll on to being aged 49, writing a new CV and reflecting on my current interests. Well, some things have definitely changed. 'Going out, socialising' won't find its way onto the CV, because I am too much of a grouchy misanthrope to want to go out and mix with people having a good time, bloody annoying that is. And the only running I do these days is the bath, the only jumping is 'to conclusions' as I apply prejudicial scorn on people based on how they look and 'reading people's names' has become increasingly difficult as my eye-sight has deteriorated from all those other interests (no, not THAT one!) such as looking at computer screens and my phone. Hmmm, maybe I can put 'going on my phone' on my CV. We all should, shouldn't we, if we're honest.
I think all of us find this aspect of a CV quite a challenge, sceptical that it could bear any relevance to a job we might go for, anxious that we'd be judged more harshly about what we like doing in our private lives than what we have achieved in our professional ones and self-deprecatingly embarrassed about the fact that our limited range of interests reads so pathetically on paper that we end up confronted by the sheer utter futility of our own existence.
I don't think any of my CVs as an adult have demonstrated any improvement on something I once wrote as a 7 year old at school (in a First Holy Communion Book, which I still have) in response to the question of what things I am good at. I claimed to be 'good at running, jumping, making people laugh and reading people's names.' But of course, these weren't interests. Ask a 7 year old what his or her interests are and you'll get a list of a hundred hobbies. Ask that person ten years later and you'll get 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films' and a puerile attempt to add something to mark you out from every other teenager on the planet, like 'Badminton'.
I played badminton possibly 3 times. I did, however, buy a racket, so I considered that evidence enough of a serious hobby. I could argue that this racket got regular use throughout each summer for many years, but to be candid about it, that was for swatting flies around the house rather than for badminton. When I started at university, I joined one club. With dozens of opportunities to exploit and broaden my interests, expand my horizons, meet new people, learn new skills, keep myself busy, etc... I chose to join just one club, the badminton club. And I went once.
Nonetheless, I put 'badminton' on my CV every year thereafter and I like to think that my first job in teaching was nailed not due to having interviewed well, but purely because I was an interesting person for having a hobby like badminton (to go alongside 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films, reading people's names, running and jumping').
I did of course have interests, but like I say, they would not have marked me out in any way from your common garden human being, not even if I added a minor detail or elaboration. For example, I enjoyed reading. Sounds boring. So I added what sort of books I enjoyed reading. On a couple of CVs therefore, I wrote, 'Reading about Irish history'. Given that my CV indicated that I went to a Catholic school, I eventually started to worry that a line of logic might lead someone to assume my support for the IRA. So I considered adding a disclaimer like 'by moderate authors, non-sympathetic to terrorism' but thought it best just to change it to 'Reading about history' and remove the line saying that another interest was 'making things with wires and Semtex'.
I also spent a stupid amount of time going to Highbury to watch Arsenal and in the years before the gentrification of football, such a hobby carried a stigma that Nick Hornby and SKY TV had yet to help reduce; so putting that on a CV wasn't doing me any favours. Later on, when I was writing for a fanzine and contributing comic strips, I felt I could add that detail as something more middle-class to rid myself in the eyes of potential employers of any misconceptions that I was just another foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded football fan. I was in fact all those things, because I contributed foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded content to the magazine.
Fearful of being found out if I lied on my CV about interests, by being questioned about any of them (which never happens), I avoided the temptation to fabricate excitingly unique pastimes, like sky-diving or surfing or ski-jumping or something wanky like that. I did once add 'travel' which we all do once we've had more than 3 foreign holidays.
And so, roll on to being aged 49, writing a new CV and reflecting on my current interests. Well, some things have definitely changed. 'Going out, socialising' won't find its way onto the CV, because I am too much of a grouchy misanthrope to want to go out and mix with people having a good time, bloody annoying that is. And the only running I do these days is the bath, the only jumping is 'to conclusions' as I apply prejudicial scorn on people based on how they look and 'reading people's names' has become increasingly difficult as my eye-sight has deteriorated from all those other interests (no, not THAT one!) such as looking at computer screens and my phone. Hmmm, maybe I can put 'going on my phone' on my CV. We all should, shouldn't we, if we're honest.
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