Just a quick note today to say thanks to the lovely boys who played in my D&D campaign today. Not only was behaviour very good with barely any rules lawyering/ cheating, they really put some thought into the second encounter.

I never would have dreamed that Grimm's Mr. Fox would find himself impaled and crushed in his own iron maiden. Bravo.

Grandma's footsteps.

I'll begin by reprinting a sonnet I wrote after my 21st birthday party:

21

Good age. Good enough for a sonnet?
Of course nothing too glib or too fancy.
Just a short collection of warm snapshots.
A dark bar, some close friends, diesel drink.
Folky music, and home before midnight
To play poker not even for pennies.
A quick sleep then presents; casserole dish
Water colours, truffles, and an apron.
Blowing bubbles in the morning sunlight.
Saying goodbye again. I always have to.
Then baking and making - cakes and salad,
Far too many desserts for one party.
Grandma’s footsteps and murder in the dark.
No-one died - we just laughed and played old games.

Games in my little little sonnet are important. Because the games which feature are a method of expressing the passage of time. Childhood: playing playground games, Adulthood; turning twenty-one. And of course the inevitable death; murder in the dark. Grandma's footsteps the old woman stalked by successors. The title, of this poem 21, as pointed out by Emily, (she gave me a home made card with a queen and an ace glued to it and wrote pontoon on the inside) is a game as well as a birthday. Games are not as simple as they seem.

I forced my friends to play footsteps again this afternoon, we stood in the courtyard and stalked each other. Some people played others sat out, but everyone engaged. Those who weren't playing were watching, commenting, laughing. Games are infectious and terribly addictive.

Take for example Magic: The gathering a wickedly addictive game which is rightly known in York at least as cardboard crack. But the returns on magic can make it so worth the costs. Yes it is expensive and yes fate is a strumpet, but to win is to reap rewards big time. Likewise computer games offer this input. You pay the costs of money and time: (time in particular) and you reap the rewards of success and constant feedback. This can be dangerous. Games can be selfish as well as social.

I have little direction to this post. No real argument, just a desire to remind people that adulthood is in no way separate from games. No other activities offer the scope and stage for effective learning and the continuation of development. No other activity can potentially better simulate or analyse our cultures; by which I mean that games and these kinds of media could very easily over take literature; very easily be the next step to exploring cultures. Because games are not passive, they are involving.

Play on.

Unemployed, unimpressed.

I have endured unemployment for exactly one month. I have just received marks for the essays which marked the end of my degree and potentially (if things continue as they are) the end of my university career. Undoubtedly the biggest contributor to my problems is the pathetic realities of what is called the "welfare state". If there are people who are living in luxury on benefits they are not doing so legally.

Our government has no means for helping middle class people. No offers, no aid. I know this sounds like ridiculous whinings of a bourgeois, but it's true. When the disenfranchised fall out of education, they fall into an environment which is geared to help them specifically. To get them onto courses, to get them into employment; to help them stay there. This is of course a good thing. But there are no resources in place to help students and graduates, no one to make sure that they can get by. There is a persistent and false belief that people graduate from university and fall into work. There are preconceptions, misconceptions and downright mistakes floating around the employment world. I suffer because people assume that I won't stick their crappy jobs because I have a degree in literature. Well that's just not true. I want their jobs because it gives me the chance to carry on studying. I am not going anywhere. Their job is so valuable whether it is scrubbing pots, selling phones or coffee or books, or cleaning bedrooms.

Another major misconception is that experience is more important than intelligence. To think of one example, I was working in a kitchen last week and was asked to unlink sausages. The chef asked me if I was "knife trained". I got taught how to use a knife at GCSE, and how to open boxes in a book shop. But because I was not chef trained it seems as though I am unqualified. I chop onions, unlink sausages and carve chickens all the time. Thankfully he did give me the knife and let me get on with it. No fingers were lost or cuts sustained; surprisingly. I understand that it stems back to a fear of getting sued. "Untrained woman cuts off own arm with knife whilst trying to unlink sausages." But this culture of fear is utterly ridiculous. Intelligence needs to be recognised as something as useful to a business as experience and the ability to follow orders.

Job interviews: I have had five or six so far, and they have mostly been ok. Not good enough to get me real work obviously, but ok. By far my favourite type is the kind where they ask standard questions about your past. i.e. describe a time when your enthusiasm paid off. Describe a time when you were to blame. etc. These questions are nonsense, they are neither insightful nor useful because the answers you are receiving will be lies. Not necessarily whole lies. Just twisted little truths. I like these interviews because there emphasis is on how a person can analyse their own experiences: which I can do very well. Responses can be easily manipulated.

The worst kind of interview is where the majority of the time is spent describing the job and how oh so difficult it would be. These are not interviews at all. Once you get into this situation, of being forcibly dissuaded from the role the interviewer has already decided you are unfit and is outlining all the ways in which it would be too hard for you. "The level of cleaning has to be much higher than what you might do at home." "It's a busy retail environment and you will have to be able to do two things at once." "You will be required to where a Peter Rabbit uniform... oh you think that's cute, well it is boiling hot inside." Your cries of "I can do that" go unheard. You are inexperienced, lazy, too short. But the reality is I can do these things. I can get to work on time. I freaking well can do two things at once, I have a degree from one of the top ten universities in the country. I can even manage to put on a bunny suit and look fun.

Mostly this occurs not with the more difficult jobs but with the simpler ones. When I turned up for a days work in a kitchen the woman who'd called the agency looked distressed when she discovered I hadn't worked in a "real" kitchen before. I was nonetheless very successful. Two of the jobs I have not managed to be hired for I think are the result of being too middle class. Too qualified. They imagine that a lovelier better swankier job will suddenly come up and I will put down the mop and rush off to be a receptionist or a retail assistant.

I find myself wading through a sea of forms. Looking for work in a proactive way is essentially the same as having full time administrative work. Daily data entry, telephone conversations and print outs. I'm running a mini-business from my bedroom but unfortunately there's no money to be had in it.

At the back of my mind in all of this is how horrifically messed up my life is because instead of pursuing the sciences: subjects I was very apt and had potential in. I plumped for arts subjects. If five years ago someone had told me this would be the end result. Perhaps I would have directed my studies a different way. Perhaps not; I was a stubborn child. Although it may not have helped me permanently at least I would have had the opportunity to carry on at university, at least for another year. As I find myself reading more and more science literature, I wonder if physics would have been a better choice. I am frustrated that I am being made to feel this way by a government which does not value education nearly as much as it pretends. A government which has completely devalued our degrees, and now leaves me on the brink of being unable to afford a house; let alone lurpak.

In which our protagonist gets a day's work and sore ankles.

I was very happily woken up this morning by a job agency telling me I could have a day's work.

I'm going to be a dinner lady for the day. I really hope that the agency continues to find me temporary work, and that it follows the kind of careers you considered when you were a kid. So tomorrow I will be a dinner lady, the day after, a lawyer, then an actress. And so on. Next week: Fire woman, police woman, nurse, doctor, builder, business woman. It would be a lot more interesting than just getting an office job.

Meanwhile: Admiral's log day 2

good things:

- Tap rehearsal: Much practice is required for the new steps, but all will be well.

- A bit of reading.

- Seeing my lovely, positive supervisor.

- Chinese night: Not nearly as racist as it might be construed, good company, great food.

- Ringing home.

bad things:

- not much to report. Someone threw a banana skin out of the second floor window: jack asses.

In which our entrepid adventurer escapes from tumblr into unemployment.

Admiral's Log Day One.

"In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!'"

Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass

To those who may be confused. I am not an admiral at all: It is an anagram of my name.

Tumblr is shit. I've travelled through the looking glass to place which looks very similar, but noticeably warmer and less... casual. Less pretty too. But I am willing to forgo prettiness for substance. Blog mirrors life. Please comment. Please get involved. I have been talking to nothing, and no-one for too long. Unlike escaping Alice you can get at me.

In return I will try to be interesting. I have recently finished my degree. If I get a decent part time job I can continue my studies. I would rather not think about the alternative. In the meantime I have devised a list I will call it the Admiral's plans:

1. Video games: Little King's Story/ DJ Hero/ Viva Pinata: Not necessarily completable but certainly satisfying.

2. Baking: There is nothing like baking cakes: it is so productive and satisfying.

3. Learn to lead properly: Woodstock Salsa is coming up and I better get good quick. Plus I'd like to be able to start thinking about the salsa music itself. I'm sure that leading makes you better at following. I just need to work out how it does.

4. Woodstock tap: This is slightly different to the salsa, because it's much more intricate and based on memorising the hundreds of individual movements.

5. The I-am-going-to-hell reading list:

- The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

- The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

- Modern Science Writing Anthology

- Lolita - Vladmir Nabokov

- Ulysses - James Joyce

Books I've had on my shelf for ages and have been meaning to read; But not found the time. There are many other books I could add from my everlasting still to be read list but these are the best books for burning. They really get a fire going.

6. Dungeons and Dragons: play in Bob's game, write a couple of one-offs.

As you can no doubt see this eclectic and fascinating list will provide me with entertainment in between the hours of searching for a job (and house). But probably won't help to get rid of the lump in my throat for not being quite as clever or brilliant as I have always assumed.

The Admiral.