Bleeping Hell

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And in today's exciting episode...

* I can't apply to do anything at the university because they insist on me using their online application system...which doesn't work.

* If you like East European men, as I do, register at the Human Factor Solutions employment agency. The name is more than usually meaningless, and if you can't drive a lorry or operate heavy machinery they can't help you, but there's always fit young men from Poland, Yugoslavia and the Ukraine hanging about.

* They say I'm suited to being a Team Leader ;-).

* I learned a new word today: "Jenki" - Polish for "Thank you".

* Elite Recruitment Ltd can't understand why "a man of your calibre can't find work". I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.

* Maybe I should put them in touch with Ranstad Recruitment Ltd, who tell me "there's no point in registering you because there just aren't any jobs that suit your interests".

* The city council are legally required to publicly advertise all and any vacancies they have - even when they intend to recruit internally. Currently they're looking for five childminders, nine managers and a statistician.

* What is a "Digital Printer"? Am I one already?

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It's 03:15 (in the morning) and for the last hour a car alarm has been sounding somewhere in a nearby street.

Presumably the car wasn't stolen, because it's still there, bleeping away. And presumably no thief was found and no police were called, because no one's switched the alarm off.

I started to wonder what would happen if everyone treated every alarm as false...and realised that pretty much everyone does already.

When a burglar alarm goes off, people mutter and sigh in annoyance at the irritating noise, never stopping to consider there might actually have been a break-in. They just wait impatiently for someone to switch the damn thing off.

When there's a "terror alert" at a train station, everyone assumes (probably correctly) that the bomb disposal squad have blown up a piece of lost luggage, and passengers have been delayed for hours on an unfounded fear.

People don't seem to actually believe there is an ongoing threat from terrorists at all. Or rather, they believe in a vague way that Al Quaida or Spectre exists and wants to kill us all because they hate our freedoms or something...but at the same time expect any give bomb scare to be a scare with no bomb.

Everyone "knows" that car thieves are everywhere, but no one considers the possibility that the car alarm outside might have been triggered by an actual thief.

It's what might be called "abstract paranoia" - pervasive fear that something bad is about to happen, seamlessly replaced with certainty that it isn't happening the moment it appears to.

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