Tidal Change

So, three months on the 'new' weekly schedule...almost.  A week dropped here and there due to being busy, or just down to good, old-fashioned depression - I am as tired of writing about feeling emotionally disappointed as you must be reading about it.

Now is of course a spring time of discontent.  Due to my own budgetary incompetence I am reduced to living on the sum total of twenty pounds sterling a week; if it isn't food, I can't have it.  I haven't even written to anybody this week!  Sure, I'm still waiting for the airmail to come through, but I owe a return to my local friend and right trusty cynical companion, Mr. Godolphin.  I traded in a copy of Soul Calibur V (an ultimately disappointing purchase in itself, actually) for the princely sum of a fiver at the start of this week, yet a further disappointment in itself.  The pricing of videogames is something that will always confuse and infuriate me.  Anyway!  This 'free' five pounds, independent of my bank account (a mere eighth of the original price) has been the only other money I have had, and predictably it has gone already (I cheated and spent part of it on milk and cereals).  Other than that I've only spent £7.38 out of my £20 this week though, and it's looking promising.  I have eight portions of £2.50 to spend, that's almost enough for a day's food, especially as most of my meals are based around large portions of rice or pasta.  Thankfully, both of these commodities are cheap to the point of being easily affordable, I just have to make sure meat stays in the menu...

It's really tough though.  I'm being so hard on myself making sure I don't go out.  For the price of a pint of Guinness, I can make two meals, basically.  When your financial constraint comes down to that simple dilemma... Well, I've made my decision.  I can live without a pint but I can't bear to go hungry.  I've got a couple of bottles knocking about should I really want a drink... But to be perfectly honest I've been fine without.  I can't actually go into a pub and not have a drink though.  The last time I managed it, I was at the City (a spiritual home from home in Truro if ever there was one) drinking pints of water approximately every 10 minutes.  The act of going to a pub or a bar is so inextricably linked with the act of drinking that I cannot do one without doing the other.  Funnily enough I hardly ever drink at home unless it's predrinking!
I'm doing okay though.  I haven't gone mental just yet, and to be perfectly honest my social life is no less for saying I'm not going out.  It's bizarre if you look at it that way, but in review a lot of my social life comes from me actually getting out there and running into people.  I can sit here all day and the only person who'll telephone me is my own mother.  Just her!  I don't think that's massively problematic really, because my mother is a witty old battleaxe who will do anything she can to make sure I'm alright, you know: happy, healthy, got enough to eat, getting enough sleep... She is the very image of a Jewish mother and let me tell you here and now that every stereotype is true, especially the stereotype about the stereotypes being true; it is a self-fulfilling stereotype.  I'm getting off the point though, because I was talking about my broken social scene. With the sudden total lack of cash, I'm even more reticent to call people and go out because, hey, I get a bit embarrassed when I can't afford to!

Things are possibly the quietest they have been on all fronts, and you know I'm really not surprised.  There are two words that come out of my mouth that don't seem to register with a lot of people, and usually (how long did you think you had to wait until I got to this point seriously) women I'm even remotely interested in just don't seem to get it, and these two words are "CALL ME".  There is an unspoken meaning behind these seemingly insignificant words and I am putting it on the internet so if you forget it is always here.  If I say this to you, doesn't matter who you are as long as you have my number, and I'm serious now so pay attention it means: I am interested in seeing you (socially or romantically OR MAYBE BOTH IF YOU'RE LUCKY) and I am unsure as to when you are free or best available to talk to but I am free a lot of the time so just drop me a line.  That's it guys.  I am an unemployed, unattached man.  I have a lot of spare time on my hands and I usually end up spending it on cleaning which is pretty miserable for saying I'm supposed to be young and enjoying my life (newsflash most of the time I'm not).  If we boil it down further, it basically translates as "I am interested in you, are you interested in me?"  Black and white sensibilities as standard.  When I was younger I was always surprised when people just rang up to talk to me, because it didn't happen often.  I was called upon if someone wanted something I had or could do for them... And we're almost back to that.

Maybe this is something that 'normal' people don't have a problem with.  People don't call you... and that's fine.  Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all to anybody, and I'm just taking this all way too seriously.  Maybe!  This is one of those social boundary things I have immense difficulty with, especially taking into account all the times I have been told off, reprimanded, bitch slapped and basically rejected for being "too intense", which is something I can barely tell (but definitely not because I'm not intense woah no)... I worry about it.  Am I bothering people too much?  I remember once calling someone twenty times in a row when I was younger, so that's probably the definition of being too intense so at least I don't do that sort of thing these days.  It all comes from a root problem I have with communicating with other people, namely "is what I have to say of any interest to anybody else?"  I will often stop talking for hours in end entirely due to this principle, usually erroneously.  It is the source of having a block on when I try to write my blog as well: I'm not exactly viral material, and I don't imagine for a second that I'll get picked up for a publishing contract because of my quirky, slice-of-life blog is so popular oh no (That'll be Berkeley Girl anyway).  My inability to successfully interpret a group conversation in order for the best time to join doesn't just go away because I'm sat at my keyboard.

Another part of my wasted spring is still waiting on any announcement from my full time job application.  As it stands it's now been three weeks since I put my application in... I guess that's no time at all but let's remember some facts here: 1) This is my first full time application.  2) I really, really want this job.  3) I have no money at the moment so a wage could really help out here.  4) I will need a full time job in order to fund my Lay-Vicarship.  5) I have no idea what else I'm going to apply for if I don't get it.

Fund my Lay-Vicarship?  Isn't that a self-funding enterprise?  Well, no.  Not really.  Part of why the honorarium is so modest at Truro as a Choral Scholar is the living allowance that goes unspecified - basically they pay for everything in the Scholary.  We aren't subject to rent, taxation or utility bills (within reason I should think on that last one but this has been an especially chilly and long lasting winter so I hope chapter has mercy on the fact that the heating has been left on for about 4 months solid now basically (although please note, that is neither my idea or preference having footed a share in a winter heating bill over £500 in the past)) Now I'm sure I'm about to get fired for giving away a huge trade secret (jokes on you though because EVERYBODY KNOWS), but the point is free house with pocket money on top is more than adequate pay for a couple of hours for services a day.  This does not continue once you are a Lay Vicar.  No no.  Unfortunately, the wage paid to Lay Vicars, even full time ones here (there are one or two who do not attend every single weekday service) will not even cover the cost of a single flat.  I'm not even talking about anything exciting, you know like the Boss' apartment that was built on the same blueprint as Britten House (which at £98 p/w I could almost afford (I mean the halls not the apartment)), I'm talking about any normal, run of the mill flat for one person in Truro.  I sometimes get angry about this before I remember that it really is not and cannot be the Cathedral's fault: unlike the choral scholarship they are not responsible for my living arrangements any longer (although I am 100% sure that quite a lot of them do care), and also it really definitely isn't their fault if accommodation is so bloody expensive down here.  If a single flat is at least £500, usually a two bedroom flat is only about £100 more expensive, which is almost completely ridiculous.  Obviously I need to find somebody to live with here, but who and how I will find them is another matter entirely, especially seeing as I really want to live on my own: after years of living at home and then in shared accommodation, it is time I struck out...well, I feel that I want to strike out! 

But the real problem I have is that of when I get a full time job and balance my living arrangements... will I even feel like a musician any more?  I want a job in a music shop, sure that's cool, but what if I don't get it?  What if... I end up working in an office full time?  Finish at 5pm, get to rehearsal maybe 10 minutes late at most, then go home and cook, clean up and go to bed ready for the next day... Make sure I pay my bills and my rent and my taxes and don't get drunk on a Saturday night so I can get up on a Sunday... Where will my time go?  I don't have the experience and reputation that some of the other scholars have as performing musicians, I'm not here as a gap year before joining a Oxford or Cambridge Collegiate Choir, and I don't have the sheer raw talent that some others do either.  I can't even play hymns on the Organ for God's sake.  I spent three years at University, being the lowest graduating mark in my class in Music that year.  I've spent two years here, which maybe I should have used as preparation for further study, but haven't basically due to being so conscious of how bad my degree is.  People tell me that I should just go for it anyway, what with that first class dissertation I have and such, but often if you don't have it on paper it isn't worth it - Bath Spa University had the good manners to write to me upon my application for their music degree, informing me that because I didn't have Grade VIII from the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music in ANYTHING that I was immediately ineligible for study.  But hey!  Years of Cathedral service, self taught Upright bassist and great all-round knowledge of music.  But not on paper.

As always, I stand at a crossroads.  I'm sure perhaps I make mountains out of molehills almost every other day, but I'm worried about my future.  I said before that I don't want to get stuck in Cornwall, I wouldn't mind staying but I want it to be on my terms, staying because I choose to and not because I can't afford to go anywhere else.  Travel in and out of Cornwall is prohibitively expensive to the point of being completely farcical.  I have a huge overdraft to work my way out of still, and at least because of having to live on fresh air until payday I seem to be becoming a tad more responsible about where my money's going and how quickly it goes.  I'm programming a recital to sing in the Cathedral before the summer's gone, instead of the usual Banjo playing... nice to have a change, huh!