Crappy Birthday to me, Crappy Birthday to me!

Well folks, I've heard of having a 'memorable' first blogging birthday, but this past couple of weeks have really taken the biscuit!


For those of you who haven't been reading this page for the last 2 weeks, and to save my fingers and your eyes, I shall skip through what normal stuff has been going on in the last couple of weeks, then come back to the silly stuff at the end!


First up was the meal at a Teppanyaki restaraunt in the Mailbox. Its a great night out for a group of mates, as its not the most 'personal' of surroundings, as you are being constantly talked to by the chefs, whilst they attempt to cook everything in sight (and I mean everything; unless you like your eyebrows, don't lean forward!). The meal itself cost us £30, but for 8 courses, in the Mailbox, which left you stuffed by the end of the night, its definately worth it, and the food was great too.


Right, next up was the saturday, and a great second half performance for Villa against Arsenal, which was great....unfortunately as we had given them the first half, it was never gonna be easy, but it was a good game, despite the 2.1 defeat.


Now, Monday and Tuesday were pretty damn good. Work was good, well as good as it could be, but with something to look forward to as I had a job interview at work the following Monday, which was good, and a great opportunity to leave the minimum wage to do something which paid slightly higher, and was a far more interesting job, so that was all to come, and I had a great review from my boss, so all was good. I had even found a fan on the blog, who I was chatting to, and generally getting on well with.


Wednesday onwards? Well that was when the walls caved in.


As previously mentioned, confidence and me don't exactly go hand-in-hand, and so, on leaving the office and having the odd moment of P & Q with my own mind, I somehow came to the conclusion that my new fan was someone that I knew, probably from the office, having a laugh at my expense. Now, no normal human being would ever think this, imagine, if you will, the creators of Google or Myspace thinking that every single person on their site was a nutjob (well in the case of Myspace, they could be right, but we'll come to that later!). Being that I wasn't in the most confident mood on Wednesday (one of those weeks where nothing goes right at all), one thing led to another and I took a shot in the dark at it being someone in the office, and even went so far as to name that person in a posting. Suffice to say, the shot in the dark hit a big fat tank of petrol! I got it so far wide of the mark that it set off a sequence of events, not unlike the start of Saving Private Ryan! That post was subsequently deleted within about 10 minutes, but the replacement post, apologising for getting it so very very very wrong, started the next wave of 'happiness'.


I'll not bother to say exactly what I wrote in the post, but it referred to the upcoming interview, and was very similar to a post I wrote when I first applied, back in April, for the job I'm in at the moment, in that it gave various rough 'characteristics' of the people who were going for the job, in my usual ironic style.


Not to mention any names but I was called into my least favourite meeting room (been told I didn't get the last job I went for in there), and was told by senior management that my blog 'constituted incitement within the office', as I had mentioned people in the office in a less-than-complimentary way, and that I shouldn't be on the site in work time anyway, producing sheet after sheet of log sheet confirming this, together with letting me know, in a matter-of-fact way that everyone in the office had been told of the 'offending material'. It was an informal meeting, but mud sticks in a big law firm, so its fair to say I'll be on the minimum wage till I'm about 40, which will be nice.


That shook me up a hell of alot, and put a pretty massive dent in my legal career before its even begun (cue cheers from chavs, if the asbo's allow them to), and pretty much destroyed my self confidence, and with the interview coming up on Monday, that was never gonna be the best preparation for it.


The weekend came and went (another Villa defeat, I shan't bother telling you about it, but we just didn't turn up!), and so to Monday, and interview day. For an internal vacancy, the three external candidates who turned up for the interview were a shock to the system! After having 3 tests done, 2 on the department itself which were good, the interviews were held in the afternoon, and, typically, mine was last. By that time, both the interviewers and me were tired from a long day. They didn't want to ask many questions, I was trying desperately not to repeat the previous answer, but apart from that, it was a fairly good interview, however short it was.


The evening came with even more wonderous news, I'd failed my exam I took back in October, which I was kind of expecting, and amazingly it was rather cathartic, as I threw all of my conveyancing papers into the recycling bin, as that finally signalled the end of my conveyancing career, as I was always far more interested in litigation now anyway. Annoyingly, work has a silly rule that prohibits people in non-fee earning positions from having their course paid for, so a strongly-worded email was sent to a few people in the firm's 'academy', who deal with all that. It was done in the heat of the moment, but the sentiment stays firm, after all, I am half qualified, its not like its a hobby of mine!


The results of the interview were revealed on Wednesday, and unsurprisingly I didn't get the job, but as I'm having the worst couple of weeks of the year by a long shot, ironically the person who did get it, I convinced her to go for it to get some internal interview experience, as both of us knew that, as she'd only been here 4 months, she probably wouldn't get it, as that was the excuse given to me the last time I went for a job.


This week also saw a fair amount of abuse directed at the beagle on this page, the most disturbing of which came in an email I had on my myspace account from 'Chris'. The following is the email in full directed at me, by this 'special' young man:


'you sad sad t w a t ive been reading http://legaleagleblog.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html , and you are one sad chap, one of the people you are talking about in that is a friend of mine and lets just say you wont have a smile on your face when you find out whats gonna happen, you are jelous really bad '

Now, apart from the major grammatical errors littering the email, this is taking it a tad too far, even for the likes of this guy.

I readily admit that I talk about people that I work with, and people who I am mates with, but for those of you who do truly know me, will know that I haven't got a vindictive bone in my body, and certainly wouldn't start slagging people off openly on the internet for everyone to read. The simple fact of the matter is that if you write a blog, you characterise people to make the piece you are writing more entertaining for the person reading it. You are not lying about someone, or inventing something, just pointing out an amusing part of their nature, not to berate or bully them, but to either emphasise a point or to add humour to a situation. If everyone started to write exactly what happened in their week, without emphasising small, insignificant details, then for a start off, it wouldn't be true to the person writing it, as there would be very little point writing it in the first place, and everyone reading it would be bored witless about some guy or girl yattering on about how they went into a shop to buy some milk, paid for it at the checkout and got the correct change from the guy behind the counter; not writing about how the guy behind the counter looked like Alan Partridge, or that the person in front of you in the queue took so long, that your milk was turning into cheese while you waited!

Fact is, I will happily apologise for any offence I've caused anyone in this blog, but as there was no malice behind it, nor backstabbing on my part, I've drawn a line under the whole situation, and I suggest my detractors do the same, otherwise I'll have to delete even more of your little pointless vile comments off my yellbox.

Right then, Christmas party tomorrow, that should be fun!