Note Well. Read Closely.

This blog post provides something of an update to the resurrected offering that was discovered among my sent emails. That particular post was written in March 2011 by a man about to encounter major change in his life; the sharing of his self and home with another adult; the landscaping of his garden and a makeover to his decor; and a possible uplift in his running.

It seems that some of my readers (well, at least one) were confused by my reposting an 18 month old offering. Let me make it clear:

1. My garden never did get sorted.
2. I still need to get busy with a paintbrush.
3. I'm no longer 'a man with a successful career in the fire service.'
4. Mrs Mac turned down the job she secured in the beautiful south to spend the next 18 months tirelessly job seeking in Scotland.

Regarding point 4, I'm interested in this oft heard claim that 'you should feel lucky that you have a job.'

Let me put you right about that: Most of the idiots you hear quoting that refrain are the same that complain about work-shy benefit scrounges. Get this, you can't have it both ways. Either society depends upon its citizens working and playing a role, in which case a job of work is a basic human right; or employment is a condition of fortune, in which case you have to accept that those without paid work need to be supported.

Anyway, that bit felt a bit heavy so let me cheer things up by telling you a tale of an intelligent
university educated woman with excellent social skills who found herself the victim of the coalition's cuts agenda and made redundant from her job.

She never gave up, she accepted knock back after knock back but stayed on her feet. She kept busy creating a successful ultra marathon and creating things of beauty from wool and cotton. She also travelled to London to deliver health intervention messages to young, disaffected young people in deepest, darkest Battersea. Imagine a dozen or so young men of South London, some the size of brick outhouses, mesmerised by a bespectacled Scottish woman and lapping up the information she had travelled to impart. Remarkable.

Last week, after 18 months of disappointment, she secured a job as an operative in the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Well done, Lee Maclean. You deserve the 150 positive comments you received on your Facebook   page and you will be a success in your new role.

To Maureen Lyons, my former ma-in-law, keep reading this blog but please read closer what I've said.

Laters.