WHAT I BOUGHT

I've started a new project recording all the things that I've bought. I'm trying to draw as many as the things as possible, but sometimes cracking out your sketchbook after a few pints is easier said than done. Nonetheless, here are a few bits and bobs so far...

Oh hello again!

SO even if nobody follows this thing anywho, OH HELLO! Even as a wee diary for myself, I'm going to tell my keyboard what I've been upto.

I've moved to Quebec. Whoooa. I'm in a town called Victoriaville ('Victo' if you like that sort of thing), east & equidistant between Montreal & Quebec. It's not somewhere I'd choose to spend the next 9 months, but a job's a job and French's French. I've got a position as an English language monitor, helping hormonal brats with conversational English. Like I said, a job's a job and if I can learn backwards Catholic French in the process, bonus.

So here I am stuck in the land of Walmart, Winners and colonial French. The accent is bizarre to say the least. Quack quack is all I hear and cheese curds are by at the counters of gas stations. My Enlgish accent is proving problematic and a legitimate means through which people feel they can victimise me. On the note of which here is a list of things that cause confusion on a, mostly, daily basis:

1) Tube = Subway. Still gets me. As does:
2) Tram = Street car.
3 ) Sausage = Weiner - and yes that applies to 'weiner dogs' too. Just perverted.

4) Trolley = Shopping cart. Really? The verb 'trollied' (ie. drunk, I presume because trolleys are as easy to navigate as a drunken slag from Essex) also proves most amusing. Which leads me to:

5) Slag = Slut. Need I say more...

6) Chips = Fries. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

7) Crisps = Chips. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

8) Wank = Jack off. Not really any translation that does justice to this genius bit of linguistics.

9) Oi Oi = Dismissive looks

10) Improv cockney, eg. apple 'n' pears. = No questions asked.

So alas, I'm the misunderstood clown in Quebec. Neither the Quebecers nor the Canadians understand me, and me them. Bloody Americans *.

* Not a good way to make friends in Canada, at all.

Bye Toronto!

I'll miss you Toronto, I'll miss the 918 CREW, I'll miss all, but two*, at Cafe Uno and I'll miss you the mostest Phil Rackley :(

Got a job offer in Quebec. Gotta fly. It's been fun - drinking overpriced beer, avoiding the 'retarded' ** subway system, Bike Pirates, riding my squeaky bike in the tram tracks and severely hurting myself, kayaking in lake Ontraio, swimming in lake Ontario, canoeing and camping with the chipmunks and moose of Algonquin park, eating buttered popcorn for the first time, indulging in cinnamon buns and burritos, Tacos al Asador, Acgillies the fish R.I.P., Karma Coop and all the lovely people I've met along the way and who have showed me nothing but kindness.

During my time in T.O. I did some nice sketches, much of which are inspired by the architectural mastermind of Nigel Peake. Here are a few:

* You know who you are

** Local dialect, not me.

Derm - 5 minute ink sketch

Jen's Bike - Black pen is one continuous line. Ink & Watercolour.

Lampost. Ink is one continuous line. Ink & Watercolour.

View from Josee's house. Ink & Felt Tip.

This is Rubbish

So just finished a poster for the organisation This is Rubbish - you may know them for the feeding of the 5,000 they did in Trafalgar Square last year.

Anywho, this year the TiR team will be touring Wales, campaigning for a more efficient human-managed foodchain. Shocking facts I was given for the brief included:

● The UK's food system produces 20 million tonnes of edible waste annually and
emits 3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas.
● Over half of the food produced today is either lost, wasted or discarded as a
result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain
● In the UK, 6.7 million tonnes per year of wasted food (purchased and edible food
which is discarded) amounts to a cost of £10.2 billion each year.
● Food waste costs British households anywhere between £250 to £400 a year.
● Every 1 tonne of food waste thrown away needlessly is responsible for 4.5
tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.

YIKES.

 For the poster I decided to draw all those yummy treats that we don't see enough of. I wanted to conjure up those taste-bud memories, making you think... "Oh I remember eating those. Fuck, they were sooo good."

And then the fact that all of these goodies (and trust me, I have years of experience of combing through supermarket skips to know) are thrown away by the ton.

TOP TIP: go to a Sainsbury's bin on either Monday, Wednesday or Saturday night, and I'll guarantee you at least 3 boxes of Mr. Kipling cakes (Bakewell Tarts seem to breed in those bins)

So, why do you want this job?"... Ummm, I don't.

Today I had a pseudo interview.... It made me so angry, I just had to write something:

 

 

He looks me in the eye, a frown forming from those caterpillar brows, and asks “Why do you want this job? You have a lot of qualifications. You’ve a degree and have done an internship. Why would you want to work in a café?”.

Why? Jesus. This is the part of the ‘interview’ I wasn’t expecting. Why do you think? I’m a graduate of Anthropology, albeit from one of the world’s leading universities, this is the only job I am bloody well qualified for. Yes I have sat in the library for 13 hours in a day, not slept, survived on pasta, written 5,000 words in a single evening. And what for? Too be ‘too’ qualified for a coffee shop but to not have enough experience for anything else? Give me a break.

So this is it. I don’t know what I want to do. I have many interests: writing, art and design, environmental issues, marine conservation, food. But how to channel them? I know, I know, it’s a long-road. But seriously, a coffee-bitch? As it turns out, money does not in fact grow on trees. A job’s a job.

Like every other confused graduate, I’ve done THE internship - unpaid of course, for an environmental NGO. Sitting behind a desk, being the photocopying and coffee monkey, otherwise fused to a chair, my only mobility being the occasional 360° spin to the bin (whoopee!). So my ‘media and communications’ internship basically consisted of sending emails to anyone and everyone, and when you’ve finished sending those emails, researching more people to send emails to. And what do I take away from it? That I don’t want to be a campaigner for an NGO and, even if I wanted to be, I don’t have enough experience anyway. Great.

So what next? I’ve done the soul-destroying call centre job (I did get to speak to a Mrs. A Hole. Nice.) Applied for jobs in media, environmental sector and within the arts, some of them were even paid. But of course, my degree isn’t in the relevant area, and I don’t have enough ‘experience’. And it just makes me wonder - how did these people get to where they are? Am I meant to intern for three years for free? For someone like myself, who doesn’t even know what they want to do, this seems a little absurd.

At this stage, it really is no wonder that the more well-off of the confused flee on gap years,  become ski-instructors, delay the process by undertaking a masters or take a TEFL course. I don’t even like kids - they moan and ask too many questions- but even I have applied to be an English language assistant, it is apparently a step up on the CV ladder and it seems to be one of the very few graduate-sympathetic fields out there.

So, whilst all this pondering and complaining may help me decide what I don’t want to do, there is still the unanswered question of what I do want to do.

The world of employment has been far from sympathetic towards my quest - “at least four years experience required”, “must speak fluent Spanish”, “paid experience necessary” “need Master’s level qualification or above”. And most of these requirements are necessary even for unpaid work. The recent graduate, as are many young people, is recurrently met by the hopeless paradox of needing experience to get work and yet needing work to gain experience. It’s the chicken-and-egg of unemployment.

It has become clear that paradoxes such as this feed the ideology of a ‘career path’. One is encouraged to get a certain set of skills specific to a certain job to reach a certain goal, making you perfectly carved to fit ‘the ideal job.’ But for people such as myself, the prospect of knowing exactly where you’ll be in 40 years’ time is definitely more terrifying than not. Excited and terrified as to what the world has to offer me, I know that my route will reveal itself, but amongst the distractions of paying the rent and bills, I need to keep reminding myself to keep an eye out for it.

Newerer Self-Portrait

So with lines on the mind, I decided to try a newer self portrait. I recently got fiarly obsessed with graffiti artist / illustrator Kid Acne ( love the LINES!!!). But seriously - a nice mix of playful, imagination, detail and starkness. I somehow cannot peel myself away from these graffiti artists, there's something so grimy, real and mad about this work. I'm working to get the balance of plain / detail right, something that I think Miss. Schnoor does oh so well (though I'm not such a fan of the flat colour - maybe I'm just old fashioned...

Self-portrait

T-designs

So whilst interning for the Environmental Justice Foundation, on their save the seas campaign (yes, for any of you who don't know, I know A LOT about fish and marine issues. Ask me anything regarding seafood... I dare you) I designed them a new t-shirt, as I think their current one (even if done by a famous illustrator) is a bit, well, rubbish. So I did 2 designs for them, but still haven;t heard back. Grrrr. 

C'mon! I would buy this stuff!

Design 1 (the limit was 3 colours. Ouch.)

 `

Design 2 (with 3 colours)