Not sad at all, that B&Q replaced The Hull Fish Meal & Oil Company, they used to be customers of ours and when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction you could smell them from Goole.

^ You must have got them after us then.

I must have been about 7 at the time, forget H&S in the 1970s, and I got to do the maintenance of one of their machines. I added to the fish meal with a violent vomit, somthing 12 pints never did.

After that I'd only do the maint in their garage, which was bad but tollerable

It was the first contract that Dennis signed when he came to work for us, when he rang the office to tell us we wrote a clause into the contract that if they ever had a breakdown when Dennis was on holiday then they'd have to wait until he came back because there was absolutely no chance that we'd be going instead - strangely enough Dennis said that he couldn't smell anything wrong at all whenever he went there, but as you know, he was mental.

I survived my trip to Whitley Bay

My friend lives near close enough to Monkseaten Metro station to get away from there!

Did find a top bar/gig venue called Clunny near Byker bridge, well nice

Hello Mr Field. Today I have ironically been on a field picking strawberries. Can this bit of work go on my CV?

Did you do it for money or did you pay them to take away the strawberry's ?

If you were asked by someone to pick the strawberrys on their behalf and they paid you some money at the end of the day then this is a concept known as "Work", sounds strange I know but some people do this thing called "Work" all of their lives, they leave the house and travel to a place known as "their work" and they do the thing called "Work" for several hours every day and then they get paid money for doing it.

Yes I can hear you laughing from here and I know you think I'm winding you up but really, some people do this and this is the sort of thing that you put on your CV, your CV is not a sort of blog, it shouldn't contain things like "I ate a cake from Ainsleys down the road today, it was quite nice", in fact the sole purpose of a CV is to contain a list of those things called "Work", the things that someone has paid you in real money to do.

And no, your grandma giving you two shillings to go to the shops for her shouldn't be on your CV either for it isn't real "Work" and is not the sort of thing that any potential employer is looking for, unless you're going for a job that involves running errands for spare change in which case it will be quite a useful thing to put on your CV.

Thanks for that info Mclazza. I think that eating cake from down the road at Ainsleys can class as a mystery shopper role if I let people know how it went. You’ve got to remember that we live in the era of ‘transferable skills’ which means that anything can be put on your CV these days.

Sometimes I wonder if I just get interviews because people wonder what kind of idiot has a CV like mine

Just remember the rule of thumb, "Did they pay me to buy and then eat that cake ?", if the answer is "No" then most definitely it cannot be legitimately counted as a job, if you paid them then most definitely it is shopping and not working, its very important not to include self-provisioning shopping on your CV in order to avoid expressions like "What the fook..." from any potential employer during job interviews.

Its a shame that we don't have jesters these days, Damo will be in demand

Do cash in hand jobs, extortion and I believe the expression is usuary count as work. I could have quite an extensive CV if I can include those.

You can certainly include these types of occupation on your CV but you must be very careful with its storage and distribution, for instance applying for a job as a civilian telephone operator at West Yorkshire Police may raise eyebrows and interest when you send in a CV showing that your current income consists of a six figure sum undeclared for tax purposes that is garnered from the small business that you operate involving your local shopkeepers to ensure that their windows aren't put through once a week.

^ thank you.

But when applying for any post within any police force they look into not only your past but that of your family too. It really would be a waste of time me picking up the phone for an application form and if I were to it might start a number of alarms ringing in the bridewell

Would it be accurate to suggest that it wouldn't be first time a member of your family has caused this to happen?

^ I think thats reasonably accurate.

Although myself and the other person both have letters of thanks from the North Yorks police for breaking up ( barging in and sorting out) a fight.

Mc F will tell you the other person is not one to be messed about with.

PS he arrives in England on Wednesday

Damo?

No

Let me put it this way, when he offers to buy you a pint you just say "Yes" in case a refusal offends

Mr Field, I have just agreed to go to London for the first time ever in July and I’m wondering – do I need a survival kit?

What tips do you have for me in our capital city?

Don't go.

If you insist on going then lower all of your expectations by a factor of 100%, prepare to stay in a crappy room in whatever hotel you have booked, learn several different foreign languages in order to converse with the residents of the city, learn to behave with the sort of aggressive attitude to everything that would instantly have you arrested in any other part of the UK, increase your spending money by a factor of 400% and don't be surprised when it all gets spent on a can of coke and a sandwich, and don't expect The Queen to be in when you stand on The Mall and take photos of her house.

Other than that you'll hate it.

I think we’re staying at a mate’s house in London who’s originally from Halifax and he seems to be surviving fine in the big smoke. We’ll be at the Lovebox festival as opposed to doing the usual tourist farce thank goodness.

But your right in saying that Londoners are aggressive.

I'm stopping at the St Pancras Renaissance next weekend, taking in a show (Dirty Dancing) and eating a fillet teak the size of my head from Gouchos.

I can't bloody wait.

I once stayed for a week in the Barbican area nearly 10 years ago and it was hell on earth full of business folk, rude idiots and chavs, 'orrible it was

went the other year and actually loved it, found the place much more enjoyable

I found that standing still in the 'fast lane' of the escalators on the underground really es off those southerners.

Have you tried pausing at the bottom of said escalators, checking out the large maps which tell you which platform you need to be on, pretending that you can't figure out whether you're going northbound or southbound because it's a horizontal line on the tube map rather than a vertical one?

If you can do so in such a position that it obstructs both the people getting off the escalator and a mediocre busker, double points can be awarded.

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