This Cursed Year Won't Come To An End Rapidly Enough
Mrs Izzard and I cannot wait for New Year's Eve. Not because we have something marvellous planned for the evening fun and games, though of course we have, but as we can't wait to see the back of this most terrible of years.
Mrs Izzard and I cannot wait for New Year's Eve. Not because we have something marvellous planned for the evening fun and games, though of course we have, but as we can't wait to see the back of this most terrible of years.
There have been positives, and we mustn't ever forget them, nor to count our blessings which are munificent. After all, we remain in the Black Country, we have our little lad William, our parents remain in rude health and we have fantastic family and chums. So it's not all completely dreadful, but these are the things that are generally unmoving and not what one may refer to as 'events'. Other than the expulsion of Gordon Brown from Downing Street - now THERE was a wondrous occurrence!
Other things are not and this is the stage, things take a turn for the unpleasant. To start with, in January, I began the year out of employment which was appalling enough, I had expected to be back in work pretty quickly, but it was not to be. Then, in March my last remaining grandparent passed on, a marvellous lady of endless refinement. Then in April, just after her birthday the real bombshell, Mrs Izzard was diagnosed with breast cancer and events were set in train to deal with it using surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It was roughly the same time that I was told by the DWP that I would not get unemployment benefit as I'd been paying the wrong kind of National Insurance, and so on top of all the rest I had no income.
And then things seemed to pep up. The 1st Mrs Izzard was looking through the Directgov website for job vacancies for me and came across an advert promising work doing SEO. I had already done a bit of work for local firms, offering IT support and even though I was clueless about what SEO really was, I contacted the website mentioned in the Directgov piece and in time had a call from one of the owners of the firm advertising. He explained how SEO worked and explained about the job and what the company wanted from me and what they would do for me. We arranged to meet at a Jobcentre in the North end of Birmingham. I found him a charming, extremely nice man and we had an extensive chat about work, life, career, business and loads of other things and I finished up really wanting to work with him. I explained that although I did a bit of IT support I was not able to pay for the training myself but I really wanted to do it. He said that he would examine funding for me to cover the training because alas the company wouldn't be able to provide it for free and it sounded reasonable.
We met again a few of weeks afterwards and having been told that I wasn't eligible for funding I gave over a cheque for 3 grand that I'd managed to secure from my parents in advance of the cash that my nana had apparently left me as an inheritance. And what a legacy! The chance to train to work from home for good income for the long haul! I started the training and it took something like six weeks. While the business sorted out an ideal client for me, they gave me a website they said they'd designed for a business that had gone bankrupt, but as they owned the site they were looking to sell it and it was a good plan to have it optimised when they did. You can see it at www.2bbq.co.uk and I composed fifty articles using all the keywords to biff it up the results table.
Several weeks went by and as my resources ebbed away I contacted the company asking when I was finally going to get a customer, until in early November I discovered a group of people on the internet who had all followed the identical path and it became perfectly transparent that there were no customers and the whole experience had been a rip-off to wring training money from jobless people from all over the place, not just the Black Country like me.
So, now my own cash is almost gone as I've been using them to support us all while waiting for the clients to come and now I understand that they never will. So, being a finer man than the foul scumbags who have swindled me, I will find clients and do SEO myself, as well as IT support which I will still offer to companies in the Black Country and we will come out of this in one piece, stronger and the inheritance cash from my nana's legacy will be paid back and used for something worthwhile and valuable as she wanted.
20101109
Mrs Izzard and I cannot wait for New Year's Eve. Not because we have something marvellous planned for the evening fun and games, though of course we have, but as we can't wait to see the back of this most terrible of years.
There have been positives, and we mustn't ever forget them, nor to count our blessings which are munificent. After all, we remain in the Black Country, we have our little lad William, our parents remain in rude health and we have fantastic family and chums. So it's not all completely dreadful, but these are the things that are generally unmoving and not what one may refer to as 'events'. Other than the expulsion of Gordon Brown from Downing Street - now THERE was a wondrous occurrence!
Other things are not and this is the stage, things take a turn for the unpleasant. To start with, in January, I began the year out of employment which was appalling enough, I had expected to be back in work pretty quickly, but it was not to be. Then, in March my last remaining grandparent passed on, a marvellous lady of endless refinement. Then in April, just after her birthday the real bombshell, Mrs Izzard was diagnosed with breast cancer and events were set in train to deal with it using surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It was roughly the same time that I was told by the DWP that I would not get unemployment benefit as I'd been paying the wrong kind of National Insurance, and so on top of all the rest I had no income.
And then things seemed to pep up. The 1st Mrs Izzard was looking through the Directgov website for job vacancies for me and came across an advert promising work doing SEO. I had already done a bit of work for local firms, offering IT support and even though I was clueless about what SEO really was, I contacted the website mentioned in the Directgov piece and in time had a call from one of the owners of the firm advertising. He explained how SEO worked and explained about the job and what the company wanted from me and what they would do for me. We arranged to meet at a Jobcentre in the North end of Birmingham. I found him a charming, extremely nice man and we had an extensive chat about work, life, career, business and loads of other things and I finished up really wanting to work with him. I explained that although I did a bit of IT support I was not able to pay for the training myself but I really wanted to do it. He said that he would examine funding for me to cover the training because alas the company wouldn't be able to provide it for free and it sounded reasonable.
We met again a few of weeks afterwards and having been told that I wasn't eligible for funding I gave over a cheque for 3 grand that I'd managed to secure from my parents in advance of the cash that my nana had apparently left me as an inheritance. And what a legacy! The chance to train to work from home for good income for the long haul! I started the training and it took something like six weeks. While the business sorted out an ideal client for me, they gave me a website they said they'd designed for a business that had gone bankrupt, but as they owned the site they were looking to sell it and it was a good plan to have it optimised when they did. You can see it at www.2bbq.co.uk and I composed fifty articles using all the keywords to biff it up the results table.
Several weeks went by and as my resources ebbed away I contacted the company asking when I was finally going to get a customer, until in early November I discovered a group of people on the internet who had all followed the identical path and it became perfectly transparent that there were no customers and the whole experience had been a rip-off to wring training money from jobless people from all over the place, not just the Black Country like me.
So, now my own cash is almost gone as I've been using them to support us all while waiting for the clients to come and now I understand that they never will. So, being a finer man than the foul scumbags who have swindled me, I will find clients and do SEO myself, as well as IT support which I will still offer to companies in the Black Country and we will come out of this in one piece, stronger and the inheritance cash from my nana's legacy will be paid back and used for something worthwhile and valuable as she wanted.
20101109