jobhunt

I ve been looking for a job for about three weeks now. Since I finished my dissertation at the beginning of September I have been without work, except for a day of writing at Nonleaguetoday. Following on from my Masters, I would like to be a sports journalist. Without question writing about sport of the highest level on a daily basis would be fantastic; fun, interesting and rewarding. Sports journalism however, is not the pursuit of the sporting. Weekends are when the big action happens, Football, Rugby, Cup finals etc. Weekends are also when I play sport, exclusively cricket in the summer and increasingly football in the winter. As a freelance sports writer you cannot afford to pick and chose, you cannot afford not to be flexible, and you cannot afford to be unavailable at weekends. I don't wish to quit at the first hurdle, but liekwise I dont want to waste my time and efforts. I am not short of contacts; friends have been kind enough to provide me with some fantastic network opportunities, and as such I have a small advantage over must budding reporters. A uni friend, who is as good a writer as I could hope to be, experienced a similar problem this time last year. Working on the student newspaper he could write about what whatever he liked, although mostly he chose a specialist subject, music. As a young writer, options are limited, and you are restricted to the things that matter least, the stories which are small enough even for you to handle. As such I feel that I am best advised to seek more stable employment , at least for the time being. On top of job satisfaction, I still aim to be independent and self sufficient. Thus, I need a regular income, one that journalism, with my level of experience and skill, is unliklely to provide. I have become more general in my job applications, applying for teaching positions, sales, graduate schemes and sports coaching work. Now, after several weeks of unsuccesful applications, mainly for positions involving journalism or more general media, partiuclarly at sky and the beeb, I have become increasingly keen just to start work. Finally. Students. Tax dodgers , cut your hair and get a job!

diary of a spurs fan

Can Tottenham fans please start being more realistic in their valuations of our team. Sure, it would be brilliant, fantastic and all the rest of it if we made the top four, but its no coincidence that the same teams are competing for these places year in year out. It takes time to build a side that will challenge for the title. White Hart Lane must become a fortress, and while it is important to consistently beat the likes of Middlesborough and Fulham who stand for midtable mediocrity, Martin Jol also needs to find the right recipe to take on the big guns. The recent losses to Arsenal and Man Yoo were massively dissapointing not least because we created a lot of good chances, and competed for much of the game. Perhaps that is the very crux of the problem. Maybe we do need to park the bus like some old Chelsea manager Jose something once said. You can't afford the big teams chance after chance they will simply punish you by virtue of their extra quality. Enough ranting for now. It would be nice for Spurs to realise their potential immediately, and turn this season around. For now rebuilding a league campaign must come second to successful cup runs domestically and in Europe.

variety

They say variety is the spice of life and as such, we took a break from Oceana and ventured to Crazy Larry's. It is always interesting to go somewhere different, and it was good to spend a night out away from the New York Disco room. Of course, the tabloids would wax lyrical about a booze fuelled night out (definitely preferable to a drugs fuelled night), but it was not a particularly drunken one. As per usual the emphasis, particualrly towards the end of the night was on scoping the ladies. Rather nervous, bumbling and sometimes pathetic attempts to convince girls that your the man for them, or at least a man, repeatedly failed. Shockingly and suprisingly, even the finest disco feet in the business did nothing to attract anything other than the odd strange glance. There was even the embarrassing instance of a girl simply getting up and leaving after hearing two minutes too many of my very stinky chat. Nonetheless it was a good night, although doubtless a return to Oceana is imminent, I didn't even get to meet this wacky Larry charachter, although the taxi ride home with Mutley more than made up for that.