»21st March 2009

Leeds Guide Week 2

In a surprise move recently, Extar, the proprietor of this website, wrote another blog update detailing his second week of work experience at the Leeds Guide.
Commentators were shocked as he followed the exact same format as before and copy-pasted various text files together to resemble some kind of whole.
Speaking on behalf of himself, Extar released a press statement today saying that he had "no intentions of taking this ludicrous newspaper format thing any further than necessary."
Today marks the seventh day since the last blog update. "It is unclear how the situation is going to develop from here" said a rather uninformed bystander.
So now I'm going to write about what I did this week with the help of primary sources.

Day 6



It makes sense for me to call monday day six, I suppose. It makes more sense than saying it was day eight anyway.
I kept a todo file whilst at the Leeds Guide, so, you know, I'd know what I had TO DO. I'm going to refer to it at some point, probably. Before that time comes I'm just going to pull out the old diary thing from last week again. Blockquotes ahoy.

00:18 17/03/2009

Yep, that's a timestamp, you know you're in Notepad country now.
Fill this in with more detail later

Well here I am, supposedly doing that.
-new hot intern amy from newcastle university, potentially threatening my position

It's probably not entirely appropriate to just describe her as 'hot'. Well I found out later that she's called Amy, I later found out that it's actually spelt Aimee. So yeah, sorry about that.
Potentially threatening my position? Well you see now there was competition, no longer could I sit there brooding and sharpening my knife looking threateningly over at the guys in design and for people to think 'well, I suppose that must just be what interns do.' No, all of a sudden I'd have to start trying to be normal or something.

-ali gave me skivvy job to deliver draft of shopping guide

This involved me delivering a work-in-progress copy of the Leeds Shopping Guide (I think that's what it was) to somewhere on Great George Street, which is opposite Morrisons. This is Ali as in Alison, the editor of Plush, by the way. The office was on the sixth floor at no. 2 Great George Street. So I got to the building and proceeded past reception and started ascending the stairs. On about the third or fourth flight of stairs I started muttering 'sure, send the intern to drop this one off...' and by about the sixth or seventh flight of stairs I had to tether the pack mules and go onto my oxygen tank. God know's how many flights up I was at the top and was dismayed to find I was only on the fourth floor... If there was a secret door I was supposed to find up here to get around the skylight illusion then I didn't have the equipment to find it so I had to return to base-cam- I mean reception. The two burly security guards informed me that 'no, we don't have a sixth floor.' Growing slightly concerned 'this is number two Great George Street, right?' 'Yes, but, ah, yeah you want to be at the Leonardo Building, that's next door.' Great.
After walking out and around the corner to the Leonardo Building I decided I wasn't going to be climbing any more stairs. So I told the receptionist here that I needed to hand it over personally. So Kim or whoever it was came down however many flights of stairs there was in this building (seriously, is there a ban on lifts on Great George Street?) and I handed over the 'package' and went on my merry berry way back to the office via the Nevice outdoor store, where I bought some more bootlaces and replenished my oxygen supply.

I was given an interview to do at 1pm which I promptly started panicking about. My first interview. I wouldn't go as far to call it an unmitigated disaster, or a train wreck, but there were certainly some leaves on the track.
It was just very awkward. I had to interview the head honcho artistic director at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and ask him about his new play, which surprise, surprise, I'd never heard of before. It was written by J. B. Priestley, who I thought was the guy who discovered Oxygen (no seriously, that guy is a local hero in Birstall.) At Tom's suggestion I wasn't supposed to let on that I was an intern as apparently some people don't like dealing with the interns. This turned out to be a mistake.


"It's set in somewhere called Cleckywyke. It was a an amalgam of Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike. It was a little sort of imaginary place, it's recognisably one of those small towns around Leeds at the turn of the century when it was set. You know people did live in their little town, had the town council, it was very self sufficient."

I walked down to the Playhouse to interview the Artistic Director there about his new play. I'd had a frantic reading up session on Priestley, the play, and the guy I was interviewing but still felt hopelessly under-prepared. The interview was held in a slightly quieter part of the Playhouse foyer and my pre-interview chatter clattered to a halt a few yards short of the start line. At the start line, my questions were ready and raring up to go. A rather frantic start saw the questions plough against concrete barriers running down the opening straight before spinning off in a cloud of dust and gravel at the hair-pin. I struggled to get any sort of a rapport going with this guy, maybe he didn't like interviews much, maybe my blizzard of insipid questions (in my defence, the tone of the article is meant to be fairly insipid) put him off. Either way, my conclusion when transcribing the interview later, was that I ended up making a series of unintentional veiled insults and didn't do a particularly good job of actually engaging him or giving the impression I didn't think my own questions were a waste of time. Twelve minutes of careening disaster later and to the surprise of the playhouse press office, who'd just arrived, the interview stumbled over the finish line and I began the consultation for formulating the plans for Operation: Get The Fuck Out Of There.
The photographer, Tom, was with the Press Officer and set about ushering the Artistic Director outside for photos whilst I sort of followed awkwardly. After a few shots were taken and a bit more awkward hanging around, the A.D. started walking back to Playhouse and as a parting shot 'and, you're freelance right?' Yep, that little lie at the beginning of the interview and my total inability to back it up had really backfired. Trying to salvage something from the interview I decided to strike up a conversation with the photographer, who didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to get off.


Day 7



23:11 17/03/2009

-finished off a load of work today
--do something different at weekend feature
--simon's property piece
--tom's ian brown interview piece
--ben's hobby horse guitar piece
---had to ring up the guy at leeds guitar school and record phone conversation with dictaphone

-finished off one piece of new work
--top ten dvd releases for issue 219

-got the new magazines delivered and looked at the stuff i'd done which got printed

-worried about the party tomorrow
-was reassured about the party knowing mark might be there
-had to cancel lunch at dorsia's o'neil's with ali
-was tired despite having had more sleep

-will not have much pre-existing work for tomorrow
Day 8



06:53 19/03/2009

kim interview went okay
went out in van with rebbecca
talked to amy the intern after being left in charge of phones
bought a shirt
party went fairly well
had a lot to drink
lindberg lemonade?
bus straight back and pretty much fell asleep immediately
Wednesday started off with a trip out with Rebbecca, who I think is the other Office Manager, and we had to deliver a bunch of copies of the new magazine to various people. I'm not entirely sure why, I think it was some screw up with distribution or something. Anyway, this basically involved being driven around in the van and then having to leap out and walk quite a way to the actual drop-off point because of how bad Leeds is for parking. This was the closest my placement at the Leeds Guide came to a mission from GTA.

After hauling several tonnes of magazines around Leeds I had to do an interview with Kimberley Rivers Roberts, over the phone. She's the star of a new documentary from the producers of Fahrenheit 9/11 and is based around her home video footage of her house and neighbourhood being laid to waste by the tag-team of Hurricane Katrina and government oversight. Oversight as in 'an inadvertent omission' and not 'watchful and responsible care'. The interview was over the phone and went surprisingly well, for a start, I got the feeling that Kimberley actually wanted to do an interview as opposed to the 'do I really need to be here?' A.D. from the Playhouse. Secondly, I felt a lot more prepared, for a start, I'd actually heard of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina prior to the interview and having been given a press copy of the DVD on monday by Ben I had actually watched the documentary and Kimberley's footage so could ask some vaguely intelligent questions.

Today was the day of the big relaunch party which I'd been invited to last week 'Are you coming to the party, Intern? Sorry I don't know your name.' It was at BRB, which, as could be expected, I'd never been to nor heard of. I approached this with much trepidation, it surely promised an evening of standing in the corner attempting to make small-talk whilst the sales people networked and the editorial people laughed about something that happened a couple of weeks ago. Mark was initially going but had to pull out so I had to revisit my initial plan which was along the lines of apply a good supply of social-lubricant (i.e. drink a lot).
It seems Aimee the intern was kind of not massively on board with the party as well so at least I'd be able to avoid standing around incredibly awkwardly at least at the beginning. Once the party got going things settled down. The event was meant to be an opportunity to promote the magazine with the new look and for clients to be networked or something. So once I'd networked with all my clients which I don't have, I decided to touch base with the various editorial people. A ban on sales spiel wasn't going to stop me. 'Let's take that idea and ski off-piste with it', I ran this idea up the flag-pole, 'we're looking for paradigms here people, outside of the box.' I touched base for a while, a mildly erotic experience.


You'd feel like that as well if you were on the receiving end of one of my anecdotes.

It was a fairly fancy bar, there was an initial complementary free mojito which was a drink I described as 'okay, but not something I'd pay money for.' The mint leaves were just ridiculous, all sat at the bottom of the glass like some inadvertent soup. After this I continued talking at various points to the various editorial people and started talking a lot of nonsense as is so often the case, it was probably not the ideal situation, but it was time to try and learn more about journalism as I was supposed to be doing on these placements. More drinks were required, the bar was very busy and so I was stood by it talking with Tom and his girlfriend and Simon. I think some people from the fancy pizza restaurant, Croma, were around and handing out free pizza, the strangest of which was a Duck and Green Pepper (I think) which was fairly nice but totally wouldn't work if it weren't restaurant-quality.
The barmen were bogged down providing all the ropey free mojitos so when they finally got round to me I took the opportunity to get hold of two drinks, which probably made me look like a total alcoholic. In a moment of confusion after been told that they didn't make Vodka Stingers I ended up saying yes to whatever it was that was the only whisky based cocktail they claimed to do. It turned to be a Lynchburg Lemonade. It had Jack Daniels and Triple Sec in it as well as some Cointreau which I don't think it's supposed to. First time I've ever ordered a proper cocktail. I then proceeded to complain about the price of the cocktail, it was about £8.50 for a pint of Amstel and this damn cocktail, so you work that out. It was nice, but not £6 nice.
Amazingly, I actually got a drink bought for me, which was kind of appreciated but made me worried that maybe interns should pay for their own drinks. Just a Guinness. The social lubricant was working now, I managed to confront my 'nemesis' Matt from design. I'm not entirely sure why he was my nemesis, he was the guy I met at the awful 'networking' event back at the Leeds Student in February where I managed to spill most of a pint of Strongbow over one of the editors in front of his girlfriend. Matt didn't seem to like the fact he had to be at this networking event. We ended up talking shop about the Leeds Guide website.


"Yeah and we totally touched bases."

The crowd was starting to thin out. Tom and Ian the senior sales guy had made their big speeches. The raffle was a series of mis-fires seeing as about three quarters of the clients names they'd read out for prizes had already left. I was looking for another group to latch onto, I ordered another overpriced drink, a Strongbow and realised it was about five to nine, I had listened to Ian-the-sales-guy's state-of-the-industry speech and managed not to throw drinks at anyone. I decided I didn't want to out-stay my welcome and so set about drinking the Strongbow very quickly whilst nodding along to some conversation between Ian and the Scottish head honcho guy. Time for an exit.
What was most surprising about the party was the fact it was not totally awful and also that despite all the drinks I'd had, including the ridiculously strong but sweet rip-off Lynchburg Lemonade, I didn't feel all that drunk. This was good as I had a bus to catch.

Day 9



Somehow I didn't wake up with a hangover and even managed to squeeze in having a bath despite having not had much at all to eat the previous evening.

First up was another interview, this time for a fashion piece, which required me to go to a fancy up-market fashion shop in the Victoria Quarter. For those who don't know, in the Victoria Quarter, the film Zoolander is watched as a factual documentary. First up I met with Tom the photographer again who proceeded to take some pretty cool looking photos of a model wearing the clothes I needed individual quotes for. Clearly the model knew what she was doing and assumed a variety of poses and it's not as if you have a hard time finding a good location for nice photographs in the Victoria Quarter. With the photos done, Tom disappeared once again and I had to get a quote about the shoes from the model as they were her own. This was yet another situation where I was quite self-conscious about being dressed like a lumberjack.
Back at the shop, Aqua Couture, I confronted the designer, who was the only man other than myself in the shop. I tried to explain the idea of the article to him but yet again this clearly wasn't happening and he didn't really know what to say about his clothes despite me trying to explain the idea of the article. So much for interviewing skills.
Anyway, the shop manager(?), my original contact for the interview, jumped in and talked about things, yet another thin, statuesque beauty. The shop was quite noisy and I had the old tape dictaphone so things didn't come out all that clearly. It turned out quite hard to make out what was actually being said on the interview which was made harder by the fact I didn't know all that much about fashion to begin with. Aimee was supposed to have been put on this job but was sent out to do some other job.
Back at the office I had to transcribe the interview from dictaphone. It was at this point that I had to find out what the hell a 'snude' was ("Oh, so that's an actual thing?" The final notes from the interview were very short and even after I bulked up the quotes the word count was still very low.

After I had typed up the fashion piece, typed up a letter sent in by some angry pensioner, and looked at the weird psycho communo-nazi letter that apparently all the interns get shown I was left without much to do. I once more had to pretend to look busy.
15:31 18/03/2009

Busy, busy, busy... Type, type, type... Mustn't look idle. Must wait for more work to become available. Have asked for work but haven't been given anything yet. Work, work, work. Busy work. Read a bit of the new mag. Bad, bad, bad. Got to keep working. Sit around typing, I am busy and you are not. I am working and I am the productive one. Hit the keys, keys, keys. I should format this in word, that will be more work for me to do.
I interspersed appearing busy with surreptitious text messaging to Mark.
Jimmy Saville didn't turn up. Frankly I was disappointed.
It was sadly only a rumour that Jimmy Saville was going to appear at the party.
Nooo! Having been here nearly two weeks without so much as going near a kettle I was ambushed and had to make... The tea.
Mark suggested I palm the tea making off onto Aimee though sadly this was not possible. There was a sense that my new nemesis, Bryn from design, was behind the tea making attack (I really need to figure out the process by which someone becomes my nemesis)
Haha no, my authority was totally destroyed. Amy did actually think I worked here at first so I must exude that brow beaten experienced aura.
Alas, having been sent on my rite-of-passage as a intern, to make... the tea, I was no longer able to consider off-loading intern work onto the other intern.

More clock-watching and Slashdot idling occurred until half five when I had to make another dash down to the bus station for the bus at quarter to six.

Day 10



And so it was the final day at the Leeds Guide. The final day did not involve me doing much work. Either the weight of screw ups had finally reached a level as to make giving me any more work a mistake, or perhaps I'd actually worked through all the stuff they expected to give me? Surely not.
I sat around for a while looking yet again on Slashdot and maybe some other websites (it's the only one I can remember), asked for some work at about ten. Sat around some more, asked for some work at about quarter past eleven. Sat around some more. Asked for some work at about quarter past twelve.

Looks like I've checked out on the pictures on this thing as well.

Was given work to do on updating the listings, the worst, most boring job available, but one that's always available. Trouble is my database hadn't been working throughout the entire placement so I couldn't really do the job properly and had to make a retarded text file with the changes that needed making. Ali had given me the work and had given me a short explanation of what to ask for across the phone. Trouble was I was ringing up right in the middle of the lunch-time service at a lot of the restaurants and got fobbed off a lot. I filled ought the details for a few restaurants before getting bored with the awful task. I once again resumed not doing any work whilst looking busy. This continued for a while until I resigned myself to taking the last day 'easy'.
I've completely checked out now. The listings just destroyed my ability to work and I have done bugger all in the last three hours.
It was about half four and I was just reading through the memorable quotes page for American Psycho on IMDB.
It got to half five and another trip to the pub. It was decided that seeing as it had been a sunny day and was thus 'summer' that we'd go to a pub with a beer garden. This turned out to be the Cuthbert-Broderick on Millenium Square, where I had been to with Ali (not the Plush editor) on Monday after seeing Watchmen for the second time (perhaps more on that later). It's not a bad place, it's a Weatherspoons. It being half five on a friday it was packed and even if we did want to stand inside, there wouldn't have been any space. So we stood outside, and as the sun set, so the temperature plummeted and the folly of my choice of Guinness EXTRA COLD as my second drink became clear.
And thus, at about twenty-five-to-seven everyone went their separate ways. I voiced my eagerness to contribute more to the magazine before disappearing off to Borders to get my mum something for Mother's Day. What did I buy in my tired, drunken and confused state? Watchmen, David Bowie - Low, Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine, and a Lou Reed greatest hits album. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how I could construe any of that as a Mother's Day present either.

So I'm at the end of another work placement, pretending to have a job. That means I must assess and arrive at conclusions or something. Let's assess this with an un-ordered list.


Seriously, man, you and me, we're fucking done professionally.


Extar, over, out.


TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!