Wales #3 The Bingo Girl Diaries

I've started this particular entry so many times and have always pulled up short. It's about my job (of course it HAS to be about my job) but I honestly don't really know how to describe it. Either the job itself or how I feel about it.

So here goes. The accumulation of 17 years of study, a Bachelor in Communication Studies and a Masters in International Relations has led me to this.

I work at Rileys, which is a pool and snooker club. They have membership cards and a bar that I sometimes work at. But mostly I'm just the bingo girl. 
Don't misunderstand me here. I don't get to spin the ball cage and pull out a ping pong ball with a number on it. There's no microphone and witty repertoire for each number to memorise. I literally just print off a little ticket with numbers on it, and these numbers come up on the t.v. screens every 5 minutes or so.

It's alright guys. You can stop being so jealous of my high flying - multi layered career. 

It's actually the weirdest job in the world. Sometimes the place is packed, other times it's dead empty. If there are only two old men in the back corner playing snooker and neither of them want to buy a tickets... well... that's my next 4 hours sorted out. 

In this weird way... I'm kinda just really enjoying myself. There are a lot of regulars who come in and so in that sense it's turned out to be the best place to be for my first few weeks starting off in a few city because I've got to know a lot of faces. I've found myself walking down the street in Cardiff and bumping into people I know already. On my birthday I went out with some friends who came up from London, ended up bumping into a couple of the regular students who come into Rileys who knew it was my birthday and bought me drinks! 

So... a brief summary of the 'Regulars'

1. The Indians:

They're a bit chavvy, a bit 'lad-dy' and are there, never fail, every night. It's their 'local' and they alternate between being amazing at pool, playing the poker machines and proposing to me.

2. The Veterans:

The old men who have been coming in to play snooker there with their 6 buddies for the past 25 years. It was one of these many groups of veterans who come in who asked me the other night 'So, do you actually do anything or do you just walk around putting people off their snooker games for a living?' It definitely knocked any potential chip I'd been developing off my shoulders...

3. The Students:

Definitely the most fun. The people my own age recognise that a job (even a fairly useless and strange one like this one) is money, and money provides a place to live and means to enjoy oneself  They don't judge it, they just accept it, and often they'll buy a bingo ticket from me out of pity.

The manager has been amazing. When I waltzed in for the interview; bankaccount-less, home-less and largely uncontactable she basically said to me, "tell me how many hours you need, when you need them and how much you want to work. I'll sort it all out for you".
Somehow this woman turned bingo ticket selling into a full time job and since then that's pretty much what I've been up to this entire time...

...Of course I'm joking. I've done a lot of exploring already, gone out on the town a fair bit, caught myself already picking up the Welsh-isms and saying some of the really stupid sentences that they use here with complete sincerity. I've made a heap of friends. I have extensive travel plans which include Scotland and Ireland, and I'm planning a weekend Castle exploring extravaganza. 

Many more stories to come! Promise! :)
For now, I remain,
your humble bingo girl.

Risk It.

The temptation to put it away into the 'Dreams' folder is always a shadow on my shoulder. 

That there is too much involved, that the rate of failure is exponentially higher than that of success, that heartbreak (or worse, soulbreak) is an inevitability, that you need to stop being such a child, stop gypsying around, stop ignoring facts, be smart, when are you going to get a real job?

But something innate and organic inside me keeps insisting that Atlas doesn't really have a clue what he's doing. That the world is growing smaller. That how things were in our heads when we were children (of how things would be and how things should be) (the siren call of the picket fence) only have the power over our reality that we give them to potential to be.

So risk it.

Being foiled by your inability to be fearless... is frustrating.

And in our hunt to find success, we've forgotten one thing.

There is no such thing as failure.

Surrendering to the worst case scenario makes it all the more sweeter; will move your story from a 80c Kindle tale to a meaty thing people want to hold, want to curl up with in front of a fire and READ; will give you depth of character and scars of heart that no pirate ever had. The things you'll see will be burned on your retina irreparably, the things you'll hear will make the buzzing in your ears louder than any concert. 

Fuck you picket fence. 

Let your heart be swollen by the anguish of impossibility - because impossible love is what Fairy Tales are made out of and can inspire a millennia. Be reckless beyond good reason. Be charitable outside of your means. Scare yourself into living. Throwing your soul whole heartedly into the stupid option. Accept it. Embrace it. Chase it. 

Something other than what you've assumed all your life is what you're missing. This is it. You've found it, grasp it with two hands and don't let go; even if it means losing your hands in the process.

Wales #2. Dodging puddles – and bullets.

I’ve always felt that a large part of whatever little charm I possess is my naïveté and underlying assumption that the people I meet are good people. It’s not something I’m ashamed of…but it’s not always something I’m proud of either because I end up looking like a fool.

Take yesterday for example.

I somehow found myself agreeing to a shady waitressing job, being assured that it’s normal in the UK for waitresses to receive 2 pounds under the minimum wage, cash in hand, and that I’d be the only one working there – along with the boss and his brother. It wasn’t until I got home (after accepting a MUCH more legit job elsewhere) and I talked to my friend Carrie-Anne who was like… 

‘erm…Elyse, that’s SO illegal’ 

that I realized they’d blatantly taken advantage of my foreigner status and naturally trusting personality.

'...oh yeeeeah'

When I told a friend about this he said to me that I needed to go re-watch ‘Taken’. And it’s true.

The first time I watched that movie I had to pause it and call for backup after the first 20 minutes. I was shaking so hard, was so traumatized… because that girl flouncing innocently around Europe was me, and my dad is awesome - but he's no Liam Neeson.

I'm not writing this story to have anyone worry about me btw. This blog has just become a space for stories about my life and inevitably the things I learn along the way. Yesterday was a wake up call because everything has been going so well here so far. It's honestly seemed like a dream land.

So yes. The bright side to the story is that I ended up getting a really awesome job at a pub in Cardiff, the ladies who own it are incredibly friendly and on top of all that, I'm probably going to be renting my own room by the end of next week within walking distance of one of my best friends. All this within 5 days after I gave myself a timeline/budget of 2 months to try to get myself settled over here. It's been amazing. My original plan wasn't even to stay in Wales but this is how it seems to be working out! I was meant to go to England but, when you think about it... what's so great about England anyway? I mean...really, only their flag's a big plus ;)