Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off

This is the bright shiny letter that lets the good folks at the Job Centre know that they're entitled to treat me like shit until someone takes pity on me, and gives me the kind of rudimentary employment that a chimp could fulfil (Cabinet Minister, for example). Still, our final few days at work are continuing to be genuinely funny, if sometimes farcicle, and we're refusing to let the situation get us down.

As always, I find myself turning to those capturers of the wry, and stalwarts of long-term unemployment, Half Man Half Biscuit. Because frankly, no-one has ever, ever written a better song about getting P45ed.


Watch out world, I'm a man at ease
Free to do whatever when I want
Lonely heathland here I come
Deathless useless bracken underfoot

Happy days are here again
It's just like I'm fourteen again
And I can't cope, but don't tell your mum
Not while she's got Medicine Head on the phone

I need pills to help me sleep
And I need pills to wake me up as well
Factory Prankster Of The Year
Once upon a time and a half
Time and a half

Turned up
Clocked on
Turned up, clocked on, laid off

There's people who can't spell "weird" right
Driving round with thousands in the bank
But I get by, got a lot on my mind
I get by, got allotments on my mind

The three men I admire most
The Father, Son and Mickie Most
Took the last train for the coast
And rendezvoused with Peter Glaze
To kill Don Maclean

Turned up
Clocked on
Turned up, clocked on, laid off

Sign on, with no hope in your heart
When you walk through a storm, you get wet