The end is in sight

Everything changes, and everything stays the same. With the end of the traineeship nearly in sight, parties are less frequent, but talk of jobs and what you’re going to do after the end creeps into elevator chat.

The scary thing is how eager some of these people are, because having worked for a few years before this traineeship, struggling to wake up at half past five in the morning on a daily basis, I know the workplace can be nothing to look forward to.

I find myself beggaring belief and wanting to bang my head against a wall as I hear colleague after colleague scream in delight at their acceptance into A European Lobbying Firm.

But, when you’ve just spent the last few years in poorly paid internship after another, as plenty of my cohorts have, a proper, real, full-paid job is a god-send. Who knows, maybe after all this moaning I will end up joining them, which really would be ironic. Or maybe I’ll remember why I came here in the first place and stop delaying that chat with my head of unit.


The Europeans, as is probably not well known or cared about back home, tend to spend a little more time in education than us Brits, and they’re more involved in programs like Erasmus so they spend more time in the rest of Europe developing their knowledge of international breweries and simultaneously developing the languages that are so highly valued in institutions within the EU and other international organisations.

Of course I’m not going to bemoan the lack of seriousness with which my school took language education, but I will think about seeking legal advice about how I can rectify my future earnings as a result of it.

So that idea to scrap the oral element of GCSE language examinations in England will obviously be a great aid to all those future students who have the ambition to work in such organisations in our increasingly globalised marketplace.

Of course, what I should be talking about is the impact of the Irish ‘no’ vote on the political feeling here, but I’ll stop now, before this turns into an advertisement for a broadcast on Radio 4, which incidentally, only rivals the local station ‘Nostalgique’ (100.1 FM) in its equivalent quality output.

It must be the only radio station in history that really does play hit, after hit, after hit…
And all this talk of climate change at the G8 summit, but unfortunately there has been no change of climate in Brussels, where the rain has returned with no let up (and the umbrella thief striking me yet again).

It made playing the final of the stagiaire football tournament slightly more tricky, what with it being played on astroturf, but I’m happy to report that yours truly scored to give team 100% Catenaccio a 3-1 victory, a display of attacking football that truly contradicted its namesakes, and left the opposition only able to offer their hands in congratulations.

If I achieve nothing else of any significance in my time here, I will at least have a Clausura Football League medal to take home and proudly hang on the mantelpiece.