Job Centre Blues

[addy]

A very well done piece Jack. Needs only a bit of tightening up in a few places, but overall i really liked it. You've used imagery expertly and with such wit... there's a bland feeling of misery/desperation, so bland it only succumbs to mild gaucheness. Though I've never been to such a job centre, I can't hep but feel you captured a unique sensory environment so well.

Job centre windows fascinate me as I wait to be called to a booth. Not to enamored by "fascinate", the idea of it is good but needs to be said in a more compelling way for a first line
On metal springs they open just a small, measured distance.
I imagine they're so to prevent suicide, young mum leaping from the ledge How about phrasing it as "To prevent suicide I imagine, young mum..."
on hearing that her fortnight's dole won't cover a hair extension. LOL
I work with what I'm given. In this case the job centre, I don't know, I really like this line. Something about the contrast between a philosophical line and a dry, normal one made it great for me
its mawkish photos of the middle-aged: a hennish woman,
big brown eyes, white teeth and dowdy hair, opposite a red-faced man,
who looks like he survived the movie Trainspotting.

I suppose they symbolise those on the dole,
in a world where laziness was left behind by nature's scheme.
I should have brought a book along, I think as time wanders.
Adjacent on a low table are engineering magazines, some politics
and articles which read to me like algebra. I'm sitting in a blue armchair,
down a short gray corridor, ended on either side by desks,
computers and telephones. I feel as though I'm in Yemen
(a place to which I've never been). I work with what I'm given. Good lines