Flawless

I didn't get the job. Apparently I was a close second, and they would have been happy to appoint me if they had had two posts to fill. They said I did a faultless interview, which I have to say was my own perception. I don't know if this makes me feel better or worse really. If my best isn't good enough to 'win', then what can I actually do (apart from breaking the other candidates' legs)?

The afternoon is changeable - sunny one minute, raining the next. April showers just in the nick of time before May arrives. It does feel rather as if we're a month behind up here at the moment. My friend K arrives for the weekend in a couple of hours, and I look forward to her company, as we don't get to see each other very often these days - commiseration and distraction, including music and laughter, and food and wine.

How I feel I don't altogether know. Upset might cover it. But also glad to know I am still able to come across as a confident and competent professional, and trying to keep hold of the idea that there will be another chance to do so soon. This organisation have a similar opportunity coming up in another area, so we shall see...

But I feel rather blank. And tired. So tired.

Limbo

Preparing and not preparing for the job interview. I think there is definitely such a thing as over-preparation. It's not an exam I have to crib for after all... On the whole I think I am amply qualified and suitably experienced to undertake all the duties this job involves. I need to be grounded, calm (as far as is possible) and just be myself rather than performing. I have prepared my little presentation and shall polish it some more tomorrow. I've washed my interview outfit, and L will iron it (I don't iron!) I have looked at the route, and checked the sat nav is working. Anticipation is tiring. I just wish it was over now. There feels a little too much at stake, though I tell myself there will be other jobs, if I don't get it, and of course, I'm right...

I have neither left nor not left my temporary job, but am not going in this week, and have arranged to meet my 'boss', finally returned from Italy, next week, when I will know if I've got the 'proper' job, and have had time to think, if not, about what I want to do. She seemed to understand on the phone today that I can't do any more cold-calling, but I'm not clear if there's any other role for me there...

Meanwhile the new car is fine, though it lacks the acceleration of Elfie, which is sad on our steep hills, but I'm getting used to its ways! And there is a distracting reflection all along the bottom of the windscreen, of a kind of grille where rain can drain away. Brains being what they are, I probably won't even notice it next week, but for now it is an irritant. The stereo is better than Elfie's, but other than that there isn't much I can find to prefer... Still I'm trying to give it a good welcome. Unfortunately J phoned to say that Elfie had misbehaved on the first trip to work, the engine over-revving wildly, and so I am crossing all fingers and toes this won't turn out to be a major and expensive problem. Something similar happened when I was driving her once years ago and then seemed to right itself, so I hope the same will happen again.

I emailed round the poets about the next meeting and one of them, a former teacher of mine emailed back that she would definitely be coming even if it's only to make [me] write more poems... She liked the poem I took to the last meeting - the only thing I've written in months, and this is the spur I need - someone wants me to write more poems! I find it hard to convey how much that message meant to me.

Stop Press

This morning the letter came - inviting me for an interview for the job next Thursday! I had despaired too soon. I think I could not bear the tension of waiting for the postman, hoping and expecting something day after day. Couldn't go on doing that so decided it was too late to keep hoping after Thursday. And then, lo and behold, I am shortlisted after all... Confusing. At first when I read the letter I was actually annoyed and swore at the organisation for putting me through the despond of the last two days by keeping me waiting so unreasonably long, but then rapidly felt my self-esteem climb like mercury up a thermometer taken out into the sun. I feel as if my sense of world order has been re-established, my judgement of what I am capable of. I am also (still) afraid to want this too much. But will try just to do my best and see what comes. Another step towards recovery from November's assault.

Goodbye To Elfie

My mother, at the age of 80, has decided to stop driving. She is increasingly anxious about - well most things really - struggles to pull herself up out of a chair, never mind the awkward sideways manoeuvre required to get in and out of the driving seat, and in addition suffers from chronic vertigo. All in all driving has become a worry to her, and she has driven no further than the supermarket or the station (to pick me or other visitors up) for some time, and looking after the car and its admin have been giving her headaches too, as she is inclined to get paperwork in a muddle these days. She has very generously decided to give the car to me, as she did its five years older sister Elfie (reg plate is LFE, and the name just stuck) when we moved up here six years ago. I am eternally grateful, as, in my circumstances both then and now, purchasing a car would have put a huge strain on our resources.

Wondering what to do with Elfie, now 12 years old and a tad rusty after being regularly deluged with sand and grit for five winters parked outside our previous house, but still running like a (slightly elderly) bird, I visited various 'free valuation for your car' websites, and received astonishingly contradictory quotes, and an unwelcome sequence of emails inviting me to sell my car to We Buy Any Car for a pitiful sum... Then my best friend J's car died. Really died. Had to be towed away to the breaker's yard, though she had hoped to nurse it through til June when its MOT expired. So, guess what? I'm selling Elfie to J, for what is hopefully a fair sum, based on guidance from her brother who knows about 'motors'. A good deal more than Pushy Motors' offer anyway, and a welcome boost to the exchequer at this moment. Being desperate to claim Elfie at the first possible moment, as she needs transport to get to work, J is now going down south tomorrow to collect my new car from my mother for me (which I wasn't able do for various reasons until May). Weird. J has met my mother, but not for at least 10 years... They will probably spend half an hour together, drinking tea, and then off J will drive to the M1 in her car. On Sunday she'll bring said car up here for me, and drive off in Elfie.

Elfie was my first car, which is probably why I am struggling a bit to let her go, as well as the fact she has a 1.6L engine and is a lovely purply blue colour. I've loved her, and for me she's represented independence and adulthood and freedom, and all the things no doubt cars entirely predictably do represent to people. I realise that sentimentality about cars needs to be kept in perspective. Nonetheless I shall be sad when I lock her up this evening for the last time after going to collect L from the station, and when I hand the keys to J on Sunday. The new car will no doubt serve me well too and I'll come to terms with the fact that it's silver just like every second car on the road these days!!

Panic

Panic seizes me. I have no job (or barely), and my savings will only last another three months or so. These are some of the scary, edge-of-the-abyss type feelings I was assailed by in November and December, when it became clear I was going to be sacked over the blog, and my only option was to resign quietly. But then, in so far as I thought about it at all whilst in the grip of the more immediate panic, I thought I'd be able to get another job without too much difficulty. I always have before. Maybe it's the recession. Maybe it's the awkward recent passage of my CV, or maybe this just wasn't the right job. I have no way of knowing. What I do know is there's precious little else to apply for at the moment for an out of work adult therapist turned child therapist turned manager, who doesn't want to be a manager any more... I am thinking of retraining as a ________?

Panic is awful because it pulls the ground out from under your feet and uses words like 'never' and 'always' and 'impossible'. It paints a grey wash over everything, makes the stomach churn, makes comfort hard to draw on, collapses a sense of continuity and confidence. Writing and talking help because they ground and connect, make links between past and present and allow many possible narratives of the future.

Vapour trails have returned to our skies, and my 'boss' to these shores. Quiet has ceased to be experienced in West London parks and gardens. What a weird episode this has been. A thump on the back to wake us all up out of our strange complacency about getting to anywhere in the world within 24 hours. And feeling entitled to do so.

Mysteries

A little bird called a dunnock has been obsessively flying from the wall at the boundary of our garden, up to the frame of the sitting room window, where it sings urgently, flaps its wings hard and taps its beak against the glass. It stays in this position for maybe ten seconds at a time, then flies back to the wall. Another dunnock sits nearby, and flies about too but doesn't display the same puzzling behaviour. We think the other is the female. We think the male is staking out his territory, and seeing his reflection in the window, comes over to see off the rival male he believes is challenging him. L put sheets of card up at the window for a few days to reduce the reflection, and it seemed to work, then we had guests for the weekend and took them down. But while I was talking to my mother on the phone this morning, little dunnock was back to his fluttering, singing and tapping.

We had a good afternoon digging over more ground at the allotment in gorgeous sunshine. I found a small plaster mole, who has officially become the mascot of our plot. Unfortunately I had to stop my digging after an hour or so as I'm suffering from vertigo again, and all that bending and leaning forward to pick up weeds was making it worse.

I am still waiting to hear something about the job I've applied for, but as the closing date was Friday and the interviews next Thursday, I am rapidly losing hope. Time for a rethink.

Volcanic

A cloud of volcanic ash from an Icelandic glacier is blowing over Northern Europe, and Southwards down the country, halting all flights in and out of the UK. My current boss is presumably stranded in Italy at the end of a 2-week holiday, while a friend who just set off for Cuba yesterday obviously got away just in the nick of time! How strange the world is. I like it when natural forces halt human activity (as long as no-one's in danger). It's quite humbling really. A message from the god Vulcan - 'enough of your carbon emissions, humans!' Probably if I were lying on my coat on an airport floor I'd give you a different narrative.

Le Weekend

Optimism alternates with pessimism. My days are largely unstructured and this may be something I need to change. Getting up later, not making many plans... Drifting. But my spirits are a little better, the view a little brighter, due in no small part I'm sure to the sunny spring weather. I'm meeting my poets' group on Friday after some time. I have no work to show them. Or not yet anyway... I do need to start writing again...

A pair of collared doves is building a nest in the pine tree in our garden. Or the nest may be finished by now. He was busy many days last week, picking up lots of slender twigs from the demise of the leylandii, and flying up to attach them to the platform-like nest I am told they go in for. She was at home, tweaking them into place. We shall watch progress with curiosity and affection. Funny the temptation to feel that birds nesting in a tree in the garden are somehow one's own!

The weekend involved sitting out in the garden for the first time, in hot (yes hot) sunshine; going to a 50th birthday party in a bar with large video screens showing scantily clad, apparently entirely body-hairless young women gyrating alarmingly like pole-dancers, also ads. I don't think L's sister, whose party it was, had requested this, but everyone acted as if it was not happening or was entirely normal. Wallpaper. On another screen was a little show of pics from I's 50 years. Much more entertaining, and a whistle stop tour of fashion through the decades too - she looked just like Princess Diana when she got married in the 80s, with layered flicked back hair, funny hat, jacket with wide lapels, shy smile, looking sideways... In another shot she had wild curls and dungarees and looked for all the world like one of Dexy's Midnight Runners!

To continue with the weekend - it also involved the return visit to IKEA to get (hopefully) the last few items for the house. We had an entertaining time getting there as ever - took motorway going in wrong direction, took wrong turn, missed first roundabout opportunity to get back to right road... Too tired from largely sleepless post party night's sleep to manage the mighty roads of Britain. We saw a man and a little girl walking (twice, before we took the wrong turn, and when we returned) beside the six-lane road, at the junction of about six roads and a motorway, all pollution and noise and metal railings, and Travelodge and roadhouse pub and IKEA. I hate those places in the world - the ones you have ample time to study as you wait at traffic lights for 3 minutes at a stretch... I wished the man would take the girl somewhere else to walk... At IKEA we bought all the items on our list and then ate chips from the dire looking hot dog place near the exit. It all descended to MacDonalds level at this point. I ate them sitting on a curb stone, being studied deeply by a child sitting in a trolley seat, waiting for Dad to come and rescue her, Mum, and siblings from IKEA-world.

Later, we had friends round for dinner, and the Mexican pancakes with soured cream and shredded lettuce, followed by chocolate fudge pudding (my signature dessert) and ice cream, helped erase the memory of the party food that had been our dinner the night before. Pastry pastry pastry and more pastry, and not even nice pastry. Actually there was a bhaji and a samosa and a small chicken chunk, and a slice of French bread. But the rest was soggy pastry all the way.

Lifting

There are primroses in the lane, and lapwings in the sky over the fields you can't see, but you can hear that watery shimmery trilling song of theirs, and look up, searching the air for them.

We've finally put up our improvised curtain in the window by the sink in the kitchen, and it looks a treat, made from a piece of lightweight material that had been left behind when we moved into our last house, that just happens to match the red in our kitchen perfectly, attached by IKEA clip-on hooks to a curtain wire such as you might use to put up a net or voile curtain. Each of these sorts of little jobs we complete makes me feel more at home somehow. Maybe because so much of the work was done by others in the refurbishment process. Usually we do our own decorating and it's a good way to become intimate with rooms. Here a sense of connection, of ownership has been slower to evolve. I think also, I'm finally thawing from the shock of what happened in November. You can't see what shock has done to you until it begins to pass. Like a veil slowly lifting, I begin to see more clearly what is in front of me. Celandines beside the beck, the neighbour's boy throwing stones into the water, greeting me, turning his face towards me. I've only seen him in profile before, passing our window several times a day going to and from his home. A gentle face.

Pace Egg

So, we went down to St George's Square at 11.30 on Good Friday to watch a group of boys from the local high school perform the Midgley Pace Egg Play. I've given you the link to an amazing archive film of a performance in the 60s by boys from the same school. It's an ancient tradition round here, that was revived in the 50s by a drama teacher at the school, and has been maintained ever since. They perform it about five times, in different locations around the valley in the course of Good Friday, and are often hoarse, wet and cold by the end! Meanwhile a local am dram group perform another version every year too, similarly touring it round the valley throughout the day. We didn't go to theirs this year, but last year watched the two back to back in pouring rain in Weaver's Square in Heptonstall. This year's high school Pace Egg was a vintage rendition, with lots of great visual jokes about boys and their different genres of absurd stylised combat, from Star Wars to Kung Fu films to computer games to Dr Who. What I love is how the traditional shape of the play provides the bones of the thing, but then there is lots of space for contemporary improvisation, just as there would probably always have been (though the 60s troupe did seem a little more earnest about their rendition.)

What does it have to do with Easter? Good question. Something about death and rebirth, maybe. It's essentially about St George vanquishing all challengers. But then there's a doctor, who brings one of the vanquished back to life with a magic potion. A thoroughly English display of derring-do, and maybe on one level quite unappealing (violent, macho, jingoistic). But, well, I love it. I love the tradition of it, the mad costumes, the bizarre lines, the pantomime of it, and the fact that adolescent boys are not too cool to be part of this local institution and to have a great time with it. It always brings tears to my eyes, as all rituals tend to these days, socking it straight to my heart with messages about time and aging, community, continuity and renewal. Maybe that's what it has to do with Easter...

In Bradford

We went to Bradford this afternoon, and saw a lovely exhibition at the Media Museum. Simon Roberts travelled around England for six months with his wife and child, taking photographs of landscapes with people doing stuff in them, from hill-walking to sun-bathing in their socks, mud-racing to hood-chasing, celebrating a birthday to playing golf in the shadow of a power station. It all felt so, well, English, indeed the show was called We English. Like a mirror held up, I found I didn't know how strongly I knew what that meant until I looked into his great big panoramic pieces and saw so much that was so deeply familiar.

I must also tell you that the almond slice and decaff latte in the cafe were to die for.

I was less moved, slightly shocked by the work of Robbie Cooper. His show, entitled Immersion, fetaures full-face images of children and adults immersed in front of screens, watching TV, or playing computer games. The intense energy racing through the bodies of all these people, especially the gamers, almost entirely channelled into their facial muscles, otherwise just a few arm movements, or a slight bouncing, made me feel overloaded somehow just looking at them. Longing for some kind of discharge. The isolation of these activities, and the unconsciousness of so much that is going on in them, I found really quite disturbing.

And this afternoon, hail stones bouncing about outside in the sunlight! Good Friday tomorrow and we shall go to see the Pace Egg Play. I'll put you in a link tomorrow to an amazing piece of film of this ancient local 'mumming' type play being performed in the '60s. We shall also lay in stocks of food, as you do, for the Bank Holiday weekend. Tonight it's rare breed pork chops from the freezer, and a lovely bottle of tempranillo.

Going to exhibitions is good for me. So much better than working, which I seem to have opted out for for a while, as it's the school hols... Looking at photographs - good ones anyway - makes me see the world afresh. I sat on Tyrrell Street in Bradford, eating a tuna and cucumber sandwich, while L was opening an ISA at the building society on Hustlergate, and enjoyed light and shadows. Bradford is steep with imposing Victorian buildings, sometimes a bit evocative of gothic German public buildings, and so there's lots of shade in the steep narrow canyons between them in places. And lots of people of many sorts to watch. Windy too, so the temperature as well as the light kept changing. Then I had to go and buy chocolate. One shop I went into called itself a 'smoking shop', and it didn't have chocolate, so I only stayed long enough to see some teenage girls being shown a large bong from the window, excitedly saying 'yes, that's the one'. In a Turkish newsagent's I bought a Twirl. They had pistachios on the counter, and a tank of fish with a submerged plastic skull sunk into the gravel.