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.