White Wedding

Despite being up north just last week, I returned to my birth home (like a birth parent to an adopted child, the birth home will always be part of you no matter how much you try to forget it and adopt a new accent) for a joyous occasion. An old school friend and her fiancé, another old Dingwall alumni were joined in holy matrimony in Strathpeffer.

The bride, the fabulous Tania, wanted a more personal wedding than the generic standard fare and whilst the wedding formed the same basic mould there were a few Tania-twists that made the whole thing even lovelier. It was held at a Strathpeffer hotel and due to the ropey weather the initially planned outside ceremony was swiftly set up in doors (well, you can dream). However the inside chapel-esk hall was very nice and in particular I thought the female (gasp- a woman!) registrar was really wonderful. The twists of the wedding included woman giving speeches at the meal (as Tania said- why do only the men get to talk?), she had no bridesmaids, there were 2 best men and the most out of mould thing was than she did not wear a white dress. No, instead, she wore a delightful pink flowing, cut to the knee number with a lovely flower pastiche at the side of one strap. It reminded me of heather and seemed very Scottish.

Now on the topic of outfits, this brings me to one part of weddings that fills me with great pleasure- seeing what everyone wears. There was one gentleman in particular that really caught my eye. I suppose no one had ever told him that it is bad etiquette to wear white at a wedding or maybe he knew that Tania was not being a tradionalist, but this chap turned up in pure white crushed linen suit. And it gets better. Not only was he wearing this dazzling beauty with a half way down unbuttoned blue Hawaiian style shirt, on his feet were white leather loafers. Actual loafers with a snazzy design. To top it off he was one spray tan away from being a mahogany chest of drawers. Whilst obviously all eyes were on the bride (and the groom, I must say Chris looked splendid in his charcoal coloured kilt) there were also a few on this fabulous chap. (I must mention at this point, whilst I was desperate to get a sneaky photo of this chap, I quickly got far too filled with let’s say ‘love and joy’ and was away ceilidh dancing for the majority of the evening and promptly forgot to take any snaps of him so anyone who was at the wedding who reads this blog, if you have any please, please, I beg you, send them to me.)

Later that night I sneaked over and asked quietly in the bride’s ear and asked who he was. How had she met such a divine creature? She replied he was one of Chris's Territorial Army buddies.

Well.

Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Ornithes

I left you last time with the tale of my bus and having a job at last. So now I will tell you about my holiday. Yes, holidays already and my birthday. It was a great delight and surprise to discover I get to choose my holidays and days off, in fact on receiving this information I looked so shocked and pleased that it caused one of my colleagues to burst out laughing. Because dear readers as many of you are doctors (and teachers etc etc) and thus aware, I have never had non rota-ed in holidays. Choice is a wondrous thing and I find myself actually struggling to decide when to take off. However, a clear winner was the period around my birthday so I booked the week. The only down side to my new found freedom is the pay packet that comes with and as such overseas adventures are denied to me so instead I went north, homeward bound once again.

Many of you hardcore fans will be aware that last year my mother got in tow with a fancy man then moved house. Well, the brazen hussy has taken it even further and is moving again and this time with the fancy man! The new house is in Tain so not too far away from Dingwall and the move is at the end of this week, so my sojourn to the fair county was still based at Gateside her old new house (it’s confusing isn't it?).

The good thing about Gateside is that it is in the centre of town and in easy walking distance to everything, but bad part of it is the parking. No, no, not the fact you have to reverse into the driveway between a railway crossing safety sensor thing and a wall and then tuck the car into the small space next to my mum’s car. No, no I have mastered that like a pro, I might even start trying to reverse park soon *laughs* , it is the birds. Next to mum’s parking area is a small triangle of land called a community garden. Hmm, yes I’m not sure a bit of grass with a few dead rose bushes constitutes a garden, but it belongs to the council and at the edge of the ‘garden’ and the driveway there is a large weed tree.

Do you know what I mean by that? It is a tree that has leaves that look like nasty maple leaves and apparently their tree spawn (seeds? Dear lord I can remember none of my higher biology, how embarrassing) spread forth and cause horticulturists many a headache. Well, it’s one of them and as such unsightly, but also uncuttable down because it belongs to the council and that would cost money *gasp*.

Apart from it over hanging into my mother’s land and looking unsightly, it also seems to the home of every bird in Dingwall. I think it might be the bird equivalent to the Mallard, the local pub as every type of bird seems to inhabit it at various times of the day, it is no one bird’s castle. I have nothing against birds, but a great issue I do take with them is their toileting habits. I mean what other animal literally craps where they stand? Cats sneak away and bury it, dogs usually go against a wall or the edge of the garden and rarely crap in their own house/bed, but birds; they just go whether it be mid air, sitting in their ‘pub’, walking along the sunny pavement or in their nests. It weird and gross.

So getting back to the point- birds crap. Birds live in the tree over hanging my mum’s driveway. Simone is parked there. By the end of a lovely few days being force fed by mum and visiting tropical gardens, Simone was completely and utterly covered in layers upon layers of bird crap. And this was no ordinary bird crap. It wasn’t that nice white powdery stuff you normally get, it was a thick disgusting browny gloop which was cemented to the car. Just before my departure I thought I should clean it off. It took almost an hour of concentrated water pouring, ice scraper offing to get it to budge. There was one particularly large, solid, stuck-on crap on the roof and I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until at last it came off. However, I then took a step back and the light hit poor little Simone and it was then I realised that I had scrubbed too hard and I had scratched her! This put me in a very bad mood for about 25 minutes and required chocolate.

However, I recovered, apologised for being grumpy to my poor, long suffering mother then decided to go back to the ‘burgh. By this time of course another bird crap had appeared on the windscreen and so the fond farewell was delayed slightly by having to clean this off. Then finally we hugged and I went to depart when I heard a shriek from my mother. A bird had crapped on her! No, wait, it hadn’t- it was transfer crap from me, a bird had crapped on me! Not only that, it had managed to crap on my side under my arm. This made no sense, how could the crap get there and not on my arm? Then it dawned on me, I must have been crapped on whilst stretched over the car cleaning off the latest crap from the windscreen. Whilst a small part of me acknowledges and repects the sheer determination of the birds the poo everywhere, this was a tad aggravating and did put an end to the touching goodbye my mother and I were attempting.

I did eventually leave and had a slow journey back to my adopted home behind lots of caravans travelling to the Royal Show. I parked Simone and had a lovely evening in with the landlady wife who opened champagne, cooked me tea and gave me flowers and a handbag for my birthday- she’s such a good wife.

The next day I went to do the food shopping so popped out the flat and down the stairs to the car park where little Simone was parked. And on the windscreen there were, you guessed it, a large crap.

I hate birds.

On the Buses

Dear readers where to begin the apologises? I don’t know, so I won’t belabour it. Soz.

Right so last we spake, I was about to become employed. Well, 2 months later I am still employed- yippee! My job is perfectly pleasant, the people perfectly pleasant and the 9 to 5 (or precisely 8:45- 4:45 due to my bus) lifestyle is suiting me, well perfectly. And long may that continue. I don’t really want to dwell too much on my job for confidentially reasons- what I do is basically convert written notes to numeric code so the information can be collated by some organisation to turn into statistics to do well, something important I guess and also apparently there was a previous employee who wrote a detailed and disparaging blog about life at the office and got fired. I think there may have been other issues too, but you know I don’t want to tempt fate. 7 months people, 7 months and with the emergency budget coming out tomorrow the likelihood of anyone getting a job or benefits is going to shrink to about nothing so I’m not going to do anything that might jeopardise my nice new stress free job.

However, I can talk about my bus. Any of you who have known me for any length of time may be aware of my personal dislike of public transport or to be more honest the people on public transport. In fact as a teenager I would whole heartedly avoid going on buses if I could possibly avoid it and the event of getting my first car Evita was one filled with great joy. After 6 months of car-lessness in my new city, the begetting of my 2^nd car Simone was even more joyful despite, let’s be honest, one doesn’t really need a car in Edinburgh. This statement can be countered by the fact that in about 2 weeks time my mother is about to move to a slightly remote (certainly by public transport standards) house with her fancy man and getting to and from there without a car would be tricky.

Anyway back to the topic in hand, my bus. I work in the New Royal, but live in Leith, the top of Leith to be more precise. The great problem with this is that despite the distance from my flat to the hospital only being a little over 4 miles, it takes approximately 40 minutes to get to work every day. This is because there is only one direct bus to and from Leith to the hospital and it goes right through the centre of town. Why not drive I hear you say? You could go via Holyrood Park thus avoiding the traffic and get to work in about half the time (this is what you would say if you knew the geographical layout of Edinburgh, but not the following facts)? Well, dear hearts this is because parking costs £7 a day at the New Royal. Yes, I say again SEVEN pounds. If I work a fulltime month this would add to £140/month plus the cost of petrol. The bus however costs £42 pounds a month for limitless amount of trips. I have a special card with a particularly smug picture of me on it that makes this possible. It is truly a wonderful thing not to scrabble around looking for change in the morning and it works out as £2.10/day if I only use it for work and when you divide it by the all the additional trips I can use it for the actually daily amount reduces considerably.

Hmmm, that has turned into a bit of rant what I was actually going to talk about were the people on my bus. Right as I was saying, it is the only direct bus from Leith to the hospital and Leith being a pleasant, but affordable part of the city centre is a popular choice for commuters. As such it always rammed full. It is only a single decker bus, something which I cannot understand as I more often than not do not get a seat for about the first 15 minutes. I notice that there are a few people that get the bus everyday as I do. I have decided to describe them to you so you can get a flavour what greets me every working day.

· Thin Puck- he is a young fellow who gets on the bus the same stop as me Tues- Friday who looks just like a thin version of Puck from the popular new smash hit TV series Glee. He even has a near Mohican like hairstyle. He is rather slim and tanned and he almost never sits down. Even if there are seats he usually stands for the duration of the bus journey and most likely beyond as he does not get off at the hospital (where he does go, I do not know). Very occasionally if the individual seats at the front of the bus are free he will sit in them, but I have never seen him sit on a double seat. Does he fear someone will sit next to him? If so why? What has happened to Thin Puck to make him so afraid of sitting on the bus and instead stand for over 40 minutes every morning? Poor Thin Puck.

· Bossy baggage couple- they are young Eastern European couple who are always on the bus before me, but are not present every day. The female of the coupling is the one I refer to as bossy. As seats are few, I have noticed she always sits in a free seat before the chap; however they always seem to have an extraordinary amount of baggage with them, which he has to shoulder despite her being seated. There are usually 2 rucksacks and several filled to capacity carrier bags (with what I have not yet discerned). When they speak, she seems to be telling him to do certain things and he always looks a little sheepish. They get off at the hospital, but I do not know where they go.

· Bakery lady- this woman works in Gregg’s. I know this because she wears the uniform on the bus. She always seems in a pleasant mood. Gregg’s must be a nice place to work.

· Bedraggled doctor- one stop after I get on, a young Asian woman gets on the bus. Despite the bus being consistently busy, she always looks so disappointed when she doesn’t get a seat. I have concluded she is junior doctor as she always looks exhausted, carries a large rucksack containing books and gets off at the hospital. She must be disappointed that she doesn’t get a seat straight away as one suspects that getting a seat on the bus is the highlight of what is about to turn out to be a very exhausting day. She looks smart enough, but on closer inspection you can see her trousers are too loose for her meaning they used to fit her but the pressures of long shifts and continual stress have cause her to lose weight, her shirts are not ironed and her hair is always in disarray (I can only imagine she pulls it back with a hair band before commencing her work). I always feel sorry for bedraggled doctor. I used to be her.

· The Wet Granny- the Wet Granny gets her name from a very disturbing incident which made me first notice her presence. It was a particularly rainy day one Wednesday morning and after my usual stand I was relieved to get a seat even if it was one of a series of the pulley down seats that runs along the side of the bus. About half way through my journey an elderly woman came on the bus wearing a hugely enormous woollen poncho which due to rain was quite damp. She grabbed the free newspaper, pulled down the seat next to me and then sat on me. Now I know I am not large, but I would have thought that my presence would register, but clearly not to the Wet Granny who sat half on her own seat and half on me. I then would have thought on realising her error, she then would have shifted her mass to be fully on her seat, but no she continued to sit on me, covering me in wet woollen poncho and crushing my leg with her rather considerable weight. Eventually after what seemed to be an eternity, she shifted (mostly) on to her own seat. However she then opened the paper, but opened it practically on me, her arm flagrantly in my personal space. What made it worse was every time I moved even the slightest bit, a nod of the head, a blink, she would turn her face rapidly and stare right at me, our noses near touching like I had cause her some great affront. It was most disconcerting. That was one of the longest bus journeys of my life. The Wet Granny gets on the bus sporadically, one can never tell when she will appear, but when I see her alight, my fearful heart trembles in memory of that horrific trip.

And those are the people on my bus.

Work

I have to go to work on Monday.

Balls.

The Rough with the Smooth

Since my last entry I have fully embraced my pre-work life. I have been driving around testing out Simone, visiting folk and generally having a wonderful time. I could detail my every move, but I can’t be bothered and I don't think you'd be that interested. Instead, I am going to talk about 2 key topics- Costco and the M8

The M8

Last weekend I took Simone to Glasgow to see my cousin Esme. I was accompanied in this journey by the Glasgow savvy Karen, my cousin Malcolm’s girlfriend who since I have moved to Edinburgh has fast become a good friend. Now many of you may know that despite loving having a car, I hate parking and I hate motorways. I have only ever driven on 3 motorways in my life; one of these was the M8. Most of you will have driven on the M8 and will know it is a daunting affair to the unfamiliar. Unlike any other motorway I have encountered, the M8 appears to have little logic and is the only motorway I know of that has filter lanes blending into both sides of the road. As an unsure driver, one’s natural instinct is to go slow and get out of the fast lane. However due to the M8’s terrifying system, if you go to the far right, you end up turning off, but the middle lane frequently turned into the fast lane and you are constantly having to change lanes which I find is the most stressful part of it. However, what also confounds me about the road is that when you are in Glasgow, it seems almost impossible to get on it. On one occasion, despite correctly following all the signs, I ended up driving under and past the motorway several times exasperated that I was down below when I wanted to be up there when suddenly, for no known reason, I appeared on the road. I am convinced to this day I was beamed there by some sort of teleportation device. And am I not the only person that this has happened to. It’s definitely a conspiracy.

Going back to my original story, I was heading to my cousins with Karen as my navigator and despite a bit of tension, with her guidance we made it safely to Esme’s. However the next day I had to get back on the M8 alone to head north. I instantly missed my turn off for the motorway and ended up having to turn the car around in some stately home driveway (in Glasgow who would have thunk it?) and eventually found my way. However, I was then faced with a new problem- following the signs to Stirling. Just to mock me, the sign /road makers taunted me by constantly changing position of the lane I needed to go on to get to Stirling and I seemed to be constantly changing lanes whilst trying to ensure I didn’t miss my turn off- or worse turn off too soon and end up in some random suburbs with Glasgow ruffians. I thought as soon I got out of the main city things would improve, but alas not as there seemed to be never ending road works thereafter all the way to Stirling with a maze of cones and single lane traffic to contend with. I eventually after an accidental detour to Cumbernauld reached Stirling. I have never in my life been so happy to get onto the A9. I hate the M8 and I blame Glasgow for this hideous road. I hope to never again have to navigate this monstrosity, but know that because of the peculiar draw of people to the Weegie-land that I will have to someday. A sat-nav has been purchased.

Costco

On to happier things, my landlady wife took me to Costco on Sunday. I have once been to a similar type store called Macro (for some reason I thought was called Macroland which I think sounds far more exciting) when I was a young child. My abiding memory of the store was over sized tins of fruit and the doll ‘Pamela’ my parents bought me. Pamela was meant to be a life size child doll and even more excitingly she was supposed to walk! She was quite large and made of cheap thin, but hard plastic. The idea was you held her hand and she walked along side with you. However in practice all that would happen was poor Pamela would wobble slightly and then fall on you. Fortunately, she was not very heavy, but it was slightly alarming. Despite her not walking, I loved Pamela my life sized doll and along with Sylvia the ‘real skin’ baby doll, Esme and I would turn my bedroom into our ‘house’. The game consisted of Esme being my wife and me being the husband. I would come home from work and say ‘phew that was a hard day at work’ and then Esme would give me a fake cup of tea and fake dinner and then we would put our two children to bed. We loved this far from scintillating, gender stereotyping game until alas one day we made a grave error. We decided to give Pamela a makeover involving lipstick, eye shadow and a drawn on bikini with an eyeliner pencil (all with my mother’s make-up). She looked like a child prostitute. We tried to wash it off, but alas Pamela’s descent into the oldest profession could not be averted and our happy family game was truly ruined. You see, the sexualisation of children even affects dolls.

Anyway, the visit to Costco re-awakened strong memories in me and it was with trepidation that I entered. But what wonder greeted me- a vast warehouse of bulk buying of products you will probably never need! There were 10 of everything! The tins were comically over sized, the loo rolls were bundled together in unfathomable quantities and there were hunks of meat that looked like an elephant had procreated with a bull. It made me feel like a borrower. I got completed over excited and ended up buying a lot of things I didn’t strictly need including a box with 60 bars of fudge. The result of this is I now feel compelled to bulk buy- I mean why buy one of something when you can get 12?!

Right that completes my rambling. In summary- M8 bad, Costco good.

Variety

So I didn’t get the third job I interviewed for the week I got 2 other jobs. Shame. Well, not really, I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it because the interviewers were terrible! I have had probably over 10 interviews in that last few months and I have come to a better understanding what makes a good interviewer as well as interviewee.

For example, the job I have finally settled on (Clinical coder for those of you mot keeping up) they asked me questions like ‘why do want this job’ and ‘do you think you would enjoy working in a busy environment’ etc etc. The interviewers then went on to tell me some very important things like my wage, pension and the times and location of the job. They finished it off by telling me exactly when they would let me know and when the position would start if I got it. However the property job I went for made me fill out an ‘optimism questionnaire’ first to assess my ego and I guess, optimism. Indeed. The interviewers then asked me inane questions like ‘what is your greatest achievement at work’ and ‘how did this achievement cause a change in the workplace’. And other such wafflily beauties that have no bearing on why I would be good for their job. Also, I then asked about salary and possible progression, I got such an unintelligible answer back that I still don’t know what they meant, how much I would earn and if there was any possible growth to be had in that job. So, yes, happy with the job I took.

And on the subject of jobs, I am ever more grateful of the coder job as I very naughtily didn’t turn down the SAAS job until yesterday. Now let’s think about this. I interviewed for that job on the 22^nd December. I didn’t hear I got it till mid Feb and by early march I hadn’t yet even got an inkling of a start date. I know my references didn’t supply one for that post as I contacted them and told them not to, but no one in SAAS office chased me up and said ‘Oi references?!’ or anything. I mean in many ways, I should have continued the pretence just to see when eventually they wanted me to start. Next year perhaps?

Anyway, jobs aside now. Literally. I used to send 8 hours a day minus tea and ‘animal rescue 24:7’ aside and now I am free of that. So I did what any sensible person did and I bought a car and went home to test her out. Her name is Simone and she is a 2003 silver/blue Peugeot 106 with low mileage and a 1.2 litre engine. For such a wee car she is surprisingly nippy and my journey home was a pleasure and a delight. I then did a rather spectacular reverse park into mum’s driveway and got along side mum’s Toyota. I repeated with wonderful manoeuvre without assistance over the next few days *pride* Parking is not my strong suit so any sucessful manoeuvre is worth praise.

The visit was mainly focused around my little-big brother (i.e. older than me, but not as old as my eldest brother) Ian the murse. He will be ‘28 again again’ on Sunday (i.e. 30) but as he is going to a wedding that weekend, we decided to go something this weekend just passed. I say we, but actually biggest brother was in fact the organiser, only to be unfortunately pinged off-shore to Nigeria at the last minute and was actually not present. The evening was thwarted once again when the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed just for that week for renovation. Sigh. What to do. Well, fortunately my brother’s fiancé is a wonderful cook and instead she put on a feast of curry. And I mean feast. There must have over 10 dishes, maybe even as many as 20. All cooked from scratch and made just beautifully, along with my mother and my maternal cousins plus partners, we had a delightful evening of total and utter curry indulgent and beer (mine noon-alcoholic as designator driver, sigh). It was lovely night even though most of we felt full to burst and the next day let’s just say a breeze was needed throughout his house to keep it fresh....

I returned from this jaunt back to Edinburgh via Pitlochery as because due to a series of events Cat the Australian wanderer and Andi the remote Fort Willy doc were both residing there for the afternoon. We went on a jaunty walk to find the mystical frozen pond Cat was keen for us to see – we didn’t find it, but I did locate a frozen puddle. We almost became duck killers when a flock refused to move out of the way of Simone and Andi was despatched to chase them away whilst been laughed at hysterically by Cat and I plus 2 grannies sitting on a bench who were also amused by this sight.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I also went to my friend Simon’s book launch in Blackwell’s last week. Simon has written a book about his travels with the aim of going to visit every place in the world with the word ‘mullet’ in the title. No seriously. He gave a reading of the book and then along with my brother and landlady wife went for tea. Niall is actually Simon’s primary friend and is mentioned in the first 5 or so chapters of the book which pleases him tremendously. The book is called ‘Up the Creek Without a Mullet’ by Simon Varwell and is available on Amazon. If you Google the author’s name, you’ll also get info about him and his blog. Interesting there are only 8 people with the surname Varwell in the world (fact) so this means ensuring you have the right Varwell is particularly easy. Right, plug over.

Since then I have been enjoying lazy days in the flat with no obligation to spend hours on the computer trawling for jobs. So what have I been doing? Well, I’ve being playing on the internet for hours trawling through Wikipedia. Variety is the spice of life.

Buses

Jobs are like buses. No sooner did I receive word that I got that SAAS job, I got word of 2 further interviews. I had one of these yesterday. It was to be a clinical coder for the NHS (Google it) and if I’m being brutally honest I only applied for the sake of it and thought no more of it. I was then surprised when I received notification that I had an interview. I then forgot all about that as well as after my SAAS job victory I totally relaxed and left the list to one side. I went home and spent a weekend with my mother basically eating and doing lovely things such as meeting up with an old school friend (who by coincidence happens to be a clinical coder). I returned after this indulgent weekend and then spent the week doing, well, not very much at all. In fact I can honestly say last week was particularly uneventful, I did the pub quiz, met up with friends, went to the cinema during the day etc etc I also went to see The Sound of Music at the Playhouse and it was very good. On Saturday the majority of the Forsythian cousins and I went out for a meal and drank far far too much wine and in amongst all this I actually bought a car.

Aside- yes I know I don’t need a car in Edinburgh. Yes, I know they are expensive, I know they are a bitch to park, yes I know because of this, and my personal green house gas emissions will cause the world to implode. But you know what? I don’t care. I want one, I want one, I want one!!!! So I am in the process of purchasing a 2003 blue/silver 5 door Peugeot 106 with only 23,000 miles on the clock. This means all you people I keep saying I would visit; well now you can’t hide, I coming to see you.

Back to the man story. So after the cousin dinner party I was very unwell. I mean seriously unwell. I was unable to emerge from my slumber and filth until the mid afternoon and was unable to keep down solid food till the early evening. However, fortunately I recovered enough of that evening’s festivities –Andi’s birthday. Yes, my gay ex-hubby (we had painful and public face book divorce 2 weeks ago) was yet again on holiday from the Fort (does he ever work?) and along with kiddie doc Jen and my wife- whose birthday was on the Saturday (she went out with her family, I didn’t abandon her for mine, dinnae yea worry and I got her a lovely, but unfortunately broken present) ate lots of pizza and watched the wonderful ‘Up’. If you have not seen this film, do it. Do it now. The first ten minutes contain some of the most moving scenes in film history. And Up is a cartoon.

And then all of a sudden, it was Monday and I had an interview. For all my other interviews, I have been meticulously prepared, checked out the job, the company, spent ages getting ready etc etc. But for this one, I barely remembered I had to go for it. I almost cancelled going because I hadn’t slept well. I finally got my act in gear and spent a whole ten minutes googling the job online and then got the bus to the hospital. On my arrival I was stupendously early as always and had a leisurely cup of tea. I was uncharacteristically chilled out, maybe this was because I realised I didn’t need this one and I entered the interview arena with confidence, oozing charm if I do say so myself. The 3 interview panellists were all delightful people, it was more like a chat than an interview. They laughed at my jokes, didn’t seem to mind my wildly gesticulating arms and seemed to think I knew what I was talking about. I was then told that the job would pay more than I thought, there were casual Fridays and flexi time on offer. Also my pension from my years as an FY doctor would be carried forward and slot into this one. And I do love a good pension. It was over and I left the room where it dawned on me- gosh I want this job. It sounds more interesting and generally just better than the other one. I was told I had a 1/5 chance and they would phone me Thursday/Friday.

So it was to my great surprise whilst buying flour in Tesco today (I am a good housewife) that I got a phone call from one of the panellists to tell me the they had completed the interviews a day early and that they wanted to offer me the job. I was stunned and delighted. I was so happy in fact I ended up buying the most ridiculous things in the shop, far too heavily burdening myself, resulting in a spilt bag incident at a pedestrian crossing and being aiding by a passing stranger. However, this supermarket related incident could not curb my enthusiasm and I have been on cloud nine since returning back to my home. My wife is on nights this week so I was unable to whip myself into a cleaning frenzy so instead I sat in my sofa eating cherry tomatoes and hummus on crackers feeling generally smug.

And here I remain, my wife is up and left for work and I am now watching the Olympics feeling restless, but contented. I won’t be starting the job till April so intend to pack in a lot of visiting with my wee car (getting it on Friday!) so watch out people.

Oh, and did I mention I have another job interview tomorrow afternoon.

Buses.