Saturday 13 September 2003

Update: There you are, that's what happened. Including the result of my interview which everyone was so interested in.

Hello, I'm back. Can't blog much now, Dad's listening to internet radio, but here, for your delight and edification, is a list of days that I was away for, reverse chronological style:

Saturday

We just sort of came home really. When we got home, Nick, Neil and I watched Fantasia 2000.

Friday

Today was Lyme Regis. We sat on the beach and did very little. I read some more of Miracles and I've finally finished it now. Mostly we were entertained by kids chasing seagulls about. Had another pub lunch. In the evening we played nomination whist. Was it today that The Miller's Tale was on? There are not words for how completely that program was devoid of merit. I feel like writing to the BBC claiming compensation for the wasted minutes. It was a publicly subsidised disservice to literature. Whoo-hoo.

Thursday

Before we went out I got a phone call back from County Hall, and I didn't get the job.

Today we went to Dorchester. First we had tea in a Christian tea room. I think it was a joint URC and Methodist one. We spent flipping ages in there. Then we spent ages in town trying to find a museum. I relieved some of the boredom by going in a second-hand bookshop and emerging with Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Tom Jones. Adrian bought a nice edition of Alice in Wonderland. It was quite expensive. We found the museum after a while; it was a museum for The Emperor Qin's terracotta army. It was pretty good, but too expensive and rather on the small side. We ended up in a Wetherspoon's, The Royal Oak. Then we went back to the van.

Wednesday

I woke up and got out of bed, remembering that I had no breakfast. Somewhat optimistically, I purchased an unpriced Ginsters product from the Esso. Won't be doing that again in a hurry. As I had no milk, I thought I should have green tea. James was about in the kitchen while I was doing al this, saying I was up far too early. He had a one day temp job. After he left for that, I dug out some paperwork, prepared for some questions from my handy Jobseeker's booklet thing, dressed up and got my paperwork together. Steve the landlord phoned for James, so I left him a note. Steve was quite concerned that they wouldn't be leaving us a sufficiently clean house. Cautious ol' me was at County Hall, via public transport, about an hour before I had to be, so I wandered round for a bit.

The interview started with these tests. I did good, getting 100% for the verbal usage test, and something like 78% for numerical reasoning. I had a calculator for it. The interview itself was fine. What was especially good was that they didn't even ask me anything for a while; they talked about the job while I tried to think of exciting variations on the theme of "Uh huh.", "Right." and "I see." I wandered back to the house fairly content and then prepared to go. I found James on the sofa; they'd not got enough work for him at the agency job, but they were paying him anyway. He was quite pleased about that.

Then I drove to Charmouth. It's near Lyme Regis. Mum and Dad were at the caravan there. I followed
a sign coming out of Exeter which said "A30 avoiding M5". This seemed like a fairly good idea, so I followed the sign and found myself unaccountably travelling on a bizarre little road parallel with the M5 north. But I got there in the end. Adrian and Emma turned up the same evening. I forget what we did that night.

Tuesday

Hello. Today I drove to Exeter. I started of by heading towards London on the M3. Realising that this wasn't quite right, I turned round and headed for Exeter instead. It took me longer than it would have done, but I still made pretty good time, arriving about 2100. Whne I got there, those present helped me take my wodges of stuff up to my room. Those present were Luke, James and Norris. Norris seemed to be mildly injured, and be covered in little bits of paint. I asked him if he'd been paintballing, but it seems he'd been painting a bridge. After that we just watched a bit of cable TV. Ab Fab it was. And then I went to bed not too late for the interview.