Here in Blackpool listening to Japanese folk music on You Tube and slightly full of crisps - we are preparing for the arrival of my mother's cousins with whom we will sit for several hours shovelling cake and crisps down our throats and chatting about anything not at all controversial or interesting (to me). I will be virtually silent and be rarely ( Read more... )

Now settled in Manchester with new job starting in the new year - lots of forms and checks to fill in - impertinent questions about my health. It is a sort of library cum admin assistant job for a health resource library so should be quite pleasant and interesting ( Read more... )

Decided not to take the job in London after all - after frantic calls to agencies etc and nothing turning up I decided that taking a job which would leave me in much the same position as if I were unemployed or a fundless student - struggling to get by in one room - for a job that was OK but not really that great wasn't really my best option ( Read more... )

Just got back to Blackpool from Yorkshire where I saw my Dad and siblings. Beautiful weather. We had chips by the river and I fed chips directly to the beak of a lady duck. Also saw a heron. Went to the park with my seven year old brother and we took it in turn to throw his ball through a hoop. I did rather well. On the train home I saw deer ( Read more... )

I'm readiing "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith at the moment, a comforting old fashioned sort of book. Interesting that there is a heavy emphasis on fur coats in this book too (she went on to write "101 Dalmations"). Maybe she had some kind of Thing about fur.

In Blackpool at the moment applying for lots of jobs, just finished 2 week work experience at Swansea Uni Library which I hope will help get something interesting but I am applying both to Library and Archive jobs and also admin type jobs. I got the impression from work experience that some academic library jobs are not much different from general ( Read more... )

I am happy and relieved that everyone hasn't tidied me off their friendslist in my long absence! I hadn't realised it was quite that long since I last posted - not last October ( Read more... )

I've given up the placement and emailed my tutor to say I want to withdraw from the course. It occured to me that I don't have to be a teacher if I don't want to and I don't want to. Meanwhile temping will keep wolves from doors and I can think about what I want to do next. I think it is because my temping has been going well that I realised I don' ( Read more... )

Read Sarah Waters' The Night Watch over the weekend. I had really enjoyed her earlier books set in the late 19th century and it may have been partly the change of chronological scene which made me not take to this novel quite as well. Another factor I think was that it was focused around 4 different characters so there was never that feeling of ( Read more... )

Strange weather here today - lots of simultaneous rain and sunshine. Rather pleasing from an indoor perspective. I saw a fine rainbow from the morning bus.