Mon 24th June 2024

We (me, Kirsty, the children, and one of their girlfriends) are on our hols in the same place in southern Brittany where we've been going for twenty-one years now.

The queues to get a metro ticket at Charles de Gaulle airport were twenty minutes long; the train from Paris was two hours late, and on the bus for the final leg into the village, the driver, knowing our destination, chose to keep the information that it wouldn't be serving our stop near the village centre to herself. We trudged like donkeys in an advert for forty-five minutes to reach our asylum. All is calm now. Bees burrow into the rosemary, which is flowering in a fluorescent cerise; a fat yellow rose over there is waving to me from behind a drying bikini.

Last week, I was in Doncaster, on a residential course with a railway union, for which I am a rep now. A man told us that his short-lived career as station staff ended after an incident in which he asked a man to stop smoking inside Glasgow Central station. The passenger told him that he'd smoke wherever he fucking well liked, and exhaled a lungful of smoke into his face. Conveniently positioned at the head of an escalator, the smoker was kicked down it for a painful descent to Glasgow Central Lower Level. It was cheering to hear a rare tale of the Revenge of the Customer Service Assistant.

I got an email on Friday telling me that I've got through to the next stage for the Sheffield job. Part of it is the shapeshifting task that I seem unable to crack, but one of the Young People in our band has offered to do it for me. She's going to do the practice test today, and see how she gets on.

4 comments »

4 comments

Comment from: Scarlet [Visitor]

What is the shapeshifting test like?
If it’s what I think it is then I’m crap at it too!
Have a relaxing holiday!
Sx

Mon 24th June 2024 @ 05:11 Reply to this comment

Comment from: [Member]

Here’s an example from the practice test they send you. The real test is harder than this, because they use shapes that are made up for the occasion, like a backward Z, two concentric half-c’s, and single and doubled back and forward slashes.

A twenty-five-year-old did it for me this evening. If she can’t do it, there’s something wrong with the test. The instructions rely on you understanding what the unlettered rubric writer really means.

Mon 24th June 2024 @ 11:15 Reply to this comment

Comment from: kono [Visitor]

Our holidays seemed to have some similarities… i was stuck on island as a Category 4 hurricane came through… still here though ;)

Thu 4th July 2024 @ 05:59 Reply to this comment

Comment from: [Member]

Glad you made it kono! You get some spectacular weather over there!

Fri 12th July 2024 @ 08:51 You are currently replying to this comment

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 60 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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