I lasted all of 3 days before succumbing to the new Harry Potter. I decided to support my local independent bookshop, West End Lane Books, even though it was a couple of pounds cheaper at the big chains. Having a proper bookshop in West Hampstead is a good thing, after all.
However, they didn't exactly make it easy for me - all their copies were behind the counter in a special display case so you had to make a special point of asking for one. For some reason (maybe it was the other customer at the counter, who was talking loudly about his desire to burn all the copies) I felt all flustered, like a teenager trying to buy condoms from a drugstore in the 1950s. And then the man in the shop put it in a special edition bag with "HARRY POTTER" emblazoned on the side in big letters, so there was no point pretending it was something terribly literary instead. But I'm enjoying it so far - it already seems better than No. 5.
I have now accepted the government job, to start next Tuesday. I was offered a second interview at Cancer Research, but it wasn't going to be until the day after I was due to start the govt job and you had to prepare a presentation with visual aids and present it as part of the interview. It all seemed like too much hassle (when I could be reclining in the sunlounger with HP) so I said no. The agent thought it would be perfectly reasonable to start a job one day and take time off for an interview the next but I disagreed!
We had a nice weekend - went for a 40-minute run on Saturday morning down to the Paddington Recreation Ground and then went into town to the World's Most Photographed exhibition. The world's most photographed people are (apparently): Queen Victoria, Adolf Hitler, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Garbo, James Dean, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali. Mind you, that's not necessarily true in terms of sheer number of images - the subjects of the exhibition were chosen partly because they used their own image to achieve particular ends. Anyway, it was well worth seeing - lots of stylish black and white photos and good stories to go with them.
On Sunday I went to Homebase and bought two tomato plants and some tubs and canes for them - they are now thriving on the roof terrace. Apparently they are heavy croppers with bitesize, flavoursome fruit so that should be good. Donald came around late afternoon and we sat outside for a bit and then went to the Czech pub. Definitely an authentic experience - the decor in the dining room was ugly and old-fashioned in an ornate sort of way - bits of gold lacquer and red velvet and a lurid patterned carpet. Also, everyone except us spoke Czech. I had a potato pancake with streaky pork as a starter - and I could just feel my arteries constricting as I looked at it. As that was only 2.50 (and supposedly a starter) I had already ordered roast wild boar in a creamy sauce with onion rings, another deeply healthy dish. Both were delish, but one or the other would have been ample.
After all that effort on Friday, Data Connection found me unsuitable in some undefined way. How rude - I thought my solution to Archimedes' and Pythagoras's stone tablet problem was ingenious!
2 comments:
Elizabeth Know wrote the dompost review of the new Harry Potter -and she liked it - so clearly its a quite respectable thing to be reading.
Liquid tomato food would be a good thing to buy for the plants
At least your interviewers gave you a nice tight time frame for a reply. I've just come from Wellington after a short [1 1/2 hr) interview that included a very snazzy Powerpoint presentation in which I managed to include a SuDoku puzzle BUT left of the denoument photo of me in the Philippines! Thye will let me know sometime mid - late August! I know that you've just left Wellington! But there doesn't seem anywhere else for ex-public servants to go to. Other than that very hot place or it's English equivalent - Bradford!
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