Time and busyness

A month has passed since my last post, so decided to provide a quick update of what has been going on.

Firstly, no advance on the job front - still have a number of things looking hopeful, but nothing at all concrete for now. It's starting to hack me off again. I've been for one more interview (maintaining my one-a-month rate) but it frankly wasn't a very good interview and they, once again, decided to change the job spec a couple of weeks later which made me unsuitable.

Secondly, I _am_ still doing my Prince 2 course, but it's ended up being far more work than I anticipated plus, I've been finding it difficult to make the time to actually do it (see below). I'm hoping to start spending some serious time on it again soon.

It has been a busy old time. It started with a telephone interview near the end of April, this resulted in me undertaking a programming project over the next week (which ended up taking 50 hours of work). It was fun and it was good to be doing something with a purpose again (albeit, unpaid). Regretably, half way through, I had a phone call to say they'd been put on recruitment freeze and so the job I was working toward didn't exist any more. I decided to finish the project anyway and send it in.

It's quite unusual to be given a full project to program, rather than just a programming test, but I rather liked it - although I'm glad not everyone does it because it takes a great deal of time to produce anything that gives a clue as to what you're capable of.

The following week was a bank holiday, so not only did I have to catch up with searches and applications which had been neglected the previous week, but I only had 4 days to do it.

This week's been mad with job applications, as well as my wedding anniversary and my wife's birthday. Between all these things there's been little time to do anything at all that I actually wanted to!

In the meantime weve been on a progressive supper around our village (great fun), had a village festival (damp but good), had visitors and family staying for a while.

I now have to complete a very long application form for a job, get some birthday presents and plan some birthday events for the weekend ... so I'd better get on with it.

Times pass

I stayed up especially to watch Morrissey on Johnathan Ross' show last night.

I'm not sure why, I guess I was just interested to see what he'd be like - I'd not realy been aware of him for years and, for me, he was still caught in a timewarp from the late 80's/90's.

I don't mind admitting that I was quite keen on quite a number of his works, especially The Smiths. He got quite a rough ride at times, became ridiculously pretentious and smug, but beyond it all wrote and sung some wonderful songs in his own, unqiue angst-ridden way. You always knew when it was a Morrissey song.

So what would he be doing now and what would he look like. Quite alarmingly, he was singing very similar sorts of songs in a very similar way. To me it sounded less edgy, more like going through the motions than really feeling every word and sentiment, and the voice had lost some of its raw power, but it was obviously him.

But when I looked at him performing, 20 years on from the big-time, it just struck me that he looked like a cross between an aging Country-and-Western singer and one of your mates Dad's from when you were a kid. It just didn't seem right that he was still singing these songs. I don't know if that's wrong of me or wrong of him - I know I still have many of the emotions I did 20 years ago, but I guess I can't pretend they are the same ones or that they still keep me awake at night. I think most of us find some way of finding some peace with ourselves later in life, which is a place we just haven't got to when we're in our 20's.

So, I felt a little sad. Sad that, as much as you might want it to, time never stands still. We all get older, we all change, and I think, if we're wise, we accept that this happens. There's nothing wrong with this, it's inevitable. But then, maybe it's not him, maybe it's me. When I heard his old songs for the first time, I was in a very different place than I am now. I like to think that I am happy with this and accept it, but perhaps from time to time I still like to think that I could change the World, just like we all thought at one stage in our lives.

To quote the man himself, has the World changed or have I changed?

Traffic calming

No, I am not at all calm.

Thanks to horrendous traffic in Reading, I just missed my eyesight test. This is a test they should have booked me in for last week when I went for my contact lens check-up, so it's doubly annoying that I had to struggle into the middle of Reading again and that this time it was a nightmare.

I don't know what caused the traffic to be so bad, but at 10:00 it normally seems to at least be manageable, but not today. It might be something to do with the school holidays, I just don't know.

I could have waited an hour and a half for another appointment, but that means being late back to work (maybe not a major problem), having to pay for the car parking (at great expense) and also hanging around Reading for far longer than is healthy.

I have now rebooked my test in Didcot, which is a far more sensible place to get to, on Thursday. Just means I have to hope I don't break or lose my last remaining set of lenses for a little while longer.

[15:55]
Typical. My boss now wants a meeting on Thursday which will make it difficult or impossible to get to Didcot in time. I'm trying to persuade him otherwise.

[12/08/08]
Phew. Meeting rearranged for Wednesday.