Of Other Worlds October 25, 2007
Posted by Jen in : Journal , trackbackSo. The interview with Hastings Council. Anything was going to be better than the non-speaking hospital, right? Sigh.
Off I went, clutching my Google map instructions and feeling more bewildered as each minute went on. Past the Conquest Hospital, past some massive industrial estates and on and on… and on… Where was the huge, gleaming glass and chrome council building I’d been expecting?
I found myself on the biggest council estate in the whole world, a city made of burnt out pubs, boarded up shops and houses with smashed up fridges in the front gardens. This can’t be right, I thought. ‘Har’, said the Google map instructions, ‘it sodding well is right.’ My stomach felt a little bit funny. I glanced at the bottom of the email from the agency. I looked ahead at the day care centre. I gulped, as if I were in a rather low-budget horror film.
I parked the car and looked at the large clump of people looking at me. Teenage girls clutching babies and lanky, spotty boys wearing hoodies. I took a deep breath and got out of the car and wibble-wobbled past them in my high heels and black suit. I wondered if they would think I was the police and try to beat me up. I’ve seen The Bill. I know about these things. I felt a bit scared.
I was buzzed into the centre and some right-on, scruffy social workers looked me up and down before I was taken into a non-threatening room and interviewed by a touchy-feely lady with a voice like honey and a frayed skirt who told me about deprivation and breastfeeding.
Somehow, I don’t get the impression I was quite right for the job.
Phew.
Comments»
Sounds like a fecking lucky escape! Use to live on the doorstep of an estate like that - very depressing.
Good Lord. A lucky escape indeed.
Oh my gawd, is that what Hastings is like?
JJx
Yep, you’re well off out of that one.
Narrow escape there. You should of done your star wars “I am not the temp you are looking for” just to make sure you understand . . . OK and to see their faces
If you take Google map instructions as gospel and are so easily intimidated, then your prospective employers were right not to give you the job, whatever it was.
Have you thought of taking up forestry, or plumbing?
Blimey…..suddenly working with the crumblies and non-talking woman doesn’t sound so bad!!
C x
That sounds like a really horrible neighborhood. Apparently I don’t understand exactly what a Council Estate is. In the US, I would’ve thought a Council Estate was a house full of rich hippies ruled by some kind of council of elders. Good luck with whatever comes up next!
But dahling, you’re supposed to be hugging the hoodies:-)
I hope the next interview leads you to an office chock full of chirpy people and a fat wage slip:-)
xx
And I thought Hastings was a nice place, maybe they need another battle!! Just consider all this as fodder for a book.
tony- she isnt easily intimidated!
sis- that sounds grim. life is terribly unpredictable when we don’t want it to be. hmm. i would like non-speaking people. i am hoping there will be a proliferation of non-speaking people at my new job. actually i have already invested in a coat with a VERY big hood just in case there are any Speakers. unsociable, moi? keep your chin up sis x
Liked your blog but feel that your commenters are not such dolls as I am wishing to give the large hello to, so farewell.
I can see why the stay-at -home chocolate bon bon eating writing - life is so appealing. Yikes. Hurry up and finish that book!
Hellojed - depressing, yes, but I just wish I’d been warned so that I didn’t look like such a git!
Helen - it was certainly an eye-opener!
JJ - not all of Hastings is like that. Some of it is rather quaint?
Zinnia - you’re quite right.
Breezy - am going to definitely use Star Wars quotes in all job applications from now on. Perhaps I could be a space traveller? Would look far more funky on important forms than ‘administrator’.
Tony - forestry would probably make me itch. And plumbing… um… hands down other people’s bogs? Sounds tempting but…
Carol - I forced her to talk yesterday and she was actually nice to me. I almost fainted.
Karen, hello… I can’t think of a US equivalent. But rich hippies sound groovy, man…
Lane - you know, they didn’t really look like the hugging type? Mugging, maybe…
Sheepish, I guess there are places like that everywhere. It’s just when you’re thrown in there without warning and looking like a zebra at a courgette party things get tricky!
Sis - non-talking is fine if nobody talks. Being deliberately ignored is another matter. And I like talking, as you know…
Tony - again! - why would you think that any of these lovelies aren’t dolls? Come back! I would miss your snippy comments if you disappeared
Becky - you forgot to mention pyjamas? Finishing the book is seeming like a distant dream right now. Sigh.
No Jen it’s writer now remember!
couldn’t you adapt?
x
You’re being shown a different side of things right now, aren’t you? This’ll help you write tricky dialogues where two rational human beings with completely different world views utterly fail to understand each other. Talking to patients should show you just how little of the world people really perceive…
BEFORE - this would have simply been a shitty job.
NOW - this is Life Experience. Make notes.
Look. I’ll finish my book if you finish yours. Mine has taken three years so far, two years and six months have been made up of non writing gaps so don’t you go there.
Part of me wishes you’d taken that job. What a great column it would have made. The other part thinks you’re well out of it although I think we may be heading for a little pad there if rent here keep rising. Gloom and doom
Breezy, just keep reminding me, ok?!
Caroline - I could have tried but may have been murdered before I was fully assimilated…
HW - you’re quite right… I look on everything as life experience. Not sure if it’s a writerly thing or a grown uppy sort of thing?
Fiona - you, my lovely, have a deal. We really should pull our fingers out before it just becomes plain embarrassing
You’re well out of that particular job situation. The lecture on breastfeeding and deprivation would have been the tip of the iceberg - you’d end up PRAYING they would stop talking to you.
Can’t you find temp employment in an easter egg factory?
Mya x