The good news

There was, a while ago now, a kind of ‘general promotion board’ here at the office. In fact, looking back through my office diary, I see that the interview itself was held on 26 April at 3pm (a Friday afternoon). I was lucky – I had a couple of days’ notice so I could prepare. One of my colleagues was given his invitation to interview less than 24 hours before his actual interview.

The whole procedure was like a throwback to an earlier age of panelled offices, tea ladies with trolleys and three-piece suits de rigeur. The last board I sat was in about 1996, when I got no where and then the Department switched to the rather more logical approach of interviewing candidates for individual posts as they fell vacant. You know, the way sane organisations do it.

Anyway. Having had three days or so to prepare, I gathered the general information I needed, details on competences and evidence that I had them and such, the standard spiel concerning different grades and possibly most importantly in this case, the current buzz words showing that “I am hip to the groove the Department is following, Man” (the very sentence shows that I am not, but preparation allows a bloke to bluff).

The interview went well enough; the single best piece of advice I had (though I had a great deal of it), was from my line manager, who told me to treat it as a conversation. When I had one of the interviewers coming back at me with her own experiences in a situation by way of comparison, I knew I had cracked that particular nut.

As I say, the interview went well, or seemed to at least. I didn’t come away from it feeling that I had disgraced myself or under performed, so that was good.

And then time passed. The bank holiday came and went. A further week came and went. We went on holiday and more time passed. I came back to work and a couple more weeks passed.

No news for me, or indeed anyone.

Finally, last Tuesday, literally as I was putting my jacket on to go home, my Deputy Director corralled me with the always ominous phrase, “Bryan, do you have a moment?”

I nearly didn’t have a moment, as I was in a hurry to be elsewhere, but somewhere in the back of my head, a rational voice told me: yes, you do have a moment and so I did.

It turns out that I passed the board. I am not promoted yet, but I will be once the Department has finalised its deployments. I don’t yet know what job I shall be doing, or in which part of the Department it will be, but I shall be doing it at the higher grade.

I am finally about to get back to where I was about three years ago. Only this time it should be permanent.

A weekend to forget

I am back in the office after an extended weekend. Furtle had taken three days off for her own adventures last week, so I thought that I would take Friday off and have a bit of ‘me’ time myself.

So far, so good.

Friday afternoon saw me at the British Museum with friends – we intended to see the Pompeii Exhibition, but the first available tickets were only available after a three hour wait, so we decided to look at the Elgin Marbles, which took about 90 minutes before cultural overload set in. Then we popped into one of the many gift shops to be appalled at the prices and decamped to the pub.

The trip to the pub was intended only to take a couple of hours, but it all went horribly wrong when somewhere down the line my chum and his girlfriend went into meltdown and yours truly found himself in the middle of it. I left the pub very late, quite depressed and not a little drunk. Though it seems that my drunken attempts at mediation were assisted by the fact that the protagonists were also drunk; I may have bored them into giving themselves another chance.

Saturday, late morning I awoke with the sorest of throats and a raspy voice. Evidence, no doubt of loud drunken snoring and far too much loud talking the night before.

And yet, no hangover.

Furtle returned from her travels at lunchtime and later in the day, we had a splendid Chinese meal before decamping next door, chez ingenue_the and harold_chasen for booze and bonfire (though I restricted myself to Pepsi, rather than booze. Truly I did). I was rather more troubled by the gusty smoke than is usual at these bonfires and spent much of the next day feeling short of breath and dehydrated. That wasn’t the problem, though – it was a good evening over all and finished off just before 2am with home made ice cream, which was rather tasty.

The problem came when the cistern on the toilet imploded at about 2.15am. The tank wouldn’t stop filling and it turns out that the mental giant who had installed the cistern in the first place, had omitted to include an overflow, so there was only one place for the extra water to go: down under the floor and into the kitchen. I shall spare you the details, but suffice it to say that once the remains of the ballcock had disintegrated, I was left plugging the leak with my index finger, every tap in the house turned on to reduce the water pressure, while Furtle looked for the uniquely inaccessible stopcock. In the end, thanks to the intervention of jfs, we got the water turned off at the water meter in the street, so we could mop up and get some sleep.

The kitchen ceiling did not fall in as I feared; we must have caught it early enough that it was simply wet, not sodden. As you might imagine, we didn’t get the best night’s rest (which I rather needed after my drunken escapes of the day before). Anyway, a very professional and helpful Polish plumber sorted us out on the Sunday morning, even to the extent of creating an overflow for us. Any Ilfordites in need of a plumber get in touch with me and I’ll pass his details on.

The remainder of Sunday passed in a bit of a haze. There was some tidying and cleaning up done, but not much else. I seem to recall that we collapsed on the bed at one point for a catch up sleep.

Monday morning, what with one thing and another, we were both so tired that we took an impromptu day off (thank God, it’s a fresh leave year) and did very little other than some gentle gardening.

I slept well last night and am relatively refreshed today, but on the whole, I wouldn’t recommend spending a weekend like that.