All over for another year

It's that time of year that you see those members of your family whom you only see at Christmas, weddings or funerals.
I haven't seen Auntie J since last Christmas. She is a robust Scottish woman who is not actually a relative, but a friend of my mother's from her college days. She is tough: she survived a botched operation which means she will have dialysis for the rest of her life. As a secondary school teacher in inner city schools, now retired, she regales us with tales of boys masturbating in her lessons, of teachers and their affairs, of pupils attempting to burn the school down and of the manner in which she dealt with these occurrences; she told him if she caught him doing that again, she would cut it off and he wouldn't be able to play with it any more.
Although i tell her that i don't want to be a school teacher, she advises me that if i kiss ass (which she regrets she never could) i will get myself a nice job. I tell her i want to work in Higher Education and she tells me there's not enough of it to go round, and asks me what i do with myself of an evening.
I tell her that i write on my blog and she pauses and looks at me in which time i wonder if she knows what blogging is. Auntie J says that blogging is for lonely people and i do not disagree with her. She tells me i should teach myself music, and that i will never be alone if i can play. I insist that i have no ability for it, and she tells me that i am a talented and intelligent girl. She tells me that i look beautiful, like the madonna or the Mona Lisa. She repeats her many compliments and notes that people may say she has a big mouth, but she said nothing when i looked so terrible last year, and now i look the best she has ever seen me looking, and she just wanted to say it.

Break

I got it.
I got the break.

The phone call was in true X-factor tradition.
"Hello, is that Nina?"
Yes this is Nina.
"Hello Nina, it's ***** from Human Resources at ****."
Oh, hi..... (nervous pause)
"Is this a good time to talk?"
Yes, it is, I just got back from another interview, so yes...
"Yes, well, i didn't want to let you go through the weekend without getting in touch. I'm ringing to tell you that (century pause) well, we would like to offer you the job."

I danced around the whole of the top floor of my house playing Chromeo's Fancy Footwork and singing loudly.
In and around and out of each of the rooms in turn. Rolling up and then rolling right back down to my knees, Punching the air above my head and then punching all the way back down to the horizontal. Doing Abba fingers, and imagining i was Agnetha and her famous ass wiggling dance.
When i had done, i looked down at the swirling patterns that the treads of my trainers had made in the horrible dark blue carpet left by the previous homeowner.

I got the break.

Sex in the Noughties

Apparently (according to Channel 4), no one is ever going to 'do it' like Girl with a One Track Mind.
Wheel in Zoe Williams (she writes for The Guardian so she must be right) to say that a great number of blogs are just dross.
Then to cap the programme off- which had hitherto disguised itself as a celebration of blogging, the freedom of writing anonymously and a sexual revolution for women in the noughties- 'The Publisher'. 'The Publisher' comes on to tell the viewers that 'The Publishing Industry' has become very cynical about blogging. That bloggers who are hoping for a book deal are going to be sadly disappointed.
No Shit! Writing without profit? How dare they?
The proliferation- more than quadrupling the number of blogs written over the last three years- is presented as an inevitable decline in quality, originality or significance.

I beg to fucking differ.

I'd like to say that blogging is a democratisation of writing, and that every individuals story deserves a space, and that I look forward to the time when more than a privileged few (programme makers, publishers, intelligent press) get to describe the world and their view of it.
I don't want to hear what they have to say. They speak the language of the institution safeguarding itself.

I want to hear your voice.

Men and Buses

Interviews are like men and buses. You get nothing for six months and then two come along at once.
So, i'm sitting here squirming. I have to pull a weird face every time i think of some of the answers i gave yesterday. Lets call this my Big Break Job. It's my Big Break Job because it's in exactly the right environment with exactly the right target group, and although it's only a tiny little bit of work, all the other things going on there are right up my street (if only i can get into the street, by whatever means, i must get parked!). I considered it my job as soon as i saw it. I prepared to the max, as none of the agencies had called me this week so i had no work.
They didn't ask me anything that i had prepared for. So i was left with my on the spot skills.
God only knows if i made any sense at all.
Number Two on Friday. Number Two is one of those jobs that are in the right environment and could lead to really interesting things (if not well paid things).
Then again it might not.
I really need them both.
I guess i'll just have to wait and see now, wont I?