Lucy had her job interview at twelve today, so we were a household of yawning early risers.
Mark staggered downstairs to make coffee, and Lucy dived sociably into our bed, and we talked about the exciting prospect of being grown up enough to have a proper job.
She was beside herself with the thrillingly scary contemplation of her imminent First Job Interview. She sat on the bed and agonised, and we both gave her lots of helpful advice, as you do when you are a parent.
Actually, it is entirely possible that we might have done more harm than good, as we are obviously both rubbish at job interviews since neither of us have actually got anything that might sensibly be described as a job.
Mark has had jobs, and indeed had one up until early this year, but I haven’t ever been involved in anything that might be accurately described as employment for much longer than about a fortnight in almost my entire life. The whole thought of spending my life busily occupied doing things that somebody else would like me to do seems ridiculously improbable by now, and I have more or less given up hope of it ever being a realistic possibility. Regular readers might remember that I had a job interview of my own earlier this year, which not only did not lead to a job, but may well have led to me being blacklisted from all similar organisations for the rest of my life. With this in mind I have an uneasy feeling that my advice to jobseekers may well be about as much use as a Nerf gun in a zombie apocalypse.
However, Lucy failed to spot this obvious flaw in our advisory capabilities, and listened carefully, which amazingly paid off, because when she emerged cheerily from the front door of the You And Me fifteen minutes after I dropped her off, she was the proud and very excited occupant of a waitressing position, starting tomorrow at lunchtime.
We had a general family celebration, and I sorted out her paperwork to take with her, proving that she was a Genuine British Citizen, and we had a minor crisis about what she should wear. They had asked her to come dressed in black, of which she had none. I had got some elderly and unsuitably large and comfortable T-shirts, and Mark had a pair of baggy black shorts, but between us we had nothing actually appropriate, and had to do a quick dash around the neighbours.
In the end kindly Philippa at the end of the alley, who had once been their nursery school teacher, produced an assortment of black shirts, and Lucy had a trawl round the village and discovered some black trousers in the charity shop, which we all agreed would do very nicely until we could get into Kendal to Marks & Spencer next week.
After this we had a House Meeting to discuss the implications of her absence. As the only remaining unemployed member of the household, Oliver agreed to take over the role of Domestic Technician, and spent the next hour learning how to do things like hang the washing out.
This presented him with some difficulties due to the washing line being about three feet out of his reach. Mark helpfully lowered it a bit for him, and he stood on tiptoes and painstakingly pegged out the sheets and towels. After that we had a lesson in oven function, and he made himself a pizza, of which he was touchingly proud. We all sampled it, and agreed that it was quite the nicest pizza that we had eaten all day, and that quite clearly he would not starve to death in the event of the rest of us being wiped out in a zombie apocalypse.
After that he and Lucy went to Morrisons, and then Lucy cleaned her shoes, which was another breathtaking First Time For Everything moment, whilst Mark and I got ready for work. Saturday is our busiest day, and we made sandwiches and tea for a long haul.
We left the children eating pizza and teaching Oliver his three times table and checking anxiously for the likelihood of rain. By the time we got back for our mid-evening coffee break they had pegged another load of washing on the line and emptied the dogs and tidied everything up, and we were very impressed with them.
Mark took her paperwork down to the Chinese restaurant, and had a chat with the friendly man who owns it. He came away feeling reassured that no matter what Lucy will doubtless think about her first employment experience, they are not brutal child exploiters but hard-working, sensible people up to their eyeballs in the exhausting tourist summer.
We thought that we had got very splendid children.
We will see how the summer progresses.
