I regret to announce that today I have not moved our Lockdown Home Improvement project forward by so much as a millimetre.
That is not exactly true, because I watered the plants and painted varnish on a drawer to see what it would look like. This would have been a better idea if I had either done the whole of the chest of drawers or at the very least remembered to wash the brush, but I didn’t, so now although we have a beautifully varnished drawer, we will probably have to throw the paintbrush away. I might throw it away quietly, in the morning, before Mark notices.
It was a rubbish one anyway, the sort where the hairs finish up stuck in whatever you are painting and you are still picking the occasional one off your skirting boards years and years later.
Anyway the drawer looked brilliant.
I was incapacitated for house-project work because I could not do anything which might make me grubby, like yesterday’s sanding endeavours, because at twelve o’clock I had to go out.
I had an Interview at the Co-op.
You will probably be as astonished as I was to learn that I had been selected to attend an interview for the job I applied for last week.
Note here to my long-standing regular readers, we have been here before, haven’t we?
I thought I would go to the interview anyway.
Mark laughed a lot whilst I was flapping about trying to decide whether it was a good idea to wear scarlet trousers and a purple shirt with yellow flowers. I decided not to, because I had no idea if this looked nice or awful, I rather liked the effect, but that is not always a good sign, so in the end the trousers were exchanged for a less exciting pair.
“You don’t even like shopping,” he said. “Do you think you can last to the end of the interview before they sack you, or will they wait until your first day?”
I stalked off to be Interviewed. It took me about thirty seconds to get from our door to theirs. It would really be very convenient. It is almost as close as going to get in the taxi.
Quite apart from the interview, of course I was fascinated to have the chance to poke about backstage at the Co-op. We shop there all the time, and I was dying to see what went on behind the scenes.
I was allowed to go through the secret staff door that leads to the mystifying dark bit behind the fridges. There were a lot of squished cardboard boxes, and lots more full cardboard boxes, and some mysterious metal cage things. I would have liked to explore properly, but of course it is not the sort of thing you can ask to do, so I didn’t. We went up the stairs into a staff room from which you could probably see our front garden if you leaned out, except there was a discouraging-looking iron grid in front of it so you couldn’t lean out.
I don’t know if the window could still be opened. I hope so, how horrible to have a window that is for ever stuck shut so you can’t hear the swifts or smell the grass cutting in the Library Gardens.
Disappointingly, it was not very exciting. There were posters about hand washing and an app for telling the Co-op that you needed to see a counsellor, and some boots piled in the corner. I would have liked to ask about those, but of course I didn’t do that either.
The manager lady was very nice indeed.
I talked and talked.
I can do talking about myself, nothing is quite as interesting, and of course an interview for a job is a perfect opportunity for doing just that.
It is lovely to tell somebody all about your good points whilst they are nodding and smiling encouragingly. I carried on for ages, waving my hands about occasionally to emphasise my wonderfulness.
The manager lady told me about the Co-op.
If I got the job I would get a pension and a free funeral afterwards.
I nodded enthusiastically.
I was in there for an hour and a half.
Afterwards Mark said encouragingly that perhaps I might find that I had a vocation, perhaps I was discovering my niche in life, but I was not convinced.
I am not going to bother thinking about it because almost always employers do not want to employ opinionated taxi drivers. Those who do invariably change their minds in the first couple of hours. They have got lots more interviews to do yet, so I won’t hear anything about it for over a week. I promise I will let you know what happens.
After the interview I still did not do anything useful, because we had a VE Day Socially Distanced Street Party.
At any rate it started off socially distanced. By the time we had all drunk far too much and danced until our feet were sore we had all forgotten a bit about being exactly two meters apart and were just leaning on garden walls, giggling and drinking and chatting.
It was actually the most splendid of evenings. It was organised by the nice ladies who own Roger Poopy’s best friend. This is a sleek black Labrador called either Pepper or Pippa, I can never quite work out which. Roger Poopy spent the evening sloping into the house whilst everybody’s back was turned and stealing all of her stuff a bit at a time, which he dumped in a small secret pile on the pavement. By the end of the night he had several balls and three bones. We made him give them back, much to his disappointment, and he has been sighing and huffing ever since, having realised what a comparatively deprived lifestyle he is forced to lead at our house.
The party stretched all the way up the street, and spilled out into the middle of it. The dogs charged up and down the road, barking and chasing each other. The children had a paddling pool and water bombs, and rushed about squirting one another and shrieking until they were all soaked and shivering. Every now and again somebody would bellow: “Car!” and we would all leap or stagger back on to the pavement, depending on how drunk we were, and then wander back again once it had passed.
There was the most fantastic barbecue, we had burgers and sausages and some very splendid potato salad. The police stopped halfway through, and laughed and said it looked like good fun. He was a very nice looking young policeman, I hope Lucy meets some like that.
We danced in the road until it started to go dark, when reluctantly we had to make our way home. My legs are aching now.
There is a picture. It doesn’t look like very much of a party, but it jolly well was.
