Interviews, brevity and Tom and Jerry.

I began this blog back in April never having read a blog before. Since starting though I have been reading other peoples blogs and have realised a few things:

1. I write way too much.
2. I need to work out how to attach pictures so that it looks prettier
3. I should break the text up more instead of using long paragraphs eg. by using bullet points!
4. Everyone else seems to write about a single topic (for instance food, travel etc) and although I started thinking I was going to write about redundancy it hasn't always ended up that way.
5. It's good to throw in a few quotes

So I will attempt to keep this blog brief, to the point, pretty and with not too long paragraphs.

Things have been happening on the job search front this week. I have had an interview, a phone interview and also signed on at the Jobcentre. All on the same day!

I was getting ready to go to the Jobcentre, checking that my jobsearch diary was up to date and that I had recorded all the websites I had looked at, where I had sent my CV and jobs that I had applied for, when the phone rang. It was someone from the garden centre that I had applied to, asking me to go for an interview the next day. This put me into a real panic as I think I mentioned last week that I am not a gardener. I sent a desperate message to my ex-colleagues on Facebook asking for (well demanding) help to prepare for the interview and for them to tell me everything they knew about plants and gardens. They promptly replied and tried to help. What soon became clear was that they knew about as much about plants and gardens as I did, or to quote Paul Daniels "Not a lot". What I learnt in summary is: some plants have flowers, some don't and some grow things that you can eat and apparently some of these fruit and veg can sing and talk (if Mr Bloom is to be believed).

My first signing at the Jobcentre was interesting. I told the adviser that I had an interview the next day and what it was for. He mentioned that it was a very different job to my previous occupation and then went on to tell me that he was being made redundant in a couple of weeks. The rest of the interview was about him and his plans (college for an access course, then hopefully Uni). He didn't ask to see my job search diary which I had laboriously recorded everything in, or ask what I had done to try and find work, just booked me another appointment for 2 weeks time.

When I got home I had another phone call from a seasonal job that I had applied to. This was more  like an interview with her asking me about skills and experience. She asked me about my availability and I explained that I had an interview the next day and agreed to keep her informed about how I got on in this.

The next day was the interview at the garden centre. I say interview but really it was just a chat. The manager seemed really nice but they had interviews for the following week planned so I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I should end this post here as it is brief, to the point, contains a quote, even it is from Paul Daniels, and has fairly short paragraphs. I still haven't managed to work out how to upload pictures to make it prettier but will keep working on it and you never know there might be some visuals to look at next week. For this week you'll just have to imagine a picture of a flower, maybe a tree and a grape vine.

Its a shame to end it here really as I wont get to tell you about the incident with me chasing my dog Billy, who was chasing the neighbours cat who was simultaneously chasing what I thought was a little mouse but turned out to be a vole. Or the moral dilemma this entailed, which should I protect first? The cat, the mouse or my neighbours cat flap which Billy nearly destroyed trying to reach the fleeing cat. But if I were to tell you about this I would be  straying from the point so I mustn't, but believe me it was a real Tom and Jerry moment.

I won't get to tell you either about this weeks foraging experience of picking wild strawberries and how I had forgotten how much stinging nettles hurt. Or how annoying I am finding the dawn chorus these days, yes the birds sound pretty, but 4.30am, really? No, none of this will be discussed by me in this new improved, succinct, ramble free post. Nice word ramble, as is amble but not scramble, no definitely not scramble.