“Please make sure you take all personal belongings with you”
So says the announcement.
I think I left something, a few things.
My self-confidence, inner strength, poise,
Knowledge and intelligence, if I had those to start with.

I can imagine them lying in the luggage rack
Maybe someone else will find them.
Will they hand them in to lost property?
Or will they decide they could use these things of mine?

Sitting in the shadow of the Eye,
watching those capsules of happiness sail past
through the fog of my tears.
I notice the clouds floating past the spokes
And for a moment its not the clouds moving towards me
but the wheel moving away,
free falling towards the River.

In that moment, everything seems bent on destruction.
How appropriate.

(written on the train journey home on Tuesday. apart from the last line)

This morning I delivered my first service in my new circuit. And it went rather well, if I do say so myself. I wasn’t the only one to say so, I even managed to impress Mr Critical (otherwise known as my other half, who has a tendancy to be picky about preachers), who hadn’t seen me do any preaching before. And I had various other positive comments and reactions from the congregation. I may well blog about the service itself at some point, but needless to say I was rather pleased with it. Now its on to the next one, countdown two weeks..

The other item of news, in relation to my last two posts, is firstly, as you may have guessed, I didn’t get that job. I wasn’t overly disappointed at this, being quite surprised at having an interview at all, and given I really didn’t have a lot of experience of the computer programme that was a large part of the job I was told I still came a close second, which was pretty good. The other thing I was told, in a message they left to tell me I hadn’t got it, was that they had another job coming up that they were really keen for me to apply for. Well, as keen as you can sound when you’re not meant to ask someone to put in an application. Anyway, this was positive, so I applied, and surprise surprise, the next day I got a phone call asking me to come for an interview. Which is on Tuesday, at the same time as the last one. Interesting coincidences. Somehow I don’t think I’ll need directions to the office. I’m not too worried about getting it or not, I’m still impressed to have got interviews this early on. I’ll just do what I can, and when the right job comes up I’ll be ready.

Oh, and the other thing to mention about the quirks of preaching round here. I had a meeting with the lady who was meant to be preaching today earlier in the week, and among other pieces of ‘advice’ was told how when she started preaching the women had to wear black or grey, and ‘of course its not like that anymore’, but they were all a little shocked when one particular female preacher turned up to her first service with a ‘red swishy skirt and dangly earrings’. Horror of horrors! And a comment was also made about some people possibly being unsure about the fact I have my nose pierced. Terrible, what was I thinking?! I’m just sorry I didn’t have a red swishy skirt to wear this morning..

Well thank you very much for all the comments/text messages/facebook messages etc, t’is one of the things I love about this little community, is feeling like you’ve got people around you even when many of them are far far away.

Anyway, the interview went either very well or not very well, depending on which bit you look at. There were tricky techy questions on the bits I didn’t think I knew enough about (turns out I was right!) which weren’t so great. I haven’t heard anything from them yet but I kinda knew when I walked out of there. But it wasn’t one of those ‘dammit I should have said such and such’ or ‘if I’d just read up on that first’ moments, if I don’t know it, I don’t know it, end of story. I have, with the exception of a couple of moments last night, been fairly ok with it. It wasn’t *the* ideal job, I learnt more about it during the interview and maybe it wasn’t right for me as well as me not being right for it. Its more the fact that it was a job, in the right place.

Ho hum, there’ll be others, and we’ll get there, eventually.

This may be a surprise to some and an even bigger surprise to others, but today I have a job interview. Some readers know of The Plan, but those that don’t may have to bear with me.

Chris started his new Grown Up Job in the city on Monday, after a rather hectic weekend of moving him and all his stuff down the M4 (but thats another story that I may come back to..). And I didn’t think it was going to be quite this soon that the big scary job-hunting machinery would clunk into motion, getting me a step closer to joining him. But last week I put in an application. A job I didn’t think I stood much chance of getting, but why not? Useful application practice if nothing else. And then I managed to get an interview. So after some interesting juggling (and confessions) at work, I got the day free and I’m about to go and get my train.

So, for those I hadn’t told really about this yet, apologies, it all kinda happened rather quickly. But thoughts/prayers/crossed fingers (delete as appropriate) would be appreciated about 1.30 this afternoon.

Thank you.