Work

I recently failed to get selected for a post in Ireland. Yes, I know my job here is perfect but, supposing that we wanted to move back to Dublin, wouldn’t it be nice if I could get paid?

My family in Ireland, in the manner of families, delved into the details with more enthusiasm than I might have wished successfully bringing out the peeved adolescent in me: “How many candidates were there?” “Dunno, can you leave me alone please?”

I rang home the other day and got my brother. I heard him calling my mother “It’s John McKenna on the phone”.

“Who’s John McKenna?” I asked when she picked up. “Nobody,” she said hastily “just your brother being foolish”. In the background I heard him say “No, no tell her he’s that golfer who never makes the cut”.

And to think that the poor Princess has two younger brothers.

A while back a colleague said to me “you don’t have a blog or something daft like that?” and instead of replying in a suitably Jesuitical manner “why would you ask me something like that, do I look like I’m 16?”, I was caught on the hop and I said “yes”. He is the first person I’ve ever worked with who has known about the blog. It’s a little unnerving. We are friends as well as colleagues and I trust him to keep my secret safe (are you listening J?) but yet, the whole Chinese wall thing is mildly unsatisfactory. My colleague rubbed his hands in glee when he found out and said “it’s like being gay and wanting not to be outed”. Who would have thought this blog would bring me such a range of new experiences?

And then there’s another friend and former colleague who has heard that the blog exists and is, I am paranoidly convinced, slowly but surely scanning the blogosphere until he finds me. Not that there’s anything here I haven’t already told people; as one friend memorably remarked to me, “you would tell your life story to the person beside you at the bus stop”. Do other people’s colleagues know that they blog? Do they still have paid employment? Answers on a postcard, please.

In other news, my feckless brother is coming to visit tomorrow and as my mother says “you must be absolutely delighted”. Yes, yes, I am, of course I am. I just had to remind her that he has faults but she remains annonyingly unconvinced.