Yep. Well, I told everybody not to get too excited. And before somebody tells me it’s all to do with a positive outlook (and I axe-murder and disembowel them), I did go with a positive, nay scarily smiley face wearing a suit and heels.

Luckily, I was very early. Which was fortunate as it took me 30 minutes from the time I found the building on the map till the time I found where I was actually supposed to be within it. The letter didn’t give so much as a floor, let alone an office number, and there was nothing as revolutionary as a receptionist….To be faced by a smug middle-aged woman telling me that she supposed that the University was difficult if you didn’t know your way around it. She briefly interrupted her intimate conversation with the woman taking us down to interview to tell me this. She only stopped again to have another little knowledgeable chat with the 12-year old who was going in after me, who she also seemed to be on dinner-party terms with.

Then they gave me 20 minutes to prepare an ambiguously-worded and figured conference budget (’using any software you like’) Great. on someone else’s PC, set up with Vista to boot. Oh, and in 20 minutes. No clue where to save, what they would like… never used Vista ho hum……it would take that long to set up the EQUATIONS in Excel…..paper and pen was actually quicker, in a Word table. Succinct, clear, and even with my duff mathematics, I did finish. Sweating, it’s true, but finished.

That however was the best bit…it went downhill from there on. I’m so glad I went and read everything I could about what they did, their research, their specialities….not. I didn’t get a chance to mention I knew anything. I even read the Times Higher Education Supplement for god’s sake. All their questions were angled towards people who already worked in Higher Education. Or the fact that I was really into Women’s Studies, and feminism in general, both French and English, I could have talked for hours about that….. They were more interested in whether I had used higher education accounting software though, or whether I could type. Well dammit, there might be a teensy weensy clue in the fact that I never actually appear to have been sacked for administrative incompetence, and that I was apparently clever enough to have been given an M.A. less that six months ago.

There are so few jobs around here. So few employers that aren’t ASDA, or Morrisons, or minimum wage-slavery. I am sick of being asked to dumb down my CV (one agency actually suggested I took out degree, MA and most of my work experience so as not to ’scare’ empoyers). I get a chance like this…and again it’s no chance. It’s a little clique once again….needless to say, they didn’t ring back. Why aren’t I surprised?

For a proper job that might treat me as someone with a little brain. I have a job interview at the University tomorrow afternoon. A proper, grown up, job interview for the kind of graduate job I have wanted since I graduated in about 1989. So I am bound to screw it up. A centre co-ordinator for a Centre for Gender and Womens Studies. It’s too good to be true. I might even like it…hell, they might even like me! Somewhere that actually treats my qualifications as an advantage and not a disadvantage……(do you think it’s all a big hoax????? is today April Fool’s Day???) I’m sleeping with my fingers, toes, and any other possible parts of my anatomy crossed……. I’ve only waited for twenty years for this and several thousand pointless applications for this to happen after all…there’s absolutely no chance that i’ll f**k it up………..

Khlari, my netname is due to a strangely named Uni friend of mine called Antigone Panayi (yes, you guessed it, she was Greek), a painter of icons and fascinated by language. One day she wrote my name out in Greek script, and it comes out as Khlari….. which became my nickname, with variants upon it, and my nom-de-plume when I was writing and standing for student election at the same time. I’ve always liked the sound of it. Years later, with the arrival of the net, it seemed perfect, short, sweet, and unusual, I share it with two or three people worldwide, and I two of them are definitely men! (One’s a baseball player, and one’s in a band on MySpace…). There’s also a role-player of indeterminate sex, and it appears to be some kind of Punjabi or Indian verb……

I just came across something quite cool today. Apparently in Cambodian Khmer, Khlari means ‘Strong’. I like that meaning, accidental, but ultimately, rather cool!

Still, the 42,510 words of novel, 5000 words of critical introduction and 3000 words of synopsis are all in now. Phew. I am a free woman!

Now I just have to:

a) wait for the results

b) actually finish the damn thing!

Nice to be back!

(and imagine all the rants I will have saved up by then)

Yes, the time has come to deliver M____ to her doting grandparents for the holidays. So it’s trial-by-parent for me for the next few days…. Down tomorrow afternoon, as Mr A____ has to work in the morning, spending tomorrow and Friday hanging about with parents, then catch up with Matt (my brother) and the lovely Kali on Saturday at some point, then head off to that monument of goth culture, The Dev. AKA the Devonshire Arms.

(The bar staff)

(For those of you who don’t know what Wikipedia describes as the longest running ‘Alternative’ pub in the world or
Look here

We had been thinking abouut going to Inferno at the Electric Ballroom, but lucked out on the date,

or to the Slimelight, look here for the world’s longest-running Goth club , but we again lucked out, as there is a band on and it’s only two floors, not the third neccessary for a traditional goth floor…….

So it’s off to The Dev for a pint with as many of the Scooby Gang as we can drag up for the occasion…….It’s the thought of that which will sustain me for the next two days of inquisition and torture (otherwise known as a visit to my mother). I wonder if she’d notice if I wore earplugs. She would you know, she notices EVERYTHING, like a superannuated eagle or something. I thought you were supposed to become deaf, blind etc…no, I think she’s been honing her spidey-powers to catch me out.

It comes to something when you have to smuggle your goth gear down and get changed at your brother’s to go out……aged 40. At least Matt has a flat now to go back to when trashed, used to be awful when we had no choice but to go back to Mum’s…..standing there going ‘Will I pass for normal?’ to each other at the end of the road before we got home like a pair of twelve year olds after a bottle of cider in the park. (Standard answer of course from both sides, was ‘you, never!).

Think to self- suffering- Dev- inquisition-Dev…you can get through it!

The Bride and Groom…Berni attempting to chop Gary’s hand off…….(well, she didn’t say that, but….)

This is the real M______- stealing Becca’s champagne (about right for my small monster……..)

This doesn’t seem to like posting more than one picture at once…here you can see the strange hat-thing, and M_____ who looked a deceptively innocent pretty in pink. It was FREEEZING on Saturday, we almost died of hypothermia up at the memorial, (it’s the highest point in town….) only to have to dash back to Morecambe to get Mr A’s mum’s inhaler (which she had forgotten)…then back to the hotel, where Mr A decided he REALLY didn’t like me like that (scary was the word he used), so goaded me on til we went back home again to goth up…(true, I did feel more comfortable, but……) M____ insisted on gothing up too, so we made our entrance like the Addams family!

Here are some more wedding pics……