wabson

Various reasons. I’ve been busy at work, busy at Glastonbury, busy flying around various European countries. The usual. My absence from the blogosphere has not helped by the fact that Facebook has recently been giving me that quick fix of Internet-based broadcast expression but with a lot less effort than is required to actually sit down and write something. But it’s time to stop the rot.

For once, I’ve had a weekend that I actually want to pen something about - and enough time on a slightly grey-looking Sunday evening to do so. Last weekend was all about G’s birthday weekend, too much Pimms and recovering from the effects whilst paddling around Chichester harbour and beyond in a vessel clearly not designed for such purposes but which worked surprisingly well.

This weekend has been similar, but with the Saturday festivities and socialising having been moved 40 miles south down to Brighton and the Sunday paddle consisting of the slightly more challenging 18 mile Maidstone to Tonbridge marathon, the latter having been completed in 2 hours, 48 minutes and 26 seconds (though estimated to be some three and a half minutes short due to the closure of the river at the last portage ).

Brighton was good. Sufficiently different from the last time round, a scary five years ago. There was still plenty of Park-based fun, the rather gusty yet still utterly fantastic beach - where fish and chips were eaten - a little bit of drinking, and plenty of meeting new people. My pictures are about to go on FB, which though no doubt missing a large part of the evening after I trundled back off to London I must say I’m still rather happy with.

Next time it won’t be so long

Am I the only person not to have picked up on this already? Suddenly half of that last book makes a lot more sense.

JK - you’ve surprised me. And I certainly don’t agree that Harry Potter is “ruined forever”. What terrible views to have.

Found on the bottom of a pack of Salmon fillets this evening:

Allergy advice: Contains fish

Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming to…

The acceptance email has been sent. As of today, I am offically employed once again! My new employers will be the lovely people at Alfresco Software, and I’m genuinely excited about the stuff I’m going to be doing there. I start on Monday.

It was worth the wait :-).

UPDATE: It seems I’m not the only one celebrating a new job. London in Janurary is going to be the place to be.

I’ve uploaded a ton more photos from Sydney, Melbourne, the Radio 1 Athlete gig and Dan’s Birthday to the Flikr page. The Thailand photos can wait til another time, as can a picture of me to add to my profile.

Apparently I have 168 photos up there now - not bad for a critic, eh? Either I’m going to have to upgrade soon or else progress on the new “regenero-wabson” is going to have to be speeded up…

Update: Did I mention I’m in London this weekend? Call me if you want to meet up!

Today I have been mostly…

• Attending a job interview with a well-known Internet retailer - results tomorrow apparently
• Talking to recruitment consultants on the phone to arrange the next round of interviews
• Continuing to grapple with Flikr - more on that later
• Ironing a shirt for tomorrow’s interview
• Making cheese, ham and tomato toasties - perhaps I could get a job in a cafe instead?
• Checking news and blog sites at regular intervals throughout the afternoon - you people need to blog more!
• Reviewing my CV and spotting annoying mistakes that I can’t correct from here

So still I have no job and still I’m struggling to find things to do all day while other people around me busy themselves all day with paid employment. Tomorrow I’m buying the Guardian and scouring the jobs pages in there and by end of Friday I should hopefully have some feedback on most of the positions I’ve applied for.

If all this doesn’t work, then Plan B may need to be put into effect. But for now, we wait.

After two hours of fiddling, I’ve finally managed to post about half of the decent Australia photos up on Flikr. I’ve given up trying to work out why it sometimes shows me my groups and doesn’t at other times, so I’m off to cook dinner, drink some wine and prepare for interview number three tomorrow morning.

Finding a job is hard work.

Radio 1 came to Northampton today, in the shape of Jo Whiley and her crew and staged an intimate gig at the Picturedrome just up the road from here, featuring Athlete. Me and Dave went along to get tickets from Market Square where they were giving them out beforehand and I ended up on the radio talking to Jo.

Athlete’s performance was top-notch - possibly the best gig I’ve ever been to, in fact. Tomorrow I’m off to Virgin to buy a copy of Tourist. This is what music is all about!

I ended the great journey as I began it, on a National Express coach. This time I was travelling back from Heathrow, but the driver was the same one who had taken me there six weeks ago. He remembered me from that early morning journey, and politely told me that he thought the Big Pink Gay Hat From Thailand - which I was carrying with me under one arm - looked silly. But I think it looks cool.

I’ve been back for four days now and the mixed feelings I had initially about being back are slowly giving way to a determination to find a job and somewhere to live as quickly as possible. So today I got up at 7am (which actually turned out to be 6am thanks to the sad demise of British Summer Time last night) and finished off my CV ready to send to somebody. Anybody, actually.

Apologies to anyone I haven’t seen or been in touch with since getting back, it’s all been a bit hectic.

It had to be done really, didn’t it?

Tomorrow morning I fly up to Cairns and the hot and wet conditions in Northern Queensland - very different from Sydney at the moment, which continues to creep into Spring.

More blog (and email) updates to follow, I promise!