THE ROAD GOES ON

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A totally forgettable Friday just happened. I had an interview. Lucrative job. £270 a week, one day's work a week, 39 weeks a year. Lovely. BUT of course there was an interview. My track record at interviews is not good. Originally, I was given to understand the job was a 'shoe in' but of course other people applied for it. Trouble was, it was at the place I was already working. This means the interview was taking place in front of three people I already knew, one of them well, as a friend and fellow Spurs fan.

It didn't go well. I had the feeling a condemned man must have when he ascends the steps to the gallows, hangman's noose dangling in the wind before him. I was first up to do my presentation which I spent a beautifully sunny Thursday preparing. 'Yours will be the presentation by which will will judge all others' informed my friend David as I prepared my ten minutes of what I thought would be informative diatribe. 'No pressure then' I muttered to myself. Ten minutes later I had finished and was lead away from the room still trying to part my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

Written test next. Spent about 30 minutes writing incisively feeling clever because i, unlike the other witless candidates in the room with me, I had the foresight to bring my netbook and could raise pertinant quotes from the internet. Take that you fuckwits! Scribble scribble the bullshit flowed like sludge.

Next up the actual interview. God knows how I hate it, especially sitting in front of three people you already work with. I struggled through like a dope on a rope most of the time, words failing to express the thought in my brain as if I had been drugged with some mysterious serum. It didn't help that David was sitting at the table drinking coffee that someone had brought him in a West Ham mug! Knackered, I stumbled from the room as the next candidate, tipped by my boss John Williams as hot favourite for the post (thanks mate),cheerily went the other way I ignored her, climbed into the car and went home.

I spent the night in Luton at Trish's house drinking copious amounts of vodka and tonic, eating fish and chips and waiting for the call confirming that yet again I had fallen foul of the interview. My mobile rang but I let it go to voicemail. After dinner I retrieved the message. It was David asking me to call him back. His voice had the tone of a judge who had just donned the black cap and was about to deliver the bad news. And so it proved.

When I woke this morning the sun was streaming in through the blinds. A beautiful spring day was outside. It wasn't long before I was cycling through the Bedfordshire countryside on my way home. As I approached my village I looked to my left and saw great swathes of yellow mustard stetching as far as the eye could see, with the ridge houses perched atop the horizon. I stopped and took a couple of pictures and listened to the hidden skylarks sing and the peace of the nature. Suddenly Friday didn't really matter anymore.

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