So, some of you I’m sure have been waiting with baited breath to see what would come of our complex little planette, the one which involved me being a Senior Staff Nurse. Well, stuff all is what’s come of it. Apart from an invitation to keep working above my grade to get ‘more experience’, which while delightful doesn’t really engage me in the way I think it was intended.
Since being declined on that job front, Kathryn and I have been instigating ‘plan B’. Plan B is so named, because it is the alternative plan, and I note it involves the first letter of the city to which we intend to return.
Yes folks, we’re moving back to Bristol. Well, that’s the plan, anyhow.
Unfortunately, I’ve fallen for a house that’s completely and utterly like this one, and priced well above where I’d expect to be at. It has ‘potential’ though. The worst thing about it is not that I’ve fallen for it, but that it’s for sale *now*. It will quite possibly be gone by the time we’re actually in a state to move, and that will be somewhat upsetting. But as it stands, I like it’s proportions, I adore the available garden space, the fact it’s got a garage, and a driveway so long that people will need to stop to charge their EVs / fill their cars just to drive down it.
Okay, that might not be entirely accurate, but it’s certainly better locationwise than where we are now.
It does require this house selling for pretty much it’s maximum value, and the house we want being sold to us for less than it’s asking price, by quite a bit.
Also in the plan is at least 50% of us having a job. Now, ideally we’d have a 100% jobishness rate, but we’re aiming for only 50% – I can always go off and do agency shifts, it’ll be hard going for a while, but if it means we can get moved sooner, then that’s a good thing.
So today I’ve tweaked my CV and in a few minutes time will be unleashing my awesome telephonic skills on two of the trusts at which I’ve experience (the third and fourth a bit far away).
In other news, the cucumbers, broccoli and lettuce (despite my hurling of the latter on the floor) have started sprouting, it looks like the back windowsill with it’s permanently warm heater is the bomb, as it were, for the growing. We’re both really over excited, and can’t wait for the little seedlings to get big enough to be planted out and have some seedling fun in the garden. They need to be quite a bit bigger though; as yet they are but spindly leaves poking through the soil on the thinnest of stalks. It is utterly awesome though. This whole growing m’larkey is just brilliant.
Our garden continues to do really surprisingly well, especially given our general lack of apptitude. I think, essentially, things grow. They like growing and so long as we don’t do something actively unpleasant to them then they’ll get on with it. Sometimes we probably come under the catagory of helping, and sometimes I’m sure the plants are going:
‘Oh just f**k off and let us get on with growing will you’
But it’s still really cool to see the peas unfurling their leaves, and the carrots popping their little grass like stems up and going ‘hey, we’re gonna beeeee carroty!’. It is, in fact, lovely. Of the things in Slough, our garden and it’s happy growing is one of the very few things I’ll miss. However, the new house* has space for chickens, and I’ve been quite taken with this idea of having chickens, so perhaps that might be something we can do :)
I ought to mention, incidentally, that on the work front I did ‘quite well’ on ALS – and got invited to be an instructor when I’ve got a bit more experience. By ‘quite well’, I mean that a consultant I know of old, who has nothing to do with ALS rocked up in A&E to see a patient, and mentioned my performance as something that had been mentioned to her. So I’m assuming it was really quite well. I’m quite tempted by it as an opportunity, not just because I think it’d look good CV wise, but actually because it’s something interesting and gets me more into the area I’d like to be heading in. I don’t *don’t*
- dont want to be doing management. No way.
Finally, in other other news, the Dead Bug Jumping podcast continues to actually grow in popularity. I’m not exactly hitting the exalted heights of triple figure listeners, or anything, but I’m getting a steady double figure number (the first figure might even have exceeded a 1 for episodes 1 and 2, which is a shame, because they’re the most sucky episodes). I did have a DBJ accident though, after the interview I headed into Reading and found that Reading sports an Oxfam Music, Video and Comic book store. This, unsurprisingly lead to me getting a few Gramophones and a Strangers In Paradise pocketbook (we now have 1, 2 and 3). I’m intrigued by the gramophones, but haven’t broken out the gramophone yet to hear them…
I think I might use one of them as the first gramophone of the next show though :)
* if we are to get it, damn, I think I’m really rather hooked on it. We / I / Kathryn might hate it when we get there, I suppose. But it’s got Sash windows! and Fireplaces! and big rooms! and a garage! and has Potential!