Somewhere I belong

‘we’ll start over again, grow ourselves new skin’ Feeder – Buck Rogers

It’s been 18 months since I found out I was being made redundant from my website job. And fifteen months since I walked into my current crappy temp job. Since day one I have wanted to leave. There have been moments when I can’t even fathom dragging myself out of bed and onto the bus and other moments when I laugh so much that tears pour down my face and I am reminded that it’s not so much the job as the people you share it with. Over the summer, when me, Pete and Helen ran area 7 it was fantastic. Every day was good, funny, and almost enough to make me consider applying for a permanent contract. We all hated it, but we kept each other going. Now the job is tiresome, a pain in the ass most days and not worth the pittance I get paid. All I’ve wanted since I started, and more so since Christmas, was to be able to say ‘sod this, here’s my notice.’

So it was like a huge weight had been lifted when I finally was able to say this on Friday. To walk up to Caroline and say ‘how much notice do you want?’. I got the subtitling job. I nearly fell off the seat when she called, fully expecting the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ call after my terrible punctuation test, and probably highly dodgy spelling. (These are things I used to do on a daily basis, but my mind froze when the tests were put in front of me.) Instead I was told that they had liked 4 of us candidates, but were only supposed to be hiring 3. One quick call to head office later and they could hire 4. I don’t start until the first week in June, which is perfect for me. I do my placement, spend 6 weeks doing crazy amounts of overtime at work and then leave and start my great new job. And if I decide that teaching really isn’t for me, then I have a job that I will (hopefully) enjoy for a few more years yet. How much more perfect does it get?

I spent Friday afternoon in a state of virtual delirium. Smiling inanely for no reason and even not killing the new girl, Anna. (She started last week to replace Karen when she eventually leaves and I have been training her, but she doesn’t shut up, she doesn’t pay any attention to me and then wonders why she can’t remember how to do anything.) Friday was her day of doing everything on her own to make sure she could cope with my workload for the two weeks I am now off for. It didn’t inspire confidence and I just know that my first day back will involve overtime to correct all the foul ups that have been made. Oh well.. all I’ll have to do is think of the money and remember that the big orange circle of my desk calendar signals my last day in the place.

I had my sisters stay for the weekend. The greatese mother’s day present my mum has ever had – a weekend off. It made me appreciate everything she does all the more and make me determined that when I have children, I don’t want 4 of them. Generally they are well-behaved children, but some moments make me want to scream at them. Like listening to them complain about how they never do anything cos Dad’s always working, or how they never get to have everything their friends have. How nice it would have been to have those complaints as a child. To have grown up with both my parents and been taken abroad at least every other year. They don’t seem to be able to appreciate that the first time I left this country was after I had used my student loan to pay for the flight. No holidays in Crete for me. Plus I got to do stuff with my dad once every 6 months, not once a week like they do. (David, their dad, works shifts, so sometimes has to work weekends. This is where the problem is.) I don’t think they realise what lucky children they are. But of course you can’t tell them that because, well what would I know about it all! But having them for the weekend gave me some much needed practice with children for today. You see today, I started my placement.

Until there is a next time..

xx