It Never Rains but it Pours

It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening before rain. 

Part 2, Chapter 8, 1984, (published 1949).

I love the sound of this sentence, and the picture it paints for me.  It makes me think of a time when you could tell the rain was coming because you smelt it everywhere - very fresh and green but also very heavy and wet. 

Speaking of wet, I have been futilely attempting to get myself a job for nearly two years.  As Dad said, "it never rains but it pours", and I had two opportunities open up very rudely one on top of the other.  Here is how it happened.

There was an ad in the local paper for a swimming instructor at the pool just across the road from my house.  Oh how convenient! though I.  I had an interview, was practically hired, and that weekend was scheduled for the training.  That weekend didn't work out.  So I said the weekend after.  Now this was where it began to get sticky.

The video library, a store that I have always wanted to work in (the next best thing after a bookshop), was looking for someone too, when I went to return a couple of DVDs on the Tuesday.  They said that they were hoping to hold interviews the following week.  So feeling like a flustered goose, I waltzed home, printed my resume, and gallumphed on back, extremely excited. 

Well, I cancelled that weekend for the swimming training for two reasons.  First and foremost because I had a cold, but fringing those sneezes was the feeling that I needed to learn the outcome of the video library situation before I committed. 

Anyway, as it happened, the video library didn't talk to me that week.  So this morning I really had to do the training.  I got up at 5:50 am, for a 7:15 start.  So after five hours of non-stop, non-paid, non-fed, non-watered training, I ended up in a pretty bad place.  I would love to say 'near-death experience', but it was really more along the lines of wanting to vomit, having black outs and failing at walking straight - all the result of low blood-sugars and hydration.  I reallly did enjoy it though, until I got out of the pool.  It was freezing, but the girl that I was with was sweet and the kids themselves were very fun.  It was certainly an experience, albeit a weird one.

It is now present day.  I am almost completely recovered and I'm hoping tentatively for a call about my job interview for the video library.  It's a whole lot of drama, hey?