Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Obivously, because I had an interview the following day, my attempts at an early (well earlier) night werethwarted by insomnia, and my attempts to get a decent amount of sleep were thwarted by the morons in the house next door and their penchant for running powertools at 8am in the morning, half a metre away from my head on the opposite side of my wall. At least that meant I was in no danger of sleeping past 1 (the time I wanted to be getting ready by), which does occasionally happen.

So, fate took me back to London Bridge Tower. I noticed, walking to the tube station, that it’s suddenly gone, more or less overnight, from autumn cool breeze to winter bitter winds, and I was thankful that the smart-casual clothing I had chosen included a thick jumper. The tube ride was punctuated by groanings from my stomach which was trying to say something along the lines of “james, why the hell are you going to an interview when you’ve negleced even to snack since you got up?” That’ll teach me to spend time doing personal grooming whe I should be eating, I guess. I somehow only had time for one of the two.

The doorman asked, when I checked in, “James Hunt?! Is that like the racing driver?”

I can never tell when it’s going to strike. Surely people must know it’s not the first time you’ve heard it. The same way Ian gets repeatedly told he looks like Tim Henman (especially around Wimbledon), I have to suffer this on occasion. My only comfort is that whatever idiocy I suffer can’t be anywhere near as bad as what I expect Relly’s had to live with. I’ve so far avoided using the “Ha Ha! I haven’t heard that one before.” response on people, because I discovered the best way to get them to shu up is to go “Yeah, that’s right!” and leave them grinning to themselves. Another alternative might be “He’s dead, you know,” or perhaps, “Sorry, who?” but let’s just say after 20+ years, I’d rather let people have ther fun, especially if I don’t have to talk to them about it.

Besides that unfortunate reference, though, he was an entertaining guy. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet me, even though I’d never met him. Much better than the rather surly doorman/receptionist I was greeted by last time I went.

The interview went about as well as last time. There were some technical questions which, shock horror, actually required me to recall the university definition of “Object” in order to describe the relationship between it and a class. The interviewers kind of eased me into what the role might require by taking me through example cases, and I got the hang of what they were after soon enough. Looks like an easy enough task, and quite interesting to boot. We’ll have to see how I feel about it after 3 months, but I reckon I’d be happy doing that kind of database and SQL work.

While I was waiting in the reception, a woman ran up to her friend and asked if she knew that Eminem was going to be doing 2 songs for TOTP outside the HMS Belfast, literally just up the road. I had previously read this on NME.com so I would’ve probably hung around for the hour extra I’d have needed, post-interview, to see the recording. However, I had a Girlfriend offering comics and nandos if I went to see her, so it was hardly a difficult decision.

I forewent the chance to get petrol at the Hoover building tescos at a 40-minute journey extension cost, and instead decided to see how far I could make it on what was in the car. I got 25 miles out of Ealing when the light came on, indicating 15-30 miles of petrol left. I’m never certain how much. Instead of running the car dry, I found a Petrol station somewhere just outside Lewknor, where it took me 5 minutes to fill up and be back on the motorway. My gamble paid off, and I made it to Oxford far earlier than if I’d gone to Tescos, though I admit was mostly down to serendipity because I really had no idea where the next petrol station was between High Wycombe and the Oxford services, which was the stretch of road I was likely to run out of petrol on.

I met Nikki in Nandos, where I ate like a king. I’ve been poor for so long I haven’t had the chance to enjoy many Nandoses (plural, anyone?) and I can’t remember the last time just Nikki and I went out and did something like that, so it was an excellent meal in all respects. It could’ve only been improved if Nikki had bought me my week’s comics. Which she had!

We got back home, and I arranged for us to go up to Nan’s tomorrow and assist the moving out procedure, because, you see, they’re moving to a new house, up the road, which doesn’t have stairs. Stairs are a death trap for the elderly, it would seem.