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Thursday, November 24, 2005

It's been a busy few days.

Tuesday's appointment with the National Insurance people went smoothly; seems like I'll have the magic number in a few weeks.

And my parents' visit was lovely. It really is good to be able to see so much more of them, now that we live in England.

On Tuesday my mom and I went clothes shopping, and I got my hair done (Bobby says he thinks it looks nice, but his opinion is completely unreliable, as he also thought it looked nice in its previous shaggy incarnation). And yesterday my mom and I took the train into London to see this exhibition at Somerset House, and to have fun looking in all the shops in Covent Garden.

Somerset House (which, rather incongruously, is also the home of the Inland Revenue people) is really gorgeous, and they've just set up an ice-rink outside it for the Christmas season - seemed quite magical, with Christmas music playing and torches burning along the sides of the rink.




My dad is not terribly keen on either shopping or art galleries so he was quite happy to stay here, have lunch with a friend, and fetch and carry the children. And in the evenings I cooked nice meals and we chatted and hung out and played Jenga with the kids. All good.

My parents went home this morning and I went to a job interview - an admin job at a doctors' practice. Good money, good hours, but not the most riveting work in the world. They'll let me know if I've got it by the end of next week, apparently. In other job-related news, the long-suffering friend who's acting as one of my referees emailed me yesterday to say that he'd been asked to provide a reference by a local college - haven't heard from them yet, but it's promising that they're chasing up references. That particular job would be great - it's a career adviser type person - so I'm really hoping I get an interview there.

One more thing, before I brave the rain to go to the chemist to drop Emily's prescription off - I have noticed, these past few days, one area where English life is seriously deficient.

At the JobCentre where I had my interview for the National Insurance number: no public bathrooms. None. (And let me tell you, that is not neccessarily happy news if you had three cups of tea with breakfast.)
At the little restaurant where my mom and I ate lunch yesterday: no loos.
At the bookstore where we spent some time browsing: no toilets for patrons.
And at the library opposite the doctor's practice where I had my interview this morning - no loos! They run a clinic out of that building as well, and there's a big sign in the foyer which says "No Toilets for The Public".

These Brits must all have iron bladders, is all I can say.

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