she's a knife drawn down a side-street when there's no one else around

Hi, internets. Long time no hear. I blow kisses in your general direction.

Firstly: I aten't ded. I was down south for a while, which is entirely not the same thing, being petted by shimgray, who has been looking after me while I contend with a to-do list which goes "ring CPS / get a job / sort life out", for, among other things, an interview for a training contract. I went there last Tuesday to Oxford, but the actual interview was in a place called Gerrards Cross, which is a small town in the London commuter belt, and also the Twilight Zone. Really. I went by train, and got off at a quiet country station in unseasonal silent heat with the occasional tumbleweed skipping across the platform. There was absolutely no one about. There were no more trains on the noticeboards. The asphalt baked. The trees didn't ruffle in the breeze. In a window there was an advertisement selling a whirlpool bath for the bargain price of £10,271. I had three hours to kill.

I eventually discovered a cafe that was open and selling sandwiches, and sat there quietly for my afternoon eating a panini and reading Empire of Ivory and wondering where the hell I was. The interview wasn't so bad, really - at least I found the place easily enough, and managed to straighten out my nice interview skirt and shirt so I didn't look too horrific in the thirty-degree heat, and present myself to the reception and not misspell my own name.

(A brief digression: thirty-degree heat! In England! I have spent all the hot days wearing sundresses and flip-flops and feeling wonderfully, beautifully, smugly all-over brown. It's no wonder, in retrospect, that my sense of bodily self-esteem skips and leaps up at this time of year, but, oh, warmth. Sunshine, blue skies, how people complain about it when the heat gets in and just sings beneath your skin, I have no idea. Admittedly not great with new crisp interview shirt, but still.)

They gave me a verbal reasoning test, which was enough like the LSAT for me to be comfortable, and a writing exercise which was enough like my actual life for ditto, and then they asked me a lot of questions (while all the time I was womanfully trying to ignore some sort of disaster going on in the corridor behind the door; through the glass panel in it I could see people running past with mops and buckets and vacuum cleaners and bleach), and then it was over. I bought Cosmopolitan, caught a train and learned my red lipstick is one of their must-haves for the month. It wasn't such a bad day, really, although I don't have high hopes for my being called back. We shall see.

Hmm, what else? The day after that I went into Oxford, to run some errands. I got halfway up St Aldate's when I met two baby lawyers going the other way, and after a brief and surprised exchange ("Aren't you supposed to be in Liverpool?" / "Aren't you supposed to be on a nudist beach in Germany?") I discovered that they had a) discovered the presence of a swimming-pool somewhere in central Oxford; b) they were going to find said pool; c) they had been in all the other possible directions from Carfax, and this time they were going to find it. Oh, and they were going to Primark on the way to find swimming costumes, at worst, and probably bikinis. And I should come with them.

I dithered, I pondered, I remembered the thirty-degree heat, I agreed. And then asked, "If you came out of the house knowing you were going swimming, why do you need to go and buy things from Primark?"

"Because," Siousxie said mournfully, "I bought a bikini over the internet. And" - waving offending garment - "they only sent me the bottom half!"

"It's a very nice bottom half," I said doubtfully, after a while, and we found the pool. It's an outdoor pool, unheated, by Hinksey Lake, and nine tenths of the year it has no patrons, and of course that day it was heaving. We ended up draped over the grass, occasionally jumping into the water whilst trying to avoid small children, and it was a very lovely afternoon. Because we had a lot of things to keep an eye on, we took turns watching everything while the others swam, and when it was my turn, I was dozing off in the sun, wishing I'd brought a newspaper or something, and half-thinking to myself that the couple who had the patch of grass next to us would stop it with the incredibly public display of affection. She had started to put sun cream on for him, he had greatly appreciated it, you get it. And then I shut my eyes for a moment, opened them again and the man was getting dressed and the girlfriend was shrieking into her hands, "Well, fine! Have a nice life!"

He got up and stalked off. I blinked, and then the guy was back in just trunks and she was draped over him and looking at him adoringly. I am sure this was not a heat-induced hallucination. But when Siousxie and C had returned, I explained all of this and they looked at me kindly but disbelievingly.

I went off to take my turn swimming, and after a bit, Siousxie said she was running to the loo, she'd be back in a moment. In the two minutes she was gone, the same couple drifted by with one of them shouting, "You don't give me enough space!"

When she came back... I tried to explain. But they were gone. I related this entire tale to Shim later, and he had no opinion, on account of the fact he could not get over the notion of me draped by a pool in a bikini as a first premise. I... have no idea.

The weather didn't break for all the time I was away, really. We had a lovely Saturday afternoon picnicking, and evening watching The Fellowship of the Ring, and I returned dejectedly on Sunday to the drab and damp north, where I must Apply For Jobs and Be A Grown-Up And Not Spend Every Waking Hour Watching Deep Space Nine. I'm here a handful of days, then off and about again - Shim and I are going to Amsterdam on Thursday, and possibly I am in Hong Kong the week after that (still not confirmed; anyone on the flist who's been there, I need you, yes), so there is no shortage of excitement, certainly.


...applying for jobs, yes.