Orange skittles

[raven]

A rather strange day, all told. First of all came the job-hunting, and I actually have a job. It's not a very nice job, actually. It's a place up towards Crosby called Lady Green; they sell plants and stuff, and the job is on Sundays, nine to five, for a rather measly £3.25/hour. Also, it'll be a nightmare to get there. On the plus side, it's a job. I have a feeling I'm going to take the damn job. It'll be some money. Eight hours times three twenty five... um, twenty-six pounds.

Sigh. Having told them I'd call them about it, I wandered into Southport, looked in at Broadhurst's and the library, neither of whom wanted to give me a job, and met purplerainbow at the station. Her exams finished this week, and I was going to go to Liverpool with her, only the job-hunting got in the way. We spent the afternoon together, talking and walking in random directions. We went down to the marina first, eating ice-cream in freezing February weather, and when we'd walked for miles in a seemingly random direction, we walked back. Hannah suggested a café. I was all for it, so we went to Puccino's, which is a small, highly irreverent place on Lord Street. The saucers have "Please bang your cup down really hard" on them, and there's a door that says: "Baddies chasing you? Hide in here; but take away this sign otherwise they'll twig." Outside, they have a list of things they have to offer: "Mocha. Americanos. Sandwiches. Other humans. Salads. Windows."

So we went there, and immediately ran into my parents. A moment of awkwardness followed, but Hannah and I went off and sat somewhere else and started talking. She gave me a birthday present, which I loved: Schott's Original Miscellany, lots of utterly irrelevant useless information. We looked at lists of Carry On films, guides to palmistry, Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, lists of Bond girls; and we only looked at it for a few moments. When they took our order (hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows) we were informed that someone else was paying for it. Which was Pedar, of course, who was sitting in the corner hidden behind the paper. When I thanked him later, he growled a lot.

Hannah and I then walked off into Southport again, eating pasties and generally talking about nothing at all. We ended up in WHSmith looking for books about stress and eating orange Skittles. I tried to persuade Hannah to come home with me, but she couldn't. It was too late.

I'm horribly tired. Am going to watch Stargate.

Comments

[donnertheim.livejournal.com]

"So we went there, and immediately ran into my parents. A moment of awkwardness followed..."

Reminds me of something which happened the last time I went to visit my father. He lives in the Philippines, so it doesn't happen terribly often. Anyway, he, his girlfriend and I went out to do some grocery shopping and almost stopped in for lunch at the deli there. We would have, but we almost ran into his father with his father's other family. And my grandfather was there with his other family.

(Quick cultural note: it's almost impossible to obtain a divorce in The Philippines, because the prevailing religion is, except for in Mindanao, a rather conservative version of Catholicism. So when people want to get a divorce, they don't usually bother. They just stay married but still go ahead and hook up with other people and start other families and whatnot.)

So we instead finished up the grocery shopping and went to a small place owned by a drinking buddy of my father's. It was awkward enough just seeing them. It was, however, an interesting reminder that things are done a lot differently in other parts of the world.

Concerning the job, money's money. Besides, working in a plant store might have unexpected benefits, especially if they offer an employee discount. Plants are a quick and often reasonably inexpensive gift for any occasion.