Ooops: Lost a day!

I'm a bit surprised after the year we've had that this hasn't happened before: on Friday; I had decided I was going to complete and send off an job application I've been considering... In itself that is a strange thing for me to be doing as I intend to be accepted into fostering in a month or so. Part of it is an innate self preservatory sense of a 'Plan B' and its also to do with habit: it feels strange not having something administrative to strive for. Anyway: once I looked into the application, I found a couple of acronyms I had to look up. They were obvious parts of venue management which any manager would do as a matter of course, but have become areas of study in their own right with attached certification. I was becoming more irritated as a progressed because OF COURSE I had 'experience' of PEEPs, for example I could not produce a piece of paper proving that claim. Experience has taught me that I can have 100% of what is requested in a job application and still not be shortlisted, so when I have apparent 'holes' in my experience I no longer bother. 

With time on my hands and being alone in my house I got into cleaning and dusting and really enjoyed myself doing something creative but with low intellectual energy. When I woke up yesterday, the fact that it was sunny, after a grey and grisley week made me think it was Sunday! I did the things I do on a Sunday including uploading found pics to FB albums and preparing for Green Day with Mick and Lorraine... An hour after they're usually here; I called Mick thinking he'd been stuck on a bus by Newcastle Mela, only then did I find out it was Saturday!

At least it meant I could meet my friend Kevin who lives in Glasgow and was in Newcastle for a cancelled music gig but had decided to come anyway to make a trip after lockdown. He'd told me he was coming and I'd said we'd go for a drink or something but thought I'd forgotten about it. So I contacted him and made my first social trip to Newcastle in almost two years!

It was a sunny day. I was enjoying listening to the ear buds I'd bought from Mick. It was surprising how much of the city is being knocked down and rebuilt! The number of shut shops was striking. I met him in 'The Yard'. It transpires that 'The Eagle' is "closed permanently". I did wonder about the Harrison and whether he has finally lost his flat. I'm not ashamed that the thought pleased me. I didn't bother to look at the rest of the strip of bars, sitting there sipping a pint reminded me that it was the first lager to have passed my lips in about two years and how little I missed it.

Kevin is a nice-enough guy I know from ECC days. I do find his dialect difficult and he has that Glaswegian gutteral tone, but quiet, so it was sometimes hard to understand what he was saying. I have always thought him to have a serious alchohol dependency problem, although some of that may just be the way that he speaks which is punctuated by unexpected mid-sentence pauses as he searches for the next word. He is an attrocious listener! (lol) It is strange to speak with people who don't really listen to you. Part of it is that he takes the time when you're speaking to him to be thinking about what he wants to say rather than responding to what he hears. I noted that one of my lodgers is like that, though he has become MUCH better as time goes on. Like my lodger, Kevin drags his own personal cloud of pessimism around with him. I've said of my lodger that 'something bad happens to him every day', Kevin is the same except that it doesn't seem to bother Kevin: he thinks that is what life is like. I'm pretty sure he was pretty drunk by the time we hooked up. I found myself increasingly uncomfortable about being in a pub in a pandemic. Kevin coughs a lot, I think he always has as I remember, he doesn't cover his mouth. I found myself covering my drink with my hand which he interpreted as caution against being rooffied. He was wearing a rather nice 'Hawaiian' shirt which garnered compliments, sadly he honestly thought at least two people who commented had sexual intentions.

We went for a bit of a walk around the city centre so he could take some photographs... He IS a nice guy and it was nice to see him, but I was quite content to leave him after a couple of hours and to head back to the comfort and security of home.

For a while I had a strong feeling of having gained a day, but I didn't come up with much to do with this 'extra' time except I found myself reviewing this blog.