A strange 48 hours

Tuesday starts off the same as pretty much every other day -- get up, go to work, do the usual pointless slog they call my job -- but then I finished at 2pm. I finished work half a day early, drove home, changed my clothes and then drove to Portsmouth with my Dad.

By the time I would normally have been getting home from work I was instead in Portsmouth, and making my Dad sit through the new surfing DVD I'd bought while we waited for a call from my brother to say if he could join us for dinner. After waiting an hour and not hearing anything, we headed out -- not directly for food, but first to the bar where I had left my coat a couple of weeks back.

The bar was deserted -- as you'd probably expect before 8pm on a Tuesday night -- but I explained to the bar tender my position. He said he'd go look for it. He had a strong Northern Irish accent and I felt sure he was the same person I'd spoken to on the phone about it originally, when I'd called on the Monday morning, and who had told me they had it.

After an inordinate stretch of time, the guy returned and told me, sorry, they didn't have any coats matching my description. I was quite firm, and explained someone had told me it was there, and it had my name on a label attached to it. He offered to let me take a look with him.

It was so strange, being led upstairs to the deserted club. Through heavy, locked security doors and through a comedy club that looked more like a ghost town, he took me to the room with the lost property. Probably expecting me to concede it wasn't there, I almost immediately went to my coat where it was hanging -- and mentioned there would be my grey gloves in the pockets. And so they were. Along with my name on a label. The bar tender apologised for not seeing it earlier, he said he didn't check that one because there'd been a handbag on the same coathanger (the bag, I'd like stated for the record was not mine).

Some people might have been annoyed -- that having lost the coat once they might have ended up losing it again, all because someone didn't look for it properly, but I was just glad to have it back. I was sure to be appropriately thankful, since I had what counted. And yes, I have learned my lesson -- if you're going to leave your coat unattended, use the damn cloakroom.

Dinner was uneventful, unremarkable, usual pub far from the place almost next door to the apartment buildings, then we went back to the flat so I could spend the rest of the evening studying.

Because the whole reason we were in Portsmouth, was for my job interview with an online PR agency. I've recently put a second copy of my CV online, with the alternate Portsmouth address instead of my "home" address, to widen my possibilities for work.

I was I was neat, clean, shaved and sober -- and I didn't care who knew it. And the interview itself seemed to go well -- It's never easy to tell with these things -- but I'd done my homework about the company, which showed, I asked questions about their training and recently won clients, and I think I answered their questions reasonably confidently. On the way out, the lady who had been interviewing me got me to wait in reception while she saw if the agency director was free to say hi to me. He was, but our meeting was brief -- I was just polite, thanked him for seeing me, though was perhaps slightly nervous. He asked me if I had any other interviews today, but I told him, no it was just the one. In hindsight, maybe I should have lied, and made myself seem in-demand.

Now it all depends now if I am the right fit for the role, I know there will be a lot of competition for the position, so I have to wait and see.

Strangely enough, the recruitment consultant who got me the interview worked almost right next door (I think she said they were renting from the agency), so we met for a quick discussion about how it had gone. Because she said she worked in a basement, we ended up going back inside the agency -- I asked the receptionist if she wanted me to sign back in. I hoped we wouldn't run into anyone I'd just met -- although I expect they wouldn't be altogether surprised, I felt like we were sneaking in. The consultant seemed nice -- not nice in that fair weather friend way most of them are, but genuine -- and we chatted about my impressions and how I thought it went.

Then it was time to leave again, to hit the road and get back to Essex.

And that's more or less where it ends -- I come home, go to the gym, and go back to work again tomorrow morning.