It's a Funny Old World

So life settles into a new routine. Mornings are my "job-hunting" time - looking for a job should be regarded as a job in itself. One that you can do in your underwear, admittedly, but a job nonetheless. So as wifey takes munchkin out on various mums and baby activities (rythm time, baby yoga, opera for rug rats), daddy scours the internet for opportunities (avoiding the time suck of facebook, cartoons and, ahem, blogging) or, more usefully, calls up former colleagues and sets up "networking opportunities." The flood of rejections has been tempered by a few more positive responses, although that in itself has led to some searching questions from recruiters. Chiefly along the lines of "Would you really be willing to move to Snodgrass-on-Swamp?" After a pause, my honest response of "it depends" generally hasn't led to whoops of joy from the other end. Part of the problem is that beloved wifey is a brainy bird (could I ever fall for any woman who wasn't?) and, after her maternity leave ends, she has a high flying job to go back to. Upping sticks and heading off for the sake of hubby's job (yet again) is possible, but needs to be made financially worthwhile. Even in the 21st century the notion of wifey actually being a significant wage earner (actually at the moment the only wage earner) seems bizarrely foreign to some recruiters, who appear to have themselves been recruited from the 19th century, and are willing to tout the opportunities in Snodgrass-on-Swamp for those gentlewomen willing to help furnish the shelves at the local comestible emporium of Messers Sainsbury. Catching a cold hasn't helped my mood. Probably due to spending too much time in just my underwear.

I have had one interview, for which I did actually put on clothes over the underwear. I think both sides of the table had some serious questions. Theirs along the lines of "Will I catch anything from his coughing"; mine along the lines of "Would we really move to 'Mittenham-in-Minefield'?"

Still, the afternoons allow me to put those frustrations behind me, and to rejoice in the company of munchkin and wifey - a chance that I could have missed out on. As the smaller one of the pair seems to be changing daily, I have to admit that in many ways I'm very lucky. I could have missed out on seeing an awful lot of her emergence from a sort of eating/sleeping/weeing/pooping machine into a fully fledged personality. It's been fun showing her off as well; we made the trek down to my old college for a reunion. Feeding my baby daughter in the sunshine sat on its lawn, twenty-two years after I left, was a very strange, but oddly satisfying experience. Changing her poopy nappy in front of the library perhaps less so.

In the interim I've been volunteering for things. I may yet be seen at "Imagineering", but all the plum posts at Birmingham Arts Fest seem to have already gone to the arts crowd; no room for engineers in anything other than crowd control!

If anyone has any ideas for an ex-engineer, slightly soiled, do let me know!