#47 Somewhere between Station to Station and Low

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What can I say? It’s been an incredible journey. I’ve learned so much.

For those lovely people who misunderstood and thought  I actually got the job mentioned three posts ago – I didn’t, or I should say haven’t so far, only interviews, but that’s a start. Last week I made it to the third and final round of interviews, gave it my best shot (ok, messed up the second interview but really went for it on the third). Even managed to come up with three passable ‘interview outfits’ out of a rather limited wardrobe/budget.

After several rounds during which I’ve gone from pleasantly surprised at being contacted out of the blue to heavy emotional investment, now all I can do is wait. It really does feel like the finale of a Saturday night light ents programme, and unfortunately in those there are losers as well as winners. Will I end up with a glitzy West End role, or feeling like I’ve been crushed by a Kansas farmhouse?

This self-indulgent preamble is, I suppose, a roundabout way of saying that this year there do seem to be a few jobs and interviews about (unless you are in the public sector and about to go through what the rest of us already have). I have news of a number of How To Be Unemployed regulars breaking ranks recently and getting great work in high-flying City jobs and hotly-tipped stage productions, cleaning up on the schools drama workshops front, and  seeing their small business inundated with bookings.  Even Brenda Tucker has finally got the job of her dreams, albeit in Leicester which is something like a two-hour commute from Ambridge.

At the same time, more dissatisfied full-timers have finally taken the plunge and handed in their notice – to them, a big How to be Unemployed welcome.

Of course things are still tough, and I don’t mean to rub your nose in it if things are still grim for  you . The friends I’ve just mentioned all deserve their success, they’re talented souls who did put in the hours,  and have been through the whole bleak jobseeking grind (even Bren). They’re not ‘doing better’ than the rest of us, they’re just further along in the same process.

There was a nice line in the BBC’s otherwise tedious Boy George drama the other week where Jon Moss (Matt Horne) gives a heroin addicted, post Culture Club, pre DJ-reinvention, George a pep talk. When Bowie did Station to Station, he says, everyone thought he was washed up. He was in a bad place, he went to Berlin, then he came up with Low. Somewhere between Station to Station and Low is where you/we are.