A palpable feeling of relief

I had a call a little while ago, from the chap with whom I had an interview the other day, in which he said he sorry, but the job was going to someone else. I wished him well, and he likewise, promising to think of me should the situation become vacant once again. In all frankness, I am a bit relieved. I don't really think it would have suited me. Sadly, this means I'm still part of the great morass of the unemployed, but swings and roundabouts!

I had a bit of a set-to with my chair this morning. Its arms forever forced my shoulders upward so that I assumed the position of a seated Igor. I lopped most of them off the other day, but left just enough to be an awkwardness, an irritation. I am not too considerate of my future iterations, it seems. So today I lopped off a bit more, and I now find the situation greatly improved. I have been celebrating in fine style: by reading Dorothy L. Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon. Aside from an unwelcome dash of 1930s anti-semitism (an occasional hazard of reading this author), it's a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

I'm sure that many of you, readers, have had occasion to compare yourselves with fictional characters, and I keep finding similarities between myself and Wimsey. Well, I say similarities, but in honesty I am not an aristocratic detective, fabulously wealthy, wedded to a novelist, a former Army intelligence officer-cum-spy, or any of that. But we do share the similarity that we both blather seeming nonsense that makes people think we're mad. Of course, he isn't the only fictional character I've latched onto in my time. Nicholas Seafort remains quite the shining star: bonkers, obsessed with honour et quid fas est (and what's right), and so on. Rudolf Rassendyll is probably the leading light of my childhood: I think he acquired my sympathy easily with his head of hair, and laid eternal claim to it by being a chap who had no idea what to do with himself, only to find himself in a situation in which his finest qualities shone through. It's one of the handy things about fictional characters: that they can achieve the heights that we mere mortals so often falter before.

For instance, my town has statue of a Victoria Cross medal winner, a man of indubitable courage and fighting spirit, who seems at first to be just the type that these fictional heroes are. Yet as is often the case, the qualities of boldness and inflexibility that stood him in such good stead in wartime, were a millstone round his neck in peace time, and he divorced when his children were only small. That's hardly the ending of a hero of fiction. Yet such things are not the end. I don't believe in "Happily Ever Afters" and nor do I believe in their tragic counterparts. A child might find himself abandoned by his father, and yet end up President of the United States. Then again, I fancy I'm rather glad to have kept mine, all things considered!

Au revoir, dear reader!