Out of Northampton and into somewhere smaller

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:53:49 +0200
So last I left off we had given up on paying through the nose for our hotel accommodation and foreigners, who thought it was mucho nice two girls would share a bed, and trying to find one to bloody share!

So we waited outside the bus stop for Kylie's elusive ex-boyfriend to collect us, me sniveling from the beginning signs of a cold - Kylie probably sniveling at being so fed up with my sniveling! So a Peugeot slid up alongside us after an hour with a tubby guy in it, Ipeered at him, he peering at us through something I can only presume were his eyes. The folds of skin or muscle or something squashed up his eyes so much they were likelittle piggy eyes, on a big lumbering body. Dangerous combo I decided and got up. He hopped, or rolled out the car, and came round to greet us. From those who know mewell, you'll be familiar with my dislike for 'boets', you know the ones who yell out 'That's my boyyyy' at the cricket, well who yell out anything usually ending in 'eh' i.e., 'So, you well, eh?" which is what came out of this boy’s mouth. He also looked the part as he sauntered around the car holding an imaginary water melon under each arm. But he was really friendly, really open, a tad crude but happy to help us out.

He's a PE (sports) couch for a primary school and has his own little house on the grounds - quite lucky to have landed the job, and although he's been in England 4 years,I suspect his little boet community back home sent him tapes on a regular basis on how he should speak to maintain the whole look. Anyway, although he was the type of person to yell from the kitchen "Hey tit, want tea" and was peculiar to try and cross his arms over his chest when he sat down - he kind of had to grapple onto his elbows to prevent them from flying back to his sides, I'm being mean, he was very good to us, helpful and all that.

So that night (Friday) it was one of the student teacher's birthdays so we took a few drinks round and met some odd characters - began as a kind of book club but once I'd fed a few people tequilas it got a bit more interesting, was actually quite fun.

The next day we mulled around, went for a walk and went shopping for food and rented movies and had a walk and did washing and all that exciting stuff - sure you must be on the edge of your seat. How's this - then we went to sleep.

So we awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing, in this early morning state - was bout 7:30am, (well later I found it was actually 8:30 am as the clocks got turned toSummer time) I managed to work out it was most likely the guy from Baroque Bar. So I said "Good morning", which really sounded more like "grunt". "Did I wake you?" "No, Iwas up already - I had to do the paper route". At least he laughed, before telling us the 22 year-old girl he'd met the night before had a lot more bar experience (5 years?!? Yeah that's likely) got the job. But they are really interested in employing us for the littlerestaurant/bar/hotel in a little village outside of town, Andy will call us in two weeks" "A village - bite me nancy boy" Well what I really said was "Yeah, ok, we'll probablyhave a job by then but he can try. Thanks anyway, cheers". And that was that - three day interview and £100s later we were kicking ourselves.

We realised we actually needed to start getting a game plan together - that maybe if we stayed in one place it would actually be easier. So we moved again. Got Ryan totake us to my Cousin Andy's place on Sunday evening as a few of the boys had gone home for Easter holidays so there were a few open beds. We decided to try the area out for jobs, stay a few nights at Andy's then when the little genie pops out one of these coffee mugs, we'll ask for a house and a job and be off.

So Monday we spent the day going to recruitment agencies and booking skills tests for the Tuesday. As we wanted to travel sooner than later we did not want to lie about workso ticked the 'temp' positions on the form.

The next morning we went in and were tested on everything from Microsoft word tools I've never heard of, to excel and the others, speed reading, speed writing and datacapture. Then we were asked if we would be prepared to stuff envelopes to which we replied we were a tad over-qualified but heck, if they wanted to pay us £7/hourto do so, we'd be game. So we got a few freee gimmick gifts like mini radios, candles and other crap that would never go in my bag and went home, at least feeling as ifwe'd done something for the day.