Yesterday, the day dawned cloudy and gloomy. I had a quick look at what the weather prospects might be and was informed that it was going to be a breezy day with the prospect of thundery showers. This makes the task of wondering what to wear more problematic because if you caught in a real downpour rather than just a slight drizzle you can easily be soaked to the skin. In all the time that I was pushing Meg in her wheelchair up and down the Kidderminster Road, we only got caught like this on one occasion but fortunately the minute we got home coincided with the visit of two carers who were quickly capable of stripping Meg of her rain-soaked clothing and getting her into some warm, dry clothing within a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, I have been turning my mind to a different topic altogether. My friend, the Seasoned World Traveller, with whom I had a conversation in Wetherspoons yesterday has enlisted my help in preparing a current CV in case he wants to move on from his present employment. But the whole jobs market and employment scene have moved on so considerably since I last had to prepare a CV for myself so any advice I might give might be outdated or inappropriate. Nonetheless, my friend has good spreadsheeting skills so I am going to give him the following advice. This is to make a full and comprehensive record of all the employment opportunities he has had in the last forty years. This is never going to be submitted but might be a way off ensuring that things are not forgotten or overlooked. I am also going to suggest that as well as details such as days, employers name and location, he constructs three further columns in the spreadsheet. These will be ‘Things I learned from that particular employment’, ‘Contributions made in that employment’ and finally ‘Reasons for leaving departing’ From this what might be called a ‘superset’ he then extracts what he considers to be a ‘subset’ which is especially relevant and tailored to the demands of the position for which he is applying. In the days when I used to consider applications for jobs that we had on offer, we often got applications that were generic and thrown at any jobs that were going – needless to say these were rejected almost automatically as they displayed a lack of serious effort and intent from the applicant. I am going to suggest two further facets to this process. This is to prepare a one page face sheet which is in fact a selling job – I am reminded of the fact that at Meg’s funeral I was given only 5 minutes (600 words) in which to summarise her life and achievements. My final suggestion is to prepare what I call a ‘discursive’ CV, unlike the usual list of dates and job details, but is an account of those facets of one’s employment experience (or life for that matter) that makes for a really good read. It will be interesting to see how my friend responds to my suggestions when next we meet, probably on Tuesday next.
After breakfast, I was delighted o receive an email from my University of Birmingham friend and we decided to go out to a leisure facility nearby which used to be sand, gravel and brine extraction area but which is now water filled and provides water based leisure facilities such as open air swimming, canoeing, kayaking and similar water-based activities. The attraction from the point of view of my friend and myself is that there is some attractive water to sit nearby and we can have a coffee relatively cheaply from the small cafe overlooking the facility. We spent a happy morning in conversation before my friend took me to collect my Sunday newspaper and then dropped me back at home. Then I went down by car as my Irish friends had very kindly invited me out for lunch and they had prepared a simple but excellent stir-fry for us all. As it happened, my friends had not been able to stay for the amusing anecdotes type speech I gave in the middle of Meg’s wake some eight weeks ago now so I as more than happy to retell the funniest of the stories for their benefit. I returned to a mess that BT and EE have between them created with my broadband connection, one having taken over the other and the two businesses not yet operating as one.
The start of the week looks busy as the car needs to be serviced (already booked in before the transfer of ownership to me) and I have some physiotherapy in the afternoon. As the weather is so threatening, I am a little loathe to start any gardening activities this afternoon but it is one of those days when the sky is constantly threatening but the rain never really seems to come. One has the feeling that a really good downpour would clear the air as well as being good for the garden. But the prolonged dry spell has meant that the grass has hardly grown at all which has meant that I have been spared mowing activities for a week or so now. Perusing the TV schedules, I am appalled about the amount of time devoted to Wimbledon these days – it seems that about 18 hours a day split between BBC1 and BBC2 is the order of the day whereas cricket gets one hour of a summary on BBC4. Of course, royalty regularly attends Wimbledon whilst attendance of royalty at cricket matches is rare. Nonetheless, I feel the attention given to tennis is disproportionate in the extreme this year. In the part of Yorkshire in which I grew up, we played cricket all year round including the winter using chalk marks on a lamp standard as our wicket. I have very few regrets in life but I do have one. If I had stayed on at the school I attended in Bolton, Lancashire whilst my mother as training to be teacher, then I would have been coached by a young West Indian cricketer who had come over to Lancashire to play in one of the Lancashire leagues during the summer (West Indian winter). The young but already famous West Indian cricketer was no other than… Gary Sobers!