Leonardo's is open on Mondays, and I went there yesterday for a blow-dry in preparation for today's assessment centre and interview for the call centre job. Ingle Farm isn't particularly close to where I live, but I happened to be shopping there one day when I felt like getting a blow-dry. Leonardo's had an appointment available, I was impressed with what they did, and I've been going back sporadically ever since.
My appointment was at 9:00am, and because I arrived a little early, I took a walk around the shopping centre. That's when I was reminded of our state Attorney-General.
I recently discovered that he has a fondness for sausage rolls, which prompted me to do some research into their history. I discovered that sausage rolls originated in Britain, so I wrote to bakeries in countries across the former British Empire asking about sausage rolls in their part of the world and whether they would share a recipe. I also sent letters to 75 bakeries across the UK, and I have another 75 sitting here waiting to be sent to bakeries around Australia.
I haven't received any responses yet, but international post can be extremely slow, and I imagine it's even slower at the moment because of the war in the Middle East.
Anyway, I was reminded of the Attorney-General and my sausage roll letters because, as I wandered around the shopping centre, I came across three bakery-type places selling sausage rolls.
I'm a vegetarian and, in many ways, completely repulsed by meat, but every now and then I crave a Balfours sausage roll. I used to buy them from the tuck shops at so many of the schools I attended, and I loved them. The sausage rolls you can see below reminded me of those old Balfours ones and they even looked oddly appetising.
The last time I was at this salon, a beautiful Greek lady named Katherine did my hair. She had just turned fifty, and I really enjoyed chatting to her while she did my colour. When I called to make yesterday's appointment, I was told Katherine was on leave, but her 27-year-old daughter, Eliza, was there and ended up doing my hair instead.
Eliza and I talked about her mum for a while. Katherine was on holiday in Greece, and then Eliza told me that she was getting married next year to a man she had met online. As I sat there talking to her, it occurred to me that we could almost be the same age. Except, of course, we couldn't. The reality was that I was much closer to her mother's age than I was to hers.
Her 50-year-old mother is my generation, while Eliza's generation, in many ways, feels completely foreign to me. It was a slightly strange realisation, particularly with my own birthday just around the corner. I quickly processed that, then I took two photos around the salon. The first is of a workstation much like the one where I was having my hair done.
I like this salon. It has the feel of an old-school hairdressing salon and reminds me a lot of the place where I started my apprenticeship in Alice Springs 27 years ago. After reconciling myself to the fact that I am now officially a mature woman, I thanked Eliza for a great blow-dry, jumped in my Beetle and came home.
That morning I heard from Liam, who sent me a flirty little message, and then I went to sleep for a while. I woke up in the afternoon and watched NCIS with Mum while I did some planning for my book. Ever since then, I've mostly been watching Piers Morgan and Al Jazeera on YouTube, keeping up with what's going on in the world.
Earlier tonight, Liam sent me a message saying he was on his way to the hospital with his partner, who had suffered a suspected stroke. The moment I read that message, any lingering doubts I had about ending our little inappropriate conversation disappeared instantly.
The most important things in the world are our family and the people we love, and I knew then that I would no longer engage in any kind of amorous or sexual dialogue with him. More than anything, I hope his partner is okay.
Having said all of that, I think I may have been a little harsh on him when I wrote about him last night. In so many ways, it does take two to tango. While I certainly think people can cross boundaries in relationships, Liam felt comfortable crossing those boundaries with me partly because I allowed that kind of relationship to develop between us.
It's extremely tragic, though. I've been thinking about my experiences with men. There were casual relationships, or what the current generation seems to call "situationships". There were flings, suggestive text messages, missed opportunities and even some traditional relationships. But there was one thing there wasn't: a great love story.
I've been enamoured with men. I've been attached to men, and I've certainly found comfort in some of them. But I've never been in a relationship where I can look back and honestly say that I loved the man I was with.
In saying that, I did love a man once. And that was the Judge.
It was instantaneous, irrational, overwhelming and completely involuntary. It was more powerful to me than any other force I have experienced during my time here on earth. I feel as though the greatest love I could ever have experienced would have been the love I had for a child, but what I felt for the Judge seemed like something supernatural altogether.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to love a man that way and have him love me back with the same intensity. Now that would be a beautiful thing. I'm not entirely convinced that kind of love really happens between two people, but if it does, and somebody gets to experience it even once in their lifetime, how incredibly lucky they are.
Having written this blog for just over two years, I feel as though it has been my apprenticeship for the writing I really want to do. I have an idea for a trilogy, and at the moment I'm going through old letters I've written, along with thoughts and ideas I've accumulated over the years and putting together a plan. Then I want to sit down and finally get the whole thing out of my system.
I wrote a novella back in 2011, but I was in a severely altered state of mind at the time. When I look back at some of the things I wrote, I find it quite upsetting because it takes me straight back to that period of my life. Then I'll read other parts of the book and wonder where on earth they came from, because some of it makes far more sense than I would have expected.
Once I start the first book, I have a feeling it will all pour out of me. There's a sense of urgency about getting it written now, and I think turning 45 has something to do with that. You never know what might happen with your health or circumstances in life, and there is something I really want to say. More than that, there is a story I feel only I can tell.
There are some legal considerations with the characters. They won't be based on particular individuals, although some will certainly be inspired by people I have known, so there are still things I need to be mindful of. The reality is that the odds of getting the first, second or third books published are highly unlikely, so I probably don't need to worry too much about the legal side of things just yet.
I'm not really writing the books because I expect them to be published anyway. I just want one person to read them. I don't care who it is. Any old person will do. I want someone to sit with the books and read the story from beginning to end, but I don't want them to tell me what they thought of it.
I don't need a review or an analysis. I don't even need to know whether they liked them. I just want another person to have read them.
And then I can go about my business in peace.
It's now 4:32am, and I have to be in town at 8:45am for the assessment centre and interview for the call centre job I applied for. The call centre will be incredibly intense and full-on, but I think I have the professionalism and maturity to manage myself within the parameters of the role.
In saying that, I don't desperately want the job. Initially I did, largely because of the hours. The shifts start at around 8:00pm and can run for anywhere between five and eight hours. Theoretically, that works perfectly with my current sleep cycle. The problem is that they told us the initial training takes place over five days during a traditional 9-to-5 working week, so I would have to work out how to manage that.
In the information they've sent about the session later this morning, they've said they want to see our personalities and will be observing how we work with other people. Twenty years ago, I would have wanted to be the loudest voice in that crowd. This morning, first and foremost, I'm just going to be myself. But I also think I'll sit back a little and let some of the younger ones make the noise.
There's an interview component as well, and I think I interview reasonably well. The difficult part is explaining the enormous gap in my resume from the years when I was caring for Dad and also studying. Fortunately, I have some volunteer work on there, and I think my experience calling elderly clients and checking on their wellbeing has helped me get this far in the recruitment process.
Not that I volunteer for that reason. I absolutely love that role, and I intend to keep doing it until the day I die. In some ways, it almost feels superficial putting it on a resume and presenting it as experience, because that's not why I do it at all. Mostly, I include it because I'm incredibly proud to do it.
I also sent the recruitment agency the police check that I finally got back from Lifeblood. It showed no disclosable court outcomes, and they thanked me for sending it through. They've said I may need to obtain another one, which could create another little headache. It should come back with exactly the same result, but because the last one took so long, I worry that another delay might start raising eyebrows.
There are certainly things about this job that appeal to me. The money is good, the eventual hours suit me, and the experience would probably look good on my customer service resume. But if I don't get it, I don't think I'll be terribly disappointed.
I've actually put together another application for the Centre, which involved working my way through some fairly lengthy job and person specifications. I'm seeing my friend Muhammad on Friday night, and we're going to fix up my resume together. I'll send the whole application through on Sunday, which happens to be my birthday.
Something I've been thinking about now that I'm seriously looking for employment and planning to try harder than I did with Lifeblood, is that I need to sort out my sleep. I could see more specialists and spend another ten years following sleep schedules or trying different medications, but at some point, I think I simply have to find a way of making my life and my sleep coexist.
I've been thinking about Neanderthals and other hominins and their sleep habits. Part of me imagines that they went to sleep when the sun disappeared and woke when it rose again. But maybe they didn't. Perhaps there were times when they had the strength and stamina to remain awake for extraordinarily long periods while hunting, travelling, protecting themselves or caring for their families.
The traditional sleep schedule is, at least in part, something around which modern society has organised itself. We have collectively decided that darkness generally means sleep, daylight means activity, and certain hours constitute a working day. But I sometimes wonder what our sleep patterns would look like if we were completely removed from clocks, alarms, working hours and all the other constraints. If we were simply allowed to go wild and sleep whenever our bodies told us to, who knows what we would do?
As for me, my first step comes after the assessment centre and interview this morning. I'm going to try to stay awake for the rest of the day. To keep myself occupied, I've got the remaining 12 episodes of Underbelly: The Golden Mile to watch, and then tonight I'll do the Census with Mum.
I'm actually excited about doing the Census, although I admit I'm still a little wounded that I didn't get a job there. I would have been a perfect fit.
