queue of spiders

Now it can be told: I have a new job. I am to be working for the National Blood Service as a 'marketing services administration assistant'. That's at least one word too long in my opinion; although at the same time I would quite like the word 'blood' to be in there somewhere. 'Marketing services administration assistant of blood.' That's a bit more like it.

So, a job that doesn't involve selling books. No change there then. They warned me about 'unsocial hours' in the interview - that I might sometimes have to stay until 5:30! I stormed out of the room at this point. Still, I got it somehow, despite my terrible performance on the test - involving something called 'spreadsheets'. Just another NHS blunder, I suppose.

Because getting a new job after over a decade in the same one wasn't stressful enough, I have also moved into a new house: one of the only bungalows around here not to have had an extra storey added to it. Or to have had anything done to it since 1956. Space, yes, is an issue: Ross had to have four vertebrae removed before he would fit. And it has its little quirks. The fan in the oven that won't turn off and causes Dave to wander the house at night, driven mad by its 'infernal buzzing'. The pagan statuary in the garden. The spiders... The other morning Ross opened the front door to go out and a moderately-sized spider walked right in, as though it had been waiting out there all night. Possibly, the previous tenants ran some sort of spider hotel.

And of course the letting agent somehow failed to mention that the place is built over an ancient Indian burial ground; well, don't they always?

But was Copperfield Gardens really so wholesome? Only now have I worked out what was bothering me about the van that was always parked there, advertising 'Nicks Tyres'. Amazing that the lack of an apostrophe can make so much difference, turning a nice bloke with his own business into a thief who advertises.