Mrs Voldemort

At its bucolic best the month of May provides us with a welcome respite, like a bridging loan, between a nasty winter and the promise of a summer of delights to come; perchance to barbeque.  At its worst, this May has opened with maypole dancing and fertility rites and closed with a soaking over bank holiday and a massive row in Matalan over socks.  Alphonse likes order in his sock drawer whereas mine is freeform and filled with Wolford delights.  He likes days of the week on the sides, with matching colours on the heels so they can be paired up at the end of the week and strictly nothing Homer Simpson on pain of death.  Albeit I waved him off to Birmingham this morning wearing a Wednesday and a Friday as a mark of protest.  As dawn was struggling into the upright position, Alphonse was attending a course.  Just as women of a certain age are herded into a pen called peri-menopausal, some men of Alphonse's stature become peri-retiremental and it's upsetting his biorythms.  Back to the socks.

On the way to the Matalan checkouts he picked up a bumper pack which I immediately wrestled out of his hands and secured back on the rack.  He was quite affronted for a Virgo,
"I need new socks."
"Buy them from Next like last time."
"These are cheaper." Couldn't fault his penny-pinching ways but I had spotted a hitch.
"And the elastic tops will irritate your legs then it will be my fault.  Stick with what you know."
"Forget it, I'm not going in Next today."  He meant "ever" because I bought the last pack of socks, and the ones before that. He stalked off towards the car muttering.
"I'll just wash some when we get home." And rather than use the usual cool Eco wash cycle with a quick spin, he spent two unhappy hours watching his smalls disintegrate on a boil wash.
Trying to be adult, I waved a flag of truce in the form of a large Pinot Grigio and attempted to offer up a reasonable explanation for my snappiness.
"I know I'm feisty but with all the comings and goings at work I'm even more snitty than usual. But acting out in Matalan was wrong and I'm sorry."  I added a short rundown of the previous week's pain and injustices, especially the part where I'd turned down contracted hours because they offered me less per hour than a 22 year old with no previous work experience. Okay, it was only 1p but I have principles and leaving me £3,000 p.a worse off I found particularly offensive.  Anyone would think I'm rubbish at maths. 
Still, Alphonse had a point and I listened in horror as he drove it home,
"You've not been this tetchy since you left the Body Shop. It's like living with Mrs Voldemort."  He had the decency to say it with a straight face and not call me 'old girl' at any point in the conversation.

Adding insult to injury, the previous weekend I'd had my cards read by accident.  I rocked up at a 'Tea with Spirit' event to see old friends Valerian and JeanGenii; I wanted the tea and a chat, no cake and absolutely no random predictions.  When I got there, I'd been booked in with a medium who reads Native American Power Cards so powerless to resist, I thought I'd give it a go.  In my first seven cards I'd pulled the Raven [what else?] but also a skunk and a weasel.  She [Linda] looked me in the eye and said "Something stinks.  They're trying to rob you of something and no-one's telling you the truth. If I were you, I wouldn't sign it either."  Well that told me.

So I had a lot to think over yesterday and kept a low profile against the squealing backdrop of the Monaco Grim Prix. Imagine it though, the wife of the Dark Lord, "he who must not be named"; she'd be a force of nature wouldn't she?  Tall, elegant, permanently enraged.  If the Voldemorts were real, he wouldn't dare be late home or would he? Ralph Fiennes is the voice of His Lordship and is in bold:
"Where the Hell have you been?  Not out with the Lestrange creature again?"
"Messing with some muggles darling, nothing serious."
"Well your dinner's in the wolverine."
"Never mind my sweet, I had a pie and pint in The Pickled Walnut.  Have you had a lovely day?"
"I bathed the Raven then went to Tesco where they dared to overcharge me."
"Will their boils heal quickly my love or do we have to write a letter of apology?"
"Save the letter for BT who've charged us seventy two pounds for forty two pee's worth of Friends & Family calls."
"We don't have any friends or family."
"Precisely."
"Then we'll reduce their Mumbai call centre to rubble in the morning, shall we?"
"Excellent.  Oh, and clean up after that wretched snake will you?  It's had another of next door's kittens."
Fundamentally, had the same derisory job offer been made to Mrs V, I feel she would've wrenched out her wand, aimed it full in the face of management and yelled "REDUCTO!"  I so wanted to but I'm calmer now.

Tip of the Beak: Ravens everywhere should delight in the news that Richard III's remains are to reside in Leicester Cathedral. Common sense prevails at last.

Raven

The Interview

And so the time came upon us for The Interview.  A toe-curling 30 minutes last week where the very apparatchiks I've worked with over a grim two year period, have permission to ask me questions they already know the answers to, and then argue the toss about my particular strengths and weaknesses.  I'd love to call it Kafkaesque but I've never read his works, have no real idea what it means and will stick to unpretentious words such as annoying and unnecessary given the current criminal staff shortage we are enduring.  Anyway, the management have suddenly realised that temps are running the shop, that they might actually leave for better jobs and this cannot be tolerated.  So in the dead of night, they cooked up a plan to slot us all into preferred roles hoping upon hope that all would be well again.  Trouble is, some of us don't like to be 'slotted'.

Let me take you back to last Thursday at noon when I'd not had my tuna salad for fear of a grumbling digestive system interrupting my interview; only a mere banana sustained me through the allotted half hour of torture.  I'd rigorously prepared myself for a good grilling from the Andrex Puppy, so imagine my horror to find the Fruit Bat sitting at the desk and next to her, her familiar; a woman who clutches her chest whenever she encounters me, obviously sensing my true demonic nature.  Luckily, she was writing notes and keeping time or we'd still be there having a counselling session.  It started well under the circumstances,
"I see that you've been with us for exactly two years Raven?"  Don't I know it? "And you're very versatile."
"Well I have been at work for most of my adult life, it stands to reason I've picked up something."
"Quite. And here you've been working on the wards, medical secretary and now Reception."
"Reception's only an emergency cover for an hour maximum."  It's so stressful, I have to go outside afterwards and pretend to have a cigarette, a desperate act for a lifelong non-smoker.
"Have you thought of adding Bookings to your experience?"
"I have thought about it and the answer's no."  The Fruit Bat pressed me for a fuller answer.
"I can't fit anything else into my brain. I already have two analytical jobs and a third where I type clinic letters for two days a week ..."  I had the list ready:
Gynaecology, Gastroenterology, Urology, Orthopaedic, Rheumatology, Dermatology, General Surgery [hernias] and a Plastic Surgeon, although the last one's a bit fluffy and is mainly boob jobs.


The Fruit Bat dismissed this lifelong expertise and asked me straight out if I was interested in applying for the full-time secretary/administrator role they'd cobbled together?  You have to see the job description; it's more like a management dustbin with so much other stuff in there, it made my eyes revolve like a fruit machine.  There's also the knubby issue of who's going to do the actual typing?  Ancient wisdom helped me keep my beak shut.  You see, I gave up secretarial work in 1997 and I can be that specific about it because I'd got to the top of my game and was utterly brassed-off with working for people less capable or qualified than me for half the salary.  And after a long stint on the top floor of Leicester City Council, known locally as Faulty Towers, I temped for bit and found myself working for medical insurers [PPP before they were discovered by AXA] at a business park on the edge of town, while they were interviewing for a branch administrator. What an unhappy place?  Please, thank you and professional courtesy were left at the door and ignoring anyone who wasn't a total cow to their co-workers was the daily message.  I went to the pub every lunchtime just to see a smiling face. On my final jubilant morning, I looked up to find the class bully standing at my desk saying,
"Do you have to leave today?"  I so wanted to but we also had to eat.
"Erm ... I'll ask the agency."
"Don't bother, I've spoken to them and we'd like to offer you the job. You're brilliant."  I knocked the static out of my ears. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me back the following week.  In fact, I spent a well-fed six months at M&S before I ventured into another administration role.  So why should I step down that well-trodden path again in 2014?

My interview also contained other well thought out questions regarding my strengths and weaknesses, computer skills and inside leg measurement.  We'd also been provided with a grid on which we had to indicate our preferred hours of work during the week and the Fruit Bat was somewhat nonplussed to find I'd not selected a pattern of 24x7.  She looked at me sideways,
"I see you only want to work one in four Saturdays?"
"That's right."  Other ward clerks are available.
"Wouldn't you like to start earlier, at seven perhaps? And stay later.  Four'ish?"  She's up to something.
"No. Because that means I have no life."
"Oh I like the early start, you get so much done."
"Well you do it then but don't ask me to get up at five thirty every Saturday morning."  Who's being interviewed here?
"It's only one in four."  Well you say that now but experience teaches us that once you've done a job once, you get it every chuffin' week. It came to a sticky end shortly afterwards when they asked me to do a test.  There were no right or wrong answers apparently.  And when it finally dawned that I was going to lose my two favourite days a week in the typing pool, only to be relegated to filing tracers in Medical Records, I went outside to our quiet area and had a little cry.  MoBo came out with a cuppa and put her arm round my shoulder, summoning up a pearl of wise counsel.
"Don't worry Raven."  I blew my nose on the tissue she proffered. "Give it a fortnight.  That's usually how long it takes for management to realise they've got no-one to do any work.  You'll be fine."

Tip of the Beak:  I'd better apologise to the whole cannon of chiroptera species worldwide, including the vampire variety, desmodontinae, for naming my interviewer after a fruit bat.  If you only knew the truth of the situation, you'd see what I'm up against.

Raven