Eleven Things that Weren’t Written by Dorothy L. Sayers, VII

Spoilers and disclaimers (incl. for directly quoted text) as usual.

( Have His Carcase )

( I )

( II )

( III )

( IV )

Plus one or two extras in the comments courtesy of azdak.

The bright lights of the big city

A close friend of mine thinks that for all my “I want to live in York” rhetoric, that really I am a big city (i.e. London) dweller at heart and in denial. I am beginning to think that this view has some merit in it, although it is possible that it is part of a long-standing campaign to persuade me to go and live in a big city with him. The problem I come up against time and again, however, is far how the salary I would be able to command goes against the cost of living there*. Maybe Manchester instead? Not that I know more of Manchester than the shops and museums, and I would like to go somewhere I might feel at home (i.e. know people already). London dwellers: is it worth it?

Have just downloaded details of a couple of jobs at the GMC and GDC. I thought I wanted to stop working for egomaniacs who think one is automatically moronic because not Them (though the GDC is a non-starter for salary reasons, I think).

Holidays also require thinking about. I am off to Galway for a long weekend on Friday, to see an old university friend, her peace-protester/anarchist/poet husband (he isn't really an anarchist, but we said he was when she met him) and their 8 month old baby. This will be fantastic, and they are great hosts, but I also need to sort out a summer holiday. So far I have a week in The North for a wedding followed by a few days with my parents, but I also have to fit in at some point a trip to Moscow (August/September?) and Switzerland. The latter is a bit tricky in that I was aiming for July, but "OMG what if I had job interviews". Except that if I didn't go and didn't get job interviews I would be miserable. Time to look very, very carefully at the diary, and most of all to be positive that suddenly there are quite a few jobs about and that if I pull myself together I might actually get an interview or two. I really don't quite know what I want at the moment on the job/location front when I consider it all in the abstract, but I might have more of an idea if things became more concrete, and crucially stop noticing all the downsides to each option before considering the positive stuff. I sometimes think that the latter is part of my character, but in fact I'm not so sure that it is when I am not already rather down - I certainly can't recall ever doing it as a child. But then decisions in childhood were more along the lines of rich tea or digestive biscuit.

*London, that is, though I did find myself looking at jobs in Singapore last week (I liked the climate when on holiday. Also, it would do the reseach for a vaguely-thought-of novel for me). But I got a quick and dirty mortgage quote today for personal reference: O HAI, HALF NET INCOME ON REPAYMENTS FOR SHOEBOX FLAT! DOEZ NOT WANT.