Schools, shows and surreal moments

In the past few weeks, my life has become increasingly bizzare.

First I willingly give up my job, leaving with excellent references and a final staff review that proves how much my employers completely loved me, only to find that I am incapable of getting another one. That's right: I'm still unemployed after five interviews, after each of which I was told something along the lines of "We really, really liked you, and thought you interviewed well, but in the end you were our second choice because you didn't have exactly the experience we were looking for/you were nervous during your teaching demonstration/you asked a question that made us wonder if you were really committed to the job/you were a little bit vague in one of your answers/you needed to give a few more examples/you weren't dressed as a large orange parrot and you didn't come into the interview room singing the first three verses of Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer while standing on your head and saluting" [delete as appropriate]. I am now so good at bloody application forms that I think I could get myself an interview at any school in the country, including those weird hippy private ones where the kids do nothing but play in sandboxes and talk about their feelings in circle time because it's good for their emotional development, but I can't get through an interview. Nonetheless, this situation has its good side, which I'm sure I'll get to in more detail another time, but which basically involves doing some part time supply teaching for a bit and getting some actual rest, which might just sort out the last of the post-viral thing that's still hanging around, and would generally be very good for me. So, there is hope.

Next, I manage to get myself involved with The Girl's Edinburgh show, not least because it's brilliant, but mostly because I couldn't stand the thought of a long, insufferably hot summer full of nothing. The Girl is interesting to work with, being a control freak and more than a little bit stressed, while I'm having fun in a small box where I keep forgetting which ropes to pull and when. It's going to be fantastic, but it does all seem a bit surreal at the moment (I'm a teacher, Jim, not a theatrical type). I'm also completely exhausted, having given myself no time to stop and catch my breath. Between the last week of term, characterised by an insane rush of goodbye parties and end-of-year drinks and rushed clearing out of desks full of three years' teaching resources, and the technical rehearsals that are going on for hours and hours every day of this week, I'm a bit wiped out really.

And in the midst of all this chaos sits little me, oblivious and fairly serene. I'm reading John Irving's The World According to Garp, which is truly inspired as well really quite fucked up, and I'm writing yet another bloody application form. I am still, miraculously, both unmedicated and happy. Even in the face of unemployment leading to poverty leading to possible eviction and having to live in a box underneath Waterloo Bridge (always my contingency plan for those 'when everything goes tits up' situations), life is a good laugh at the moment. I just need to find some time to be home for long enough to do my washing and tidy my room. That'll be sometime in September, I think.