What happened is we took a two-week holiday to Holly’s
mum’s apartment in Tenerife. The accommodation was free (thanks Lyn) and the
flights were paid for in advance, but even so we went feeling very poor.
It’s a wonderful place to go for a holiday. The weather
was near-perfect. Every day we went to the beach to build castles and sea defenses
with flags and moats, and played in the pool. Dylan made us all jump in,
holding hands, time and time again. He made lots of friends with the lovely
Spanish children who played in the pool and shared their toys and swam like
fish. I wrote Little Horrors and read more than half of Adam Levin’s brilliant
epic The Instructions. We ate well
and watched the Saints day parade down the main street of Puerto Santiago from
the Chinese Restaurant where they know us (well, Dylan) well from previous
visits, and then we watched the fireworks. And I made very good use of a prepaid
international SIM card that I’d had hanging around since I was made redundant.
What happened is I started writing to companies and
offering to work for free (for the experience) with no real success. I started
using LinkedIn to connect with various Directors and Heads of Internal
Communications, and writing to them directly—which got me an interview with the
newly formed TSB bank in Bristol and lead me to briefly consider working part
time in Aberdeen. I also registered to various websites, including Nationwide’s,
to receive job alerts. It’s pretty demoralizing when people don’t want you to
work for free.
Shortly before we went to Tenerife, I received an email from
Nationwide, inviting me to apply for a role as Corporate Communications Business Partner. My instincts told me to
ignore the job because (a) it was exactly
the job I was after and (b) it was well paid. Eventually I applied to make
up the numbers on my job centre report, and thought nothing more of it.
What happened is I received an answerphone message while we were in
Tenerife from Nationwide. I called back and was invited to interview for the job. I laughed about it
with Holly. We got home on the Wednesday and on the Friday, I went to my
cousin’s wedding in Milton Keynes. On Saturday morning, my brother-in-law drove
me down to Woolacombe for the middle two days of a four-day stag weekend, and
we had an excellent time getting drunk outside a pub on the beach while the
stag party were bowling in a nearby town. On the Monday morning, I researched
Nationwide on the internet and saw that they’d been in the news for technical,
financial reasons involving phrases like Basel III and leverage ratios. These
are things I understand because of my previous job. I drove to Swindon that
lunchtime, articulating my pitch – my one shot – in my head on the journey, and
arrived for my interview a quarter of an hour late.
The following day, the interviewer called to tell me they
wouldn’t be making any appointments until the end of November. She asked if I
could start straight away on a temporary basis while they completed the
recruitment process.
What happened is I wanted to laugh and cry and whoop for
joy all at the same time.
I started work 24 September 2013, shortly after Dylan
started going to nursery three days a week. I coordinated the internal
announcements of the interim financial results and the launch of Core Capital Deferred Shares, and
received rounds of applause for both. That’s never happened to me before. I
like the job and the team. I miss Dylan like crazy but he’s busy all week and
we make up for lost time in the evenings. I like the fact that I’m working
again. I’m setting a good example for him. I guess we’re both embarking on
brave, new adventures.
On Sundays, I took to cooking two big meals: a roast,
which we ate with Dylan (it turns out he’s mad for my junior toad-in-the-holes,
which he calls ‘toad-on-the-whole’), and a casserole in the slow cooker.
Between the left-over meat and veg from the roast, and the casserole, we had good,
real food to get us through the week without too much effort. The best thing I’ve
made in the slow cooker is Jamie Oliver’s Cowboy Chili. Google it, try it, and I’m
sure you’ll agree that other chilis don’t quite cut it in comparison.
What happened is I set up appointments with four of the
local schools and Holly went to their open days. All four schools are good but
three of them stand out and these are the ones we’ve put on the application
form. In September 2014, my little boy, who used to wear nappies and crawl
backwards and call his dummy a ‘Dodo’ is going to go to school. And he’s really
excited about it.
What happened is they offered me the job, on a six month
temp to perm basis, and I started on 9 December. Christmas was back on.
Christmas 2013 was about ice skating outdoors with Dylan
at the mall. I push him around on an orange seal, literally racing around as
fast as I can go, until I need to turn sharply to avoid a collision. The orange
seal and me go left, and Dylan slides sideways across the ice on his shoulder. It
was also about the office pantomime. Lyn drops Dylan off at Nationwide House
and we head to the restaurant to watch a suspect performance of Goldilocks and
the Three Bears, performed by a three man theatre company. Between that, the
balloon animals, the visit to Santa and the (real) reindeer we find outside
when we leave the office, it’s Christmas come early for the boy but for me it’s
just a really long day at work. On the way home, I say ‘Thank you for letting
me watch the pantomime with you, Dylan,’ and he says ‘That’s okay Daddy.’ I
guess this means we’re going again next year.
If I still have a job. Oh God I hope I still have a job.
A couple of weeks later, Dylan is onstage at the
Salvation Army hall, dressed as a sheep, to play his part in the Nativity. He’s
the youngest member of the troupe. The other children are shy but Dylan is in
his element. He sings loud and out of key and dances with abandon. He practices
his tumble tots moves on his chair and parades around with his cotton wool ears
pulled down over his eyes. And I bet there isn’t one adult in the audience who
hasn’t noticed this angel dressed in sheep’s clothing, who is bringing
innocence and joy and quite a lot of style to the original Christmas story.
That's my boy.x
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