Sits Vac

Could this be it, my new job? For those who can't be arsed to click the link, the National Trust is advertising for knitters to emigrate to and occupy empty crofts on Fair Isle. My CV includes a queer liking for desolate landscapes and knitting a series of chequered teacosies as presents one Xmas. However, even my considerable tolerance for dreichness, long winters and weather might be challenged, judging by the webcam here. A Radio 4 program a while back, possibly 'From our own correspondant', focused on Fair Isle's whaling traditions and Norse-inflected dialect, making it sound delightfully odd. If the NT threw in limitless book purchases as a perk, I might just be persuaded...

Oh well (yawns and stretches)- that's my job-hunting duties over with for the day, so now I can kick back. Although work hasn't occupied much of my attention lately, getting free of it (even temporarily) feels absolutely wonderful. Now I can slouch and shirk without guilt and anxiety at the work undone and a delightful idleness filled mostly with reading, sudoku, cooking and brisk walks has taken over.

Reading has resumed the wonderful, indulgent and preoccupying pastime I remember from childhood and adolescence. This week it's been 'Mutants' (popsci on evolutionary embryology), 'Bobby Fischer Goes to War' (Fischer vs Spassky chess match in Iceland 1972), 'The World of Christopher Marlowe' and Ackroyd's biography of William Blake. David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' is my current fiction project. I have problems with committing to fiction and often make slow progress, but this one's been rewarding. I still adore sudoku but it's reined back to timing myself on the Independent's back-page quick puzzle. I'll tackle the advanced one too if that doesn't suffice, but (at the risk of boasting) the easier ones are unsatisfactorily mechanical.

Being at home during the day gives opportunities for long, slow casserole-style cooking with pulses and for breadmaking, both of which I could learn to love. I can manage a decent loaf through the miracle of fermentation, but success with shortcrust and self-raising recipes is poorer. My scones usually emerge flat, tarnishing the earth-mother fantasy I'm currently nurturing.

I shall be taking smash's advice and doing not very much for a little while- maybe working up a few points on the excessive drinking. I tried hard the other night, anyway, with a spectacular fall on the 50m saunter to the all-nite garage for fags, scraping up my knee and smacking my arm too. I'm pleased to report that two passers-by ran over promptly to help me up, restoring faith in community spirit if not my dignity. Although I felt little at the time, my knee and arm have ached for the last 2 days to remind me of my folly.



Hey- maybe I could getta job as a permanent casualty for paramedics' training! I see a career opportunity knocking!