Yes, Friends, do YOU have trouble knowing quite how to "pitch" your application form or covering letter, when trying for a new job? It's a common enough problem, isn't it, but one that's important to get right, especially if you see and advert for your "dream job", let's say!
Did you see the story about that local man in this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire? If not, just check out page 94!
Yardley's tragi-comic experience, however, brings a surprisingly animated smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in rural, semi-unconscious Liphook, Hampshire, which is nice to relate!
my wife Lois and me - a recent picture
You just assemble your "profile" on the Linkedin website and "set out your wares" for potential employers, listing your experience, strengths etc, and then wait for those employers' "begging letters", those impassioned "please come and work for us, Colin" -type emails etc, to just roll in - what could be simpler!!!
a typical jobseeker, setting up her Linkedin "profile" for potential new employers
And stop press - nowadays you don't even have to take a lot of trouble over composing your Linkedin "profile" any more, according to an email Lois and I receive today from Steve, our American brother-in-law. Apparently up-to-date American jobseekers are nowadays just putting down whatever's on their minds currently, and Google Translate will turn it into a "profile" in a micro-second, which is a real time-saver!!!!
Here's an example, of a jobseeker who apparently "had just lost $10k on a 'parlay', and whose wife was 'pissed'" (British translation to follow below, if you're puzzled!!!, so watch this space!!!). Not the sort of covering letter that's likely to get the poor guy a decent job, any time soon, but just see what Google Translate does to make the guy more appealing to potential new employers!
See? Simples!!! And next, here are my promised "notes for puzzled British readers" (!!!)
Here's another new-style suggested Linkedin profile, apparently for a suspected fraudster, not the sort of "label" that you want to mention in your profile, I'm guessing !!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
When it comes to job applications and covering letters etc, Lois and I are two of the lucky ones, I have to say!
Retired for exactly 20 years this week, we can afford to look with some amused detachment at the problems of jobseekers, which is a nice feeling!
There's only one real downside to being retired, which is, as any retiree will tell you, that we're now busier than we ever were, would you believe!
flashback to March 2006: my 60th birthday,
and the day we both retired - and little did we know then,
what we were letting ourselves in for. Total madness!!!!
How on earth did we ever have to time to go to work, back in the day!!!!
And today is no exception, with an 11am appointment for me with our new "toes woman", Janice. And nothing quite says "You're old" like having to pay somebody to cut your own toenails for you, to put it mildly!
Janice - our new "toes woman"
Lois and I are relatively new to this area, so Janice is a good person for us to chat to, to find out some of the features of our new home town, top of the agenda being, naturally, info about "celebs" who live, or have lived, in this area. And here there's also some information we can give Janice, so it's very much a two-way street.
We're able to tell Janice that ageing rock band Fleetwood Mac used to live in a big mansion in nearby Headley, and that their iconic song "Down at the Crown" references local pub The Crown, at nearby Arford. And Janice tells us today that Queen star Brian May has lived in this area for many years, with his wife Anita Dobson, ex-Eastenders actress, and how the couple are a pillar of the local community, which is heart-warming.
(left) flashback to the 1970's when ageing rockers Fleetwood Mac lived in a mansion
in nearby Headley, and (right) me showcasing the mansion entrance in 2025
(left) Queen guitarist Brian May with Freddie Mercury back in the 1980's,
and (right) Brian today, with his wife of 25 years, actress Anita Dobson
In short, just another busy day for Lois and me!
However, that's not all, because, on our way home to Liphook, we somehow even find time to stop by the local Sainsbury's so that Lois can pick up some cake decorations for my upcoming 80th birthday later this week.
Yes in but a few days time I really will be old, to put it mildly - yikes !!!!
Old as I undoubtedly am, however, at least I'm not as old as Exeter Cathedral - yet (!!!). That old "relic" is almost one thousand years old, as Lois and I learn this evening during another entertaining Channel 5 travelogue from diminutive Scottish comedienne Susan Calman, who, tonight, is in Devon.
Lois and I didn't know, that, for example, Exeter Cathedral not only has the longest continuous unbroken barrel-vaulted ceiling in the world (see picture above!), but that it also boasts what's believed to be the world's oldest cat-flap.
What madness !!!!!
Tucked away in a forgotten corner stands an unassuming wooden door, and above it a large astronomical clock. And with medieval astronomical clocks, you always get a lot of tallow - beef fat, to grease the ropes of the working mechanism. And tallow is a delicious thing if you're a mouse or a rat. Back in the day, mice and rats would be more than likely gnawing away at those ropes, so what you need to do to prevent that was to keep a cat.
And so, to enable the "episcopal cat" to enter and exit the building at will, the cathedral carpenters installed probably the world's first ever cat-flap at the bottom of the door:
Cats need feeding, however, and cat-food costs money. A page in the cathedral accounts for 1305 reveals that the sum of thirteen pence paid every quarter to one of the vergers, who was responsible for keeping a cat on the cathedral staff.
What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off days!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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