Of Mice and Me

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I may be offered a job this week. I can't take it.

It involves spending one month getting GBP7 an hour backing up data from "a few hundred" old laptops, and putting it on another few hundred new laptops. That's it. A month doing what I've spent the last week doing, and at the end of it GBP1000, no longer term employment, no prospects, and a missed chance to get some prospects.

I can do pretty much anything with computers, I can do most jobs that don't involve hauling heavy boxes upstairs or smiling, I'm one of nature's bloody-minded problem solvers, and I can work mornings, weekends or nights. What I can't do is throw away my one chance for a decent career.

On the one hand, GBP1000. On the other, a future of seeing the world, engaging with bright educated youth, and being constantly challenged in a subject I've been interested in since age 17.

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You know how you often think of exactly the right thing to say half an hour after what would have been the perfect time to say it? The French call it "Staircase wit" - the witty remark that would have won an argument and made you look fabulous in front of everyone, if only you hadn't thought of it alone on the staircase on your way out.

Well I've got the opposite problem. I think of good things to say in situations that haven't happened yet. Things like:

* Trumpet Strumpet.

* Don't protest too much, or people will quote Shakespeare at you.

* Enoch Powell - Rivers of Crud.

* Yes I'm ashamed. And proud of it.

* The past isn't what it used to be.

* If you want certainty, you're in the wrong universe.

* Pride - a cheaper love

I hereby christen this phenomenon "Pavement Wit" - things you think of to say when there's no chance of using them.

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There's at least two mice in my bedroom, and they're both deaf. I have an ultrasonic repellent plugged into the wall, which is supposed to drive them away with a high pitched shriek only they can hear. Which has no effect on them whatsoever.

The other thing about my mice is: they're always at ninety degrees to where I'm looking. Never behind or in front or diagonal - always a dark brown scampering streak out of the corner of my eye.

Oh, and there's some in the kitchen too. They seem to have developed a taste for curry powder, biting their way into the plastic sachets. Maybe we should bait the traps with vindaloo?

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Filling out some forms today I learned some fascinating things about myself.

My Nationality is "British", but my National Identity is "English". My Country of Birth is "United Kingdom" even though it isn't exactly a country, and my Area of Residence is also "United Kingdom", even though it isn't exactly an area.

I'm also in the European Economic Area, which isn't the same as the European Union and doesn't include Switzerland. And my Ethnic Origin is either "White British" or "I prefer not to say".

So I'm glad that's all sorted out.

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