Unemployment update

Yes, still without a job to go to! Since the failed Chalkhill interview I have:

• Applied and had an interview for an ecologist post for the Dorset Wildlife Trust Consultancy [Result: no result :(]
• Applied for my old job at NE [no progress on that front]
• Left the Trust 3 times! - I was going to be in the Swindon office for a couple of Wednesdays but these were both cancelled, so I ended up being back in the Devizes office! It was good, because it meant I could attend the rounders match to say goodbye to Andrew F, and could say goodbye to Beth on the following Wednesday.

In between this I had my traditional family trip over the Easter weekend in the motorhome - this would most likely be the last time we would all be away in it. Despite the temperamental weather, we managed to avoid most of the showers and hailstorms and visited Padstow, the Lizard, the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan!

Social event wise, there was Purgle and Amanda's house party a couple of weeks ago, and then on Friday was the Redundancy Party (for myself, Jo and Beth, and change of job party for Tom!). Sarah, Richard and I spent the entire day cleaning, decorating and baking in preparation for our Hawaiian themed party - it looked great, there was tonnes of food, and our cakes seemed OK (though the Chocolate fudge cake wasn't very cooked, and Oli likened it to beef - complete rubbish; the volcano cake was likened to a pile of sick - I think the mini sparklers in the tops seemed to improve on this though!).

It was very sad to say goodbye to them all, and they gave me a brilliant present and massive card, but no doubt I will stay in touch with them - thank "God" for Facebook!

Disappointment

I was lucky enough to get an interview for the internal Chalkhill post. However, they said I had to come to it with a clear plan as to how to get a bat licence within 13 weeks. Cue much research and talking to people.

I thought I had planned very well, and was thinking it could go either way. The interview was a bit weird - many questions about how the consultancy differs to the Trust, and talk about the financial insecurities, which alarmed me a bit. But I thought it would have been a great challenge, and would have given me lots of great skills.

After the interview I went off with Colin (head of the consultancy) to look at a bat roost, which was very interesting and also part of the interview (not quite sure how...). They made up their minds very quickly - it was a no. I was surprised at my reaction (i.e. quite upset) to the news - just too much of a financial obstacle, as bat work brings in lots of money to the consultancy and I would have not been able to contribute to this. They did say that for any other ecologist post I would have got the position, which was some small comfort.

But thinking about it more, I think the pressure to perform and bring the money in would have made the first 13 weeks, and perhaps even after this time, not very nice and quite stressful. And the constant spectre of having my hours reduced because there was no work would have also been interesting... So in a way I'm quite glad I didn't get it.

It does mean now that I will definitely be leaving the Trust, which I am gutted about, as I love (almost) all of the people there. Very sad.

I've also been told that the possible casual work at Natural England will also not be coming off, so almost all of my hopes rest on getting my old job back - the application is in, so fingers crossed!

Besides from job hunting (which, to be honest, seems to be 90% of my life at the moment), I've met up with Caroline for an emergency Prezzo-catch up (Julia pregnant - OMG and major congrats!), and went paintballing last weekend for Richard's birthday (immense fun of course - severe thigh strain as a result of 6 hours of squatting behind barricades though!).

I'm off this week to open a conference in Hereford with Sarah about the NERC Duty - somehow we have to sound like we know what we're talking about. OK, it's not that bad, we know quite a lot, but if they ask any tricky questions about the NERC Duty, we may be in trouble! An excellent excuse to go walking in the Wye Valley though!