I shan't even attempt to pin down the weirdness into any kind of specific order, and a lot of the weirdness has been the bitty, random dream sequences I've had. There has been quite a bit of real-life weirdness, though.
First and foremost, after consulting a solicitor about the issues with my roof, I had a visit from the managing agents, the landlord - in person - and a roofer. They started out with a quick look at the state of the ceilings in my hall, bathroom and bedroom, then had a look up on the roof.
The landlord was very vocally apologetic - that is, he said he was very sorry and that he would endeavour to fix the situation as soon as possible - but this is a problem five years (or more) in the making. An apology would have been nice about three or four years ago... now, it's pretty meaningless. No plan of action was discussed in my presence, and they disappeared very quickly once they were done on the roof. I tried calling the managing agents last week but had to leave a message asking for a call back... and didn't get one. The person who's supposedly 'dealing with this' has a habit of not getting back to me where others - admittedly lower down the hierarchy - have been a little better.
The roofer had mentioned something about properly weatherproofing the roof - rather than having one tarpaulin just over my roof, he recommended a series of overlapping tarpaulins, properly joined, over the entire roof surface. This rather begs the question of why none of the other roofers have suggested that - in fact, most have said there was nothing they could do short of renewing the roof - though I guess they were offering free solutions rather than sensible solutions...
There wasn't time for them to have properly weatherproofed the entire roof during that visit, and they haven't been back since while I've been around, so I can only assume it hasn't yet been done. Weirdly, though, the last time we had heavy rain (and hail) the flat remained dry until late in the evening, when a few drips came through in the bedroom, but the hall and bathroom remained dry.
Next up, I had a job interview last week... Something like two months after I applied, and close to a month after I assumed they weren't calling me in. It's possible I got my dates confused, but I was sure they wanted someone to start at the beginning of this month...
Whatever... It was easily the most bizarre interview I've ever attended, with the two interviewers - the Production Manager and one of the Editorial folks - spending a good deal of time basically slagging off a large number of their colleagues. OK, granted, the relationship between Production/Editorial and Sales tends to be strained at the best of times, but for them to describe their salespeople as "unprofessional" and "not intelligent" is going a bit far. I've interviewed people and had to say much the same kind of thing, but I've always managed to find a better way, using less specific and negative language. I've also been able to discuss the positive elements of a job in Production, whereas these two didn't even touch on positives. I can't actually remember what the salary was, but it wasn't mentioned in the interview, so they clearly didn't think that was much of an enticement either.
What was rather interesting about the experience was that, everywhere I've worked as a temp, the general rule is that no-one ever leaves Production... unless made redundant, that is. If you're there, chances are you enjoy it, even if there is an element of masochism to that enjoyment. People only move on if they're unhappy... and they were set to lose two of their four/five Production staff, and claimed to be having trouble finding suitable candidates to replace them.
I left the interview wondering why anyone would ever want a job there - their primitive systems are likely to be the cause of many of their problems and their salespeople sounded truly terrible (I mentioned the 'time travellers' at my old place, and they reckoned they had a few of those). The only ray of hope was that the two interviewing me seemed to be on reasonable terms... so at least their Production and Editorial teams should have a healthy relationship.
At any rate, they said I'd hear from them by the end of the week, but I didn't... Not even a rejection... all the more strange because the subject of temporary work came up in the interview.
On the dream front, I had one recently which, at one point, had one of the mob folks from The Sopranos after me for a bit of 'accounting' work. All I can really remember about that one is that my first thought was that I really should have passed it on to a friend of mine who, in real life, works in Accounts. In another one, I was at a restaurant of some kind which miraculously turned into a Blondie concert... which caused me to wonder about a real-life friend of mine who's a fan. At one point, on stage, Debbie Harry turned to walk across the stage and was somehow replaced by a hollow model of her dress with only part of her head. Neat effect... There were lots more, but I haven't been taking notes and have left it far too long to write about any of them... Ah well.
This last weekend saw the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, which was all rather fun. The celebration started a week or two ago, with lots of documentaries and, last week, a dramatisation of the origins of the TV show. I need to watch the 50th Anniversary Special again, so I'll write that up separately...
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