Leaves

Through the open patio door, I could smell the rain, couldn't see it yet, couldn't hear it, but I could smell it.
Across the road, the sounds of the film set packing up. Sounded like trouble, but Kevin looked, we'd forgotten the film crew and they, for their part, never even knew about us.

At work, a woman brought in two leaves. They were leaves I could identify, one was birch, it grows like dandelions in a lawn here. One was red alder.
'I have these trees growing on my patio,' she said,
'Ahu,'
'Can I bring them to the park? I rang the city and they said they didn't want them,'
'The park's a city facility, and we are having birch trees removed at the moment, I'm not in charge here, but I'm pretty sure the person who is will say no,'
'But what shall I do with them?' I liked the woman, she was warm and at least she'd brought leaves.
I'll ring her back tomorrow with a solution. The cottonwood trees whispered it to me on the way home, even though I hadn't been drinking.

Last night we watched 'Hot Fuzz', dammit I could so relate to Simon Pegg's character in that. He was like me only fitter and on occasions drank beer. It was a funny and engaging film, parodying parochial life in Simon's county of birth, Gloucestershire. But I fear that this and 'Shaun of the Dead' show us something paranoid from that same childhood, a little boy afraid of being misrepresented, misunderstood, of being ganged up on.
So, I'm still relating.

It's interesting, now that I am receiving other people's CV's, I can look back to when I went to the Employment Resource Centre and the woman there, the professional, told me how to revamp mine, make it look unreadable, ridiculous, claim skills I didn't have.

'Don't listen to her,' said Gail and I didn't. Gail was right. The CVs I'm getting now are better laid out than any the woman at the place showed me as examples. More succinct than she wanted me to be. More like the one I had already.
Funny that.
And I find that although I read them all through, and make note of the ones with the skills I'm after, the presentation does draw me, keeps a CV in my head.

It has been my experience here that when people advertise jobs, they ask for too much, for skills that are irrelevant, so I understood when a woman rang me up today and said she had all the skills I asked for except the French.
'That's really the central skill,' I said, 'the others I can teach you in the time available, I can't teach you how to speak French in that time,' but I understood why she had asked.