Saturday, January 31, 2009

portrait, job, parrots

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I can see you too.

Too old, too daft, too bloody-minded I am positively unemployable, yet I have always liked work. So I have to confess even now to reading job advertisements with more than passing interest, prompted I admit by an underlying strain of fantasy. Today, my eye alights on something just right for me, or the fantasy me, looking over my shoulder:
Chief Executive Officer Salary £130k - £160k + negotiable benefits and significant package: near Oxford. Ideal skills and qualities include: Strong leadership capability; emotionally intelligent; team builder; political nous; strategist; creative; high energy; high achiever.
I suppose I would have to set the alarm a bit earlier than now, but hey!

In a vase is a crowd of parrot tulips. Green tinted outer petals like beaks; inner petals deep red; the blooms not yet fully open are at their best. Parrots: you can almost hear them.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A fantasy job, now that's a new one in fantasies in my book! The money especially attracts.

Unknown said...

I think what appeals is an office with a big desk with nothing on it but a computer screen and a keyboard. With its help I could exercise emotional intelligence and political nous. People would be in and out all day as I build them into a team. And as you say the money might come in useful.

Roderick Robinson said...

Reading job ads - and I thought I was alone with this indulgence. Shame you don't get The Guardian. On Monday there's a special section devoted to media work (much reduced now, of course)and the only reason for scanning these pages is to thank whatever deity you subscribe to that never again will you need to write a job application to something like Public Works and Muck-Shifter which I once did, in extreme desperation. Got an interview, too. "Any questions, Mr Bonden?" "Er, yes. Are you likely to change the name of the mag?"

Unknown said...

I remember the Muckshifter. Wasn't there someone called Eddie Luck, who, apart from writing about, earthmoving equipment, bulldozers, diggers and mechanical shovels, test drove them too? And pronounced on them with authority? A sort of Jeremy Clarlson of the construction site? Or did he work for Construction News.

Lucy said...

You two are making this up! Though it sounds rather like one of those guest publications they have at the end of 'Have I got News for You'.

I have never, remotely, been able to identify myself with any job advertisements, even any that I applied for or even got. Which may account for why my career in anything whatsoever never got off the ground, and I am now buried in the Breton countryside.

Unknown said...

I can vouch for the fact that there was a magazine called Public Works and Muckshifter, Muckshifter for short. What you have to realize is that for the many people whose job it was to shift "muck" on a daily basis, it was the bible.