The One Where I Get A Job
“What?” I said, as I
turned round in the kitchen to see my brother giggling at me from across the
room. “Are you laughing at me?”
He shook his head, almost a bit disbelievingly. “Aren’t you a mental?” he said. “Don’t
you just… love life?”
I was stood in my pink silk pyjamas and floor-length Japanese kimono,
halfway through belting along with whatever Sunday
Morning Love Songs was churning out as I threw eggs and flour and milk into
the brown mixing bowl we got at the charity shop for £2. Calum was sat at the table
slicing fruit for stewing; my brother’s fella was on the terrace, blowing smoke
to the London skyline.
“Well, yeah,” I laughed back at
him, looking around the flat. “’Course I
love life. My best friend is here in my London apartment, and last night we
went out dressed up as the judges off of X-Factor, and we’re having pancakes,
and being a little homemade family, and this is my life, and I didn’t know it
could all be this lovely, and so it’s a bit brilliant.”
I did dramatic flinging of arms.
“I do love it!”
I put the lid on the blender, where vanilla ice-cream, peanut butter and
Disarrono waited to be mixed up into milkshake heaven (yeah- you’re welcome for
that one), and dropped the first of the batter into the pan as everyone busied
around the table.
“Plus we’re about
to have the best brunch in the history of brunches, and I love brunch because
I’m a fat bitch, and fat bitches are never miserable- only skinny people are
miserable, because they’re hungry,” I reasoned. “One
thing I will never be is starving. Or miserable.” The three gay men at the table issued an A-MEN. They know me so well. That makes me happy too.
I’m reflecting on all this 36 hours later, wherein I’ve cemented my love for life
because I’ve just been offered a job. Accepted a job. And I’m struck with just
how thankful I must be because DAMN. Somebody, somewhere, is looking after me.
To think I was so scared, so worried, so afraid of the struggle I knew I’d face
undertaking Life From Scratch, and yet
I can honestly say that since I landed in London FIVE AND A HALF WEEKS AGO that
I’ve not once doubted the absolute perfect-fitting-ness
of this whole operation.
I’m meant to be here, now, doing all
this.
(I even just had to look in my diary to see how long I’d been in London doing Life From Scratch
because I thought my imagination had gotten it wrong. It can’t possibly have
been only five and a bit weeks, I thought. NOPE. My Moleskine agrees: I’ve done
less than forty sleeps in my London Bed. LESS. THAN. FORTY.)
(If this were Noah’s Ark, we’d still be sailing.)
(Also, I just looked up from where I am typing this to say to Calum, in
further appreciation, LOOK AT YOU! ON MY
CORNER LEATHER SOFA READING EAT, PRAY, LOVE IN MY LONDON APARTMENT WITH THE
VIEW! And he laughed at me- because that is, apparently, the theme of my
life, being laughed at by the people who I love- and said, DON’T YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO SAY EVERYTHING OUT LOUD to which I
responded WELL LIKE, D’UH. HOW ELSE WILL
THE UNIVERSE KNOW THAT I’M GRATEFUL?)
(And THEN Calum
was all, but if you were in New York City
Library and said out loud “I’m in New York City Library!” you’d get shushed. I
said, BUT THEN THAT’S EVEN COOLER! THEN
YOU COULD SAY OUT LOUD “I JUST GOT SHUSHED IN NEW YORK CITY LIBRARY!” and so
we both giggled together and agreed to never stop saying all the things out
loud because life is just funner that way.)
The week before I moved here I came down for the day to interview for an
internship I didn’t think I was qualified for. The week I first lived here they
offered me the internship. Yesterday my boss told me he was so impressed with
me that there was no need to complete the internship- he was to put me on the
staff, if I wanted to continue with the company.
WHO INTERVIEWS FOR ONE JOB, THE WEEK THEY MOVE TO LONDON, AND THEN GETS
THE FREAKING JOB WITHOUT EVEN FINISHING THE TRIAL PERIOD THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO
BE DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE?
This incredibly grateful chick, that’s who.
And Internet? It is a twelve minute walk from my front door to the office
front door, which means my working day is 8.45 a.m. to 5.15 p.m. and all the
hours between? MINE. ALL MINE. Mine and my bigger dream’s. Mine and Penguin’s dream.
Aaaaaaaand, not only did I get offered the job in spite of this rude blog and website and book proposal, but I was
offered it BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS. Essentially, I think I got a job because I impressed the right people
with my vagina.
And so, looking around at my newborn life, still wrapped in a birthing
blanket and covered in the messy innards of my dreams being borne into the real
world, I can’t help but think to myself that the universe is like, totally on my side.
Which is a relief.
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