A ping pong ball, Frier Tucks and a rest from the usual stuff

1. The big excitement of today was an interview. There is usually something very stressful about being asked to say why you want the job on offer, generally I find, there is a need to give a cleverly considered answer. Perhaps I'm alone in this but I imagine that in some ways it is the easiest and hardest question at once. I tried honesty. I'm mostly an optimistic person on the side of half full rather than half empty. For some curious reason as I came away from the meeting and back out into the driving rain, I thought of a very funny piece by Damien Hirst which was shown at the York Art Gallery about a year ago. It was a glass of water with a ping pong ball sitting in it...Bless him. I wonder if he might have been considering a jolly physics query that asks what happens when a Ping-Pong ball is set floating in a glass of water that is enclosed in an airtight chamber? When air pressure is increased in the chamber, does the ball float lower, higher, or as before? The answer according to the Online Physics Lab of Daytona Beach, Florida, is that it will float higher! Hmm.

2. Having fish and chips as a take away supper is a fairly uncommon occurrence in our house. At the end of this rather long and at times stressful day I really did not feel like approaching or cooking food at all. I probably would have been happy to have poured a glass of wine and collapsed into an oblivion heap. Allan very kindly went off to Frier Tucks at 83b Heworth Road and brought back haddock and chips. It might not be the best fast food emporium on York but it is just around the corner. I ate mine with a great blob of mayonnaise, ignoring the fat ban and with excited relish (the emotional kind). The meal wasn't delicious (I cant think why S the P goes there every week from Fulford), and it wasn't totally satisfying either (I am a vegetablly boy really) but it hit a spot. A beautiful hungry spot.

3. I enjoy writing this journal and I try to keep up to date. Tomorrow I'm off to Wensleydale for a week's holiday in the Yorkshire sun. I will be writing while I'm away and I will update the entries when I get back. The likelihood is that where I'm going there will be no Internet access, no telephone reception and lots of rain...but we will find out I guess. I'm taking my camera and intend to be a photographer, I have a pile of books and plan to finish reading all those that I've started but not finished and I have my sketch pad and pencils and paints so that I can make scribbles that will probably never see the light of day. The beautiful thing about the intention of this break is that we get to have a rest from the usual stuff and enjoy the scenery and geology of area around Semer Water.