Long live life-long learning!

Being gainfully unemployed can be a challenge. But I've met it headlong with a challenge of my own. I have decided to catch up on my classics reading. This came about chiefly when I risked my English degree being revoked by unmasking my horrifying total of Jane Austen books read (viz. zero, wince) to some of my learned friends and my hubs. So I have begun to make amends. My first port of call has been Thomas Hardy. Much to Mark's surprise I have loved "Far from the madding crowd" because of his gorgeous takes on the foibles of human nature. Check it out:

"He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent." (pg.20)

Delicious, hey?

But life-long learning doesn't stop at books. Oh no. Living with my tannie and oom has been an education in itself. They are seriously into sustainable eating and living. We went to hear a talk by Rob Hopkins called, "From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience". Very inspiring. The UK feels light-years ahead of South Africa in terms of the transition we have to make due to peak oil and climate change.

And lastly, to convince you that I am aspiring to the upper echelons of educated society (ahem), I include an extract from the job description for the Saturday Invigilator job I have applied for at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Yes, THE Bodleian Library:

"Sensory and physical demands:
1. Fetch manuscripts, rare books and archival objects (some extremely heavy) from locations around the building, including areas accessible only by stairs.
2. Handle rare and fragile objects with care.
3. Operate specialist equipment (e.g. stairwalkers) in order to move manuscripts, rare books and archival objects from delivery points."

Can anybody out there stand as a referee of my ability to operate a stairwalker? If you could just let me know what it is, that would be appreciated.

R