News 13 June 1999

Dear All,

It seems like an age since we were back in England, although it was only around 10 days ago now.

The flight was dreadful, as we went via New York. This added several hours to the journey. And somehow we left Conor’s push chair in New York. Its probably still doing a lonely circuit of on a baggage retrieval belt somewhere. Flying low over New York is brilliant though and Jaine was VERY excited to see the Statue of Liberty!

Our main news is that I’ve got a job. I had a telephone interview whilst I was in Liverpool which went well, and then a face to face. It sounded like they’d already decided ‘cos they kept apologising for making me come in! I’m working for Fidelity (again) working on a margin product (again), although I couldn’t use any of my old contacts there because they’ve all left!

The job application form I had to complete had some very prying questions. They wanted to know all starting and finishing salaries for all jobs I’ve held. Could you remember? I could only guess – but the small print says that if I’m lying it could be grounds for dismissal! I had to identify not only jobs but also all periods of unemployment, and say what I was doing. And I also had to provide references for the times when I was unemployed!

It had some very odd questions:

"Would you be able to do the job with or without a reasonable accommodation?"

What does it mean? I don’t know! I was tempted to put "Notwithstanding not being without reasonable accommodation, I couldn’t not do none of the job", but thought that was too cheeky for an application form and so I answered "without" and hoped I’d get away with it. I ended up asking the company’s personnel manager the question, and she had the cheek to ask me what it meant. It was probably some sort of weird intelligence test!

I had to sign a form saying that they could obtain any records from me from the FBI (luckily I’m an international master criminal and I didn’t sign one for Interpol!)

Of course all this seemed light when they told me they had to fingerprint me! Each finger and thumb twice – what a mess. I felt so guilty after it all!

A sort of downside is that I bought a smart new suit, tie, shoes and shirt for the interview, but I can wear casual clothes to work. So I had to get a casual uniform (chinos and pale shirt!)

Work itself is good, the team is friendly. We don’t have an open plan office, but instead the cubes made famous in Dilbert cartoons. Hundreds upon hundreds of 2m square cubes lined up. Sides are about 5 ft tall and aonlt one side is ope, so no-one can see any one. It was so quiet when I had the interview that I thought it was a bank holiday, but if you wander close to the cubes there a person in each like a maggot in an acorn! There’s a phenonoma called ‘prairie-dogging’. This is when someone drops something, or an interesting conversation is heard and everyone pops their head up over their cube walls to see what’s happening!

The toilets are similar to the cubes. Wheras in the UK the door seals all the way round, here there is an inch gap on either side so that you can see out and everyone else can see in. And the sides are low – 5.5 feet, so that when you stand to clean up (sorry about the visuals here!) your head sees over the top and you come face to face with your neighbour. I’m not sure what the toilet etiquette is here, but I’m hoping its not shaking hands! I’ve decided to follow the tip in HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I do my best not to see them in the false knowledge that they can’t then see me!

The best bit about the job though is the going home. And I mean the actual travelling. The Boston financial disrict is on the seafront, and I live in Hingham on the seafront. I catch a twin hulled catamaran (is there another sort?), and cruise between the uninhabited islands in the sunset. This 150ft vessel has got huge jet style engines and shoots home at 30-40 mph. Oh, and its got a bar! Certainly beats Connex South Central!

Near our house we have Wompatuk State Park. This is a great place to go cycling, so we’ve got some bikes, and Conor has a trailer bike that attaches to mine. The park has lots of off road cycling, plus a set of wide cycle paths through the forest. I haven’t seen any bears yet though.

I thought we were getting up early at 7am to leave for work, but all the kids are being ferried to school by the big yellow school coaches then (just like in the Simpsons!) I pity Chloe when she has to start! There are literally hundreds of joggers out at that time too, plus many ‘power walkers’ who wear weighted wrist bands and walk quickly flailing their arms! I guess someone said it was good for them!

Star Wars episode 1 is great. Well worth the hype. Trouble is as it is based earlier than the other Star Wars episodes, we’re having to re-watch the originals again.

The weather has been extreme. For a few days early this week the temperature hit 99F! Apparently the hottest this time of year since 1925. It was terrible trying to keep cool and I had to dig all the air conditioning units up from the basement and take several cold showers a day. Then it went down to 60F the next day and everyone who was by now dressed for the heat froze on the way to work! We haven’t had rain since we’ve been back. In the winter, out neighbours tell us that 6-7ft of snow is the norm – we’ll see.

We’ve done well again this weekend for invitations out, we walked up the road on Friday and were invited in for a barbecue with the people that took us along to the last party. Then on Saturday we went out to another neighbours for dinner – they wanted to introduce us to some of their English friends. Its funny that whenever people tell us of Brits they know they always have swimming pools – it must be such a novelty to us that we all want one! (I’ve been invited over next week to meet all the English girls around the pool). Today we had a work colleague of Simons over with his wife (also called Jane) and their daughter who is 3, they were all really nice.

Chloe is keen to go to a summer school, we have some details of a musical drama class that she likes the look of. We’re hoping she’ll gain more confidence for when she starts at the new school. We’re having a problem finding a playschool for Conor though, they are all full up and we have had to go on various waiting lists. We had a brochure from the ‘Conservatory of Music’ the picture on the front showed a small child playing the cello ~ we’re just not sure its Conors thing.

Happily we have heard of a place that makes real sausages and a shop that sells naan bread and poppudoms Simon will be able to survive after all.

FYI, our address is:

Wood Cat Cottage

10 Hancock Rd

Hingham

MA 02043

USA

Tel. (781) 749 1272

Wk (617) 563 6006

We look forwards to hearing from you,