Heartbreak and frustration

All last week was glorious, beautiful, freakish weather. I wore my little Topshop smock every day, and sat on the steps outside slurping Starbucks Frappuccinos and chatting to friends in 25 degree sunshine (unheard of at any time of year in N.I.) I taught my M.A. students in the park, and sat discussing the ethics of representing the nuclear holocaust while frisbees zipped around our heads. We had an ice-cream rather than a coffee break.

And I felt fucking dreadful every single day. I hated Belfast with every fibre of my being. I would wake up in the morning wanting to cry at the thought that I am trapped here forever. I looked at people sauntering down the street and felt sick with jealousy that they get to live in a place where they are not 600 miles from their family (other times, I must remind myself, I am so lucky I am not further from them). I resented the fact that I am going to have fly for the fifth time in a month to go to a friend's party next week. (Not that I even mind flying. It's the airports I hate). I thought how many birthdays, book launches, dinners and celebrations I have missed, or had to organise months in advance to be able to afford to attend. In the shower, I counted how many times I have seen my friends in the last few years in Belfast. I thought about how I was having to impose on a friend yet again to be able to grab a couple of days in England later this month. At work, every time an email arrived about research, I fretted about the lack of prospects here.

I have had two job interviews in the last two weeks, both of which held out the prospect of a move back across the water and to a better, more focused institution.

I got neither job. I didn't realise how much I wanted them til I didn't get them.

On Sunday, my friend L was at brunch. She is visiting from London where she now lives. Her flatmate and my friend C works at one of the institutions that rejected me. L told me, via C, that two members of the panel, the ones who work in my area, wanted to appoint me. But they were placed under pressure by other (older) panel members to appoint another candidate who had expertise in a cognate area, even though I was better qualified in the main area. It was a similar story elsewhere - I was appointable, I performed well, I "will be snapped up" when the "right job" comes along. The right job is like the right man - a chimera. It makes me so angry when interviewers say this to you. It's so patronising. Why will any interview anywhere, ever be any different? Metaphorically at least there will always be a better candidate.

At least the weather broke on Sunday. My friend P was over from England on a stag do. I met him and we went on a bus tour around the murals on the Shankill and the Falls before brunch and bloody marys. As we drove around Harland and Woolf the skies opened and rain poured over us. Giggling, P and I turned my broken umbrella into a little tent and sat shivering underneath laughing at the sheer absurdity of the situation. Somehow, the rain was much more conducive to my current mood, and underneath the grey skies and rattling hailstones, I felt a tiny bit of optimism creeping back in.