Hull

Thursday: Hull.

I had an interview in Hull. On paper it was an ideal job specification for me.

I've never been to Hull before and am not entirely sure where it is.

A few years ago I flew to Vancouver for a friend's son's christening. I didn't think too much about the timings and certainly didn't look at a map to see where Vancouver was ("was" - well, as I far as I know it's still there so maybe that should be an "is"). Why should I? It's not as if the pilots would get lost. And even if they did they'd be unlikely to come and find me in the economy section and ask me if I knew which way to fly. In any case, I had a vague notion of where it was.

Flew from London and it was five hours before we reached the coast of Canada. I then tightened my seatbelt and made my chair straight, readying for the landing. But the plane just carried on going. For another five hours. Turns out my vague notion was un-vaguely wrong: Vancouver is on the west coast of Canada.

It was only a train ride to Hull. In fact it was an unusually uneventful train journey. It wasn't delayed. It didn't crash. It just went there. For three and half hours as advertised.

Although Hull is a city in the UK, and has a reasonably respected University, there aren't that many trains going there from London. So, I got there quite early.

This gave me an opportunity to check out the town/city centre. It was like practically every other town centre in England.

I checked and I had mobile phone signal so my needs were mainly covered.

After a boring 90 minutes I got a taxi to the company's head office. Walked into the reception and then found I had been given the wrong address. Grrr.

Fortunately their other office wasn't that far away so I could easily get a taxi to the correct office and turn up on time.

Unlike the interviewer who was late.

As I shook hands with the interviewer in his office my arm knocked off an attachment to a whiteboard which held the board swipe and marker pens. Not a good start but I don't get phased by these things.

Although the interview went, in some respects, well, there were quite a few pregnant pauses.
And I felt that what was discussed didn't suit me as well as what had been written. Nothing definitive, just nuances.

After the interview I managed to catch the last direct train back to London. By the way, that's a 1706 train.