Jane Alexander's Blog, page 5

What type of ice-cream are you? And other questions you might get asked at a job interview

I can’t remember the last time I went for a job interview so I was amused, and somewhat puzzled, by the kind of questions that are now being asked by potential bosses.  None of that old ‘And what do you think you’d bring to the job’ stuff – apparently now it’s all ‘What dinosaur would you like to be?’ or ‘Who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman?’  Or ‘If a hippo falls into a hole how would you get it out?’ Or even, ‘What type of ice-cream are you?’
WTF?  According t...

The 36 questions you need to ask to fall in love

According to a report in the New York Times, you can fall in love with absolutely anyone.  All you have to do is ask the person 36 specific questions.  Why these?  Apparently it’s all about vulnerability.  The study’s authors said:   “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Er, right.  In other words, be open, be honest, be vulnerable.  Presumabl...

30 Days xYz - Black Holes and Dark Matter, Holometabolism and Sinewaves - the poetry of the cosmos

My birthday tends to straggle on, for days, weeks even.  I rather like that it isn’t focused on one particular day.  It gives me time to adjust to being (numerically, at least) another year older.  And I like that my friends and family are as  blissfully disorganised as I am and so I tend to get cards and parcels for quite some time after the event (horizon).
And I like the fact that my manifestation skills seem to be perking up again.   The other day, a snugly th...

The One - snugly throws reprised and re-snuggled

My son is a mass of want.  A maestrom of need.   He needs a new pair of football boots.  He needscycling shoes.  Cycling shoes???  Really?  I bite my lip and resist the urge to say that, in my day, one had a pair of plimsolls and that was it – none of this ‘trainers for this, trainers for that’ malarkey.  To be fair, he buys his own stuff but still.  ‘Can’t you wait?’ I ask.‘No.  I want them now,’ he mutters, clicking ‘Next Day Delivery’ with...

One word?

One word.  I’ve spent the Christmas break (in between barrages of exhaustive coughing) pondering on what my word is for the coming year.  Why?   Well, because apparently if one wants to change one’s life (presumably for the better) one should not focus on the externals (the new job, the new house, the new relationship, the new body, the new whatever) but on the feeling one wants.  It’s all to do with intrinsic, as opposed to external, motivation (or so the lovely Dani...

Perfect presents for beer drinkers

As you know, my husband is a beer lover, a Casanova of the cask, an Ovid of the ale, a Mata Hari of the malt and hop (okay, I'm pushing it there).  His job involves travelling the world sipping, slurping, tasting, testing, judging beer. Some say it's the best job in the world, but that would depend on your proclivities.
Anyhow, he has been writing quite a few books recently and this one, in particular (which is just about to be published by Jacqui Small, £9.99; $14.99) caught my eye.

World...

The 96 kinds of love in need of words

So, I read somewhere that Sanskrit has 96 words for love.  Persian has 80.  The Greeks differentiated between three types of love.  We have just the one word.  Love.  LOVE.  LOVE for love’s sake!  How can we be so deprived?  So lacking in discrimination and imagination and…love?That one poor overworked word has to cover everything from fondness (I love baked beans on toast) right through to total overwhelming (I can’t breathe without you) adoration. ...

What we don't see - or why your antique shop is someone else's pub

So James and I were in the car and he said, ‘Could we pop into that bike shop in Tiverton?’ and I said, ‘Which one?  The one down…?’ and then we got into a long and exceedingly boring exchange in which we tried to pin down the location of said bike shop, along the lines of:  ‘So if you’re standing outside Smith's and turn left then…’ ‘Where’s Smith's?’  ‘Okay, so if you’re coming up the other way from Tesco…’  And so on and so forth.  Anyhow… after we had eventua...

Life lessons on the twisty turning road and the trippy trappy bridge

So I was driving to Exeter, down the valley road, twisting and turning (on three hours sleep and a cafetiere of monster strong coffee because needs must when the devil drives – does that make me a devil? Nah, that really is inflation) on my way to a meeting.  And I got stuck behind a tractor, doing next to nothing a mile but hey…no need to fret, huh?  Because, as I always remind myself at times like this, you just never know, do you?  If you push at things, if you overtake on a...

Tarts or balls? A tale of two recipes

So, Adrian is off on his travels again (Belgium, Prague, London, St Albans), leaving James and I to our own devices.  This has, so far, involved finishing off The Walking Dead (we have agreed that maybe we need some lighter viewing having fought our blood-splattered way through a whole series in a few days) and eating Pecan and Chocolate tart.  James made the latter as the last hurrah for his Duke of Edinburgh award and it is disgracefully good.  Okay, so the shop didn’t have p...