New Year and back to work.

Atrocious weather, awful headache - it's not boding well already.

But I've sorted some outstanding problems I couldn't fix before Christmas so that's good and I've had an eye-test that's unsurprisingly revealed that I do indeed need new glasses - of the varifocal kind - not so good.

But before I go home I thought I'd better write about the next BIG thing.

Last year one of our two deputy librarians retired. Off to sunnier climes. We duly advertised his post - managing cataloging and acquisitions and systems.

Now for some reason I managed to miss the adverts and even the fact that they'd reached that stage in the proceedings so I accepted that what with health and not being at all sure I'd really want the job, that was that and it wasn't meant to be.

However, only two people applied - one internal - and we didn't appoint anyone. Human resources and the Library Head decided to review the job spec and see if that was the problem. I'm not sure they changed it much, but by the time I did catch the advertisement second time around I was wondering if I shouldn't give it a go. Several factors came into play:
- I'd been stung by former colleague S, somewhat dressing me down for not applying for the other Deputy post when it had come up
- I can't let illness put me off - it's up to them to tell me they don't want me
- what if they had appointed the internal candidate and I'd not even bothered?! (The fact that he was the guy I beat to my present job also confuses things!)
- can I really keep doing what I've been doing for the last fifteen years?

on the other hand:
- would I be promoted to the level of my incompentance? (the Peter Principle)
- would it be all the tedious bits of my job and non of the fun bits?
- (related to the last) would I mind no longer being an 'academic'?
- and related to that and the differing pay scales, is it worth it for the small increase in salary?

Well, for better or worse I put in an application. And although it took an astonishing amount of time before I heard from HR, I was offered an interview.

That takes place on Thursday. I'll keep you posted.