Ups and downs

After I posted yesterday’s whine, I realised it may not look too good to complain about your job prospects while showing pictures of the bar you went to. The truth is I remain optimistic that one of my applications will pay off. I’ve had two interviews in two weeks with organisations that are very good prospects, so at least they see me as a viable candidate. So I’m encouraged. If I go a few weeks with only rejection letters and no more interviews, I will be discouraged. Such is the nature of a job search. Going to a pub is just a way to socialise after spending all day in the house alone working on cover letters. I had one cider. So let me lay that potential fear to rest.

The week started out on shaky ground. A homeless woman was found dead in a doorway in Belfast--the fifth person “living rough” to die this year. I heard her sister interviewed on the radio--sobbing--about how she’d tried and failed to help her sister get off the streets. The interview was devastating to listen to. The dead woman, in her 30s, had substance abuse issues and apparently had been on the streets for 11 months. Belfast has a very visible squad of volunteers with coffee and sleeping bags walking around the city checking on homeless people. But I think some people can’t be helped short of taking them to a rehabilitation centre against their will, and that may not help.

And then I heard about a family of five who died last weekend when their car slid down a slipway into Lough Swilly in Buncrana--I think I posted a picture of that slipway in September when I was in Buncrana. I guess the driver was trying to turn the car around when it slid on algae and slid into the water. The father/driver, his two sons, his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law drown. The only survivor was a five-month-old baby, whom he passed through the window to a man who had stripped down to swim out to the car. The mother of the baby (wife of the driver) had been out of town. Imagine coming home to find your family wiped out by a freak accident. I still don’t understand how they couldn’t get out of the car before it sank.

Then there were the terrorist attacks in Belgium, 31 dead. I think I was somewhat inured to that tragedy because I was so shaken up by the Lough Swilly drowning and the poor woman curled up in a shop door in Belfast. Of course every one of these lives was precious and has left a hole in the fabric of the families left behind.
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