Ex Factor

Getting a little more topical than is usual here at househusbandnot, I was sorry to read about Steve Irwin being killed by a stingray. But mrs househusbandnot said that he would probably have wanted to go like that, like Keith Richards wanting to die on stage, taking his final moments as he had filled the rest of his life.

I'm not sure how other people would like to die. Banksy? Tony Blair? James Blunt? Alphabetically? I hope not. I would be right after that dull Australian bloke who writes the househusband blog about his kids going to the loo and other 'hilarious' observations on being at home with his family.

I guess a real house husband would want his final moments to come just after he had filled the freezer with easily prepared snacks for the wake, and right after he had completed any other chores on his weekly rota - sorted, organised, neat and tidy. By contrast, and with considerably less planning, I guess a househusbandnot would die waiting in the queue at the dry cleaners to explain that he had lost the ticket for his wife's dry cleaning , just before he's done that final coat of satin wood on the banisters, or just as he had realised that he had the wrong shopping list at the supermarket. It wouldn't be ideal, or convenient. Other people would have to sort it out. But there would be some verisimilitude and symmetry to it I guess.

This is all beginning to sound a bit serious for a Tuesday. mrs househusbandnot reminded me last night that I should not forget to tell you that I was laughing so much at X Factor while eating supper on Saturday night that I snorted a pea out of my nose. ( Now that would have been an embarrassing way to go. )

Back in the land of the living, yesterday I heard back from one organisation that "Unfortunately you have not been selected on this occasion [for a job interview] as your educational and/or professional experience does not quite fulfil the essential requirements of our person specification for the post (as attached in the application pack)." I am not sure what my educational and/or professional experience will lead me to be doing in the coming months, but in the meantime here's to Steve Irwin - an unlikely but today a very real role model for doing what you need to do, and not pissing around filling out job applications for non-existent jobs for organisations whose communications strategies you have written and who actually used some of your rhetoric in the job description. (Yes I am really pissed off about not getting the interview, but writing about it here just made me feel a whole lot better.)