An Interview - The Inside Story

You wake up in the morning and the vague stirrings in your stomach, which have been there ever since you got a date for The Interview, have overnight exploded into millions of energetic young butterflies that are performing vigorous Scottish reels right in the middle of your tummy.

After swallowing down something that on any other morning would have been called breakfast, you try - emphasis on TRY - to do a morning's work. This procedure is somewhat hampered by frequent checkings of your e-mail just to reassure yourself that The Interview hasn't been cancelled. Checking your watch every two seconds once you only have two and a half hours to go further impedes your productivity for the morning.

At one and a half hours before The Time, you get worried that you won't have enough time to eat lunch, clean your teeth and get to The Interview on time.

Lunch is eaten, teeth are brushed, shoes are on, coat is on, handbag is collected, keys are picked up. You get in the car and your hands fumble clumsily with the seat belt and gear stick. You listen to your favourite music as loud as you dare, the hope that this will drown out the butterflies in your stomach and the jittering in your head floating vaguely in the background. This doesn't seem to work very well, but two Police cars and an Ambulance , all with flashing lights and wailing sirens do help to break up the noise of the blood vessels pounding in your head.

By this time you are wondering why women give up staying safely at home and actually choose by their own free will to enter into the World Of Interviews.

Walking up the road from the car, you are positive that everyone else in the radius of five miles can hear your heart beating. Someone stops to talk to you just as you reach The Destination and you mutter something that they kindly let pass for a reply, while you fight hard to keep your eyes from straying to your watch. You're on time, but you're sure you must be late.

You don't have enough confidence to look The Interviewer in the eye, when offered a chair you perch apprehensively on the edge of it, clasping your hands nervously and when a joke is presented to you, you look at it with glazed eyes and try laughing. The laugh comes out something between a choke and a yap. Thankfully, no one seems to have noticed.

Nervousness has now just started to ease off and the relief this causes sends a rush of blood to the brain. When asked why you applied for The Job you find yourself thinking that that is a very good question - Why DID you apply for The Job? Next you start mixing your words up and your sentences come out the wrong way. You hope fervently that the sudden return of your childhood lisp is not permanent. The crowning moment comes when you knock two years off your actual age.

And some people claim that rushes of blood to the brain are when they come up with their brightest ideas.

The Interviewers are satisfied. The weak and wobbly feeling you get after a rush of adrenaline is slowly taking control of limb after limb. You just about manage to make it from The Destination to your car without walking into a lampost.

The combined effect of loss of nervousness and the inevitable knowledge of waiting an indefinable length of time for the outcome of The Interview hasn't yet been given a scientific name.

The feeling half way between depression and extreme tiredness which takes control of you the evening after The Interview is generally called A Mood.