Behind the scenes

I’m leaving. After nearly fourteen years it’s surprisingly hard to write those words without a twinge of regret. Museums have been my passion and working in East Lothian has been the largest chunk of my professional life. I will miss the place, the people, the collections, the things we have done and the exciting things we are planning to do. How could I not?

I’m leaving on a jet plane. Although I do know when I’ll be back again - in August, when I fly back to the UK to accompany the rest of my family back to New Zealand. And though I hate to leave, it’s also exciting: new job, new opportunities. One thing I have learned in my time here is that you have to grab oportunities when they present themselves - they may not recur. But as ever by doing one thing you close off the opportunity to do other things with the same resources of time or money. There’s no point worrying about what might have happened if other choices had been made. To quote CS Lewis in the Magician’s Nephew (and it’s not often that the Narnia books get quoted!):

Make your choice, adventurous stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had

Still, I’ll be able to keep in touch. East Lothian will be just a hyperlink away. Unlike Charn.

Our museums at Prestongrange and Dunbar open to the public between April and October. This means that every year we have to recruit a fresh team of Museum Assistants. No while it is the case that we have some staff from the previous year who apply again (other having moved on to other employment), the bulk of the Museums Assistants in any year will be new to the Museums Service and mostly new to working in a museum environment.

This year the interviews took up two full days. Having been on both sides of the equation, I can say that while being interviewed is a stressful and potentially-dispiriting experience, actually interviewing is more physically exhausting, and carries its own particular stress factors. The need to treat all candidates fairly and equally - to ask the same questions and in the same way, while keeping up an appropriate level of interest in answers often not dissimilar to ones you have already heard fifteen times is very tiring; the need to keep good notes of candidates’ answers, to help you remember who it was that said what; and the eventual need to choose between candidates who are all capable of doing the job on the basis of who nonetheless seemed at interview to be the best culminate of course in the worry that despite your best efforts, you might have made a wrong decision.

All in all, though, over the years we have been very lucky in the people who have come to work for us. I suppose that is one advantage we have as a museum service - the job itself appeals to people, not just as a route to getting paid, but as something worthwhile and enjoyable in itself. And who am I to disagree with that - after all it’s why all of us are here.

I mentioned the price that the view from my office exacts. Yesterday it was ten degrees celsius. That is bearable if you are moving around, but while sitting at the desk…shiver!

So I relocated to the office at the front of the building which was a good ten degrees warmer, and worked from there - isn’t technology wonderful?

Today my office is a balmy fourteen degrees. So I’m still in the front office…

Everyone who visits my office in Dunbar Town House envies the view. Here’s why…

Of course, they tend not to be visiting when the biting easterly winds are howling through the gaps around the  windows, and it’s really too cold to be sitting at a desk working. That’s when I migrate to the meeting room which is a bit (though not much) warmer. But of course there’s no network access there, so I have to brave the cold to read and write emails.

Still, as Norman Lamont said (in a completely different context), it’s a price well worth paying. Yes the view is stunning. But only when I remember to look up from the screen and enjoy it.