The interview (hopefully not like the movie Step Brothers)

Dear Diary,

I may have exaggerated yesterday. This (potential) position is not for minimum wage. It's 50 pence or so an hour above minimum wage, so please forgive my dishonest hyperbole.

I am not taking it as seriously as I should do (for I bought a bottle of wine tonight, from said store - which has a dire and abominable selection of most mediocre wines, with only one that is even barely passable [though I don't know about the whites, except for one particularly fine vintage available there, which a former employer - a nobleman, I was his butler - used to drink]). Anyway. I have been reading up on body language during interview techniques (yes, yes, yes: I've read it all before) and reading about something of the history of the company. It is actually quite interesting, in a kind of chew broken glass kind of way (let's face it, working in retail is not the most interesting vocation, certainly not like being an actor, an author or a sport star). Yet it is history, and history is something that I am most interested in, especially British history. It is a shame it is not ancient history or mysticism. Or is it?...

I recently translated Nennius' History of the Britons and there is a curious line (section 9, Mommsen's edition) in it which contains the common noun negotiato which can mean 'banking business' but principally means 'wholesale business'. In a fourth century tract by Avienus (Tales of the Sea line 113) there is a line which reads negotiandi mos erat which means ‘being fit to trade wholesale was its custom.’ (this is a verbal form of the same noun in the form of a gerundive). Curious, seeing as how this particular company is not only British (the 'it' in the translation probably being Britain), and a wholesale trading company (which feature's in its official name), and indeed a banking business. Curious, no? (hic vates sum, certe).

The regular noun interprens in Classical Latin can mean a number of things, not simply 'interpreter' or 'mediator' but also 'translator' and 'prophet'. They are the same word, just as vates means 'bard' and 'prophet' (again, it is the same word, having a cognate Brythonic noun). A rather important person (so important, I cannot even mention them) said to me when I first learnt Latin, "You are not the first to translate Plautus [and it come true], so don't let it go to your head." This is most sage advice indeed. Humility, is everything.

On another note, I have been finishing McMahon's book which just gets more and more curious still. So curious, in fact, that I cannot even mention just how curious it is (all very hush hush, you know). I will however, mention one singularly remarkable woman: Jane Archer (born Jane Sissmore). She is an absolutely fascinating character in Great British history. Conspicuously, there is no entry for her in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and the English language Wikipedia article on her tails off in its traditional amateurish fashion. There is no mention of her being treated as a kind of 'court jester' by the very macho and bigoted gentlemen of her day (quoted in McMahon, 2008, p.347), nor that she was 'rough-tongued', 'tough-minded' and always spoke her mind (ibidem). The substandard yet not uninformative Wikipedia article does, however, make mention that Jane Sissmore was deemed by the traitor Kim Philby to have been, 'perhaps the ablest professional... officer ever employed' by the British Establishment. She was a trained barrister, a keen mind and an amicable person: such a rare person in such misogynistic times, and a rightful inspiration for women.

Max.