From September 13th this year until Jan 28th next year I have the pleasure of doing something very close to my ideal job. Working at the Birtsh, Deaths & Marriages Registry. Sounds pretty mundane, and we are flat out busy most of the time, but...

I get to deal with customers - not long enough with any of them to get sick of them, and I get to surf around in one of the biggest databases in the state which goes back until the start of white settlement in NSW, Oz. (I'm an ex-librarian. What can I say!!) I get to find out about the different names people have chosen for their kids, and then, and then....

It's the human condition in microcosm. It's life's dramas being lived by everyday people and we just hear the potted history version and then they are gone. Why their father or mother won't let them change their name, why a young mother hopes that changing her young child's name might keep them both safe from domestic violence. Why someone is happy to buy a marriage certificate so she can show it once to the divorce court and then burn it forever. How the mother of a multiple birth could not bring herself to register their births because they have all not made it into life, so she sends her friend to do it for her. The legal wrangles, or tangles following a death in the family.

Then there are the happy stories: the about-to-turn-18's who want a proof of age card so that they can go out and celebrate at a pub or club, the marriages at the registry, the births of happy bouncing babies, the certificates needed for a passport to go on a trip overseas, and some of my ex-students turn up with babies, which can be a positive or not so positive thing. :-)

Unfortunately this job is only temporary, and I get to move on at the end of January. I am really going to miss this job. I haven't worked with such a lovely bunch of people and in a job I have enjoyed so much for maybe 30 years.

The next job is already lined up - state taxes and land taxes. Cannot possibly work up any enthusiasm about that but it is real money, unlike temping money, with annual leave, sick leave and flexi days, which I haven't had for about 10 years. I'm getting too old to live like a nomad on hand-to-mouth subsistence wages.

Helen