I had some really great news yesterday. I got a letter in the morning post telling me I had been offered a place on the Transform:City programme. I went for an interview on Friday which I didn’t think went as well as I might have hoped, and wasn’t as informal as I had maybe expected. I was told at the start that it wouldn’t be like an interview for a job, but having been through training in recruitment and selection it seemed every bit like a job interview. The structure of the interview was every bit as we had been taught, except that we would probably have used a desk.

I don’t know how many applications they get, or how many trainee places they have. I’d had quite a few informal conversations with the organisers about how it might work, and what I might do; some of which were with people who were on the interview panel. I hadn’t been looking forward to having people I knew analysing me in that way, though ultimately I guess it wasn’t to my disadvantage. I’m going to need to start thinking soon about where I’m going to find the money to live off while I’m doing it, but if this is the outworking of God’s plan for me to serve him in Bradford then I guess I have nothing to worry about!

Though, apparently, at the rate of this year’s earnings, it will take me 88 years to pay back my student loan.