A foggy reality

I wish I could write and say I'd found the most amazing high flying job, paying London-rates and the sun was shining (carrots and radishes blooming), chickens arrived and clucking, house fully decorated and stunning, my homemade cake business blooming and generally everything being perfect.

Sadly, as I'm now more aware than ever, life just aint like that.

If I was the protagonist of a novel, I'd be called 'Melissa' or something girlie like that. I'd have an amazing hidden talent, like the ability to sing like Charlotte Church, or uncover local mysteries a la Agatha Christie. These things I'd do offhand, in my own time, whilst prosaically trudging through the day to day monotony of job hunting in a very stagnant market. Suddenly one day, I'd wake up and find out that some local spark had discovered my inherent ability to cure all illness through song, get confessions from hardened criminals and settle peace and happiness on the land. Within three months, people would be clamouring for me to help them and I'd set up some sort of little business run from home, my stubborn attempts to get a normal office job would lie thwarted in the boggy quagmire of unanswered emails, ansaphone messages and promises to pass on messages to friends of friends who are MDs of huge conglomerates.

Any good news? Absolutely - I am my own (wo)man, the sun is shining, I've just baked a cake and I'm now going to go for a long walk, come back and eat the whole damn thing. And not least, I have managed to get four days temping, which do not involve wearing day-glo orange bibs standing with a clipboard on a street corner, or wearing a telephone headset and speaking to irate BT customers (who, like me, hate call centre operators). That should earn me almost a third of the money I managed to lose through penalties to the bank, who were happy to carry on greenlighting my switchcard, whilst whacking on chunky penalty charges silently for almost a week. Nice.