Parting shot

Things I will be glad to see the back of:

Transport: a given. The July 7 underground evacuation was just the start of my horror. I will certainly not miss the sound of someone throwing up down the back of my seat while the person next to me plays grime music at top volume, but I do not dare say anything in case he has a knife in his pocket. For that matter, always worrying if people have knives in their pockets.

Prices: being charged more for a pint than I would cough up for a bottle of supermarket wine. The very northern trait of commenting on the price of everything has been amplified here.
'£15 for a Sunday roast?' (followed by sharp intake of breath)

The self-righteous male execs I worked with who think if you have a northern accent/did not go to private school you are a sub species. These are the type of men you would warmly welcome some sort of war/uprising for, so they could expose themselves as the truly useless humans they are. Your long words and smug chops can’t help you now, Rupert! Pow pow pow!!

The fact a pitbull is a must-have accessory in certain boroughs.

Fashion. In Shoreditch especially. No, you do not look good in skinny red jeans, yellow neon top and silly moustache.

Proper London accents. Also the reason I cannot watch EastEnders but I can watch Corrie. Nah wot a mean, bruv?

Eating shrivelled canteen baked potatoes al desko every day.

My insomnia, which has blossomed over the past few years.

The fungus in my bathroom.



And to prove I am not a complete misery guts, things I will miss about London (as well as certain people, of course):

The cheeky squirrels. They are not rats with cute tails. I even like the junkie ones.
www.flickr.com/photos/jaded/112087519/

Gordon's wine bar on Embankment. Unconditionally.
http://www.gordonswinebar.com/hshow.php?jpic09|8

My charity shop volunteering – who knew hanging up polyester pants while hanging out with autistic people and petty thieves could be so much fun?

Borough Market – even though my recently diagnosed coeliacs means I have to avoid the cake and sausage roll stalls and eat a burger off a cabbage leaf instead.

Free/cheap hair cuts at the Vidal Sasson training academy. Although my present give-me-confidence-for-the-first-day-of-new-job hairstyle does have a pink streak in it (‘Oh no, it’s MINK darling, it looks good HONESTLY.’)

Canary Wharf - weirdly. I am strangely sentimental about the shiny place where I used to work. And the parties on boats moored nearby.

My mobile phone, which I lost in the pub during my leaving drinks last night. Although I did acquire a Santa hat.



And that is it. The bags are packed, the van is booked and the bathroom has almost returned to its original colour. So long London. And thank God for that.

Things I will not miss..

It is 2am and I am standing by a bus stop in Shepherd’s Bush, blind without glasses, crippled by high heels and with a mobile phone that has just given up on life. I am considering joining it.

With me is ‘Al’ an elderly Cuban trumpet player I have just met who has been to a late-night dance class and is almost as lost and confused as I am. Despite his creepy flirtatious tone, I am not telling him to sling his hook because I am reliant on his eyes to read the bus stop signs for me (his cataracts beat my stigmatism). Still, I would rather be stuck with an amorous trumpet player as my guide than a crack-head gangster.

I am not sure if it is a London thing. There is a possibility it could be an age thing. But when I am asked if I had a good night out, these days my answer begins with a blow by blow account of the horrors of the journey home. The lovely time I had before gets diluted with tales of tube engineering works, rerouted night buses, unaffordable taxis and the bizarre cast of character met along the way.

A first round of farewell drinks in Soho seemed like an excellent idea. A central-ish point for people to meet, then jump on the last tube home and be safe in bed within 40 minutes with a box of ibuprofen and a pint of strong orange squash. Instead I am dodging snaking rivers of p*** trickling down the pavement, watching girls with chubby thighs squeezed into tiny shorts throw fried chicken at each other, and gently explaining why the small matter of a 40-year age gap, me having a boyfriend and my imminent move to the north means, no, meeting for a drink would not be a great idea... but where can I get the next N207 bus from?

It takes me three hours to get back to Ealing. I take comfort from the fact my emergency trainers are still stashed under a bush on the Common, where I hid them before heading to Soho in my ridiculous heels, staggering like a newborn foal. I gratefully shuffle the final stretch of my journey home.

Treat treatment

‘You should,’ says Special Agent Dale Cooper when asked why he is drinking coffee instead of hunting killers, ‘treat yourself to one thing each day.’

These are wise words, even if they are said by someone who is friends with a dwarf who talks backwards. (Watch Twin Peaks if you haven’t.)

Which is why I have come to Richmond on my day off. Far, far away from my flat and lists and phone calls and questions and emails and bank statements. Well, 15 minutes on the 65 bus, anyway.

Richmond is posh. It’s the part of London you take family members to when they visit because it has swans and a Waitrose. I am sitting by the Thames drinking coffee and watching pigeons fight over a pizza crust. A homeless man is also watching them (this is Richmond homeless though - he has a Daily Telegraph on his lap which he has been reading, not using for shelter).

Sitting here, next to the homeless man, watching the pigeons, it is the calmest I have felt in weeks.

‘I should treat myself more often,’ I think, ‘not stress about money and moving.’

I head to the main street. I buy some trousers (treat). I buy a top (treat). I have some wine (treat). I eat a Galaxy Ripple. I buy Stephen King’s Misery on DVD (treat). I book myself in for a wax I can’t afford (treat). I should be buying mildew spray to clean the bathroom and white gloss to paint over the tea stains on my kitchen walls. I buy a shiny belt instead.

I am high on treats.

‘I should not be allowed out on my own until further notice,’ I think, wisely.

Keep calm and carry on packing

The Congratulations-You-Got-A-Job flowers are dead. My bank account is empty. I have a start date for the new job, but no finish date for the old one. I have almost sorted a place to move to after days spent tearing around Yorkshire, guided by an indecisive sat-nav. Southern Man is calmly coming to turns with relocating farther north than he had ever been before chatting me up in a pub three years ago. And unemployment.

Even though I have been dreaming of a move back north for months, now it is almost here there is a real danger of my brain reducing to mush. I am Susan Boyle on finals night of Britain’s Got Talent, about to flash a chubby leg at Piers Morgan before being carted off to the Priory.

Packing, cleaning, moving, mending, binning, rearranging, buying, borrowing, driving. Saying goodbyes. Then starting a new job.

I write a ‘to do’ list. I cross things off the list, but that makes the list look messy, like my thoughts, so I start a new list. I take the list to the shops. I think of something to add to the list. I look for the list. I have lost the list. I write a new list on a bigger piece of paper, with footnotes.

Apparently if there are more than seven things on the list, then the list becomes a source of stress itself. I have 22 things on the list. Some of them would have taken less time to do than to write (‘get big box out of cupboard’ written while sat by cupboard), but I put them on anyway.

I have three weeks until I am meant to say so long to London. Can I sit in a dark room rocking back and forth for three weeks? The idea is appealing.

I phone my mother in Cumbria, no stranger to feeling stress.
‘What you need to do,’ she says slowly, ‘is write a list.’

Hanging on the telephone

Watched pots do boil. I have watched some. Watched phones, on the other hand, refuse to ring.

I am back at work after the job interview, with my mobile on vibrate mode in my pocket. I have been checking it more times than a teenager with a crush. They will phone me this week. The longer I wait the more I replay the interview, done after two sleeping tablets, three hours of sleep and four coffees and consisting of answers that ranged from good to gobbledigook.

I feel a vibration. I get my phone out and check it under the desk. No missed calls. No messages. It was probably the gentle hum of my Mac. Again. Someone else’s phone goes off. I check mine. I wait five minutes. I check it again. I hide the phone in my glasses case and keep lifting the lid and peeking inside. Still no calls. Still no messages. I have another seven hours of my shift left.

I hate my phone. I hate its silly touch screen that makes it impossible to carry out those automated calls that require you to ‘push button three’ because it keeps locking. I hate the way its hot screen is left with a make-up smear after I use it. I hate its rubbish camera, which I can’t understand. I hate the scratch on its screen that mysteriously appeared after a night out and I will be forced to stare at until my contract finishes in a year’s time. Mostly, I hate its ability to deliver any news.

I lift the lid and check it again. I become aware that someone is calling my name. It is one of the moody executives on the other desk. I am surprised he knows my name. He is holding his office phone up and waving at me. I point at my face and silently mouth ‘For me?’ He nods.

I take the call on his phone, which he is not too happy about. I don't care. It is the man who interviewed me. He appears to be telling me that I got the job, and do I want it. He says he knows I can’t talk properly, but he just needs to know a 'yes' or a 'no'. I say 'yes'. The executive is eyeing me suspiciously. I adopt a tone similar to the one I use with my doctor’s receptionist, or the customer service team at nPower. ‘How did this person get this number?’ I am thinking. He is telling me he will send something-and-something out in the post to me. I forget to ask start dates.

I go back to my desk and try to compose myself. I fail. I go to the toilet with my mobile and make several screechy phone calls.

I have a job in the north. I am getting out of London.

Don't get the London look

Tops, dresses, trousers and skirts are dangling from hangers off every door in my flat. They are ironed – something of a novelty as I normally try to walk out the creases in my clothes.

These almost-outfits are the culmination of my interview preparation. And I still don't know what I'll be wearing on the day.

I try on the most likely choice. I think I look professional. Tyra Banks would call me ‘fierce’. I hold my chin up high. Southern Man looks up from his bag of crisps.

‘You look as if you’re going out clubbing,’ he says.

‘No, this is the sort of thing features executives wear in my office,’ I say, tugging on the hem.

‘The interview is in Yorkshire, not London,’ he says.

‘They still dress like this in the north for work,’ I say, trying to sound as if I know what I'm talking about.

I put the dress back on its hanger on the door, put my jeans and Monster Munch T-shirt back on and hold my head in my hands.

Vogue and Cosmopolitan may be concerned with going from summer to autumn collections - for me the big issue is a seamless transition from London-look to Leeds-look. I don’t want people to stare, point and snigger. And I have previous for this.

I’ve always had problems picking suitable outfits for new places. When I moved from my village primary school (where I was one of three in my year) to a nearby town’s secondary, I was clueless. I was outed on the first 'out of uniform day' (and to think I had to pay 50p for the privilege). I thought my patchwork dungarees were cool, and my reversible Winnie the Pooh sweater was the height of pre-teen fashion. My favourite jumper had a hot air balloon knitted on the front with a pocket as the basket and an actual teddy bear inside it, attached with a bit of string. Other pupils were wearing lace vests and pretty chiffon tops that tied at the front. I had gone from a trend-setter at primary school to the biggest fool in the tuck shop.

I was similarly misguided for my move to London, many years ago, from my job in Hastings on the south coast. It had been a male-dominated office there and I fitted in. The only nod I made to being a woman was the occasional bangle. Being able to run for the bus and last orders was more important than looking the business. I felt decidedly underdressed for my first newsroom in the big city, hiding behind my monitor in my black cardigan while showbusiness reporters tottered around in 4in heels and Gucci dresses. In my current office there is one girl who has not worn the same outfit in the two years I’ve been there. Either she gets outfits free from PR people or is a prolific shoplifter.

Even my time spent in colourful Brighton, with its Cyberdogging youths and gays parading in PVC hotpants could not prepare me for London – especially the foolish fashions of Shoreditch. I think my teddy bear jumper would fit in well there, if teamed with a bowler hat and skinny jeans.

So all this is playing on my mind, and I am haunted by the words that employers judge you within the first few seconds of meeting you. Hence the fact I have spent so much time on the physical and not the mental preparation. As long as I look OK and can remember my name, half the battle is won.

Parrots in spring time

Parrots wake me up every morning. They make a PREEEEE-cah-cah-cah-cah sound that drowns out the sparrows and the blackbirds and even the screeching brat on his school holiday next door.

There are thousands of wild parrots in London – they have bright bodies, shiny red beaks and pointy tail feathers. Even though I see them every day I still haven't got over the novelty of having them around and am forever stopping in my tracks and gazing like an idiot up at trees. They are a peculiar addition to the city, sticking out like a green sore thumb. Like seeing monkeys shopping in the Metro Centre. Or tigers sunbathing on Brighton seafront. I imagine they taste far more exotic than the sad, mangy old Trafalgar Square pigeons so would be quite a catch for local cats.

There are different stories about how they ended up living here. My favourite is the one involving Jimi Hendrix releasing a dozen into the wild while on some mad acid trip in the 60s. I’ve also heard some escaped from the set of The African Queen when it was being filmed. But I’m fairly sure the actual reason is the most dull: some flapped to freedom from a bunch of aviaries and found that the temperature suited them – God bless global warming.

I am envious of how they have managed to take to London like a duck to water. But if all I had to do was sit in a tree and warm up eggs, I guess things would have been a lot easier.

Lucky break?

So the news is mostly good. I am on an interview shortlist. The date for that interview is Friday the 13th. But that is OK because I am not superstitious. Not very. Although I did once land a good job because I was wearing my ‘lucky top’ (my boss later drunkenly confessed that its v-neck helped swing his decision).

I’ll take walking under a ladder over walking through a puddle. I like black cats - although I’m still not sure if they’re good or bad luck. I smashed a mirror once and won a fondue set the following week in a ‘guess the weight of the cheese competition’ at Caterite supermarket.

I delete chain emails that order you to forward them to ten friends if you want any luck in your life, and only feel slightly uneasy in the process. I salute solitary magpies, disguising it so passers-by will think I’m combing my hair like the Fonz. And if I’m reading a book on the tube, I don’t like closing it on the 13th chapter or on a page number ending in ‘13’, so will skim through to a ‘safer’ page to leave my bookmark. Weird.

I suppose there is a fine line between being superstitious, doing things religiously and being obsessive compulsive. One minute you’re not standing on a crack to avoid breaking your mother’s back, the next you’re taking pictures of your cooker on your camera phone every morning to reassure yourself later that you have definitely turned it off.

I know someone who used to have to spin her knickers over her head three times if she accidentally put them on inside out. I’m lucky in that I can go for whole days without realising my knickers are on inside out. Or my top, for that matter.

As a child I had odd routines. I could not go to the toilet if I had not checked in the washbasket and behind the shower curtain first. This was a routine born of fear - I was convinced ET was hiding there. It became as routine as washing my hands afterwards. Spielberg has a lot to answer for. I should probably not share that in the interview.

These days I just obsess over my GHD hair straighteners and religiously check whether I have turned them off. I remember sweating through a deadline day in Canary Wharf convinced I had left them on in my locked bedroom in Elephant and Castle, 40 minutes away. I had to make my excuses and leave and travel home, expecting to find my flatmates dead and the house reduced to smouldering rubble. The distant sirens were all heading to my cul-de-sac, I thought. When I got back, the straighteners were ice cold and unplugged on the floor.

Stupid hair straighteners. Stupid Friday the 13th.

Foot in the door

There is something sweet in the air. It is the faint whiff of a job. It is coming from the direction of Yorkshire, from a place that is the opposite of London.

I get the call about the job while looking through a rail of half-price bras at Marks and Spencers. The man calling me is the man hiring. I could be talking to my future boss.

‘Have I called at a bad time?’ he says.

‘Eh, no, I am just... shopping,’ I say, walking in tight circles, clutching a pair of pink French knickers to my pounding chest.

He talks about his job, my job and the job on offer. He tells me to send in an application form and we can arrange a meeting. I make some notes on the back of a receipt I find in my pocket while sitting cross-legged on the cold shop floor.

I leave the knickers and leave the shop. My head is in a spin. I try to regain my focus. I realise that I have no good shoes. Shoes that say: ‘anyone who wears me would fit in well with your company’. I must find shoes. Focus on shoes. Stay calm. Stop walking in circles.

I have been obsessed with shoes for years. Not in the oh-my-god-I-just-have to-have-those-jimmy-choos way women are meant to obsess about shoes. Just obsessed with finding a pair that fit.

My feet are not built for pretty shoes. They are long and wide, resembling slabs of gammon. On seeing my feet for the first time, Southern Man declared that I did not have toes, I had trotters. My wardrobe is filled with shoes that make my feet bleed and spill over the sides (foot muffin top) or ones that look ugly and have heels missing.

As a child I loved having big feet; I was proud of them and willed them to grow bigger than my older sister’s, which they promptly did. I thought big feet were cool. They are not cool. They are a curse.

Fat people are always complaining about clothes shops not catering for their sizes, or only stocking hideous constructions in XXL. It is the same for fat feet. Fat, size 8 feet. Life would be sweeter if everyone just wore flip flops.

After gazing in horror at my blistered, scarred, broken down feet, my mother recently instructed me to go and invest in a pair of shoes from a rather nerdy, wholesome shoe retailer. I was reluctant. Especially as I had spotted nuns and Muslim women in full peep-scarves buying shoes there – not the most fashion conscious of ladies.

But as my head is in a spin and there are large signs saying 70 per cent off, I decide to visit the shop. I try on a pair. I have a Cinderella moment - minus prince and with a chunkier heel.

'Oh they look very cute,’ another shopper says to me. I am so stunned by my feet being called anything other than monstrous, I buy them. If they are the brand favoured by religious types, they might even get me a job. A miracle.

Doorstep festival

I am at Ealing Global Summer Festival, kicking around dust in my flip flops. My feet have turned black. The festival is in sight of Ealing Studios and, crucially, within easy reach of my flat, toilet, fridge, kettle and bed. The entrance fee is only £1, so apparently my inflated council tax has been spent on Portaloos, hand sanitisers and tree lights this month.

Global festivals are a way for middle-class mums and dads or anyone over 45 to get smashed and still feel smart. All around me, parents are sitting on posh picnic rugs wearing silly hats thinking they are being edgy, when really they are just wearing silly hats. Boys wearing hemp t-shirts keep kicking a ball at my head and a man is dancing furiously by the disabled tent to ‘Benoit Vilejohn and his Musette Trio’ with his t-shirt off, not realising it is not that type of festival.

I am here for a friend’s colleague’s 48th birthday.

‘I’ve never been to a 48-year-old’s birthday before,’ she whispers. ‘It is good to know they still involve lots of wine.’

Yes, lots of wine, drumming workshops and cous cous.

‘If this is meant to be global, what have we got to represent Britain?’ I ask, scrolling down the line-up. There is African Cultural Development, the Yiddish Twist Orchestra and Ensemble Parvaz: music from Iran. No N-Dubz or Chipmunk in sight.

‘I think I saw a Morris Dancer over there,’ she says, pointing at a stall selling tin elephants and cheap rings that make my fingers itch just looking at them.

It is all a bit strange, and my head has just been hit by the ball again, but that is fine because I am within easy reach of my home and I can relax in the knowledge that an hour-long trek and an airless tube trip will not be necessary later on.

Defenders of London say: ‘Oh it’s the best city because everything is right on your doorstep.’ But they are fibbing. Or they have very big doorsteps.

I loved going to parties on Oliver’s boat, moored near Canary Wharf, right outside my old flat. I could drink red wine on the deck with my back to the towers, eating chocolate pancakes and talking rubbish until, inevitably, someone was sick in a bin. Then I could stumble 150 steps and be in my bed.

With the pain of travelling in mind, when considering moving to Ealing 18 months ago I placed a chocolate chip cookie on a map with its centre on Ealing Broadway station and drew around it. The flat I rented had to lie within the circumference of the cookie – about ten minutes walk from the station. It is a good system. But still, by the time I get to the station from a trip to a restaurant/theatre/museum/gallery in central London I am normally so stressed by the tube journey I have forgotten where I was in the first place.

The man with his top off is sick in the plastic recycling bin. I hope he is close to his doorstep.

Boycotting chains

'They are not my rules,' the woman is saying.
'But they are stupid rules,' is the best reply I can come up with because I have not had my first coffee of the day. Because of her.

For the past 18 months I have bought a black Americano (95p) from the coffee bar in the staff canteen. It takes the edge off the first hour of work and helps my brain boot up. The Argentinian working there says hello and something nice about my hair. It has become my non-alcoholic equivalent of Cheers!, where everybody knows your name, or at least how you like your coffee. But things have changed. I am boycotting the coffee bar.

A coffee chain has taken over. The Argentinan has gone. She has been replaced by an evil Kirstie Alley type who does not know my name or comment on my fringe. And they have brought their cups. Stupid red cardboard cups. Stupid red cardboard cups that cannot hold hot liquid, which instead trickles through the seam and onto your fingers, forcing you to decant the contents into several tiny plastic cups from the water cooler and drink them like a selection of luke-warm shooters.

To save my fingers I have been doubling up, placing my cup inside another empty, stupid red cup - like coffee cup Russian dolls. But despite the sense in my actions I am being told by this new woman to pay 'an extra 20p' for my protective shield cup.

It backs up my love of small independent cafes. My first job, when I was still at school, was working for a little bakery/sandwich shop called Brysons. I would walk the two miles to work along with a local farmer and his herd of cows and then sell iced buns and Cumberland fruit loaves to old ladies and add up the sums not on a till but on the back of a paper bag with a pencil (this was 1996, although it sounds like 1886). You had banter, you had regulars, and if anyone did make a complaint (which was rare) you would pacify them with a meat and potato pie. That place had soul. This place has none.


'Well you can make a complaint to my manager then,' the woman is telling me.
'Oh I will,' I think. 'Because complaining is one thing I do very well.'

Dying art of toilet gossiping

I am queuing for the toilet in Shepherd’s Bush Empire with someone who could be a good friend. In the past year we have met twice, both times because a mutual northern friend has arranged nights out months in advance and demanded we make space in our work-clogged diaries. The queue is long. She is telling me some great gossip and asking for advice.

She is a scientist – working for the World Health Organisation and looking for a cure for polio in her spare time. Despite her intimidating amounts of brains and beauty, I enjoy nights out with her. Spending time with scientists makes a refreshing change from the majority of people I come into contact with – grey-faced media types who have fading vision and relationships, coffee breath and are constantly having to extend their overdrafts.

While they are hammering keyboards and looking for dirt, the science people I know are testing pigeon chunks for radiation, are trying to grow mice in hen eggs or are running tests on 40-year-old men whose heads are bigger than their bodies. Part of me wishes I was a scientist, swishing around in a long lab coat and turning on a Bunsen burner each day instead of a PC. If only I had stopped listening to Green Day tapes in the back of chemistry class with the boy from the canoe club and taken more notes.

So I might not be a scientist, but at least I get to hang out with them now and again. And I am sure I could meet them more and know them better if I did as I was told and joined Facebook.

So far I have avoided it, despite people telling me how great it is see photos of school bullies who have since turned fat and had ugly babies. But I have managed to resist the urge. To give in now would be like starting to smoke at 80.

But I do appreciate it is a good way to stay in touch with either very old, very distant or very new friends – the ones you can’t just send a text or email to or turn up on their doorstep randomly.

But, I figure, if I was signed up I would not be hearing this toilet gossip for the first time. And gossiping through cubicles and by sinks is what makes us women.

Plus I do not think I can risk spending any more time staring at a screen – no matter how ugly the babies staring back at me are.

No time to waste

‘Stop doing the London walk,’ my parents will say when I visit them in Cumbria and invariably end up walking 20ft ahead and at twice the speed. And it’s true, I have picked up the pace in the past few years. You can’t help it, it’s contagious. Most people walk quickly and with purpose here, even when they’re not in a rush and have nowhere specific to be.

If I get stuck behind someone walking slowly along Oxford Street, say, or dragging their heels while changing on the underground, I get cross out of all proportion. Even if they have good reason to be walking slowly, like a prosthetic leg. I have completely forgotten how to amble. I am on permanent fast-forward.

I have also started to multi-task unnecessarily to optimise every available minute in the day. In the shower I will wash my hair with one hand and brush my teeth with the other. I dry my hair with the hairdryer while making the bed and pairing socks. When cooking, I always wash up/clean up as I go along (although not very well - dried on bits of branflake will always be pointed out to me on ‘clean’ cereal bowls stacked away in the cupboard the next day). I can’t even relax watching a film on TV, I have to cut/file/paint my toenails at the same time or be scanning the internet for jobs. Walking back home from Ealing Broadway Station (quickly) I will make shopping lists in my head, or consult my diary and start thinking of ways to fill my days off. If I don’t have at least a couple of things to do at any given moment, I feel slightly on edge.

I must not waste time. I cannot relax.

Short-changed

The bored teenager in Greggs has short-changed me by 15p. He has charged me for a cheese and ham baguette, not a cheese ploughmans. I don’t say anything. I have already tested his patience by asking him to cut the sandwich in half and to stamp my coffee loyalty card, tasks which caused him to sigh heavily.

I give the sandwich to my friend, along with 15p from my own pocket. I don’t want her to think I stole her 15p, or admit to not wanting to confront the assistant.

‘I need to toughen up,’ I think as I drink my coffee, mildly disgusted with myself.

To succeed in London, and possibly life, you need to be single-minded, driven and not care if people badmouth you behind your back, because undoubtedly you will have given them reason to. The ruthless creatures are the ones who rise above the ranks in my newsroom, get what they want or get headhunted. Nice guys and girls finish last.

After my coffee I go and help out in the charity shop. There is a new disabled volunteer in his 50s. I say hello. He seems very driven. He keeps telling me to do things, even though I am meant to be doing something else.

‘Put a label on that,’ he barks, pointing at something. ‘No! Put it up there. Come and look at this. Move it there. No, there. Hurry up.’

I am not sure if his disability means he is not aware he is being rude and bossy, or if he just enjoys being rude and bossy. I’m also not sure if I should stand up for myself, or say ‘Move it there please’. I decide to do what I am told. After 30 minutes I go and hide from him by the video section.

I leave and go to Sainsbury’s. I am lugging around 4 giant folders of science magazines I bought from the charity shop. There are 50 magazines, dating from 1981-1983, neatly bound in silver folders, all in immaculate condition; not that you would expect anything less from the nerd who originally owned them. There are clusters of atoms printed on the front of them and ‘Science Now’ written in a futuristic font. One article predicts 'Phones that fit in your pocket could soon be with us', another has a feature on a talking suitcase, although it does not say why anyone would benefit from owning one.

I am weaving about the cheese aisle like a drunk person, weighed down with Science Nows, shopping and a handbag. I sway to the check-out. A woman in her 70s wearing bright blue pants cuts in front of me. She knows she pushed in. We held eye contact for a split second.

‘Ehaah,’ I say to her, but the sound gets stuck in my throat before it can form a word. She is probably a retired managing director.

A very northern stand-off

I am painting my nails frosted pink, sitting on the sofa with my sister. We are watching the climax of the week-long manhunt for Raoul Moat on Sky News. We are into the third hour of the stand-off. We meant to go to bed an hour ago, but can’t take our eyes off the green fuzzy night-cam pointing at Moat, who is next to a storm drain by a river waving a gun around.

Gazza, premier league footballer turned championship lush, turns up. ‘I’ve come to see me mate Moatey!’ he slurs to armed police. ‘I’ve brought him a dressing gown, some chicken, a can of lager and a fishing rod so we can go fishing and have a chat.’

‘This is getting weird,’ I say. ‘Will Ant and Dec turn up next with sausage rolls?’
‘Are we imagining this?’ she says.

The live coverage is interwoven with reports from the village in the North East where the action is taking place. There is a bit of a carnival atmosphere – locals have come out of the pub and are drinking pints watching it all unfold. They're sitting on deckchairs even though it is dark and drizzly.

We hear a report from a middle-aged man who has a greenhouse. He thinks Moat stole from him.

‘My tomato plant had just one tomato on it,’ he says. ‘And the tomato was missing this morning.'
The Sky News reporter looks pleased with his scoop. We go back to the fuzzy green coverage.

Earlier in the week, while Moat was holding up a chip shop, an old women was told to stay in Morrisons supermarket until the danger had passed. ‘Oh, it beats sitting at home on my own,’ she told a Radio 4 presenter later. She hadn’t been that excited since the Blitz.

I know Raoul killed his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend and shot a policeman, but the whole thing feels surreal. Even the photos of the shot policeman did not seem real – his face looked plastered in strawberry jam, not blood. Or maybe tomato sauce from the chip shop. I almost hope Moat jumps down the drain and makes a new life for himself in the sewers – rescued by teenage mutant turtles. Anything seems possible.

Another hour passes. Things are not looking good for Moat. We switch the TV off. It's like when I watch a film for the second time and know a main character is about to die, so I turn it off and pretend they get their happy ending. Thelma and Louise set up a bakery in Mexico. Tom Hanks finds a cure for Aids in Philadelphia.

I look under my bed before I go to sleep, half-expecting to see Moat hiding there, putting his finger to his lips and giving me a cheeky wink. But he’s not. Because he’s dead.

Nothing nice to say

I have been asked to meet the new batch of trainees who are destined for London. I must represent the desk.

‘Try not scare them,’ my boss says.
‘I’ll try not to scare them,’ I say at the same time.

The trainees have been herded on to a balcony high up in the building, which offers impressive views of the canteen. It reminds me that I have not had time to eat – other than the usual plate of **** I am force fed by certain people.

I shrug and drain my third glass of wine.

The trainees are fresh faced and have come from across the country armed with serious degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, connections and smart shoulder bags.

'What is it like? How do you like London?’ they say, staring into my eyes expectantly.

I pause, stutter something incomprehensible, then accidentally elbow the MD in his back and spill wine down my top. Someone else answers the question, stopping me from saying: ‘Jump! Jump off this balcony now.’

I retreat to the canapé table. A retired member of staff is there. I have been looking forward to catching up with him. He is from Manchester. He knows people there. I can trust him. He says he can help me. We go out for a drink. I look at him expectantly.

‘You won’t be on the money you’re on now in Manchester, you know? You need to be in London to make serious money,’ he says. ‘You’ll be bored up there. There are no jobs... They’ll chuck money at you to make you stay here. Or they’ll make you work three months’ notice... You should commute - it's three hours on the train, I did it for 40 years.’

I want him to stop talking. I look at my glass of wine and consider throwing it down his shirt.

Words and screens

My left eyeball is dry and itchy and my right one is watering and twitchy. The nurse at work advised me to stare off into the distance every 15 minutes to give my eyes a break from the screen. I remember this after I have been looking at it for eight hours forty minutes. I stare off into the distance. I see more computer screens.

‘I need a break from words and screens,’ I think. ‘I would be better off staring directly into the sun.’

On the tube home I do not read my book. At home, I hide the TV remotes and put a cushion over my laptop. I look at the pile of unopened post and then put it under the cushion.

I go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I pick up a bottle of shower gel to read its ingredients for something to do. I realise the ingredients list is made out of words, so I throw the bottle on the floor. I focus on a splodge of mildew on the shower curtain instead. The mildew is real. It is living. I go to bed. I dream of work and screens and words. I wake disappointed. It is a waste of a dream. I want to dream of gun fights, flying horses and Robert Pattinson.

I go out for a walk. Words and screens are everywhere – posters, electric displays at bus stops, house ‘for sale’ signs. My phone vibrates. It is a text message. I ignore it.

The World Cup is being shown on a giant screen in the beer garden I am in. I look at the flower underneath the screen. It is real. It smells. I can touch it. I want to touch it. I go and touch it. I turn round. People are looking at me. They are real.

Pack man

I have started to pack for the move up north, pushing aside the small matter of not having a house to move to or job to go to.

I am no stranger to the packing process, having moved at least 17 times in my adult life. One move involved driving a van for 600 miles, another saw me pushing a shopping trolley containing all my worldly goods - and a cat - around a corner. But they all have one thing in common: ruthless packing. Separating the essentials from what is, essentially, tat.

My wardrobe resembles the final hour of a jumble sale, so it is my first area of focus. I make three piles: bin, charity shop, keep (it is the sort of thing skinny presenters for Channel 4 makeover shows would advise).

A large percentage of Southern Man’s pants and mildly amusing, yet hole-ridden, slogan T-shirts make it to the bin pile. He might notice they are missing in 4-5 months and complain. I am willing to take that chance.

I part company with a 'Pink Ladies' polyester jacket, glitter legwarmers, ancient dresses and boob tubes from my thinner days. I have somehow amassed six scarves, which seems a bit excessive for someone who only has one neck. Four go.

I normally give my clothes to the Cancer Research shop, and then walk by it for the next week in the hope that one of my donations has made it on to the shop window mannequin. They never do.

But I buy most clothes from a different charity shop, where money goes towards, rather vaguely, ‘helping the local community’ (not quite as appealing as the big C). I’ve found designer clothes there for a snip - I continue to squeeze into some Nicole Farhi trousers that I bought for £3, despite having to undo the top button when I sit down. I’m in there quite a lot, and told the assistant, a slightly loopy woman in her 70s, about my mission to find a job up north.

‘Oh you know what you need to do?’ she confided loudly, so I could hear her over the badly tuned-in Capital FM, ‘Paint your face black or become one of those lesbians.’

I shuffled uncomfortably in the busy shop and tried to distance myself from her statement by looking at a pink plastic necklace.

‘It’s true. It’s the only way to get a job,' she said, 'And I don’t care who hears me say it!’

I have not seen her for a while. She appears to have been replaced by a quiet Polish woman, who isn't black or gay.

Window shopping

Britain has been slowly baking over the past week. It is the sort of rare UK weather that leads tabloids to fill their pages with pictures of Beth, 19, a hairdresser from Brighton, in a bikini and up to her belly button in the Channel, while other newspapers will report on the true cost of sunburn to the NHS. Even Glastonbury festival has been sunny, which I am not very pleased about – once you have been and endured four days of sludge, slurry and downpours, you want others to suffer the same way.

The heat in London is oppressive. My flat, with its large Victorian bay windows, has transformed into a microwave oven and I have been cooking on full power for eight days. I am done. And I am too afraid to open any windows after hearing about a colleague’s daughter – a student doctor in West London. She went to bed and left her bedroom window open so she could nod off with a slight breeze, only to wake at 3am staring at a hulk of a man who had climbed through and was helping himself to her computer. What a toerag.

Being pale and Cumbrian, I am not built for this heat – although I do love the sun as long as I can sit around in it and do very little, except eat white chocolate Magnums and read magazines. The promises of a good wage and good weather were the main reasons I moved down south in the first place. The Lake District is by its nature wet, and Aberdeen, where I went to university, was so very Scottish you only got two hours of sunshine each day. But after five years in London and nearly ten down south, the grey skies of the north seem most appealing. And it would be lovely to open a window.

Only words

I miss toast. I receive a tip-off that Marks and Spencer is selling an edible wheat-free loaf that my dodgy stomach can stomach. I head out to buy it on the way to work. It is only a loaf, it should not take long.

I am inside the shop, clutching the small, white, overpriced loaf. I am already running late. I spy a till with two people waiting on it. My luck is in.

The checkout-lady has her left wrist in an arm guard, as if she has twisted it or there is some sort of deformity underneath it that might put customers off buying last-minute Turkish Delight or vanilla fudge bars. She is carefully folding some pyjamas and putting them in a carrier bag. She moves on to the next item. It is a carbonara ready meal. She studies it. ‘Oh that looks nice,’ she says to the lady buying it. Two more people have joined the queue behind me. The checkout woman carefully scans the pasta meal. She picks up the next item – it is a block of cheddar cheese. ‘Have you got a flower bag?’ the person on the next till shouts over. She bends down and does a thorough search of her area. She sits back up. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I do not have a flower bag.’ She looks at the cheese in her hand and seems surprised to see it there.

The woman in front of me turns around and catches my eye. I think she is trying to engage in conversation. ‘Are we going in slow-motion?’ I ask her. ‘Why do I always pick these tills?’ she replies. We shake our heads and puff air out of our cheeks in a mock-exasperated fashion.

I eventually buy the loaf. I leave the shop strangely elated. It is because of the brief exchange (of words for words, not goods for money).

I realise that on a typical working day I do not talk much. I get up, mooch about, look for jobs online, travel to work, go to work where the only conversations are brief, sharp and usually end in someone telling me to do something quickly, which means I will be unable to talk, then return home to find a man on my sofa who I try to talk to, but he is asleep. It is why I sometimes go to the Hotel Chocolat posh sweet shop before I start my shift – the assistants always have a banter with you – that, and you get a free square of chocolate.

‘This is what it must be like for old people,’ I say out loud, just so I can hear the sound of my voice. Old people only get to speak to their doctor or the charity worker who comes to chisel dead skin off their feet. No wonder they will talk to anybody.

I am as isolated as a 90-year-old. The thought is quite disturbing. I try to concentrate on the thought of toast.