Blind drunk date

My week off has been spent sofabed and spare room hopping across the north, via a few bathroom floors along the way.

I picked up a copy of the Manchester Evening News while I was there to look through the jobs pages. Exactly the same jobs appear on the online version that I check from London, but there is something more earnest about leafing through a newspaper's job section, instead of entering key words and scrolling down a computer screen.

Job vacancy highlights include the experienced fryer wanted for a fish and chip shop, chatline staff (must have own landline), and person wanted to be ‘responsible for the maintenance of office tropical plants’ – which I presume means watering yucca plants on windowsills. The starting salary is £16k – the same Southern Man started on for his audio job in Soho (another one of those media roles where you must have a degree, the right face and know someone in the company, but if you won’t settle for the crappy pay there are 1000 other media graduates who will).

My older sister in Manchester was moving to a bigger house, giving her more space to fill with Mamas and Papas highchairs and musical plastic space pods for my nephew. I had agreed to help her move. But I had also agreed to meet an old school friend the night before who has not had much luck meeting men who were not socially stunted in some way.

In West Didsbury's Met bar, I herd my school friend over to a nice-looking chap from Northern Ireland who is 31, has a good job, good accent and a good sense of humour. The only problem is, after 2 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and no tea she is finding it hard to stand, let alone focus on the good catch, and wants to talk instead to the 19-year-old with the pierced lip, no job and two children.

I give her a not-so-subtle shove back to the Irishman and initiate a phone number exchange. In the cold light of day they agree to go on a date. I wonder if I could relaunch myself as a matchmaker. Then I reason a job watering plants might have fewer repercussions.

After 4 hours of troubled sleep I head to my sister’s to help with the move. I end up falling asleep on a concrete slab in her back yard and wake when my dad has to go to A&E for a problem with his leg.

God TV

I take the train from King’s Cross to Newcastle to see my old flatmate John, who has been in the same boat as me but has managed to bail out to the north. And it only took him three years of twining and CV tinkering. He is proof that you can get out. But also proof that it can take a long time.

We toast his new life in his new house with mojitos and prawn cocktail Seabrook crisps while watching episodes of Cold Case (the soldier did it, but his boss covered it up. Soundtrack: Pearl Jam).

We discover the religious channel, God TV. They appear to be holding some kind of telethon, but instead of Lenny Henry they have a jittery preacher with a fake tan. They are trying to raise ‘urgent funds’. There is a large stack of orange papers on what appears to be a rockery. I am very confused.

I call the number at the bottom of the screen. A pleasant-sounding Indian lady picks up.
'Hello, God TV,’ she says.
‘What are the orange bits of paper for?’ I say.
‘They are prayers, maam. You can make a donation and we will print out a prayer for you.'
I get scared and hang up the phone. I wonder if they can trace the number.

We carry on watching God TV. We have another mojito. I call back God TV. The same lady picks up.
‘Hello, God TV.’
‘Where is the money going? Which charity?’ I ask.
‘We are raising $4million to keep God TV on air,’ she says.

I am flabbergasted. Across the bottom of the screen I can see that a man from Russia has just donated £1000. Someone from East Anglia has donated £15. I am getting annoyed. John takes the phone off me and packs me off to bed.

I forget to brush my teeth and wake at 6am with a bad taste in my mouth.

Wise move

Everyone is moving. Everyone except me. KC is moving. And of all the streets in all of London, it looks like he is moving on to mine.

KC and I started on the same day at work and have been complaining ever since. He is house hunting with his attractive teacher girlfriend, who has benefited from the sudden death of a rich relative (the only way you are likely to get on the property ladder in London. Unless you are those two Polish painters who decorated a banker’s new house in Canary Wharf and decided they liked it so much they changed the locks and kept it for themselves. Quite enterprising, really).

KC and his girlfriend pop in for a cup of tea. I root around the cupboard for cups that are not chipped or covered in coffee smudges and tea stains. They tell me they have been looking at a one-bedroom first-floor flat a few doors down. They show me pictures. I see that it comes with a garden which is approximately the same size as a Subbuteo pitch. It is selling for £249,000 – roughly the same price my parents’ 4-bed detached home with garden, garage, shed (Mother: ‘It is not a shed it is a summer house.’) and little pond with occasional frogs is going for, up on the borders of the Lake District.

But KC and his girlfriend are young and in love and excited about buying their first place. I tell them the garden has potential.

Depression

It is my day off. I spend two hours and 40% of my laptop battery looking for jobs in the North West. It is hopeless. I turn on the TV. A woman who used to be on Coronation Street is talking about her battle with depression. I text Southern Man. ‘I think I am depressed,’ I say. He calls me back. ‘Go and get an ice cream,’ he says.

I go out wearing leggings with holes in the bottom, red flip-flops, a baggy black jumper and no make-up. It is the sort of look a depressed person would go for. I shuffle out of the house and down the road, staring at the pavement. I spot a crow eating a dead pigeon. One of my flip-flops falls off. I text him again. ‘I am still depressed,’ I say. ‘Cheer up,’ he replies, ‘Not long until our holiday.’ ‘But I’m already worried about going back to work after my holiday,’ I say.

Women who are depressed go shopping. I am sure Liz Jones did, after her husband slept with a stripper. Yes, depressed men gamble, depressed women shop. I pop into the Cancer Research shop and buy a book and an egg press from the 1980s that turns ‘ordinary hard boiled eggs into a unique square taste treat’. I get a slight buzz when I hand over my cash, but I am still miserable.

I remember that the woman from Coronation Street said she developed a cocaine addiction when she was depressed – but that seems a bit out of my league. Instead, I go to Tesco and buy some wine, along with some bananas, tinned custard and eggs. I get another call when I am in the cheese aisle. ‘Just pack in your job and we will move to Manchester and stay on your sister’s sofabed,’ he says.

I go to pay. The checkout girl looks me up and down. ‘Have you got any ID?’ she says. ‘But I am 30!’ I tell her, with big, sorrowful, un-made-up eyes. Clearly the depressed look takes years off me. Which is a reason to be a bit cheerful, I suppose.

Secret diary of a choirgirl

It is strange how little I know about the people on my desk after 16 months there (it’s a very heads down, get on with it, don’t look directly in the editor’s eyes affair). Still, you try and glean bits of information when you can

I only found out this week that our version of the Diet Coke man, on the tech support team, is a trained actor trying to break on to the BBC3 comedy scene. The fact he has 5 children by a few different women was less of a surprise - it's the inevitable outcome of looks + humour + coming to the rescue of damsels in distress whose computers have crashed.

I mention this to someone in my department. ‘Oh yes,’ she replies. ‘It took me eight years before I told anyone here that I was gay.’ I look around our corner of the newsroom. ‘I suppose he could be a secret cross dresser,’ I say, nodding my head in the direction of a 6ft bearded Cornish man who looks after the puzzle pages.

‘Hmmmm, and then there’s him…’ she says, looking at another colleague. ‘I know as much about him now as I did when he first started ten years ago. He has given nothing away about himself. He’s the sort of person that when the bones are found in his back garden, you’ll tell Sky News “Oh he was a quiet sort, kept himself to himself.”’

It does make you think. And I wonder what the Eton execs who sneer and shout at me would say if they knew my job 12 years ago was to dance around the clubs of Ibiza, dressed as a choirgirl. Then again, maybe they were doing the same thing.

Things I discovered this weekend:

1. Dinosaurs suffered from arthritis;

2. Dinosaur bones were first found 150 years ago in Lewes, Sussex - the same place I discovered Harveys beer;

3. I need a little sit down if I walk around a museum for longer than 40 minutes;

4. Breaking Bad is the best thing on TV;

5. The glamorous features executive in my office also has coeliacs. I don't really know her, but as we are in the same gluten-free gang, with faulty intestines, I feel as if I do. Is this how people with cancer felt when Kylie/Lance Armstrong announced their bad news?

6. As I can no longer eat coco pops or toast, my favourite breakfast is egg, chips and beans;

7. The ants are back.

In the doghouse

This week has not been my finest. It has a lot to do with it taking Southern Man 11 days to replace the fridge that he stabbed with a bread knife (a long time to go without easy-access to cheddar).

I am also angry with him for not being able to rescue me from my horrid job and whisk me up north with a rucksack full of cash. And for the fact he can fall asleep so easily. And that he doesn’t clean the flat enough, preferring instead to watch documentaries such as Hitler In Colour and The Wonderful World Of Maps.

To ‘punish’ him I have done two loads of washing this week, both times neglecting to include any of his pants (in a ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s not done’ sort of way). He ran out of pants two days ago, but has not mentioned anything.

I am not really angry with him – I am just having an angry week with a lot of work and a lack of sleep. But he is an easy target, well, the only target, when I come home at midnight, red-eyed, after another shift where I’ve had to smile sweetly at vile executives, battle with bugs in the computer system and rewrite clunky copy from people who’ve only got their work in the paper because of their double-barrelled names. And all I've had to eat are baked potatoes at my desk that are as dry as my eyes from staring at a screen for ten joyless hours.

Ho hum. Four more shifts until my escape to the north - Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham in 7 days by train to see friends, sisters, nephew and possibly oblivion after too much wine. I'm sure someone will be glad of the peace, too.