Friday

I rang Haringey Council up today to ask if I simply needed to nip into the nearest Job Centre to apply for a jobseekers allowance - the man on the other end of the phone answered rather rudely that, yes, I did. One hour and four pounds on bus fare later I arrived home having been told that I had to call an 0800 number to apply over the phone. Four pounds, you realise, could've brought me a weeks worth of food. I'm considering complaining about how ironic it is that they are there to help you through times of need but instead purposefully forfeit your vulnerable budget to the evils of living in the capital. Am considering writing a Down and Out in Paris and London-type novel to off-load my woes of poverty onto the rest of the world and get paid for it. 

I also received a phone-call from my dear friend in Wantage and we had a rather long conversation planning what we would have for dinner if he were to come and visit this saturday. Carbonara seems to be on the cards and, after momentarily panicking about whether I have enough cheese to avoid a wall-paper-paste situation, we salivated over the thought of the dish for a good ten minutes. This is what life has been reduced to; two twenty-three year olds becoming worryingly excited over cheese sauce and bacon. We might have to skip on the cream unless I can convince him to buy some as payment for a sofa for the night. 

Four days later and I'm in the job centre in front of my interviewer; a smartly dressed Indian woman with excesses of lip gloss on who keeps muttering things into her computer. She suddenly points at me wide eyed, making me jump, and asks if I'm under twenty five. I nod hesitantly, at which point she whips her monitor around to face my side of the desk and fills out a referral form to the Prince's Trust. She got very excited about this and asked me if I'd put her in one of my films. A mad man came in and started insulting one of the staff in the booth next to us and at that point and she flattened down onto the desk with the smoothness of a contract killer on a tricky assignment (I felt compelled to do the same) and at the end of each of his sentences rolls her eyes at me and sniggers like a teenager. We listened for about five minutes until he left and so she handed me some papers and told me if my claim gets rejected to sign on in two weeks regardless. She gave me a little wink and said it was a gift from her. My faith is restored in the council - perhaps they do have my interests at heart after all.