November 22 (Monday): Greetings. The first official day of my unemployment and I find myself up, dressed and functioning by 7.30, something that I do not think I have ever experienced in my entire/whole “adult” life. This is the life.

Good morning good morning and I put BBC Radio London on my PC in some kind of attempt to move my mental state back to London (after four days travelling up there). The radio mornings in London belong to Danny Baker (an old hero of mine) and, out of the blue, his guests today on his show are Mark and Lard, so this is pretty much my dream ticket, all my favourite DJs ever on the same radio show. I realise just how sad this admission is. They do however talk football and wind up ripping the piss out of Colchester United.

Today I have chores and proceed to get my shit together to head into town. Acton comes on MSN and tells me how he’s laughing off work today and headed out to piss some money away on shit. Snap, me too.

Eventually I head out at 10AM however unable to get half the things together that I wanted to do. I get to town and parked pretty swiftly. So this is what Monday morning looks like then, oh man, this is depressing. Immediately I make a vow to myself; “do not come into town on a Monday morning ever again”. This is death on a stick.

I head to Natwest and bank my final Globochem paycheque. I don’t expect that will last very long, it is going to be a long cold winter. From there I head to the post office to try and sneakily renew my road fund licence on my car. Both that and the MOT are due at the end of the month but we both know which of the two documents I need more and will be cheaper. Rightly though, the cow at the post office sees complete through my ruse and refuses to renew my RFL. Is it cos I is white?

Disheartened, I head to Virgin Megastore to buy the newly released today Nirvana boxset. This really is not a sound purchase in these times of unemployment and financial uncertainty but being a lifelong fan, I feel obliged to purchase the set even though I have next to zero enthusiasm for it. I take it to the desk and half expect the teenager behind the counter to turn my credit card down because I’m not in work and have “unemployed” stamped all over me. I guess it is this complex which causes me not to get angry/irate when I watch the idiot struggle to open the boxset out of the wrapping, scuffing the side of box along the counter and ruining the packaging. I am paying £45 for the honour of having this dumbfuck do this? I feel like sending the little prick back to his job in McDonalds by telling his manager but instead I’m a good guy, in times like these I don’t really care about such things too much in the light of the recent atrocities in my life.

When I get home, I feel really disillusioned. Within one morning of unemployment, it has already taken its toll.

I check the newspaper and on the front of the football section are pictures of Dennis Wise having coins thrown at him by West Ham fans and he’s picking the money up and handing it to young Millwall fans. Classic.

I continue my chores, today has been further set aside for getting my house into order before launching 24/7 into study and revision (yeah, I’ll believe that when it happens). Still, I do get some of my credit cards sorted out while booking my car in for an MOT on Wednesday this week at the Twin Peaks garage which I am incredibly dubious about after a less than successful track record in them dealing with my WOW mobile Escort. My distrust of car mechanics remains strong (especially knowing those from school who went into the profession).

I phone up Acme and make an appointment with them to show my face on Friday with the hope that they can bail me out of this position.

From there, Acme then proceed to call and arrange an interview for me Felixstowe this Thursday, which to get a job interview on my first official day of unemployment is something to raise the moral.

I begin listening to the Nirvana boxset which now I have next to real interest in hearing. The first CD however comes over as really good initially, all the bulky chunky demo stuff that has previously sounded good on bootlegs and now that bit more completer and sounding somewhat better in quality. The Nirvana boxset appears to be split into three section/discs, one for each studio album. It is noticeable how the quality of the tracks really flows with inconsistency. So much for hoping these songs would be pro-tooled the same way that You Know You’re Right was. This is not the boxset we have been looking for but really, by now, no one really cares about Nirvana anymore. Courtney, Dave and Krist really missed the boat on this one, they should have struck while the iron was hot and actually released it the boxset while people still really cared (instead of pretending to, as we do today).

By lunchtime, with no intention to study today, I am mad on MSN and I have Sara, Chris, Justin and Richard all speaking to me as I juggle them like spinning plates. In brief: Sara is bored at work, Chris is asking me financial advice (ho ho), Justin is suggesting a Bad Hand webzine meet up and Richard is bored at work too. Justin’s suggestion sounds the daddy and most fun, some kind of poker night at his in Leytonstone on Saturday night. I’m not sure however if I will be able to make it, revision commitments and all.

At 12.30 Cheers comes on TV and I figure I’ll give it a whirl, I used to enjoy the show about 15 years ago. And now I fucking love it! I have to admit however that my getting the joke of Lilith and Frasier being dressed up as Christina Rossetti and her brother for Halloween makes it for me.

I plough on into the afternoon with the Nirvana boxset and the Nevermind era disc turns out to be really really disappointing and the In Utero era disc turns out to be brief at best and crap at worst. That’s the problem with first impressions, you only get to make them once. At the end of the third disc, I have far from an appetite for the DVD.

The afternoon continues with Sara online from MSN, her alone in her hotel room looking to me for amusement. Subject turns once more to her coming back to England next month and I suggest that we go see a show. She jumps at the suggestion and I add the suggestion of going to see The Producers. This doesn’t work however as most places are sold out for the over Christmas shows and the places that do have tickets only have tickets starting at £75! Stifled, I look around for other suggestions and to be honest everything I really fancy seeing is all fringe and unlikely to interest/impress Haslett. She pipes up with the suggestion of seeing Jerry Springer The Opera. I comply, that sounds OK. She then goes “oh, but I can’t order the tickets because my card will not be the posting address”. Dude, you can collect them from the box office. I however, naively, jump right in and buy the tickets, two £35 tickets from Ticketbastard who add £10 in fees in the process making the whole purchase a round £80 for easiness. And I am unemployed? Sara states the best date as being Saturday 11 December, which concerns me slightly, a Saturday? Before making the purchase I make final confirmations with her “you will come won’t you?” just because I know her track record. Of course however, this is the “new Sara” she keeps telling me. She assures me she will be there, telling me just how excited she is and I get suckered in and order the tickets online.

The evening arrives without me having managed to do any study, without work/employment I am just as fucking busy it seems (only without the payola).

For some reason in the evening I watch a Jon Ronson video I downloaded off the internet about the Bildeburgh Group. They sound like the same crowd that go to Bohemian Grove to me. It all sounds mysterious and spooky but Ronson plays it all up into something much more than it probably is. I would say however, I do notice with Ronson films, he repeats footage way too much, it’s a really amateur technic and only makes his product come over as unaccomplished.

I phone home to report my good fortune at already getting a job interview but the reception from home from mother is just of utter grumpy bollocks, as far from positive and/or encouraging as you could wish to get. My morale suddenly slumps as everything feels reduced to a nothing. Thanks a bunch catholic woman.

I actually wind up playing Playstation for the remainder of the evening. Oh yeah, that is a well spent pursuit and wise way to use/spend my time.

Eventually I fall asleep watching TV, watching Dead Ringers which means I am asleep by 9.30PM. Pathetic. And it also means I miss the documentary on Channel Four called “I Won’t Marry White” about a bunch of Muslims sticking to their guns. Yeah, I know exactly how that works.

np: Nirvana - Anorexorcist