January 10 (Monday): Feel Good By Numbers. Monday morning and I awaken like a good guy at 7AM when my alarm clock goes off, apparently for nothing, I have no job to go to, so why don’t I lie in? I don’t wish to get complacent I guess.

Early on, around 9.30, I get the first of responses from my online job application gorge on Friday night. Sadly however it is a vague response from an agency, not really relating to the actual position I applied for itself. I email back immediately, guarded in its snottiness and almost immediately the phone rings and it is the gentleman in question from the agency. This is agency is a firm that an old acquaintance called Kenny used to highly recommend and the guy on the phone sounds cool (albeit with a voice exactly like Alan Partridge). It seems that people from smaller personnel agencies possess less of an attitude and in the process are more helpful. I am honest about my dismissal circumstances but once more find myself twisting myself up in knots in the process, something that is duly noted by Mr Man, although it does not appear to make him immediately dismiss me. The position itself that I applied for actually turns out to be with the first accounting practise that I ever worked for. I didn’t leave them on bad terms but I was hardly a star, stuck out in the sticks of a satellite office in Frinton while everything happening within the organisation was occurring at their duelling offices in Colchester and Ipswich (fighting for firm supremacy in effect, to be the number one office). The calls ends but it is encouragingly.

I spend this morning fearing the post, there can only be bad to come from any correspondence currently but I really must (have) to face the music on the Job Centre enquiry.

Around mid morning the phone rings again and it is another agency and some woman asking me questions about myself and telling me how there are a few positions about (but never specifying on anything). At least I’m getting some interest but I get the impression that this agency is not much cop by the way the woman represents herself.

For the longest time this morning, my clock appears frozen on 10.47; I guess this represents life appearing to stand still for me currently.

This morning I also find myself on MSN with Justin and I manage to get the email address out of him of the lawyer I met Friday night. Nice.

Again today I pick up the book (Eden Close by Anita Shreve) that I need to read for English class on Thursday. I actually find myself really getting into the book today, its good.

For lunch I head out to Sainsburys. I wasn’t going to bother with going out today but I fancy something of taste for dinner and there is a new Uncut also I feel like reading. While I am in the cereal aisle Hays in London telephones me asking me if I am still looking for work. Oh yes. And especially when she mentions a dream job/opportunity for me: a practise just off Piccadilly Circus that specialises in media clients. That sounds a bit of a bridge too far for me even before I tell her of my circumstances, as I once more tie myself up in knots trying to describe the weirdness of the situation and generally overreaction on my ex-employer’s that it was really. The girl however seems happy for me to stand in Sainsburys and go through all the facts. I tell her that I will send her an email with more specifics and then it turns out that I have never spoken to this girl before. My god, she sounded exactly like the one I used to deal with, they must all be clones up that way, maybe all tutored in the same impersonal line of bullshit?

As the call ends, a woman comes coyly around the corner and slowly wheels her shopping trolley past me; it is obvious that she has been eavesdropping. I initially don’t take offence because she is attractive but then the situation of discussing such important issues in Sainsburys occurs to me and I roll my eye balls, shaking my head.

This week Channel Four is showing St Trinian’s films every afternoon. I was raised on these movies (almost) so I check out today’s movie in morbid fascination. Today’s film is The Belles Of St Trinian’s and I am blown away by the cast of the movie; its features Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell and George Cole (Arthur Daley) in the main characters with supporting parts from Beryl Reid, Irene Handl and Joan Sims. Sid James, Barbara Windsor and Arthur Mullard all pop up in it also, which completes a mind-blowing cast. The film however isn’t nowhere good as I fondly remember it and soon I’m back into doing something of use.

And that something of use turns out to be returning to my book for college (again, Eden Close by Anita Shreve). I’m actually making major progressed on the book today and at this rate, I will have read it easily before Thursday’s lesson. And I’m finding myself enjoying it in the process, always a bonus when reading a book I guess.

My afternoon improves when I receive an email from Tura Satana, the star of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! This blows my mind. And she hits 70 this year.

I stop for dinner and The Simpsons and tonight’s episode is the one with the A Streetcar Named Desire musical, which is yet another reminder to 11 Dec 2004, as it was the movie that was on that afternoon. Will that night ever stop haunting me, following me around with reminders?

I resume reading my book before remembering that there is a documentary on Channel Four called “What Would Jesus Drive?” about the driving habits of America and how the pollution is adding to the green house effect blah blah blah. Its part of their War On Terra season in the light of the tsunami in Asia, a real scaremongering job. The show however is pretty interesting and makes some serious points about the excess of car ownership in the US. And then it ends by focusing on the latest vehicle of choice for your successful young (and not so young) American: the Hummer.

During the programme, they show the Thierry Henry advert where he is smugly driving a bubble car around Las Vegas and when it shows him being overtaken by a Hummer himself and the goof giggles like a bitch, it suddenly occurs to me just how much of a dig this is aimed at David Beckham. Good! But Henry ultimately is no better, the little corporate whore.

Celebrity Big Brother comes on, continuing with the Lisa as Queen of the house nonsense and then tonight Sylvester Stallone’s mum enters the house. She is pretty terrifying to look at; she looks like something Jim Henson put into his movie The Dark Crystal. Maybe Jim Henson did her plastic surgery, basing it on a Muppet?

During the show, Sara comes online to talk on MSN. I tell her that I am busy and she gets pissed off snapping “what busy getting a job?”. This coming from a girl who it was said used to go into job interviews, flash her tits and get immediate employment from that. I wish I was a silver spooner too, that might have been nice.

I turn in for the evening watching ER (which actually turns out pretty entertaining as usual), over to a fine Men Behaving Badly re-run and eventually I go to sleep like a loser watching Film 2005. Need to get out.

np: Palace Brothers – Come In