MY LIFE AT THE MOMENT

Graduated in July. The ceremony was absolutely awesome in the sense that I turned up late and graduated after all of the postgrads with a special mention. There's nothing I love more than drawing attention to myself, so I was rather pleased with the way this had turned out, despite the fact that what I was drawing attention to was the fact that I wasted thousands of pounds on a basically worthless degree. After graduating, I moved from Nottingham back to Norfolk to stay with my parents for a month. I worked in Co-op five days a week, I slept on a mattress on my 14 year old sister's floor, missed my friends a lot and I applied for jobs in London. Managed eventually to get a job as a 'customer support trainee' with a company which sells solar panels. Moved to Ilford in North-East London (OK, it's Essex) a week later. On my first day of work, I arrived, knocked on the front door of the office for half an hour before eventually someone happened to be passing by the locked door on his way to the toilet. He told me that the office wasn't open that day and that my first day would actually be tomorrow (I had written proof that I'd been asked to come in on this day, but whatever). Walked home, found a fiver on the floor, ended up going to Notting Hill Carnival (an entirely panicky affair) then got on a bus to meet my old Nottingham friends and attended a sexy kissing party (some of the events in this story may or may not be fabricated). When I started my new job, it soon became apparent that I would be selling solar panels door to door. I was, apparently, self employed and therefore there was no requirement that I be paid minimum wage. I worked at least 8 hours a day, often more, and ended up being paid the equivalent of £20 a day. For those not mathematically inclined, that works out at a maximum of £2.50 an hour. I actually happened to be very good at the job. The houses which I had to knock at were sickeningly beautiful. I was met with the most desperately pitying looks as the upper-middle class peeked out of the elaborately carved doors of their houses; my pleading little eyes desperately peeking out at them from under the messy little self-cut fringe. While at work one day, my supervisor- a 17 year old glamorous little Pakistani girl- was making us all sit outside a pub for two hours so that she could smoke and giggle and make it difficult to reach my sales targets, when she mentioned that she'd recently gone into an estate agents in Ilford and one of the men there had said they had an admin position going which she could have. The man had taken her number, then texted her to say that she was much too beautiful and distracting to work in the office but he would rather like to cook her some Thai food. This delightful gentleman aside, the next day on my way to work I diligently checked the windows of every estate agent which I passed, walked into one and walked out with a new job. I had a trial the next day, explained to the boss of the solar panel company that I would be forced to leave, politely declined his offer to be promoted to telesales staff and began my new life as an admin assistant. So now I live in Ilford, with the family of a friend from university in their spare room (for delightfully cheap rent) and work for four hours a day in a letting agency, making contracts and compiling files and lists and things. Whilst all this has been going on I seem to have changed from being a person with a "friendship group" to being a person who isn't really anyone's plan A. Time to make some friends, then, and really start this whole new chapter of my life etc.