What's a girl to do?

As my first week of work experience draws to a close, I've realised that i really quite like PR, especially when working on more consumer based clients. The sickening thing is that I have the experience, I'm quick to learn yet I'm still unemployed. There are just no jobs in PR at the moment, for my level. Yet here i am, selling in stories, helping to put together pitches, writing press releases, all for FREE! Am i crazy or is that just damn cheeky?!

I'm based in Oxford Circus which is great but incredibly depressing. Lunchtimes are spent meandering around TopShop and H&M with £20 to my name. All these lovely things which i just can't have, that i've never had because even when I had a job I was paid the bare minimum. When is my luck going to change? I'm a naturally impatient person, with an extremely long list of Things I Want To Do in my life. Almost all of which depend on that papery stuff that seems so hard to come by at the moment.

I know, i'm young. With time i will be able to do stuff. But right now, keeping a roof over my head doesn't look that likely. So what's a girl to do? Use her feminine wiles? Go back and live with her parents in a tiny village in the south of England, where the nearest thing to PR is a notice in the Parish Pump about so-and-so's prize winning turnips? Go back and admit defeat? I just can't bare it. It's got nothing to do with the people, i love my parents and my friends. It's just so not where i want to be and I'll do anything to stay in London.

But a casual bar job and jobseekers allowance is still not enough to pay the rent, even with housing benefit too. It's madness! I met with my French friend yesterday, she got made redundant too. She was shocked to find out that the same rules don't apply here as they do in France. If she was living at home and got made redundant she'd get 80% of her salary for two years! That's it.

I'm moving to France.

Slave labour

How many days has it been since my last confession?

Well i still aint got a job, instead i'm doing unpaid slave labour (dressed up as work experience)just to get me out of the house and away from Jeremy Kyle and This Morning. Not sure much is going to come out of it though. I also started the process of signing on...what a humiliating experience. Still, needs must.

On the dating front, i've had a little more success. Well success isn't quite the right word, i've just had a few more dates is all. I had a nice walk along the Thames in the sunshine on Sunday with a very interesting chap. A complete geek (by his own admission) and incredibly intelligent...he ended up explaining some Phd level Neuro science to me, in such a way that i actually followed and understood what he was talking about. And i aint clever. He did have one fatal flaw however...boob groping. Yes, that's right, he went in for the kiss at the end of the date, in the middle of Waterloo station and copped a feel. Needless to say it has put me off seeing him again! I've a first date with BennyBoozeUp tomorrow after work/slave labour. Let's see what happens!

Good eggs

So, i have had requests to keep writing...one of my fans was apparently disappointed to find no blog to read in her lunch hour. My other fan is not so bothered.

So what's new with me? Well, not much to be fair so i guess i will use this space to recount my Easter weekend. Good Friday was just that, good. I spent the day running around a village in search of Cadbury Creme eggs. Fantastic! My competive spirit yet lack of suitable foot wear meant i was sprinting down the road in heels...i'll pretty much do anything for chocolate! For some reason our team didn't win (there must have been some cheating going on) but we weren't last either (and we had a girl with a crutch in our team!). After the hunt there was much eating and drinking to be had and after so much exercise we descended on the food like gannets. So much so that a couple of hours later we were all in the local taking advantage of the Fish Friday special. I planned on not drinking alcoholic beverages as my bank balance is severely depleted and what with a lack of job, i've got to be pretty careful. I only managed to buy one soda water and lime before a pint of Cider appeared in front of me. Everytime i turned my back my glass magically refilled itself. Or so i was lead to believe. Always good to know your friends are looking after you.

The rest of the weekend was pretty calm. I spent quite a bit of time going down memory lane sorting through boxes of accumulated Stuff from the attic, including some of my stories. I always wanted to be an author. I still do, but i don't feel like i have the right book ready to come out just yet. There's still time.

So, there's a snippet of my weekend. I'm still jobless however. Nothing to report on that front other than rejection and i don't want to dwell on that. Depression could be around the corner at any moment...but i'll be waiting for it!

Steak and redundancy

Time for an update. I know my fans (all two of you) look forward to having some drivel to read on your lunch hour. And i do like to keep you two happy!

Firstly, some bad news. Along with thousands of other people around the country, I have been made redundant. It sucks. There's nothing I can do about it though, the decision has been made. I'm determined not to let myself slip into the depression i went through over a year ago, when i found myself out of a job and with no where to live. At least i have a bit more experience behind me now. I'm not panicking yet. I'll give it a few weeks.

So, this blog may become a diary of job rejections if i'm not careful! Let's hope not. Better stick to rabbiting on about my love life instead!

After hearing the horrible news on Friday and watching my boss crumble as the realisation kicked in that there was really nothing else left to do, i dried my eyes and decided it wasn't going to stop me going on my date. I had, after all, been looking forward to it. With hindsight i'm surprised the poor guy still wanted to meet me, after I phoned him letting him know about my awful afternoon. I did consider cancelling but decided i'd let him make that decision for me. And the last thing i wanted to do was stay in on a Friday night, depressed, with a bottle of wine for company.

Luckily for me, my date did still want to meet and he was thoroughly charming, kind and great fun. What more could a recently redundant gal wish for? I'm sure we talked about me far too much. Perhaps that can be blamed on the cocktail of different beverages we consumed. Or perhaps i should just learn to shut up once in a while. He did make me laugh though. Even if it probably was too soon for jokes!

It was a funny evening all round. He wasn't impressed by our table in the restaurant, with a lovely view of the toilets and the kitchen! Plus his cocktail was not up to his delicate palette's standard. The steak was damn good though. Dessert, not so much. As he put it, the chef clearly only had eyes for meat. Nothing else. All about the meat.

I enjoyed myself though and as the restaurant closed and we drank our coffee, we decided to find ourselves another bar for another drink. Which is why we ended up in T-Birds. An interesting establishment where the bar maid called me "love" and i got chatted up by a 15 year old chav. I didn't inform my date of this, it's not something i'm proud of. It wasn't like it was going to make him jealous. My first drink in T-Birds was a Cosmopolitan. Apparently. It certainly didn't taste like one. It didn't come in a fancy glass, it was extremely sweet with a faint taste of grapefruit and had absolutely no booze in it, as far as i could tell. We sat at what can only be described as a park bench and chatted about what could be around the corner for me. I think i may have said "the world is my oyster" too many times. He didn't seem to mind though.

So even though Friday could have been the day of "losing my job" it turned out to be the night of "a really great date".

Every cloud...