Day 139 – My first front page
So far I have had two front pages. One with a shared by-line whilst working for the Manchester Evening News and one whilst working at the Mail. My first front page at the Mail was a bit of a dud as I didn’t feel as though I deserved the by-line. Though I had done the research, got the quotes and done the running around, when it came to writing the story I stalled. I had no confidence and felt as though I had forgotten every lesson my tutor ever taught us, all in all I bottled it.
For this reason, when the bosses decided the splash for the week was going to be the piece I was working on I wondered immediately whether I would be able to hide under the desk without either of them noticing me. 
Unfortunately today’s dress has minimal scope for manoeuvrability so instead I had to settle for going to get a glass of water.
I am trying to adjust my behaviour to stop myself from self destructing every time I am presented with a challenge so I took the sensible option and discussed the best way to write the story with my seasoned colleague. What was really amazing was that in the end, other than the original urge to hide I did not freak out any further. I wrote the story, submitted it and actually felt fairly pleased with what I had written.
Tomorrow morning when I walk into work there will be shops selling our paper which will have my name and my story on the front. I remember watching an episode of The Wire when a reporter got up before sunrise and drove down to the printing press to see her first ever front page. Whatever hours you have to do, or how tense things get on deadline day it all becomes worth it when you pick up the paper on Thursday morning and see your work published for all to see; so long as they live within the Harborough district. Doing what you love is an absolute privilege and even if it does make me want to hide under a desk from time to time i wouldn’t do anything else.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my Fairy God Mother. Along with my mystery donor she is perhaps the woman who has contributed the most to the continuation of the blog. As well as loaning me some incredible dresses from when she was a girl she has bought me dresses from charity shops and even lent me jackets to make my racier outfits better suited for work. As well as this she has encouraged friends and family to read the blog and whenever possible comment and rate each post. This dress was one she wore to a wedding. It is from Minuet which is stocked by Debenhams and House of Fraser.
Day 131 – Tears and fears
When I was studying to be a journalist two of the women I was most impressed with were Rebekah Wade and Anna Wintour. I read bits about Rebekah in Piers Morgan’s autobiography and I was impressed with how fearless and ferocious she was. There was one incident described by Morgan when she hides out in the boys toilet with a hat covering her auburn curls just so she can snatch the paper from the printing room for.
What attracted me about these women was there ability to survive in what is so often a male dominated industry and not just survive but excel. 
Today, faced with a flurry of stories I succumbed to tears in the girls bathroom and thinking of these two women I felt ashamed. I want to be ferocious, cut throat and ambitious but sometimes I find myself filled with self doubt. Taking on a new job will always be daunting and I am assured by many that tears in the toilets is an occupational hazard of any job but still I wish I could be a bit stronger.
I hope that this is all a part of a learning curb which will soon become a little more level, but whatever might occur I must still my moans. I am living the dream and must lap up all that lady luck has granted upon me. Whilst talking to the boy tonight he said something which made me cry even more than I have already done today. ”You might wish it was all over, but what if this is all we’ve got?” Sometimes it is these kind of stark statements which bring you back if only just to realise how much there is to lose by giving it all up. 
This is the job and this is the dream and I guess I just have to dry the tears, hide the fears and fight through it wondering all the while what Rebekah would have done on the same day.
- Today’s dress is Marks & Spencer, the jumper is Prada-mark and the belt is Topshop. I felt a little stocky in it but I was cold and didn’t ant to freeze and after all the colourful choices of the past few days the chance to just be in black was too good to miss. Big thanks to my secret donor who I believe sent this in a shoe box of love.
Day 123 – The remains of the day
Everyone keeps telling me that in time it will get easier to juggle the job, the boy and the blog, but it has been six weeks and I am still struggling. Last weekend, finding myself behind with my posts because of a busy week at work I tried to catch up. The boy was down for the weekend and my writing dug in to our time together. Though he said at the time that he did not mind, my mother later admitted that she had seen him mock tossing my little laptop from the door. Either he does not like my laptop or he is jealous of all the time we have been spending together.
To try to make him happy and to prevent the blog from coming between us I left log ins to a minimum and only wrote when he was elsewhere. Though this did mean we got a lot more time together, by the time it came to me heading home I was stressed and tearful. I had done no washing, writing or ironing and in spite of my best efforts to catch up on sleep I was still feeling tired.
After saying goodbye I managed to drive till I was just around the corner before having to pull in for a cry. Though I managed to pull it together enough to engage my natural sense of direction after the sat nav ran flat by the time I got home I was a wreck. 
I do not know why I cannot cope, it seems ridiculous really. I am a grown woman who should be quite capable of living if not acting independently and yet being away from my boyfriend for five nights a week leaves me in a mess. Though I want to stay up to get caught up on the blogs I have left behind over the weekend, tomorrow is deadline day and if I fail to get enough sleep now I’ll be all over the place in the morning. I do hope the girls are right and that sometime soon I will get better at juggling and be able to handle everything more easily with a lot less stress. Spending Sunday evening and Monday morning in tears is never a good start to the week and I am afraid that if this carries on any longer I will have no choice but to drop one of the three. What on earth is wrong with me?
- Today’s dress is on loan from Sinead Kenny. It is originally from Miss Posh. As we are getting a bit bored with the same old background and props we decide to take the pictures outside using a dandelion. It is a nice idea but my heart isn’t really in it as all I can think of during the whole shoot is my car parked behind us which I will soon have to drive away in. The dress is meant to be worn sleeveless but I do not have enough up top to make it stay there by itself so I pull on a Marks & Spencer long sleeved top and use a bobby pin to keep it in place.
Day 96 – Free fall
After spending a weekend on what may well have been a mini high I have now entered free fall. Last night the boy and I had a horrible fight over the “future”. Admittedly I was probably being a little irrational. I wanted him to show me in some way that this is going to work; that we will be able to get through the next 18 months without falling to pieces and that this will all have been worth it in the end. It just feels strange a month ago we were considering the possibility of moving in together and playing house and now I am looking in the local paper for flats to move into by myself.
Though I am quite excited about the prospect of living alone for the last time I am sad to see our little dream end before it had really started. I know we can make this work but when I’m feeling low and pessimistic its hard to persuade myself of the positives. I do feel for him, I know it can not be easy going out with a girl whose head is so often in the clouds; the dark and the thundery as well as the light and the fluffy. He has always been the realistic one of the two of us. Though I might run away in my mind with schemes and plans about trips away to Cuba and a home in the Lakes where he can teach and I can write, he will be there holding my hand, ready to pull me back down to earth when the schemes become too wild.
Yesterday we argued because he is frustrated at how little I have been looking after myself. He hates to see me go into decline and understandably gets angry when he thinks it might be because I have been staying up too late, forgetting to take my tablets or just taking on too much.
Although he has upset me this weekend by choosing to spend the Easter holiday at home rather than coming down to be with me, considering how much of a mess I was last weekend I can hardly blame him.
So often with mental illness it becomes all about the person who is sick. It is we who are given the tablets, the counselling and the coping strategies, all to often it is our partners, family and friends who fall by the way with little advice or explanation on how they should cope with the giant grey elephant in the corner who can not seem to stop crying their eyes out or talking at a hundred miles a minute. There are groups and websites which can help friends and partners but it is hard to know where to turn. There was one stage when I was living in Manchester when the boy was having to spend so much of his time making sure I was okay. I wasn’t seeing a Doctor, I was no longer on any anti-depressants and I had started having panic attacks. When I am a wreck it is all to easy for me to forget how much he has done and continues to do for me. I never want him to be my carer but there has been times when I know I couldn’t have coped without him. We work the best when we are both happy and I hate it on days like today when I sink so low that I refuse to believe anything he says. I tell him he should not be with me, that he should find a normal girl who is not so high maintenance but because he is sweet he tells me I am not and that he would not have me any other way even if I was.
I do love him dearly but I am so afraid of what the next eighteen months will bring. I am terrified that one day I will shoot us in the foot by saying something I do not mean and he will walk away for good and find himself a girl with fewer issues. One day he tells me he will write a blog which he hopes will help the partners of other people with problems, but at the minute I think he might be a bit too mad to write.
- Today’s dress comes from Lara. It is beautiful and I put it on because I knew the boy liked it when he first saw it in the bag of donated dresses. I wanted him to get on the train with a happier memory of me than the tired, tearful, weary eyed woman he went to bed with last night.
Day 90 – A sad day for shoes
Today has been a sad day for footwear. Back when I was a a 23-year-old with the world at my feet and a job as an events manager which paid a tidy little sum my main outgoing other than restaurant bills and bar tabs was shoes, I was obsessed with them. For the first time in my life since I was 18 I was totally debt free. Out of my monthly salary after all bills were paid I still had an indecent amount left over to spend on myself. Though I smoked and had a fondness for Marks & Spencer sushi and sausage and onion cobs every Friday when I was too hangover to use the phone, I had no children, no mortgage and no monthly car insurance or pension payments. I was young, free, practically single and absolutely loving the independence of it all.
The boy was living a hand to mouth existence as he was still studying for his music degree but I was free to fund our outings and as one of the girlfriend of Manchester’s hardest working band I got to play the part nearly every weekend; we would all hangout backstage drinking down the riders, dragging on rolled up cigarettes and generally just hanging out feeling ever so slightly like the cool kids.
At the time I guess I knew the life we were living would not last forever. I was having a hell of a good time but work was taking its toll on my health and I’d dropped down to my smallest size since I’d had a minor eating disorder back when I was 18. I remember looking at my bank statement and feeling sad at how little I had to show for all the brilliant nights out and evenings just spent drinking red wine round a rickety table listening to music and playing cards in between musing upon our dreams for the future.
Other than Sylvanian Families I had never really felt the desire to collect anything. My sisters had their key-rings, their badges and even at one stage their dice and my brother had the monopoly on every phase and craze out there including Thomas The Tank Engines, Thunderbirds, Power Rangers and even at one stage care bears which was extraordinarily cute. It was when I realised I was spending much of my money on momentary pleasure products that I decided to start a collection and as I had no particular interest at the time in tea cups I decided I would collect shoes. As my regular readers know I am a slave to Kurt Geiger. The shoes they make are so well balanced you can stamp around in a pair of stilettos for sixteen hours straight without feeling an ache. They are creative, original and considering how well they last lusciously priced.
This then brings us to today’s dilemma. There is a man in Market Harborough, his name is Andy but I have always known him as the saviour of shoes. Many times I have brought him a forlorn pair at the end of their life and he has carefully restored them to beauty. One time he managed to restore my red or dead spike heeled stiletto ankle boots to spanking brand new in spite of me having ground the five inch heel to a mere three inches after a weekend in Liverpool visiting a friend where we danced till we dropped to sleep in his dorm just before dawn. Today Andy very kindly explained to me there was sadly nothing he could do for two of my favourite pairs.
One of them was the first pair of pricey shoes I had ever purchased. Brought in my lunch break from Berties at Kendall they were soft white leather with five inch thick wooden heels. Generally I believe white shoes should be saved till ones wedding day and even then they should be hidden and if possible cream but these were divine. Unfortunately as I tend to run in heels as well as walk whilst racing to get the bus back to see the boy after an after work drink my heel snapped on Deansgate. It was humiliating and I actually sat down and cried. I hadn’t even had any hooch but I was just so sad for my poor innocent shoe. Andy said it could be saved in an expensive operation but the job would have to be sourced out and the operators may well break the wood in the process.
The other pair are of the Kurt Geiger variety. I bought them foolishly after getting made redundant from Webb PR a month before Christmas. I was a little heart broken about losing the job and in a fine example of someone who had temporarily given leave to their senses and indeed their financial situation I sneaked away on a Christmas shopping trip with the boy, and bought three pairs of shoes in the sale. Admittedly they should have cost £400 and came to just £120 but still I had just been made redundant and with no job on the horizon it was a foolish mistake. I guess I have never regretted it because today, 15 months after the fact, I still have the shoes and they are still stunning. Unfortunately one of them, a pair of mustard yellow t-bar three inch heels was mortally injured back in May. I was chasing a story at the time and as I tore down the road the pin snapped and I had to traipse around on tippy toes the rest of the day. Andy says there is no hope for them and though I know I should consign them to the bin they are just too lovely, perhaps at some time in the future there will be better technology for such injured shoes? I live in hope.
- Today’s dress is from the wonderful Rebecca Allison. She sent this in a lovely package from the states and as well as a pair of earrings there was a beautifully written letter. I realise the dress comes up a little short on me but I hope you will not take too much of a hump at me modifying it for the workplace by pairing it with the skin tight Lycra number from Zara sent by the lovely Clara, believe me it is to protect your eyes from a legging lovely sight. Again if you do get the chance take a little look at her website. It is a fabulous way to start ones day and has given me goosebumps in the past with the sheer poetry of her posts. http://solsticetosolsticetosolstice.tumblr.com/
Day 86 – Oh happiness, behind which cloud do you hide from me?
Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria
There is no greater sorrow than to recall a time of happiness in misery.
Ib. v. 121 Dante Alighieri 1265 – 1321
Today has been a bad day, the worst I’ve had for several months in fact. The misery has consumed me, totally and completely. I feel gripped by sadness. The boy tries to pull me out of it; he suggests an outing to the park or a drink at our local but I am unmoving in my melancholy. I submerge myself in sadness, powerless to halt the tide of tears streaming river like from my deadened eyes.
Years ago during an episode of depression which had lasted for weeks, my father sat beside me on the bed where I was curled up like a child sobbing and stroking my tear sodden hair, he did his best to comfort me in the only way he knew how. ”You have to fight it darling, you can’t let it get the better of you because every day you lose to it is another day of your life.” Depression is like cancer; it creeps up on us when we least expect it. It strikes without warning, crawling quietly in to your mind to poison each and every thought. It feeds off your bodies resources and before you know it, it matters not that you are top of your class, dating the hottest guy in halls or doing your dream job all you can feel is sadness.
As I am reluctant to depress you all too much with more musings on misery and also in a desperate attempt to remind myself that I have been happy over the course of the last ten years, I decided to take a look through previous diaries and letters of the past for inspiration. I was rather pleased then to come across this surprisingly succinct passage. I actually remembered the feeling of that moment all those years ago and it gave me a little lift, just enough to lull me to sleep while the boy held me tight, soothing me to sleep by stroking my tear sodden hair.
19.1.2000 – 5.00 – Today I have felt truly happy; no false smiles that shelter uncried tears. Just me happy and laughing. Natural and unconscious. No simply going out of my way to impress and make things happen or going out of my way to frown at people and criticise. Note from Editor – this is obviously not something I would usually do, ha hem.
I looked out the window and the sky had turned the most perfect colour a gorgeous reddy, pink and the town had seemed to merge into a beach scene and a presence sort of passed over me and then I felt that everything was perfect.
Elinor O’Neill, 15-years-old
- Today’s dress is another from Hannah Cantrell. I feel bad that I have failed to give it the airing it deserved but the boy was very entertained by it – lots of legs plus magic mushrooms make boy happy.
Day 85 – Dressing for the work place
Starting a new job can be quite tricky, particularly when one has been out of the work place for a while. One of the hardest things about it is the need to give off a good impression from the start. Usually I would attempt to give my confidence a bit of a lift by choosing sharp tailoring to create a look which is cool and collected. With office suitable dresses at a low however, my look this week has largely been pulled together from the depths of the closet and then customised for work with blazers, safety pins, suit jackets, slips and even a couple of conservative clogs.
Today though I woke up late and as a result I have looked a bit of a mess. It is pathetic to be this tired after just three days of a working week but it has really taken it out of me. Like the rest of the great unemployed, I have become accustomed to lie ins and control of my own body clock. Suddenly being governed then by a piece of irritating plastic which insists I answer its impertinent morning quiz about whether I wish to snooze or stop has left me rather irritable. 
This morning was worse because I stayed up late last night trying to update the blog. I feel guilty about allowing it to get so far behind but though I am determined to crack the metaphorical brick standing in the way of my creative prose I can not and all I could do was retype an introduction thirty times before consigning the whole thing to history.
I finally got up at 8.20 this morning but as my eyes were 75 per cent closed it was difficult to force any urgency into proceedings. I finally managed to find myself a frock which looked acceptable for the office; unfortunately though once I had pulled it over my head I noticed it was missing sleeves so spent 15 minutes running frantically from room to room desperately seeking some kind of smart shirt to make it look less like beach-wear. In the end I went with this white top from mothers past at the insistence of the present day Mummy who had begun to shout at me whilst I attempted to covertly raid her room that I should “just pick something would you and get out of here, you are late.” She had a point. The clock was ticking and so grabbing another ancient blazer and pulling a brush through my hair I tripped down the town at speed and somehow managed to make it in time.
Skiing fatigue has meant my brain and body are both competing with one another to get back into the correct gear. I do not mind my body taking a bit of a hit but my mind is suffering and I am terrified about my work being poor. The other day after confessing to a friend I was finding things a bit of a struggle she suggested I get back in touch with my old councillor. I agree with her, I really need someone who I can talk to who is rational and objective and who bless their hearts is at least getting paid to hear me whine like a child. I do try to sort through my own thoughts and stop the negative ones but it is not always as easy as the CBT crew make it sound. Negative thoughts creep into ones head when one is looking elsewhere; they are persuasive and can grip hold of you in mere minutes. If you are unable to rationalise them or prevent them from ploughing further into your conscience they can reduce one to tears with no warning other than a sudden jolt of sadness.
I feel bad about myself today. I do not know why but everything I have done seems sub standard to me. The blog is getting behind, my creativity seems to have dried up and to be honest I am unhappy with my arms. There are so many things I need to get done but at the moment when I get home in the evening all I want to do is sleep and vent a little of the tears I have held at bay during the day. I know I am being pathetic and that things will get easier soon but I just wish it could be sooner. I have enjoyed the week but I think I underestimated how out of practice I have become. For my own sake I need to get back on top of my shorthand, pa knowledge and even just remembering how to turn a story round in half an hour once all the facts and quotes have been gathered. I am sure I will get there, this is my dream after all, I will just have to remember that this is the reality and if I want to get good fast I will have to make sure my feet are on the ground and my head is out the clouds. I know I need to stay strong and be an independent woman but it is times of stresses like these that I find myself wishing the NHS had more schemes in place to support people in times of need.
- Today’s dress is another from HC. It is French Connection, black and of the bandeau style. I would really liked to have saved it for the beach as it would be the perfect dress to pull on after a surf as it is cotton and a great loose fit which still makes sure one has curvy bits in all the right places. Oddly enough the top is also French Connection but is at least 26 -years-old. It has lasted incredibly well considering. I used to wear it with faded jeans and pretty nude leather flip flops with a skin coloured slip underneath in the days before my stupid breasts decided to get bigger making tops like this a near impossibility on their own. The boots are Kurt Geiger and with a purple blazer I just about pulled it off for work.
Day 82 – Distressed of Market Harborough
Today will be my last day as a freelance writer. As of tomorrow I will have a real life proper job, this for me is very exciting but also fairly nerve racking. Aside from brief instances of work experience it has been a year since I have held a full time office role. I am excited but I am incredibly nervous. thanks to difficult-jet flights and French strikes we arrived back home closer to midnight than I would like.
I have been practising my tee-line and reading my Harold Evans how to write like a journalist I am terrified I have forgotten how to write in a news style. As my regular readers know my writing tends to be rather verbose and in news it writing it is so important to be concise and one should be able to understand the who, what, where, why and when of any story preferably within the first paragraph.
When I started studying for my NCTJ I nearly quit on the third day. Although I loved every second of it my peers were an exceptionally clever crew; we had journalists there who had worked on papers in Pakistan and San Diego or at least had a stint on their student newspaper. Though I had written for a women’s magazine at Manchester University my experience of actual reporting was limited to a weeks work experience at the Harborough Mail and I was convinced they had made a mistake in giving me a place on the course. Thankfully my tutor refused my resignation and instead gifted me with a copy of Harold Evans and told me to make sure it stuck out my handbag the next day at my placement.
I had the pleasure of sharing every emotional experience of the course with my good friend Kathryn. She had come over from Ireland to study and as well as being a gymnastic coach and press officer for Northern Ireland she had already had a front page in the Irish daily papers. I was totally in awe of her, she wrote news and fast and I wrote features with flowery prose and excessive metaphor. The course would shape us into real life reporters who could write both but at the beginning we bumbled along together, working into the night to get our tee-line right and sharing a DVD and a bottle of red after days where the pressure had felt too much.
I have always been a Sunday Times girl of the weekend and a Guardian fan during the week. I was a conservative liberal and loved the G2 section and lost in showbiz columns plus the crossword was actually doable for someone with as little general knowledge as myself. When I got my first newspaper writing exam one of our tutors whilst talking it over with me said I was a natural features writer and said my stories read like they were from The Independent. I was grinning away at this praise until she pointed out that to be a journalist I needed to write as concisely and clearly as The Express.
She told me once I was able to write in a news style I would be able to write anything but I had to lose the flowery lengthly introductions and the tongue in cheek phrases and just focus on getting the message across in as few a words as possible.
In Harold Evans book, a bible of all journalists, he says one should be able to edit the Times to be The Sun and The Sun to be The Times. The subs on the Sun are second to none and they consistently deliver headlines and opening paragraphs which grab the reader hook line and sinker. It takes more skill as I soon found out to write a 15 word intro which grabs the reader and gets the main news across than it does to write a 30 word introduction which still leaves you unclear if the article is about a recent explosion or an unusually placed front page gardening piece. For example: ”As the northerly wind blew across the dust plains of war torn …. a singular bluebell fluttered its petals as it peeked its head through the everlasting earth.” I love the style of these sorts of introductions but on the front page of a news story one really must get to the point.
This then is why I am afraid about tomorrow. For the last three months I have been free to choose whatever written style suited my chosen prose for the day. 
I have rejoiced in the freedom of one day writing an essay about culture and sexuality and a scathing attack on the Ugg-allys the next with no instruction apart from itnternal inspiration or triggers of memory. From tomorrow I will be returning to news-style and though I love to find a story and write it in such a way it will jump out from a page of newsprint I am afraid of how I will do after so long away from the newsroom. I guess only tomorrow will tell but in all honesty I’m scared as hell.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my sister. It has been great fun hanging out with her during the holiday and I’m going to miss her being around now we’re back in the UK.
Day 71 – Dreams really do come true
Although today was meant to be another post in the women’s series something magical happened today which warrants pushing back part three in the series to another day. Considering how the day started, the way it ended seems on reflection darn near unbelievable. Though I am anxious to blurt out the good news like a prophet on a podium I must be patient and remember that every good story has a beginning and so at the start of the day we shall begin.
I usually find Fridays to be a bit of a struggle. It is presumably because unlike the majority of the world’s population it does not signal an end to my working week, it is just another day in my ongoing unemployment. Admittedly there are some advantages to being unemployed such as having big bubble baths every morning, waking up whenever one wants and being free to blog to my heart’s content. In spite of this however the one major thing that is lacking when one is unemployed is the constant company. When I worked in an office I used to love the midday chatter, the small talk about what one did at the weekend and what one was planning to do for the next. 
I had people to talk with about the scandals in the tabloids and even found fellow lovers of X Factor and other wonderfully trashy TV shows. As a freelancer with an emphasis on the free, I miss out not just on the infamous pay-day delight but also the loveliness of work-mates with whom one has a common purpose.
Although I woke up this morning to find myself feeling the same old Friday blues I decided to force myself out of bed, swallow down the sadness and take a trip to town. It is the boy’s birthday tomorrow and I wouldn’t forgive myself if I failed to get him a present just because I was fed up. 
Having decided that what I needed was a bit of a background buzz to aid me in my work I headed over to Fuel Cafe where the internet is free, the eggs are free range and the coffee they serve is the best in Southern Manchester. The bar staff are all very lovely and they have no problem with people spending the day there thinking away so long as they purchase a pot of tea to aid their musings.
In an attempt to cheer myself up I straightened my hair (it bounced back) put on some nice make up and even ex-foliated and moisturised myself like a lady of leisure before pulling myself into this delightfully peacock patterned, silky material H&M dress. It is gorgeous and feels like I am wearing a nightgown but with better cleavage coverage.
I started to cheer up as soon as I left the house, it was a really beautiful mild day and I am finally able to leave the house without hat scarf gloves and portable heater. Fuel was jam-packed with interesting types and after a coffee and pot of tea I was feeling much perkier. I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that I’m not going to be getting the job I applied for last week, and me and the boy had a chat last night about the future and what our options are and I decided I would just have to put the dream on the back-burner for a while until we had saved up enough to put down a deposit. 
I’ve been hammering the applications this week for any administrative position which pays a decent wage around Greater Manchester. I was a little surprised then when I had a call from a Harborough area code which when I looked up was a direct line at the paper I’d applied to. My phone cut out of battery before I had a chance to answer it but I assumed it was about the quotes I’d sent it and figured I would ring them once I got home that afternoon.
A little while later after typing up my review notes I had a quick check on my emails and found a note from the editor asking me to call him. A little flutter started up in my stomach which I quickly tried to suppress reminding myself that it was probably something about the story or my request for a week of work experience. 
There was a little bit of hope that was yet to die however and I begged the lady behind the bar to use her phone to give him a bell. After polite enquiries as to each others health I heard the following fabulous words; “I’m calling about the job and I am delighted to say we have decided to offer you the position.” I nearly dropped the phone in shock and it was probably a good job I was so surprised as it prevented me shrieking with delight like a five-year-old. It turns out that I have been offered a place as a trainee reporter at The Harborough Mail, the local paper in the town where I grew up. This means the world to me and I am so excited. It is everything I have been hoping for and more and it still feels like its a dream. I must admit that in spite of my conversation with the boy the night before I instantly accepted the job because it is the kind of opportunity one cannot refuse.
Although I believe some of you may have seen news of this on my twitter and face-book updates I want to firstly assure you that I will be continuing with the blog. It means a lot to me and it is something I really enjoy doing and so I will keep it going even if it means the posts are a little shorter, which I am sure will be a relief for most of you! I am sorry that the past week has been a bit of a trial, what with doing the women’s week postings and having quite a few reviews to finish I’ve been feeling a little stretched. I am finally feeling back on top now though and I want to thank you all for bearing with me and not complaining in spite of the tardiness of this weeks posts.
I know it sounds crazily corny but the news I received today made me realise how important it is for us to hold on to our dreams. In the past month myself, the boy, his sister and our superstar musical theatre friend Anna have all got given their dream jobs. Though I can barely believe there is this much luck in the world to go round it is clear that with the support of friends and family and a ridiculous level of optimism it is possible to persevere and find a career which you truly love. Twelve months ago I started on an NCTJ course at News associates in Manchester. I withdrew all of my savings and even took a loan from my parents to pay to train in a career I had known I wanted to do from the time of my first meeting with the careers lady at school. The course was intense and it was perhaps one of the hardest things I have ever done but today I realise it has all been worth it and am so thankful to my wonderful tutor Ian Gilbert who pushed us all to try harder and gave us the confidence and encouragement we needed to crack our way through each of the terribly difficult exams. I am also thankful to the great friends I had on the course, you know who you are but for clarity sake; KK, AK, SY, TKR, RC and CB. You made everything easier and your support and belief in me as a writer meant I kept trying even when it seemed impossible. To the rest of my course mates you made every day full of fun particularly the legendary AB who somehow managed to always ask the one question nobody else would dare and the lovely MW who made a brilliant cup of tea and had the sweetest smile. 
Sorry to be a sop guys but seriously keep dreaming, keep trying and really wonderful things will happen. Don’t allow yourself to get to the end and ask what if, do it now and every day will feel like a mini miracle.
- Today’s dress has been donated by Belinda Smears. It is from H&M is a size 10 and feels gorgeous. It has lovely long sleeves which you can pull over your hands if your chilly or feeling a bit vulnerable. The random reeds, blue flowers and feathers were because the boy decided the door was not interesting enough on its own and I was in a giddy enough mood to agree. I think I may have scratched my face on a bamboo stick.
Day 64 – The magnificent maxi dress
Today was a pretty dreadful day. It has been months since I have felt this low and although I managed to get dressed in the end the project came close to coming under a new name; 364 dresses and the boy’s best t-shirt. Part of the reason for the low was loneliness; the boy was at work today which left me alone with my thoughts which are particularly unpleasant at the moment. It has now been months since I finished my course and longer still since I have been in the work place and I am starting to feel frustrated at the sheer amount of rejection and red-tape involved in the job market at this timde. 
I do not think I am a particularly unemployable person; in spite of my head troubles whenever I am in the work place I am generally in good health, am hard-working and committed and throw myself into every task and have been told I am great fun to have around the office as I get on well with most people, even tolerating questionable clothing choices for the sake of harmony in the office. My illness has never effected me in the work place as far as I am aware other than perhaps taking things to heart more than most.
When I woke up this morning and found myself drifting into melancholy I tried my best to regroup and remind myself of all the wonderful plans I had made for the day. The night before I had made a lovely list of things I wanted to do today; I am a freak about to do lists and can think of few things more pleasurable in life than ticking off an entire to do list in one day. 
Upon my list there was a couple of CD reviews I wanted to get finished before the weekend as well as a note about a trip out to see John Ryland’s library on Deansgate; it has been restored for some time now and I am desperate to explore the literary treasures within and see the splendour of a building filled to the brim with beautiful wonderful life affirming books. I had also planned to spend the day hunting out a new purse, finding some thermals for skiing in Chamonix and tracking down some reasonably priced vintage tea sets for an event I’m planning.
I like to think that had the boy been about I would have tried harder to prise myself from my mood. As it was however he was not and seeing as there was nobody about to make me feel embarrassed for mooching around like an angst ridden teenager I put my plans to the back of my mind, pulled the quilt up to my chin and queued up an indecent number of episodes of Glee to keep me calm.
I am not usually a big fan of television. There are few things I find worthy of dedicating my time to on the schedule other than the football. I did become hooked on Celebrity Big Brother at the start of the year but generally I find trash TV rather disturbing as the producers of reality TV seem genuinely hell-bent on going out of their way to find the most mentally disturbed people in the country and placing them all in a confined space. 
If they are not unbalanced when they enter the house they are certainly lacking in reality when they leave and most develop delusions of grandeur which are really rather worrying.
There are however a few series which I am happy to dedicate hours of my life to at a time. These are, in no particular order The Wire; The West Wing; Dexter; Glee and Scrubs. Scrubs, West Wing and The Wire hold a special place in my heart because when I was suffering from severe episodes of depression they kept me company and eventually aided me to abandon my bed in the hope of brighter days which laid up ahead.
When I was at University in my second year I was hit by a virus which knocked me for six right in the middle of a string of deadlines. I was ill for about three weeks in total and although the virus was severe I probably would have got better sooner had I not allowed myself to sink into sadness. My boyfriend at the time was not the most understanding of fellows and it was easier to tell him I was sick than psychologically flawed and in this way I was able to keep the truth of my crazy from him for a little longer. In fairness to him whilst he thought I was sick and not sad he did try to help me out, he downloaded me three seasons of scrubs to keep me company whilst he went to lectures and even cooked for me on a fair few occasions. 
Although Scrubs is terribly twee I found myself comforted by its softly softly delivery of lessons on morality and motivational speeches from the infamous Doctor Cox and in the end I forced myself to get showered and dressed all at the same time and dragged myself out of bed. I managed to keep my poorly at bay for a while longer but less than two months after my Scrubathon I fell into a much deeper depression. The same Scrub sourcing sweetheart had become bored of my blues and without too much trouble had found himself a distraction. He dumped me the day after I stumbled upon a conversation he’d had with a friend via MSN about a stunning girl who was apparently model hot. He had pulled her in front of his friends whilst I had been back home with my family and had apparently been speaking with her every other day since. Unfortunately when he left me I couldn’t even find solace in Scrubs as it had become too closely linked too him so instead I turned to the bitter sweetness of 80p Apple Sours from the hall bar along with any other alcohol available to numb the pain. I did try yoga for a while and even went to the doctor in search of a magic pill but oblivion was a much more attractive albeit destructive way to heal my wounds.
The West Wing helped me out in much the same way as Scrubs did. After struggling for months to find work after graduating I sort of gave up and started sleeping more than was strictly healthy. Admittedly it didn’t help that I had given up my medication upon some manic hippy notion that love could cure-all but depression did indeed beckon it’s familiar claw and without the help of medicines I gave up the fight to it all too easily. As I sleepily struggled to force myself from the safety and comfort of the quilt I found myself happily distracted by the popular sharp tongued protagonists. Escapism enveloped me as I became entirely focused on deciphering the endless dialogue spoken at a speed which even I struggled to keep up with. It took me twenty-four episodes but in the end I got myself back to reality and even managed to make tough choices to move home and take a job at my father’s company as a purchase ledger clerk. It wasn’t my dream career but at least it gave me a routine and a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Finally the other series which has been a band aid in disguise over the years is The Wire. Unlike the other programmes I have mentioned, this was a series which was watched from a decidedly upright position. Knowing as I did that exercise is one of the best ways to combat a low mood I decided to combine my usual remedy of box-set with bench work. 
Every morning before I got a shower, I would watch an episode of The Wire whilst working out with weights on the stepper. In this way, with a lot of help from family, friends and pharmaceutical companies I finally managed to get my mojo back and even got a fairly flat tummy for my troubles.
This morning when I chose to watch Glee rather than get out of bed I was annoyed at myself because I knew it was a bad decision. I knew that if I could just drag myself from under the covers and into the shower I could still stand a chance of going for a walk, getting out the house and maybe letting the sunshine and the sound of others getting on with their lives do the rest. Unfortunately it wasn’t until gone four in the afternoon that I managed to get myself in the shower and dressed and by the time the boy came home he was too tired to do anything other than drift off to sleep on my lap. I moaned like a child about wanting him to fix me and make me feel better but in my heart I know that when I am in a mood like this there is little he or Glee can do to make things better. All I can ever hope for when I am struck down by a low like this is that come the next morning the clouds will have cleared enough to tempt me into taking the tiny steps needed to bring me out of doors to see the daylight. Only tomorrow will tell.
- Today’s dress was donated by Sinead Kenny, sister of Monica who loaned yesterday’s gorgeous grey dress. This maxi dress is a size 14 but is one of those wonderful one size fits all dresses which is elasticated round the waist and bust. With pink Marks and Spencer tights and extremely high heels I avoid the fatal mistake of letting it trail on the pavement and prevent it being soiled with Manchester muck – leaves and rain mashed together to create a grey and brown paste. It was totally freezing today and though I did spend the majority of the day hiding out indoors I did make it out in time for the last of the light even if I did jump straight back in to bed afterwards.
