I’m going to level with you guys. I still haven’t found a job yet. Accessorize got back to me, offering a four-hour contract. Four hours a week. That earns me about £26. What can I do with £26? Good question I hear you ask. The possibilities are endless, including:

– Nothing.

Right now, I am dirt poor. If I changed my name to Penny, I would have one penny to my name. But being poor has helped me gain a few skills. Writing this post, I have mastered how to make a small Americano last three hours in Café Nero. God, let me tell you how to make an Americano last in the bedroom. (Am I right ladies? I have very little sex.)

What the actual fuck can I do with £26? Even If you times that by 1000 that still doesn’t make up the cost of my student loan. I’d have to work for the next millennia. ALL I WANT IS A PAIR OF STAN SMITHS FOR MY POOR-PERSON FEET TO FEEL A SENSE OF WORTH FOR FIVE MINUTES. I would have to work for three days over three consecutive weeks to earn enough money. How long did Jesus work in the desert for? I don’t know but HE PROBABLY HAD NICE SHOES.

So, I went on two more interviews yesterday*. The first interview was in Jack Wills. I got up ten minutes beforehand to give the website a quick Google to learn their ethos regarding Britishness, which ironically mostly involves relying on other countries for their merchandise (Post-colonialism***)

The interview involved going into a tiny room and being asked questions like if I was a fan of the Jack Wills aesthetic. I said yes and commended their great job on pink and blue, one of the rare combinations a superhero hasn’t already trademarked. One question I always look forward to is “how would your friends describe you in three words?” because it relies on the kind assumption I have more than one friend. Sadly, the answer is not “hire her now”.

I then headed to my second interview. This took place in a bookshop that I won’t name. This interview, by the way, was absolutely and needlessly terrifying for no apparent reason. I felt like I was interviewing for Oxford. It was like being Waterstones boarded for information, which if I had known, would have willingly given up faster than a graduate gives up dreams. What if she asks me to list the main themes of The Master and the Margarita**?

I thought Margarita was a type of cheese.

Also, The Master and the Margarita? what’s next, Tequila Mockingbird? Hahahahahahahaha we’re all having fun aren’t we

She really grilled me hard on what books were big at the moment, to which I had very little to respond with because I don’t have the money to go into a bookshop right now, and even if I did have the money, I wouldn’t be spending it buying all along the watchtower by Harper fucking Lee in a bloody bookshop that’s for goddamn certain. I’ve spent my entire student life avoiding buying literature. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be spending it on something I can’t display proudly like a ripe red baboons arse in mating season. That season, coincidentally, occurs in my world between the months always and having sex.

How absolutely fucking gutting that three years at university has taught me that although I can talk a 2,1 about books in a seminar that probably cost me about £200 to attend, if a customer actually asked me my opinion on Pilgrims Progress, I’m probably not good enough to talk £6.50 an hour about them.

I have heard back from neither interview, and I will be in Accessorise from 12-4 in Sutton on Saturday earning the half of one half of a pair of shoes.

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*To any potential employers are reading this; I have put this in for character purposes only. I’ve only been to one interview: yours. Also, I absolutely probably did spend three years at W H Smiths leaning absolutely top notch customer service skills, seriously, just ask any one of my references, including my aunt and/or Bronwen’s mum.

**The Master and The Margarita is interestingly, not the tipsy, reluctant, nervous prequel to 50 shades of grey, as it sounds like it should be.

*** Look this is clever isn’t it aren’t I clever

I’ll begin with today, because that’s what day it is. Today, I had an interview for Accessorize. Accessorize is basically Claire’s but for people who can afford to have shame. Accessorize mostly sells little charms for £6.95 and backpacks for transvestites.

Half way through the walk to the interview, I remember thinking, I’m not nervous at all. Like I was a little bit sweaty, but when you’re as consistently, cripplingly socially inept and dread human interaction as much as I do, that’s normal. Right in the middle of being impressed with myself, it happened.

I got diarrhoea.

And not the kind you can just clench and try to desperately hold inside, like a leaky moon cup. The kind that you have to follow through with right now, and I wasn’t about to do that because I was wearing a pair of expensive work trousers I had stolen from my mother, and I didn’t want to have to explain the reason as to why her leggings were in the wash was because I had shit myself.

So I ran home as fast as my wide fit (comfy on the bunion) Primark flats could carry me. Afterwards, I had this conversation:

“Pleasecanyoudropmeattheinterviewitsintenminutes”

“Alright. Hang on, are those my leggings?”

I’m late to an interview in which the woman interviewing paused and looked up from writing notes to check with me whether she had spelt literature correctly.

I’m supposed to find out if I have the job by next week, and I’d let myself get excited if I didn’t fear the implications on my bowels.

If only companies were as eager to hire graduates as they are with branding images of unnecessary Minions on things.

I am about a month into unemployment now and let me tell you about how much fun it is. It’s great. It’s really really really great. I would use more adjectives but unfortunately I can’t afford to, because I’m too busy being in denial.

My moods, my esteem, my expectations, my famous perky personality. I feel like where Far East Movement keeps their bass. I’m like Kylie Minogue’s song Slow, only minus the S.

At the moment I’m not even sure if I am actually depressed, or just bored. Or whether being bored is making me depressed. Or whether I’m choosing to be depressed because it qualifies the amount of time I’ve spent crying in my underwear. There’s only so much time my brain can take watching reruns of Friends and saying the funny lines a couple of seconds before the characters say them, to the amusement of no one.

The only thing actually high right now is the amount of time I’ve spent masturbating, which is shocking. I think it’s like a way I’ve developed to self soothe. It’s gotten to the point now where I’m becoming increasingly concerned about whether it’s just me who pays 100% undivided attention to the girl in porn. And then there’s the subsequent musings due to the implications of this, such whether I am actually gay, or if I’m just trying to convince myself I am so I might have an edge in job interviews.

I’m excusing myself from plans with friends to go home, strip down to my pants and critically analyse whether some of the darker hairs spackled on the upper parts of my thighs are simply ambitious pubes.

I’ve exhausted outlets for self-harming so much that it’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to start getting creative. Like systematically going through the profile pictures of the girl my ex-boyfriend is seeing whilst playing Chilli Pepper’s Don’t Forget Me. Or wrapping hair bands around my fat so they look like little pale diglets popping out of my skin. Or taking a selfie and then relentlessly zooming in on my face until I look like the weasel love child of Mr Bean and Sid the Sloth.

I’m considering volunteering. Some real fucked up shit.

Honestly though I’m thinking I might take over the family business. And by the family business I mean do what my dad did and disappear.

At 21, going on holiday with family takes courage. You might be convinced by the multiple perks of a family holiday, including

• Its free
• It doesn’t cost you any money

We went away to Turkey, which is a land that lives in perpetual fear that cheese might one day become a finite resource, and thus feels obligated to garnish every conceivable dish with it.

Here are some highlights of the trip:

• The invention of a game called Spaghetti Polo where you get those long float pieces and have to use them to hit a ball from one side of the water to the other. This was mainly just an excuse for us all to hit each other. Hit each other really hard in our stupid faces and savour the mutual sensation of the chlorine water burning each other’s retinas until we felt better.

• I went white water rafting. In which you pay what you could have spent on travel insurance wedging yourself into a little donut and lumbering down a fast flowing canyon. The rocks were I can assume, enthusiastically matched by our stony faces as our bodies bombarded their way through assortment obstacles, whilst a Turkish man who belonged in Battleship Potemkin shouts useful advice at you such as “stay away from the rocks”.

When a pregnant cow is having a difficult labour, a farmer must forcibly drag the calf out of the womb using his bare hands, methodically negotiating its limp, gangly legs out of the cow, heaving, until eventually the calf is out, and writhing on the ground, soaking and exhausted. This is how it feels to be hoisted out of the Dalaman River by your lifejacket.

We got out of the boats and the attendant told us to take off all of our clothes and get on the ground. He broke up some of the mud from the ground with his foot and told us to rub the mud on our bodies, as apparently mud is meant to rehydrate the skin. Kindly, he spent most of his time helping me get every crevice of my body covered. I had no idea my tits were so dry.

Here are some snippets of conversation that really sum up the trip for me:

“You could do it in less than a day probably. What, weeks? No. Definitely not. Well, maybe. I guess there are a lot of hills. And there were some windy roads.”

– Lizzie, on the logistics of driving to Turkey

“You know, you look down and see all of this land, like all those fields and shit and it’s just like, where the fuck is that? You know what I mean?”

– Lizzie, The Plane, location unchartered.

“Alex, do you think people have a difficult time understand you’re my son because I’m white and you’re black?”

– My aunt, in the swimming pool, with a glass of wine.

“Ah you’re the older sister, are you the boss then?”

“No.”

– A salesman, exploiting my insecurities.

“Say hi to James Brown for me!”

– The rafting instructor, to Alex, before laughing hysterically.

“Is that the same guy?”

-My mother, attempting to subtly whisper into her hat, as a previous taxi driver we had approaches us.

“Yes, I am the same guy.”

– An offended Turkish taxi driver, solemnly confirming the above.

“Look Alex, there’s you!”

– My aunt, excitedly pointing at another black person.

“So do you guys get a lot of trouble over here with ISIS then or what?”

– My aunt, before nonchalantly ordering drinks off a Turkish waiter.