2001-11-08 - 4:56 p.m.

�Harold, you're my lawyer, so I think you should know... I've killed quite a few people.�

Like all mothers, mother nature is a twisted scheming harridan bitch. The day I choose to haul my under-employed ass around town to as many agencies as possible coincides with temperatures which would freeze the cajones off a brass monkey. As if the process of offering myself like the administration equivalent of a bandy-drawered tart to the �employment� agencies weren�t bad enough, they�ve now taken to turning down my increasingly desperate advances, several of them refusing even to let me register. This has signalled a severe downturn in my self-worth. Your last resort is meant to pounce on you like a frisky spaniel but instead of humping my metaphorical leg, they�re indisputably just cocking theirs, like they�ve just been taken on a seven hour walk with no lamp-posts. Or something. I�m one step away from putting up cards in telephone boxes. �New brunette in town will satisfy all your clerical needs with complete discretion. Let me get to grips with your software packages, or handle your copying. Double sided and collating a speciality.� You wouldn�t think it to look at me, but I�ve had less humiliating experiences.

�My need to engage in homicidal behaviour on a massive scale cannot be corrected, but, ah, I have no other way to fulfil my needs.�

And it�s been a pretty competitive 24 hours in the �most embarrassing moment� stakes. One of my female housemates organised a dinner party last night, and we had the curiously novel experience of having single women in the flat. My male housemate and I were paragons of controlled sophistication, naturally; only involving ourselves in minor skirmishes to obtain key tactical sitting positions. Capitalising on an early territorial advantage, I was in the midst of launching a flawlessly suave charm offensive, only knocking over the lucky young lady�s glass the once (how do you pull off being loveably clumsy, do you think?). Conversation turned to how the people considered �cool� at school had in general let themselves go a bit later in life, which we put down to social and physical complacency.

Her: �I�ve got a reunion in a couple of weeks, and it would be great to see that the idiots that were too cool to talk to me all look like shit.�

Me: �Yeah, they�re probably just a bunch of sad divorcees.�

Her: �Um, I just broke up with my husband.�

Me:� Great! I�ll just go kill myself for bringing it up!�

Obviously I didn�t say that, concentrating my efforts instead on jabbing forks into my leg under the table. Luckily, industrial amounts of alcohol were on hand, and the social wheels were appropriately oiled, the party ending how ALL dinner parties end, with seven people shouting incoherently about oral sex.

�I'm not really hungry, I just need to have reservations somewhere.�

Today�s maladjusted city slicker