2002-05-20 - 5:51 p.m.

My continued lack of any apparent employment is quickly running out of funny sides to be seen from. I haven�t worked in six weeks. I have sold a piece in about four, and my inbox is brimming with more rejections than Quasimodo�s dance card. Is there some kind of secret way of maintaining a job that I don�t know about? Am I supposed to be spending evenings sacrificing farm animals whilst dancing naked for the gods of career success? Do my e-mails contain some freaky neuro-linguistic quirk that immediately makes them mortally offensive to editorial staff? I mean, I do it all by the book. I present my ideas in a coherent and interesting way. I send cuts in to people who haven�t read me before. I�m courteous and don�t mention that their publications are cultural excrement that I usually wouldn�t use to mop up monkey jizz at a primate�s peep show, and�what? Sniff all, that�s what.

And I�m aiming low, I assure you. But what happens when you dip BELOW the lowest common denominator? Then what? Admittedly it�s not many, but there are worse writers than me (no, really!) making a living, and here I am living on a diet of disused tube tickets and coffee sachets I nicked from hotel rooms. It�s not like I want fabulous material wealth, living in a gold mansion and bathing daily in the milk of supermodels, I just want to pay my rent and fund the odd five day alcohol binge in bars serving beers that you�ve actually heard of. Is it too much to ask?

The lovely Peth suggested I get some sort of hobby to take my mind off it. She thought something decidedly manly, like fly-fishing. I know that Plath-Killer Hughs indulged a bit, and he made a packet off writing (for the Queen, admittedly), so maybe it�s the way forward, and I can live off my catch each day, and sleep on the river bank, and not have any friends and smell of wee.

I�m giving it two more weeks and I�m there, I swear.