Day 570

River Phoenix, whose film Jimmy Rearden I went to the premiere of, is mysteriously dead. He was only 23 too, the same age as me. Fancy dropping dead outside a nightclub.

No Hallowe'en hassle so I wasted all that adrenalin worrying.

Day 569

Have been feeling nervous recently owing to Hallowe'en tomorrow - the possibility of being annoyed by kids.

Day 568

Wine in the evening, after 2 units I feel pretty relaxed. Think I'll go for 3.

Day 567

Red Dwarf very funny again.

So here we are at the End of the Great Abstinence. Four and a half months. I never thought I'd be able to do it. Let's hope I've learnt my lesson. The Great Temperance is next. Why spoil a good thing?

Day 566

Watched a Young Ones video: the last one, Summer Holiday, the one that started my uni ambition on July 1st, 1985. Rick's philosophical statement at the end was responsible for the amaranth dream.

Day 565

2 days of the great abstinence to go. It's good that I've achieved that, because job searching has got completely hopeless. Admittedly there was that 'Restart' in September but all that got me was a wasted walk in the rain. 8 months since the Workshop finished now. Well, perhaps something will turn up

I suppose though that I'm not doing so badly with this forseen isolate autumn. It was October that was the worst in 1991 and we've almost completed it now. Of course this year there probably won't be 3 parties to go to in November. Never mind.

Day 564

Went round to the new Co-op for skimmed milk. Many memories of going to the Co-op in the third year at uni.

in the evening Newman & Baddiel. A pity the latter throw so much dross in with the jokes.

Day 563

Cold, grey, bit of a wind. Usual clocks-going-back confusion. Quite a good day for a Sunday. It's been one of the pay-offs of Saturday losing some of its lustre these last couple of years - Sunday has got better.

Day 562

My parents have gone on holiday so am house-sitting for them again.

Day 561

Good quote from Jeremy Hardy yesterday, 'My radicalism now consists of watching the news and saying "Bastards" periodically.'

Day 560

Carried on with On Broadway. Red Dwarf VI was good again.

I got a copy of Pyramid today, the UoL mag, which induced nostalgia. Still living in the past as you see.

Just a week of the great abstinence to go.

Day 559

Very cold, dark grey stratus just thin enough to show the sun. Put the last abstinence £20 in the building society, looked at programmable calculators in Boots.

Beguiled the evening with On Broadway. Why is there never anything decent on telly on Wednesdays?

Day 558

Clear, sunny and cold again. The police helicopter hovered overhead in the morning, and moved sideways to inspect me when I went out to have a look.

Day 557

Spent the morning making physics calculations. All the physics made me wonder if I could do any sort of scientific re-training to aid the job search: as I thought later, I didn't do linguistics with a job in mind, I was only 17½ after all and very callow. I chose UoL mostly because D and R did. (A fact nobody knows). And they failed their A-levels in the end anyway.

Mum came round with a lap-top. She's accidentally been given two of them for work. She said I could use this one if I took care of it. Used Excel to draw up financial plans: I have £28 a fortnight free after rent, baccy and Private Eye. Realised though that I was making plans for circumstances that pertained a year ago (as usual?).

Well, who knows. Something good and interesting could happen any day.

In the evening Newman & Baddiel.

Day 556

Watched Lovejoy in the evening: that new woman's not a patch on Lady Jane. Then Drugstore Cowboy. Wow! What a film!

Got to sign on tomorrow, hope it's less cold and windy.

Day 555

M rang saying come to the new 'theme bar' down by Homebase. I duly set forth after The Bill, but unfortunately M was not there - had a good look round and waited outside for about 10 minutes, it was too cold to wait longer. Stars nice and clear though.

Day 554

M came round about 4.40; she told a tale of violence in Newcastle which I didn't like the sound of much.

When did I start finding going out so repellent? At uni and when I came back it was everything, so much so that when we went out on Friday I'd fret because there'd be nothing going on on Saturday. I think I lost interest when that started happening. And of course all this angst is many times multiplied by having not much to do. Even if there were any jobs to look for it couldn't take up much time and there's a limit to the amount of entertainment you can provide for yourself.

I must say that all in all things have turned out disappointingly since uni, and that itself wasn't as good as I expected. 3 years there and 2¼ years on the dole. On the other hand, I have got somewhere to live etc. On the other hand again though, I've had no luck at all in the jobs field. Every time something promising turns up it evaporates, like the Workshop and the NVQ's. 'Do a course' people say. In what? Where? To get what job? When? Paid for by who?

Day 553

Really cold. About 3.30 the Sun had came round to heat up my room. Then watched the 35th anniversary Blue Peter (!) - John Noakes and Peter Purves were among the ex-presenters, real blast from the past. Cooker bloke finally came at 5.15 so tea was ½ hr late, had to tape Jeremy Hardy.

Day 552

Floods all over the region with all the rain - not so much of it today.

In the evening listened to The Second Stain - last in the series - frankly this lot of Holmes stories just haven't been as good.

England lost 2-0 to Holland after some dirty play by the Dutch - probably they won't qualify now. Still, a World Cup in America's bound to be pretty shit anyway.

Day 551

It rained heavily all morning and all evening - bright red radar echoes. For practice with Windows Write typed out all the summaries I did yesterday.

Wouldn't be surprised if I heard from M some day soon - it'll be her birthday in a week or so.

Day 550

In the evening listened to gloomy R4 play about N. Ireland (again). I see R5 is to be replaced with the news and sport service - because of the Tory bastard Luddite fanatics it can't go on R4 LW as originally planned.

Day 549

Made the most of Sunday morning as you should. Later taped Love Is A Big Scary Animal off the chart. Watched Lovejoy.

Day 548

In Martins I was flipping through the new Adrian Mole - all very depressing, Pandora carrying on with her professor, A's parents divorced, his grandmother dead. A far cry from the heady Diary and Growing Pains days which I could actually empathise with.
Watched a bit of Gladiators in the evening.

Day 547

That woman from the Busywork Trust rang up to tell me about a training scheme in London. I knew all about it having been rejected for it a year ago but I had to say so tactfully. II thanked her for taking an interest but I still felt bad about it and had to watch my TMBG video to recover.

Day 546

Listened to Jeremy Hardy, very funny again.

Day 545

Cashed my Giro. Then rode into town for a printer cartridge and the building society. As I put in double last time I could keep most of next fortnight's £20.

Back via Homebase for a 23W mini-fluorescent bulb for my bedroom (save £45 over its lifetime, I calculate). Takes a while to warm up but has a nice white light.

The Abbey Grange was on R4 in the afternoon. I don't think this series is as good as the others, still quite good though.

Day 544

Carried on with My Son, My Son, but despite this interesting reading I got very bored. Wonder what all this boredom recently means? Has the Great Abstinence cleared my mind so much that I really need something to do more than ever?

Day 543

Went to sign on, came back.

In the evening a very good Newman & Baddiel.

So another Monday done. They never have been particularly inspiring, on the dole, at school or at uni.

Day 542

Took my leave at noon. Got to Stratford about 1pm, 1.12 train, a brisk walk back from the station got me home by about two.

Dramatic news from Moscow with the Parliamentarians staging a counter-counter-revolution against that fat drunken dictator Yeltsin. Funny, the coup against Gorbachev happened during my other visit to D in August 1991.

Got to sign on tomorrow, hope it stops raining by then.

Day 541

Set off for the station at 1.40. Train at 2.06, Romford at 2.36, Stratford at 2.42. Unfortunately I'd under-estimated the walk to D's which took me an hour.

Day 540

Did this and that. Scanned job ads. Rang T: he told me the address information I wanted. Rang BR to find out where to change trains (Romford).

Earlier watched the end of Conference, quite heartening.