Last night, a lightbulb on my landing EXPLODED! I'm still picking glass out of my hair. I love drama.

I'm not qualified for the jobs I want. Whose fault is that, I wonder. I'm applying for them all anyway. I've got the wrong class of the wrong degree, and I'm in the wrong part of the country: but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yes, I'm numerate, yes I'm a team player, I'm good with children, English is my first language.

I write online applications for John Lewis's graduate IT scheme; I take proficiency tests for NATS. I hear that the NHS is short of radiographers. I find my GCSE Maths certificate and send it to ACCA.

But then, in the evenings, I turn off the computer and sit at the dining room table and drape myself in fabric, and uncut patterns, and miles and miles of unbleached 36s polycore cotton thread. I inhale fraying threads like asbestos, and I unpick and re-press and wish I'd paid more attention in Year Nine Domestic Science instead of sticking pins into Joanne Strange. The next day I go back to accountancy. Because sewing bits of fabric together is no way to make a living, is it (and even if it was, I'm not qualified to do it).