What a strange month April was.

I flew back from New York into a life of unemployment which I expected to last for months and months and months but in fact lasted for a total of 21 days!

All in all I applied for six jobs and was offered interviews for five. Oh and I signed on once... and even that was the morning of Monday 21st. Oh and how did I find the agency that offers "the job you want, the help you need"? Pretty piss-poor. The best my adviser could suggest was "Have you considered working part-time? Theme parks will be recruiting for their summer retail staff". Bloody idiot.

Monday 21st was a very odd day - an interview in the morning for retail and one in the afternoon for office admin work. Both seemed very keen so I had to make a choice which of these two areas I wanted to work in.

The retail one was hounding me for a decision about working a trial week for a job as assistant manager of a London souvenir shop - what was putting the break on it was I would have to work a lot of evenings. In the early evening I was called by the admin office and offered me the job flat out. So I accepted!

The nice thing was Owen was with me when I accepted the offer so we could celebrate straight away and use free drink for the purpose!

We were at the launch for Jean MacColl's book SUN ON THE WATER at Kettners which is her account of the life and tragic death of her daughter, singer Kirsty MacColl. It was a nice event made nicer by the company of Owen, Alan Officer and Norma, Claire and Barry.

It was nice to finally have an excuse to introduce myself to Jean, I have always felt a bit odd about doing it at one of the October bench events. She gave a nice speech and told us all to make lots of new friends... so here I am, first with Jean and then with my new very dear close personal friend Alison Steadman.

I didn't have the nerve to tell her it was my ex-boss who once smacked her up the tradesman's with his briefcase at the bar at Stratford East.