A Brand New Me: The hilarious romantic comedy about one year of first dates

‘You will of course be paid extra for all evening work, and there will be a bonus on completion of each of the twelve studies. So–can I assume you accept the challenge?’

I was outraged. I was insulted. But I was also skint, desperate to get out of plumbing and losing the feeling in my legs. So…

‘Hmmmm,’ I replied.

2 Aligning the Planets

‘So?????’

Their little faces were the epitome of expectation.

‘I got the job!’ I replied gleefully, joining in an exaggerated group hug thing that almost toppled them off their bar stools. They’d been waiting in the pretentious, overpriced wine bar around the corner from Zara’s office for the last two hours, so they were already struggling slightly with minor issues like balance and staying upright.

‘Told you she was desperate!’ Trish exclaimed helpfully.

That’s the thing about Trish–I love and adore her but she went to the Joseph Stalin School of Friendship. She’s brutal, thoughtless, self-obsessed, and prone to dictatorial behaviour. However, unlike Mr Stalin she’s also funny, kind and, underneath the complete lack of compassionate social skills, she has her friends’ best interests at heart. We’ve known each other since our first day at college in London, when I bumped into her as she wandered along the corridor outside the catering department clutching a toffee pavlova (yes, the stains came out eventually). Surprisingly, given her truculent disposition, we’ve never fallen out, although that’s probably because I’m subconsciously aware that if I crossed her there’s every chance she would dismember me while I slept.

The first thing that struck me (after the pavlova) about her was that she was so different from my group of friends back in the sleepy suburb of Norfolk where I grew up. In my little gang of middle-of-the-road, normal, everyday pals, not one of them had a navy-blue Mohican and wore Doc Marten boots with long flowery dresses. She looked like the love child of Sid Vicious and Laura Ashley. In fact, that had been a major puzzlement when her husband Grey first met her. Let’s just get this out of the way–he’s a fireman. No jokes about large hoses, sliding down his pole or relighting his fire, please–that kind of shallow innuendo does nothing but demean the role those courageous men play in today’s society. But he is a big hunka hunka burnin’ love who could set any female’s knickers alight.

Anyway, they got together after he was called to her apartment by a neighbour who spotted thick smoke coming out of Trish’s window. A few bee-baws later he was carrying a semi-conscious Trish out of her front door while the plug-in, hot-wax kit that she’d inadvertently left on after trimming her bikini line burnt down her kitchen. Electrical fault, apparently. Thankfully, she was fine, but when she regained consciousness while waiting for an ambulance, Grey asked her why she was wearing boots with a nightdress. They’ve been together ever since that moment and she vowed right there and then that she’d never again wear floral prints, men’s boots or well-trimmed nethers.

Now her wardrobe is more Kate Moss on a slightly lower budget–a hip, eclectic and edgy combination of vintage and high-street jeans, T-shirts, waistcoats and various other chic pieces that definitely shouldn’t work together but somehow on Trish they just do. Meeting Grey also brought about the last of the Mohican. Her hair is now a screaming shade of scarlet and shaped into a razor-sharp asymmetric chin-length bob, a style that’s maintained in pristine fashion by our mutual best chum Stuart. Another college relationship that’s lasted the distance, we met Stu when he advertised for hair models in the first month of his hairdressing course. Trish and I, fuelled by the combination of permanent bed hair, cheap cider and empty bank accounts, went along, and despite the fact that he bestowed upon us crew cuts that made everyone around us view us in a whole new light (if you’re reading this, Julie McGuiness, thank you for the k.d. lang poster), we’ve been friends ever since.

Oh, and just in case you were doing that whole stereotype thing, Stu is as straight as Russell Brand with the horn. However, he is…

‘That’s great news, Leni! I’m so proud of you! But stop the hugging, honey, because this virus I’ve got might be an airborne one so best to keep your distance.’

…a hypochondriac. Or should I say, the post-millennium version, a cyberchondriac. First sign of a sneeze and he’s on the computer inputing his symptoms into medical websites, and the next thing you know he’s claiming bubonic plague and ringing a bell before he enters the room. Still, much as the web does invariably throw up the most dramatic diagnosis, we’re glad he’s finally binned the old-fashioned medical dictionary. When he was addicted to that he’d get stuck on the same letter for days and go into psychosomatic meltdown. That terrifying week back in 2002 when he contracted piles, pleurisy and pregnancy will be etched on my memory forever.

We keep hoping that he’ll meet his perfect woman and the security will rid him of his morbid obsession, but so far all attempts to set him up with a member of the nursing profession have met with a premature end. He once got as far as a third date with a geriatric nurse but she dumped him in the middle of an episode of ER when he asked her to talk him through a prostate examination. And not in a good way. It’s a shame really because, neurosis aside, he’s a grounded, cool, entirely macho six-foot-tall specimen of gorgeousness with close-cropped black hair, piercing green eyes and an abdominal rack so tight you could play bongo drums on it. Of course, he’d never let you for fear of cracked ribs, punctured lungs and internal bruising.

Oh, and he’s successful. Courtesy of his achingly hip salon, he’s a rising star (vertigo, altitude sickness, anxiety) in the hairdressing world (nits, life-threatening finger cuts, inhalation of toxic perm lotions). He styles Chelsea mothers, precocious teenagers, a few daytime-telly celebs and does the weekly makeovers for What?!! magazine. Trish has vowed that she’ll get him the Great Morning TV! slot one day, but that often involves whisking viewers off to sunny climates so he’ll have to overcome his fear of flying first. Not only is he terrified of the actual big steel tube/plummet to death scenario, but he’s phobic about germs since he heard that aircraft ventilation systems simply recycle the air, spreading everyone else’s bacteria. On the plus side, his in-flight panics often have a silver lining–if first class is quiet, he regularly gets upgraded because the stewardesses are worried that the sight of a terrified grown man sweating in a medical facemask might upset the other passengers.

I hopped onto a bar stool next to them–but not close enough that Stu’s highly virulent Ebola virus could kill me before I’d had a large glass of wine and a packet of Nobby’s Nuts.

I gave them a full debrief and they were, by turn, astonished, enthralled, proud and…horrified.

‘You have to what?’ Trish almost spat her vino across the table.

‘You’re not doing it,’ Stu commanded, like a stern parent forbidding underage drinking, discos and any contact involving the pelvic region.

‘Right then, Dad, I won’t–but only if you increase my pocket money this week.’

‘I mean it, Leni, it could be dangerous. Twelve men? Do you know that statistically at least two of them will be carrying a sexually transmitted disease? Not to mention that there’s a high chance that at least one will have a criminal record.’

For a macho guy he really did get hysterical sometimes (anxiety disorder, raised blood pressure, wrinkles).

Now that he was looking at me with an expression that sat somewhere between horror and disbelief, with a helping of concern thrown in just to make me feel even worse, my teeth started to grind. Of course he was right. And deep down I knew it. Taking this job would be utterly insane. Dates? I couldn’t go on twelve dates. I’m the woman who takes weeks to decide to try a new washing powder–and even then I feel bad for the old one. But then…My mind flicked to the pile of books at the side of my bed. Shouldn’t I feel the fear and do it anyway? Shouldn’t I fake it until I make it? Shouldn’t I take those ten steps to a new me? Aaaaaargh! Shouldn’t I stop reading bloody self-help guides and actually put some of their theories into action instead?

It was time for me to get a life–one that I actually bloody liked. I could do this. I could. I was feeling the fear so it was time to get on with it.

I decided to bluff bravado.

‘Stu, I’m not going to sleep with them, I just have to date them. You know–dinner, bowling, art galleries and stuff like that. And how bad can it be? Look at my track record in picking men. Ben? Married. Donny? The Olympic World Champion in the field of Unmitigated Boredom. Gary? Ran off with my chiropodist. Goliath? Tried to snog Trish at last year’s birthday barbecue.’

‘I warned you not to go out with someone called Goliath–bound to have inferiority issues,’ she piped up.

‘Thank you, Dr Jong,’ I replied curtly.

‘You’re still not doing it. It’s way too dangerous, and besides, you’ll hate every minute of it. This just isn’t you, Len,’ Stu demanded, thumping his bottle of Bud on the square pod we were gathered around.

He was so, so right–so irritatingly, bloody annoyingly right. My emotional pendulum swung back from ‘fearless’ to ‘realistic’–there was no denying that when God doled out adventure and ambition, I had refused with a, ‘No thanks, I’ll stick with consistency and predictability.’

I threw back a few of Nobby’s finest to break the emotional tension of it all. Take the job. Don’t take it. Take the job. Don’t take it. I used to be indecisive but now I wasn’t so sure. Once again, aaaaaaargh!

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake stop being so dramatic,’ Trish argued. ‘She’ll be fine. She might even meet someone who’s slightly elevated above her usual selection of losers and reprobates.’

Shucks. I didn’t know whether to be grateful to Trish for the encouragement, offended by the observation, or horrified that she didn’t seem at all perturbed that I might meet an axe-wielding maniac.

But her observation had already crossed my mind.

I was twenty-seven years old and I’d never had a serious/ humming-the-wedding-march/ flicking-through-bridal-magazines type of relationship. The longest one had been the two years I’d spent with the (as yet) only man I’d ever been in love with: Ben (sob–sorry, still can’t think about him without involuntary gulp and flaring of nostrils), the gorgeous stranger I’d met on a train a couple of years after I’d finished college. We were definitely world leaders in the ‘unlikeliest couple of the year’ award. Me: reserved, prone to wimpish behaviour with an adventure rating that never went any higher than trying a new muffin in Starbucks. Him: a serving marine, six foot four inches of testosterone-oozing manliness who–bearing in mind that he was a trained killing machine–had the sweetest, most caring nature. Unfortunately, at the end of two years I discovered that he also had a wife and child in army barracks in Felixstowe. Turned out that the majority of his ‘covert manoeuvres’ took place well away from the front line. Handling the Taliban must have been light relief after the stress of juggling a wife and a girlfriend, neither of whom had an inkling about the other until…nope, I didn’t even want to think about it. I threw back some more nuts and mentally fast-forwarded to the brutal aftermath that mostly consisted of me lying on the bathroom floor sobbing into the shower curtain, wishing hell and damnation of the entire male species. Since then, I’d just drifted along, embarking on a few flings with obviously incompatible blokes just to give myself a break from serial singledom.

In hindsight, what I should have done was loaded up a backpack and taken my mind off the heartbreak by trekking across Nepal seeking religious enlightenment. Or headed to the Great Barrier Reef to discover the wonders of nature and shallow sexual couplings with long-haired Australian surf dudes. Instead? Same job for years, unexciting love life, and I still lived in the same Slough/Windsor border, one-bedroom flat that I’d been renting since I first moved there. Actually, it was more Slough, but if I hung out of my bedroom window at a forty-five-degree angle clutching a set of binoculars, I could just about make out the castle. Not that I had. Well, only that once, and Mrs Naismith from next door had been holding my ankles to prevent me from plummeting to my death.

I took a long, deep breath, and in the manner of a fearless superhero (aka Nobbygirl), adjusted my jaw to a position of strength and determination. There was no way I wanted to look back on this moment and regret that I hadn’t grabbed the new opportunity with both hands (or at least the one hand that wasn’t busy chucking salted protein nibbles down my throat).

What had I vowed to do at New Year? Carve out a brand new me. And given the reminders of my mundane, deathly boring life and my deeply unsatisfactory romantic history, I was surer than ever that a little bit of crazy unpredictability was exactly what I needed to change my life.

And Zara Delta was definitely a little bit of crazy unpredictability.

Great Morning TV!

‘Now, Zara, I believe you’ve got an exciting new project that you’re working on this year and you need our help,’ said Goldie Gilmartin, the nation’s favourite sofa queen. In her mid-forties with a stunning auburn pixie cut and a body that was no stranger to the gym, Goldie bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Liza Minnelli. The British viewing public loved her, and with her sassy style, forthright manner and compassion-where-it-mattered, she was close to being declared a national treasure.

‘I have, Goldie, and it might just be the most important thing I’ve ever tackled. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say I think I may have the answers for all you single girls out there looking for Mr Right.’

Goldie grinned as she turned to camera. ‘Maybe there’s hope for me yet.’

Goldie’s single status had long been a source of interest to the gossip mags. What they didn’t realise (and we did–courtesy of Trish’s insider information) was that for years she’d been happily having an unorthodox and wildly adventurous relationship with a six-foot-two stripper with the body of an Adonis who was almost twenty years younger than her.

‘Goldie, first book off the press is all yours, darling!’ Zara promised, before turning to the camera. ‘What I need from our viewers are single men. Ladies, is your brother, son or even dad living on microwave dinners for one? Or are you a single guy who is fed up with the dating game? Come on all you loveless gents out there, drop me a line, tell me a bit about yourself, enclose a photo and you could be lucky enough to get chosen to participate in a fabulous new challenge where we’ll set you up on the all-expenses-paid night of your dreams. Dating agencies charge thousands of pounds–we might just be able to find your perfect partner and we’ll do it for free. Intrigued? Well, all will be revealed when my new book is released at the end of the year, but in the meantime I can promise you this–if selected you’ll be in for an adventure that might just lead you to your soul mate.’

‘Great, Zara, thank you for that,’ interjected Goldie as she wound up the segment. ‘Now come on, guys, write in–and if there’s anyone that catches my eye I might just be calling you myself!’

3 Star Gazing

‘Morning, Leni. Zara needs her schedule for today, her new crystals collected from Swarovski on Bond Street, and can you arrange for a cleaning team to blitz the house–she had a few people over last night and it got a bit crazy. Oh, and we’ve come up with a match on the manhunt thing–I’ve left the details on your desk.’

‘Sure, Conn, no problem.’

He grinned as he squeezed past me on the stairs. I waited until he was out of sight.

‘Chicken tikka baguette,’ I shouted to Millie, the pale-faced receptionist who, underneath the anaemic complexion, coal-coloured hair and dour exterior, was actually very sweet and funny–although I did worry that if she didn’t see daylight soon she was facing a future blighted by osteoporosis.

‘Nope–cheese salad on brown, no mayo,’ she countered in a thick Glasgow burr.

Conn’s head suddenly reappeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Sorry, Millie, forgot to say…could you order lunch for me? Cheese salad sandwich will do.’

Millie did a triumphant double wobble of her eyebrows in my direction.

‘Sure, white or brown?’

‘Brown,’ he replied. ‘And no mayo.’

‘Cream buns are on me at lunchtime then,’ I replied ruefully. How did Millie do that? I’d been working for Delta Inc. for a fortnight and so far Millie had whipped me every day in the sandwich challenge. I wasn’t taking it lightly. Maybe I should start taking notes and work out if everyone had a regular favourite depending on the day, week and position of the moon. And I wasn’t being facetious with that last one, because in this office that was probably the most likely scenario.

Our admittedly immature game had started on my first day, when I was introduced to Zara’s son and manager Conn in the reception area. There are only two highly descriptive, all-encompassing, suitably formal adjectives to use when attempting to sum him up: hubba hubba.

I’m five foot eight, and even in my highest ankle-straining heels (eBay, ridiculously impractical panic buy for city plumbing Christmas party, can only be worn in presence of crash mat and paramedics) he towers above me. His shoulders are the approximate width of the average pavement, he has sallow young Marlon Brando-type features and his topaz eyes glint brighter than those horrible bloody stars in reception. But the most remarkable thing about him is his hair–dark, long and windswept, it’s not so much Led Zeppelin, more the shoulder-length cut adopted by Jon Bon Jovi after he got a bit older and decided that heavy-metal hair was costing a fortune in conditioner.

According to Zara, Conn was born when she was sixteen, so he’s twenty-nine now–yet, despite being only a little older than me he has a composed confidence that makes him seem much more mature than his years–a disposition that renders him perfect for his role as Zara’s manager. And yes, I could tell all that from the five conversations we’ve had since I started here two weeks ago. Oh, okay, I confess–a couple of times I accidentally listened in when he was chatting to people on the phone, courtesy of the hopelessly inefficient phone system that allows you to cut in on anyone’s call. I’d complain it was intrusive and invasive to privacy, but then, if Zara is as good as she claims, doesn’t she always know what everyone is thinking anyway?

A shiver ran up my spine to accompany that now-familiar mental mantra–think nice things, think nice things…Most employees give an occasional thought as to whether or not their boss will check their desk drawers. Some people even worry about management installing spyware on their computer to check their emails. Me? I’m too busy fretting that Zara can see right into my mind and that I’ll get fired because some irrepressible brain cells will blurt out, ‘Hey, you in the dodgy kaftan, you’re a few decades too late for Woodstock.’

I made my way up to Zara’s office and opened the door with not a little trepidation. The thing is, you just never knew what you would find. One day last week she had been dangling a large kite out of the window, convinced that the patterns it made in the air would tell her whether or not she should book a spiritual retreat to Mongolia next Christmas. Yesterday I’d walked in on her in deep conversation with a goat. Yep, a goat. I’m still contemplating whether the NSPCA would find anything untoward about a grown woman demanding to meet and vet (no pun intended) the animal that will be supplying her morning beverage. Archie Botham and his ballcocks seem positively mainstream compared to this.

Thankfully, this morning there was no livestock in sight–just Zara, in a fluorescent pink boob tube that flared at the waist into a full-length gown, complete with matching headband. As always, she came to greet me, placed her palms against mine and closed her eyes tightly.

‘Let the cosmos deliver a fruitful day of peace, progress and harmony.’

I said it with her, trying my best not to feel like a twat and just to be grateful that the day had started well. I’d already come to realise that she’d ignore me when she was upset or furious about some cosmic problem, but when she was on the sunny side of the street she liked to perform our little morning affirmation. It was just one of the quirky little rituals I’d come to consider run of the mill. There’d be hell to pay if she realised that I hadn’t checked my aura for celestial darkness since a week last Tuesday. And I didn’t suppose she’d appreciate the book that was tucked safely out of sight in my rucksack: Surviving a Crazy Boss–a Guide to Creating a Positive Working Environment. It was doing the trick. I was more positive than ever that Zara was bonkers. Sudden scary thought: would she sense the book was there? Did she know I was thinking about it?

I switched to efficient PA mode, while thinking nice things. Nice things. Nice thing number one: I actually enjoyed working there. The hours were fine, the job was interesting, and despite the fact that Zara could switch from the epitome of serenity to ranting egomaniac in less time than it took me to read my horoscope, I’d so far managed to avoid her wrath. Nice thing number two: the salary was great and lots of interesting things happened every day. Nice thing number three: the…Conn. Whoa, that just slipped out there. But okay, I will admit that working in close proximity to GQ man did occasionally stir the…

Alarm bells shrieked inside my head and the voice of doom yelled, ‘DO NOT THINK SEXUAL THOUGHTS ABOUT A MAN WHEN HIS PSYCHIC MOTHER IS STANDING IN FRONT OF YOU!’ Beads of sweat formed on my upper lip as I rapidly shut down the mental porn channel and reverted to capable secretary mode.

‘Your schedule for today is already on both your computer and your BlackBerry and I updated it last night before I left. You’re in the office all day today and you have three private readings–one is with a Mrs Callow from Bridgend, standard six hundred-pound fee for the hour. The second is with the competition winner from last week’s Great Morning TV! competition–it’s a freebie so I told them you’d only see them for half an hour, as you said. And the third is with Sher DeMilo–she’s just been dropped from EastEnders and she was hysterical when she called. What should I charge her?’

Zara closed her eyes and was silent for a moment, then ‘A thousand pounds–she’ll make more than that opening a new supermarket.’

Did I mention that I’d discovered yet another surprising and fairly scary truth about Zara? Her image might be one of superior spirituality, she might be an earth goddess, she might even live within the principles of karmic equality, but when it came to her bank balance she was as astute as a supremely gifted accountant.

‘Conn asked me to pick up your crystals and organise the house cleaning, so I’ll do that while you’re with your first client. Is there anything else you need me to do?’

‘Yes, could you find out the dress code for the TV Times awards and ask Mrs Chopra to come in to discuss my outfit please.’

I made a note on my pad. Far from sourcing all her clothes in vintage markets and on her Third World travels (as many of her press articles claimed), Zara actually had most of them made by Mrs Chopra, a lovely little Indian lady who ran a sewing business from her two-bedroom terraced house in Hounslow.

I made my way over to my desk and chair–sorry, my cushion and tree stump–in the corner. As my coccyx thumped onto the floor, I reminded myself for the tenth time to pick up a pair of those cycle pants with the padded buttocks. Not a wardrobe item that I’d ever considered I’d need in my professional career.

My eyes immediately went to the red file in the middle of my desk. Or should I say bark? Anyway, no time for semantics because my brain was suddenly beating to the sound of da dum. Da dum. Da dum. Da dum. Then the hand tremors started and a solid mass formed in my throat making swallowing impossible. The da dums were speeding up now. I decided to add a defibrillator to the next office supplies order.

Da dum. Da dum. For two weeks I’d forced myself into denial, hoping that Zara would change her mind, think of a new plan, or get run over by a bus before I had to go through with this ludicrous project, but now the reality was in front of me in black and white–the first of the candidates selected from the bag of replies Zara had received after she’d announced to Goldie that she was looking for blokes who wanted to find their Miss Right.

At the moment I was definitely channelling Miss Absolutely Bloody Wrong.

A new wave of panic began to rise from my toes and stopped somewhere around my aching posterior. Why had I ever thought I could do this? Why? This wasn’t my role in the universe. In our daily existence, Trish took care of ‘fearless, outrageous and blunt to the point of abuse’, Stu took care of ‘gorgeous, thoughtful, funny and hip’, and I took care of ‘safe, dependable and predisposed towards the uneventful’.

I pulled out an A4 sheet of paper with a photograph attached to the top. ‘Harry Henshall’, the title announced. My stomach gave a lurch as I looked at the photograph and realised immediately that he was not exactly my type. Not that I had a ‘type’, as such (other than unreliable and prone to compulsive lying), but Harry looked like a boy-band member…ten years after they’d had a number thirty-two in the charts and split up to pursue solo careers.

I scanned the biography as quickly as possible, panic now at waist height. Harry, it transpired, was twenty-eight and worked in manufacturing for a fabricated panels company, and enjoyed reading, sport and socialising in his spare time. Panic was now competing with thudding heart. It was one thing mortally dreading this whole project, but I was even higher on the terror scale now that it was a reality.

Harry. Leni and Harry. Harry and Leni. Nope, wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. Very attractive sweat bubbles popped up on the palms of my hands to keep the nausea in my gut company. I wondered if I could get my old job back?

‘Ah, you found it then,’ Zara observed as she hovered over me. ‘We thought he looked like a nice chap. He’s a Leo.’

I wanted to add, ‘Who could also be running late for a meeting with his probation officer.’ I kept it to myself.

‘Now, as I’ve explained before, I’ve devised a new way of reading the stars that will revolutionise the current stereotypes that modern astrology holds for each sign–so I’m not going to give you any advice or background on his astrological character traits before the date. I want you to go in there with no expectations or knowledge whatsoever.’

I presumed that she meant no expectations other than the two I already had. Number one: if Harry had time to send his dating profile in to a telly show then he probably wasn’t beating potential girlfriends off with his love-stick; and number two: fear would kill me before I got there anyway.

‘Now, you have to leave absolutely everything on the date up to him–where you meet, where you go, what you do.’

There went my plan to have a quick drink and then leave–out of the pub’s bathroom window.

She thrust a sheet of A4 paper in front of me.

‘And we do have a few guidelines we’d like you to follow. Obviously you are representing the Delta brand, so we expect you to behave in a manner that won’t reflect badly on us.’

I had to really focus to stop my eyes rolling. This was the woman who had decided to illustrate her femininity by painting the huge canvas that hung in the hallway with her nipples. She had made a client cry last week when she’d told her that her missing Chihuahua had gone to the big kennel in the sky. And she charged celebrities up to three times the going rate. Yet she was concerned that my behaviour would reflect badly on her? Shit, she was looking at me with a really weird expression. Quick, nice things! Think nice things. Bloody, bloody bugger! It was bad enough having to go through with this mad, crazy notion without the constant bloody worry that Zara was reading my mind!

I couldn’t do this. Right now, I just wanted to put my head between my legs and wait for the terror to subside. I had a sudden urge to pen my own autobiographical, inspirational guide that others could learn from: Feel the Fear…then Shake Until Your Nose Bleeds.

‘Now, are you sure that you’re up to the challenge, Leni? Conn and I had a chat and we absolutely realise that this is a rather unusual requirement, so we thought that a bonus of two hundred pounds per night was appropriate, plus of course we’ll pay for all your expenses including transport there and back.’

Urgh, it really annoyed me that she thought I could be bought. I had morals! I had values! And I had a student loan/overdraft combo that was currently sitting at a couple of thousand pounds and could be wiped out by these lovely two-hundred-pound bonuses.

It was decision time. Two choices. Quit or go through with it. Quit. Go through with it. Quit. Quit. My opinions and concerns rose to a crescendo, and were then silenced by a thundering mental roar of Trish’s voice demanding that I pull myself together. I had to do this. I couldn’t quit after just a few weeks–where would that leave me? In the dole queue, skint, and thoroughly depressed that I’d let the prospect of twelve perfectly harmless evenings (with potentially axe-wielding maniacs) deprive me of the most interesting and lucrative job I’d ever had. Deep breath. Deep breath. And for the 243rd time in recent weeks, a silent vow of, ‘I can do this.’