Day One:

Three years and the fun’s over, and I’m bundled home in a car full of books, most unceremoniously. So what is being a graduate with an average degree in a subject most people find useless really like?

Well, to be frank, it’s daunting. In today’s exam-ridden, hoop-jumping school system, nobody prepares you for this. The entire focus of your academic career is to simply get on to the next round of essays, presentations and exams, and then get to the pub in the shortest time possible. Nobody tells you about the twilight zone of unemployment that will inevitably follow. Nobody tells you that employers will not be wowed instantly by your stunning dissertation on medieval church bench cushions, and take you on in a flash for at least 25K per annum.

I have three tasks, I say to myself in a naively optimistic fashion. Number One; reacquaint myself with my long-suffering, no longer long-distance partner. Number Two; find a job. Any job will do, as I’m in debt, but hopefully one that’s vaguely career orientated. Number Three; get together enough money to get out from under my parents’ roof. Kind as it is of them to take me in during the intermittent period, I’ve been home for two hours, forty-three minutes and twelve seconds, and already I’m hankering for the relaxed atmosphere of my moulding student flat. I go to sleep anxious to get started.

Day Two:

Task One was an easy one. P was affectionate, delighted to have me home again. I am nervous that actually being in close proximity to me, rather than being a two-hour drive away, will bring a catastrophic end to the relationship. This, however, remains to be seen.

I spent the day working on Task Two, visiting all of the local employment agencies in a sweaty, confused marathon. I wore a shirt and carried a briefcase so that people wouldn’t realise that I have no idea what I am doing and do not, in any way, wish to work in any of the jobs they have to offer.

‘Alright then.’ Said the girl at the first employment agency, who may have applied her foundation with a shot gun, “We”ve had a look at the results of your aptitude tests. Your literacy is of a very high standard, but…’ She flicks the paper over, “Oh dear, your numeracy skills are below average.”

Below average? Oh god. How long has it been since I bothered to do mental arithmetic? It never seemed relevant in the golden years of university. What do you need to count for when you’re doing a degree? We don’t add in class, we write. We don’t even add our change up at the bar, we simply hand over our cash in a snakebite-and-black haze.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Foundation Girl kindly, “We have some positions in a few banks that would suit you very well.”

Banks? Banks? The day-glo orange girl wants an idiot who can’t count to work in a bank? Calmly, I raised this concern.

‘It’ll be fine.’ Replied Foundation Girl. Before I knew it, I was signed up for a recruitment workshop with a highstreet bank.

‘Are there any other options available at the moment?’ I asked timidly.

‘No.’ Foundation Girl replied in her sing-song whine. The largest recruitment agency in the country has no other options for me. This, apparently, is the only job in town. That’s it.

I left feeling worse than when I started.

Day Three:

Dinner is becoming the worst part of the day. The conversation over tonight’s casserole is the same as last night’s, and just serves to highlight the difference between my father and I. He doesn’t understand why a graduate is unable to get a job, instantly, for more than 16K. In the same breath, he moans incessantly about the hundreds of young graduates who “don”t know their arse from their elbow’ that swamp the factory he works in and make his life hell. I point out the indiscretion. He isn’t impressed. His children, he says, are different.

‘Anyway,’ He says through a mouthful, “What did you do today?”

‘I went to the job centre.’ I reply.

‘You what?’ He looks suddenly affronted, “The job centre? The labour exchange?” He says it with such venom that I am tempted to laugh, but hold it in.

‘Well, they’ve got jobs in there. And it’s not called a labour exchange anymore.’ I reply calmly.

‘But, but,’ He splutters, “That”s for unemployed people!’

‘I don’t have a job. Therefore, I am unemployed.’ I said. Here lies the source of his discomfort. He believes unemployed people are benefit frauds, teenage mothers, drug dealers, council estate residents, thieves, gypsies, baby-eaters, labour voters and probably illegal immigrants into the bargain. In short, a hideous conglomeration of all the things he irrationally hates. His own daughter, of course, is not unemployed. She is merely looking for work, temporarily. Evidently, my lack of instant success is more of a surprise to him than it is to me.

Great. Another source of pressure.

Day Four:

Today I ran out of things to do. I was dreading it, dragging out any minor tasks I had to sustain the illusion of being busy. Now, however, I am stumped. I sat online for a while, doing the daily round of online job applications, but finished this relatively quickly. I checked my email account obsessively for ten minutes, clicking in and clicking out, waiting for that email that said, “We would like to invite you to interview…” but it didn’t work.

I turned my attention to the housework. As I hovered and ironed and scrubbed, I let my mind wander, focusing on my boredom. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for fourteen hours. At university, at least one flatmate would have passed by now to validate my existence.

This got me to thinking. That’s the problem with university. It gives you such a false sense of social achievement. At uni, I was surrounded by friends (when I say “friends” I meant people who know my first name and little else about me, but still greet me with a “Waaaheeey!” at 3am in the student bar). I was working towards something (finishing a deathly dull dissertation that nobody is ever going to read). I had activities (work experience placements that will never lead to employment, political student societies that in hindsight made no impact on anything). All of it works to trick you into thinking that you’re popular, successful and interesting, with your whole exciting career ahead of you. Then you come home, and realise that you’re unemployed, underqualified for the real world, living with your mother, and all of your home-town friends have forgotten you.

Not such a positive day then.

Day Five:

This morning an old work colleague rang me and asked if I wanted to earn some money playing music in a bar/restaurant tonight. Considering the big bold “DR” at the end of my bank balance display, I immediately accepted. Then I thought about my repertoire, and the bottom of my stomach dropped out.

I spent the entire day sweating and singing, scribbling in music books I hadn’t opened since I was fifteen. Could I get away with that top note? Can I manage that tricky chord change? Three years of playing indie covers at student open mic nights had made me a lazy musician, happy to impress drunkards with a bit of Radiohead. Now faced with Midnight at the Oasis, I was terrified.

Eight hours of practice later, I had come up with what could be stretched out into two 45-minute sets. I rang round and gathered together a little band of groupies, so that at least some people would clap.

The bar was full by the time I got there. The manageress had let customers sit at my “stage” (a dark little spider hole at the back of the place) and they didn’t look like they would be leaving at any stage. I drank three pints of water while I waited.

P arrived with a gaggle of mates, all grinning and giving me the thumbs up. I felt a sharp burst of love before the nervous nausea returned. I faffed with the substandard PA system (bought to do the quiz night and bingo on Sunday afternoons), eventually stopped it feeding back in my face, and started to plonk away at my guitar.

Nobody noticed. I am confident that if P and our friends hadn’t been there, everyone else would have just assumed I was a punter in the corner, pretending to play a guitar. The bar was so loud, the clientele so drunk, and the PA so rubbish, that I may as well have been accompanying myself on the triangle.

No matter. At ten thirty I packed away my stuff and received my £50 fee from the manageress, who said “It was lovely dear” and clearly hadn’t heard a note. P and I gathered our gang together, piled into a taxi, and headed for the town centre for a pint. After a few rounds and two taxis, I returned home, exhausted, at 3am.

I had a think about the successes of week one. I did a total of an hour and a half’s work. I have no job. I have few friends. The money I have earned, after a few rounds of drinks and two taxis, is a grand total of £3.80.

Week Two had better be more successful than this.