Friday

On Friday I did a day's work at The Doncaster Free Press, and gee mom, it was fun. It was unpaid. But that's not the end of the world it's just, I'm told, that the job market is very difficult at the moment. And it is: the newspaper industry isn't in the rudest of health these days, and the newsroom is often the place where cuts are first made, which is daft. But work experience is the only thing that's going to get me a job, so I need as much of it as possible. Plus, I'd never been to Doncaster before, and, as my mother always used to tell me: "Doncaster, Nick, is a magical world, an emerald floating in murky South Yorkshire, where the streets are paved with opportunity and the buildings all made from diamond. My mum sometimes lets her imagination run away with her.

I had to be there for 9 O'clock on Friday morning. The train left at about a quarter to eight, which meant waking up at quarter to seven. This was going to be a bit of a problem because I'm not very good at getting up very early when it's not part of a routine, and I wasn't in much of a routine. In the end, I had a bit of a mare and got about an hour's sleep, which wasn't the best preparation. A lot of the fault for my shitty night's sleep should be laid at the tiny feet of next door's baby, who cried loudly once an hour 'til 5am, the little arsehole. But also I find it very hard to get to sleep whatever the situation, so it's not all the baby's fault. I do still, though, bear it a strong grudge that will be hard to shake. But anyway, sleeping. Sleeping has never been my forté. It runs in the family; and often on occasions where I'm with my mum and brother, we all talk about how hard we find it to get to sleep, how it's such a massive pain in the arse, and swap techniques on how to conquer our nightly foe. These include tried and tested classics, such as doing "A to Zs". "A to Zs" are mum's favourite, and involve going through the alphabet thinking of one of a 'thing' for each letter. You pick a topic, like English footballers or something, and begin. It's like a really long, slow, tedious game of Scattergories.

The intention of the "A to Z" is I think to bore yourself to sleep, in the hope that the monotony of the activity will eventually send you off the land of nod without you noticing. But I really like trivia, in all in many wondrous forms, so this technique often just feels like revision, and I end up agonising over it for ages, stuck on thinking of a British sitcom character beginning with G. Up to that point [Arnold Rimmer, Blackadder, Cybil Fawlty, Dave Lister ( 2 red Dwarf characters, naughty naughty), Edward Elizabeth Hitler, Frank Spencer] has been easy. But then I got stuck on G, which often happens. I leant over and had a drink of water, turned over the pillow so my head was on the cold bit, and lay there, thinking. This is the part where you're meant to fall asleep. But I never fall asleep at this point. Instead, I lie there repeating names beginning with G in an internal monologue, which, were to it to be written down, would sound absolutely fucking mental. And look like this.

"Graham Graham Graham Graham...Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn...Glenn Parsons? There's definitely not a sitcom character called Glenn Parsons. Geoff, Geoff, Geoff from Byker Grove? Not allowed, don't know his surname. And he's from Byker Grove. Gary..? Gary. Gary! Gary Sparrow!

And then I think about Nicholas Lyndhurst in all his many, hilarious guises, for what seems like half an hour, before suddenly snapping back into the room. How long have I just been thinking about Nicholas Lyndhurst for? For fuck's sake! Right, sitcom characters beginning with H...

It continued like that until about 5am, having originally got into bed at about midnight. It had got to the stage where I was almost resigned to getting no sleep whatsoever. If I fell asleep now, I wouldn't be happy at being woken up again an hour and a half later. At best, I'd be very grouchy. After a while though, after my sub-conscious had finally decided to shut up, I nodded off. An hour and a half later, very grouchily I woke up to the foul-mouthed Scottish voice of James Naughtie, managing not to call anyone a cunt as he read the news.

I got Doncaster at 8.20 and decided to have a little wander around. The night before, harnessing the magical wizzardry of Google Maps, I'd sat and sorted out the route, and drawn a little map in my notebook. In possession of a terrible sense of direction, hunches and imagined shortcuts frequently lead to disaster. So I wandered around. And Doncaster's nice, like a bigger, more prosperous Rotherham. After walking through the town centre for half an hour, I didn't see one boarded up shop, or fight, and the streets had a pleasant busyness.

After being let into the newspaper office, and shown around a bit, I got introduced to around a dozen of the staff, whose names I forgot almost straight away. This made getting their attention difficult later on in the day, as I had nothing to call to them which wouldn't sound rude. I hardly ever call anyone mate; it just feels forced when I do. Taxi drivers, shop keepers, and youths on the street sometimes, but not always. Anyway, it didn't matter, as I had some work to do. I interviewed seven new recruits to the army who'd just signed up to the local regiment, and wrote an article about it, before doing two 'nibs' about a charity thing and an MP visiting a pharmacy. I enjoyed every minute of it, despite being knackered, and after all the temp jobs, it felt good to be being asked to do jobs that play to my limited strengths. I have a personality that makes me feel constantly out of my depth, like an imposter, and I need to learn to ignore it.

I've had a few people saying they read this rambling bollocks, including, I'm informed, at least one Belgian. This is nice, and makes me want to make it good.

It's my dad's 62nd birthday coming up and I need to go and buy him some squash balls, so I think I'll leave it at that.

Wait! One other thing. I need to find a new quiz to go to in Sheffield. If you're in the very narrow Sheffield-based, quiz-going readers, tell me one, because the Lescar Tuesday nighter is becoming increasingly difficult to win.