Grrr. Argh.

On telly right now, Hawkeye, BJ and Potter are singing in sepulchral fashion, "There's a long long night of waiting 'til my dreams all come true..."

Huh. I have had a very bad day. Very, very, very bad. I am going to tell you all about it. I wandered down the stairs this morning thinking it would be fine, it would be a good day, I would get things done. Okay. One of the things I was supposed to do today was, er, take my driving test. And it was going all right, finally, and hathy_col very kindly offered her mum up as ritual sacrifice as someone to drive me, and then the DSA, the fucking, fucking DSA informed me I had vanished from their computer system. Whatever the administrative fuck-up actually is, it's their fault and they'll give me the money back. But I don't have a driving test this week, or next week, or, in fact, until January. I would kill small furry animals just to be able to get in a car and drive.

So I spent most of my morning writing a long, rude letter to the DSA, a morning I meant to use for my feminism paper, and then I gathered up a bunch of things Pedar wanted posting and walked the half-hour to the post office. (When I have a driving license, I will not drive this distance. It's a stupid thought, to drive such tiny distances.) It had closed for lunch. I had a choice: hang around for an hour, or walk back, sit down for exactly one minute and walk there again. I, stupidly, chose the latter option. So after I had wasted two hours of feminism-writing time in favour of, er, wandering around the village getting steadily more irritable, I went home and made a cup of coffee.

Which, of course, I knocked over, half on my laptop and half on six weeks' worth of feminism notes. I got it off Loki, which is one blessing, but the papers are entirely soaked. I hung them out of the window like strange and crackly laundry and went to answer a ringing phone. It was Claire Curtis-Thomas's secretary, Rob. He's a lovely guy who has been fielding my calls since March, and he told me: forget it. I don't have an internship. She's forgotten about me, and he can't get in touch with her, and he's sorry for stringing me along for FOUR MONTHS but er... yes. I don't have an internship. I am not getting out of here in September. I can't explain to you how awful this is. I am going to go mad.

I was having a long, late lunch with quackaquacka and eternalwings, and I wandered down to the station and missed the train. (It was early, so I missed with that almost balletic grace with which I occasionally achieve when missing trains - think a full-tilt run culminating in a grand jeté leap that ends with the tips of your outstretched fingers brushing the closing doors.) I had had enough of leaping about and swearing, so I went to the newsagent for a large bar of chocolate and a newspaper. While I was paying for them, the guy behind the counter asked me where I live. I said, "Up in the pinewoods," as you do.

"I see you go past every day," he said. "Do you go to Range?"

"Er, no, I went to Merchants'."

He looked a bit uncomfortable. "You don't look that old."

The hell I don't. I thanked him, took the chocolate and went back to the station whilst musing on the fact that Range doesn't have a sixth form. That guy thought I was fifteen.

In short, yes, I am going to go madder than a trapped hare. I am stuck here. I have no driving license, no plane tickets to Europe (last month's debacle), no job. (I don't even have my usual job, because of course I withdrew myself from the bookshop rota because of the internship I was supposed to have.) Right now, I want to know what happened to my life. How did this happen, all of a sudden? I thought I was an adult woman with an education and a job and a place to live, and now I'm just thinking circumstances have conspired, the DSA and Easyjet-the-bastards and Curtis-Thomas and her lack of any organisation at all, to make me fifteen forever.

This is really quite awful.

In a neat twist of irony, an obscure Sky channel are showing XF episodes in completely random order, and today's was "Monday", which is a nice story about Mulder waking up, running late, to a flooded apartment, a bouncing cheque, "the longest meeting in FBI history" and finally, a bank robbery that ends in his being shot and he and Scully both dying in an explosion - only for the same day to happen again, and again, and again. In short, other people have shit days, too. It's a good episode and I will write something else about it when I am not so pissed off and worn out with the entire world.

Um - I'm leaving the country at the end of this week, so if you want to get in touch with me at all for anything, before Friday is best. After that I don't know how contactable I will be.