It's half past ten and I've just got in after work. Hayley has been tugging at me -- six missed calls; texts pleading with me to ring her as soon as I've left work. I've done thirty-two hours shoe-horned into three days, in a works canteen where I serve large dollops of unhealthy food to large unhealthy men. I'm low on resources to spend on others.
Upstairs on the bus with aching feet and a bottle of cider, watching Bristol on a determined Saturday night out. Women whose feet will feel worse than mine by midnight; skirts tightening and riding up. How glad I am to see them.
I ring Hayley, who is on track 1 of side A again, Boyfriend Woes. She wants: me to come round, five pounds for a bottle of wine, and for someone to do her move tomorrow; the implication being, me. She's done nothing about it by herself despite several weeks' notice of the date. "Well, I don't know," she says. "There's Wayne over the road... maybe I could ring the police, they're sometimes nice."
I am not giving up my day with Mel tomorrow to rescue you Hayley.
At home, mid-shower, she rings again. I ring her back, saying that I'll put a fiver in now, exaggerating my tiredness and annoyance. I put seven pounds in her bank account. All is silent.
There is rejoicing in the House of looby. Middle daughter, who, at the age of one, almost ruptured her mother's stomach by bouncing on it at 5am, announcing "I, awake!" -- has landed a proper acting job at a big Northern producing theatre. She announced it from Leeds, where she'd been for her "third recall", which I am guessing means fourth audition.
I am radiant like a heater with joy for her, and a fervid hope that this will be the start of her making a living out of what she's always wanted to do. She's a dogged and constantly optimistic Lancashire lass who's had no advantages at all in a world in which working class candidates are filtered out by endless train fares, unpaid work, and assumptions of money available to pay for every bit of candidacy, which neither me nor her mum can provide.
I don't know how much more inspection my out of date rail pass can withstand, but I want to join the whole looby clan, who will cancel everything to see her when it's put on -- before we're shunted into the pub after the show while she goes off to glitter.