I had to start a "New Deal" course on Monday.

I don't consider myself unemployed. Part of the week I look after my children, enabling Kirsty to work. During the rest, I do an MA. I have to keep both activities secret from the dole, lest I appear to be evading the opportunity to work in a callcentre for less than the amount I'd have to pay a childminder to look after my daughters while I worked in a callcentre.

There were six of us, five men, one woman, all younger than me. We were shown into a room full of bits of old blutack dotted about the walls. A set of laminated A4 posters was headed by one which said "Respect and Diversity"; the others went on to provide defintions of terms like "Belief", "Bullying" and "Racism".

A too-apologetic Colin, uneasy about his status as an agent of the State, took us laboriously through a "Handbook", during which we were assured that we would all have a "caseworker" (I'm a "case" now), that fighting would be "reported to the police" and that "sometimes jokes can go too far." We were left on our own for a few minutes, during which one of the more experienced cases said "You don't want to get that Samantha. She's a right cunt."

I didn't get Samantha, I got Colin, and we had a "one-to-one". We jointly looked at a computer screen as we went through my "barriers to employment". Drug use? Difficulties with English and Maths? Refugee Status?

Colin told me about his own part-time MA which he is finishing on the same day as me, three weeks from now. He showed me a job doing the same thing as he was doing, for 16K a year. Of course, I will "apply" for it.

What I'm actually going to do is to default on a credit card while doing a PhD at Leeds with one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. I got my welcome letter today which mentioned "refreshments" after our first day. I'm hoping that means that we'll have several glasses of Ch. de Taxpayeur before I slump elbow-to-elbow in a pub with a beautiful flautist from Edinburgh who will suggest we (cont. p.94)

---

I've decided to leave Facebook: I preferred it when people blogged. And it doesn't ever really feel under your control.

Kitty came to stay for the weekend. On Saturday we took a meandering bus ride to Levens Hall, one of the oldest houses in Cumbria, for a chilli festival: a food festival, but hotter. We were to meet Felicity, her sister and her family. The rural upper middle classes were dressed in their code of brand new jeans, those pointy brown shoes for men, and upturned mauve and pink striped collars all round.

After starting at the Pimm's stall and the one from the local organic real ale brewery, Kitty and I bumped into Felicity. I did the introductions and we discussed where we were going to meet for the picnic. "OK then, we'll all meet at one over there," I said. "Well, she hasn't said she'd like to come," said Felicity. I was incredulous and made a face at Kitty. "No, no, no," I laughed, "Kitty's on the A-list, she's coming in."

Therefore, it was with something of an atmosphere hanging over us that we spread the picnic out. Felicity introduced us to her sister and her husband, upon which their eldest daughter loudly said "Daddy's a bible basher." "Shh, shh!" said Mum. "Don't say that." Felicity had made some lovely food, and I bought some boar and chestnut pies, but I was quite relieved when we all dispersed again.

I went on a chili roulette game where you spun a large pointer around which determined whether you got the normal chocolate or the one with a chili inside it. I ate the whole thing in one go in a show of charitable manliness, and was relieved to find that I'd got the unadulterated one.

Me and Kitty bumped into my next door neighbour but four. I confessed that for many years I had forgotten her name and had been too embarrassed to mention the fact. We all started chatting amiably, Kitty telling her a bit about her divorce. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Felicity wander up, hover for a few seconds, then go away again. "I saw you were quite drunk," she said later, "So I didn't come up." We weren't drunk; we were relaxed and sociable.

Me and Kitty wandered off again and walked though the grounds, the croquet lawns and the topiary gardens, passing a steel band playing Dancing Queen. "I like it how people can't place us," she said. Later, and more drunk, I said to her "I know we don't... but it feels like having a girlfriend." Having a girlfriend.

We all went back together in Felicity's car. "Shall I drop you at the station Kitty?" "No, it's alright thanks. I'm staying at looby's."

"Well we might have got tanned today," I said, trying to cheer things up. "Not when you're all covered up," came back Felicity. It felt a long sixteen miles home.

There was a loud knocking at my door at 8.30am. That's strange. The postman doesn't come that early. "Hello, I'm Mr Edwards."

Oh shit. Unless I know another Mr Edwards, you're a bailiff.

I asked him in, midway through me making some sauteed potatoes for breakfast.

"The thing is," he said, "it's past that stage now. It's been passed over to me and they're coming to seize your goods this morning."

I tried to project a sense of calm which I didn't feel. St Augustine's Confessions and The Oxford Book of English Prose were on the table and I felt like saying "Look, it's OK, I'm civilised."

"But it's alright, I can pay it now," I said, anxiety in my voice rising as my sangfroid weakened. "With a card, or cash?" he asked; me dreading it would have to be cash, imagining the humiliating task of ringing Seriouscrush up to see if she could bail me out. "Card," I said. "OK, well I'll have to ring them up then."

At this stage the potatoes were getting a bit excitable in the frying pan so I invited him through. He took my card and started writing things down. It became more relaxed, and he told about the scallops his Northern Irish mother used to make for breakfast, anecdotes from the debt collection game, and about making last minute efforts to stop the removal men taking furniture away from a single mother of four who hadn't paid her TV license. "But I deal with everyone. I've had barristers, professional footballers, police officers."

By the end he was shaking my hand, saying, "In the nicest possible way, I hope never to see you again. Terrible weather isn't it?"

It occurred to me afterwards that had I left for university fifteen minutes earlier, I could have spent the day parping about with poststructuralist aesthetic theory, before coming back to find I had nothing to sit down on.

I lead a double life, where I have to negotiate the way I get my money with the way I present myself. I sign on, and every fortnight tell myself as I walk in "don't mention the MA". You're not allowed to study whilst you're on the dole, apart from courses which last "up to two weeks" which "may help you with finding work" such as "developing your numeracy and literacy skills". They've got a point: I see neither my MA nor my forthcoming PhD in vocational terms.

I don't declare the odd tiny amount of arty money that comes my way. Partly this is because, despite being in the lowest income decile in the country, I would pay a marginal tax rate on it which far exceeds that paid by Bob Diamond on his final million; but mainly because of nerve-wracking bureaucratic grind as they stop your money, then (perhaps) reinstate it after you've lived on air for several weeks, racking up unpaid direct debit and snotty letter fees. To most people, I imply I get paid for my work with the academic journal. It's an easy lie to tell. Middle class people are fearful of talking about money, so they never pursue it.

Twelve years ago I was getting 24K as a signalman and there's no reason why, with a modicum of co-operation with my employers, I shouldn't be on 40, 50K now. But the salary was totally inadequate compensation for the loneliness I felt in London, so I took a large pay cut and came back to Lancaster.

Since being made redundant and going back to university, I am much happier. I have one remaining credit card on which the amount of available credit almost exactly matches my first year's PhD fees at Leeds. I've got a much better and more involved relationship with Kirsty and the children, and I never wake up sighing and saying "fuck", which was often my first word in the morning when I worked with a hyperbolically inflated title whilst sitting in a callcentre with a headset on deflecting complaints which arose from the greed of the firm's owner.

---

Neither Felicity nor Frances want to "see" me any more. It's Felicity I occasionally miss, her sexual straightforwardness, our mutual selfishness, her drunken acceptance of the bargain we entered into which we knew fell short of both our hopes, and the way she's maturely handled the transition from lovers to friends.

She and I are going to a foodie festival on Saturday. It's explicitly designed as a test to see if friendship will work. I hope it does.

Leeds University email again. "I am delighted to offer you the School of Music Research Scholarship for 2010-11. The terms of the scholarship are in the documents attached to this email."

I'm a bit puzzled because last week they told me I hadn't been successful for this. Part of me expects another email cancelling it due to an administrative error, but I suppose someone might have dropped out or found some other funding.

It's not a full scholarship, but it's a 2000 pound p.a. fee waiver for the first year, which will continue in subsequent years as long as I do well enough. I'm meeting Seriouscrush and her boyf in half an hour to spend the first ten pounds of it.

Although I'm happy about it in one way, it creates a lot of problems in another. A condition of the award is that you study full-time, working for no more than 5 hours a week outside of the university. So the only way that that would be possible would be to continue to sign on, deflecting the fortnightly offers of the godawful jobs that exist round here. I'm confident about handling the dole: I'm a good liar and an ideal middle class client for bored clerical staff., Linda knows someone who did his whole PhD this way, but having to skirt round the law for three, four years, is not an attractive prospect.

There's a possibility of gaining proper full-time funding in the second year. For students like me, who are competent rather than outstanding, they probably want you to prove yourself a bit before they authorise what is quite a lot of state money for you.