Unpaid labour hurts my back.

Well, dear reader, being out of the New Deal office doesn't make it an easy option.

My first day at the work placement arranged for me showed me that, muscular as I am, I'm tremendously unfit. My musculature is entirely geared to push ups and sit ups, not to hunching over a desk attaching labels to used clothing and even less so to repricing entire shelves of videos to 99p each. I have a pigeon chest, in other words. I don't like standing, let alone stooping, still. I think my ideal job would involve walking very quickly in very cold weather, preferably early in the morning. If you know of such a thing, please get in touch. Those chocolate biscuits seem less than entirely celebratory, now.

Still, the day hasn't been a total loss. For the first time since I was at school I heard the word kushdi. I'm afraid I'm not sure that's the correct spelling. It's phonetical enough, so I don't see why not.

While I'm on the subject of the vernacular of my childhood, I should go further. Yesterday I proved my previous supposition that strange people are found at both New Deal and in the library. Someone, one of this week's newcomers, so I don't know his name, from the New Deal course was at the library. Talking. Loudly. I heard him use the word emo. Never heard it before, though I've read about it. When I was young things like "chav" were new and "choring" (stealing) and "chinging" (bad) were still being used. Kecks was another one, meaning underwear.

Keeping with my childhood and language, when I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical. No, when I was young it was more important, pain more painful and laughter much louder, yeah. No, when I was young she was always on my mind, my mind felt like this because, she was the one who ruined my world, and killed me from the start. You are always on my miiiiiiind. You are always on my mind. No, that's all wrong, let's give up on lyricism.

When I was young I listened to a different song. I listened to the Boo Radleys, Supertramp and the Divine Comedy. It was the 90s, you know. But one song has always stuck in my mind. It was on an educational video, presumably originally and educational TV programme, which they forced down our throats at school. The only lyrics I remember are "magic magic E". You wonder why the drugs war is failing! Bugger Harry Potter with his own wand, although he hadn't been dreamt up back then, let's look at the use of the letter 'E' and its place in punctuation.

There are two other incidents that stick in my mind from school, both from primary school as my attendance at secondary school was erratic at best. The first is being sent to ask the headmaster a question and repeating the answer in my head so I wouldn't forget it, only to garble it and effectively forget it. The second is not getting full marks in a maths test. Until, that is, I pointed out that I was right all along and the teacher was forced to admit her mistake. I'm no fan of amateur psychology (much less of professional psychology), but perhaps to this incident I could trace my life-long antagonism to authority, if I was so inclined. But I won't.