The Housing Crisis: A Chokehold on Love

Will I ever be able to afford to buy a house? This is the question that follows millennials around. For the most part (by no means without exception), we were born in to pleasant neighbourhoods; our parents offered realistic deposits and reasonable monthly repayments in exchange for the start of their adult lives. The total market value of our childhood homes was the same as what we are now expected to pay as a deposit for our own.

I will begin this post with an anecdote: as touched upon in previous posts, my mum left Sunderland to join her brothers down south in the year 2000, bringing with her a toddler, a newborn baby and very little else. At this stage in her life, she had frugal money from the sale of her and her ex-husband’s house and a part time administrative role. In spite of this, she was able to bypass renting almost entirely and secure a new home for the three of us on the sea front.

Over the course of the next few years, mum worked hard despite having two young children and ended up acquiring a mortgage for 31 Ash Close (a 3-bed semi in a lovely area, great local schools, transport links, etc). We were a single parent family and yet even as recently as the millennium we were able to access affordable housing.

These days, you’d struggle to convince a solicitor that you’d be able to meet the mortgage repayments even if you did manage to save up the astronomical deposit. As is painfully clear, if you were a 30-year-old woman with two dependant children and a modest income from a part-time job it would be almost impossible.

That is, unless you had a partner. Entering in to a relationship with someone is no longer propelled by compatible personalities and physical attraction, it also presents the tantalising prospect of a second income. In fact, I propose that modern dating and our consumerist world advocates looking for a mate based primarily on income.

As a young woman, I have been advised on multiple occasions to ‘marry a rich man’. NOTHING makes my teeth grit more than this comment. Marry a rich man Charlotte. Don’t even THINK about marrying for love.

Putting the blind fury to one side, it’s got me thinking. Why do my family and friends think this is good advice? The answer is cold but quite simple – they want me to have a house and holidays and a ‘nice life’. Without a solid second income, in the world as it is today, they know that I’ll never be able to own a beautiful house like the one I grew up in. I’ll have to bring up my children in rented homes until my parents die. Incredibly bleak.

So, what am I to do? Find a boyfriend with a great income. Fine. Then what? Move in with him even though I’m not ready because I’m 23 and getting too old to live at my mum’s?

This is the crux of my observations: in 2020, the housing crisis is forcing couples to move in together too soon because of financial constraints. Sadly, I think this naturally leads to more break ups, or worse, settling for someone long-term who doesn’t make you happy just because they can offer you stability. I know I have a reputation as a hopeless romantic (Taylor Swift fan, poet, English grad… the list undeniably goes on), but don’t we all deserve to spend our best years with a partner that enriches our lives? Don’t we all deserve genuine, passionate, grinning-like-an-idiot love?

Surely safe shelter is a basic human right. We are the first generation that doesn’t have (true) access to it. There are vacant buildings and residual fat cats from generations gone by who own multiple properties and let them out to us at extortionate prices. We’re on salaries that mean we can’t rent and save simultaneously. Fuck, most of us can’t even keep our heads above water most of the time. Even with two incomes it’s a struggle. But here is my point –  under the current government, with one, it is impossible. We move in with our parents or our partners… or we drown.

The OnlyFans Enigma

We enter the new decade with a renewed sense of purpose, a feverish enthusiasm to begin ‘living our best lives’. Whether this entails bagging a new job, travelling to new places or getting fitter, in our consumerist world its highly likely that it involves making and spending as much money as possible. 

Someone once told me (rightly or wrongly) that in order to be successful in life, you need to reflect on what services you can deliver well and sell them. For some people, their assets are their skills; they are ardent organisers, gifted artists or good with children. They possess a particularly logical brain or a natural talent for sport. One thing every single one of us have ownership over, though, is our own body.

I blithely consider myself a millennial snowflake, I really do, and I’d love for the underlying message of this post to be ‘do what you want, it’s your body’… But I just can’t shake my anxiety as I wait at the photocopier at work and overhear students (it’s an FE college so they’re 16-18) talking about posting nudes for money.

I think OnlyFans and similar platforms are the latest manifestations of a dangerous message: that human value is, above all else, youth, physicality and sexuality. In a social media obsessed generation, I find myself saddened by the poisonous effects of these sites on our self-esteems. The benchmark is becoming smoother, thinner, taller, curvier, more muscular, more tanned…

In this vein, OnlyFans represents yet another way for insecure young people to seek validation and an illusion of self-worth. I use the word ‘illusion’ because I saw one young woman offering a ‘January sale’ price of £2.50 a month… That’s not empowering, it is downright degrading. I know you want me to soften that statement to make this post more PC, but I just can’t. I find it frankly alarming that you could slap a price tag of £2.50 on pictures of your vagina.

Think about that. I just heard COLLEGE KIDS talking about doing this kind of thing. Perpetuating the ‘do what you want, it’s your body’ mindset is insidious. It is literally true – as I said, we should ALL have sole ownership over our own bodies – but do these kids really know what is best for them or how they’ll feel about this in later life? Some do, granted, but not all. Even worse than that, some know these things but do it anyway because they’re from working class families and they want more money for an iPhone 11 or a PLT order so that they’ll be admired by their peers.

Whether you care to acknowledge it or not, young female (and LGBT+) sexuality is still very much a paradox. We are obsessed with it, but it is held firmly by the hand of shame. This is what everyone knows in their hearts but doesn’t want to come out and say online – people would be horrified. Your hairdresser, your cousin’s girlfriend, your old school mates. Or worse, your parents. 

I’ll be brutally honest, there are times I think the positives and negatives of OnlyFans even out. I mean, people are out here making my annual salary in a month from selling nudes. I work ridiculously hard for a modest amount of money. I want a house, a new car, to travel the world.

Personally, the only factor which overrides the financial benefits is the social cost. I couldn’t have my grandad thinking of me like that. My friends. My colleagues. It wouldn’t matter if I told them ‘I can do what I want, it’s my body’. They’d lose their minds. Grandad would break down and cry. 

 

Of course, that’s worst-case scenario, but when you post intimate content on a public platform it does engender a risk of people in your ‘real life’ seeing it. It might be ‘OnlyFans’ on your subscribers list, but don’t tell me your psycho ex or your brother’s mates couldn’t make a fake account, obtain your nudes and show people or even use them to blackmail you. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, I piss people off now and again. OnlyFans gives rise to a blindspot that could have grave consequences.

A 'Real' Job

“When are you going to get a real job?” they ask. “You know, something to do with your degree.” I can read between the lines, too, and know how they finish the sentence under their breaths, “what was the point in going to uni if you were just going to go back to The Cellar.”

I’m having a really fucking bad day today, that’s why I’ve felt the need to sit down with my piece of shit laptop (which I shouldn’t complain about too much because it cost me £30 quid at the beginning of undergrad and has lasted 4 years and got me a 1^st and a Distinction) and write. I felt a million times worse this morning, but I took grandad shopping and we ended up trying a new café on Worle High Street where a woman asked grandad to be her boyfriend. I feel a bit less stressed after decent banter and half a lemon meringue pie, as a general rule.

Might as well get it out of the way - I’ve just come out of an intense six-year relationship full of love and life changing experiences, as well as many tears and some of the most gutting heartache I’ve ever felt. I know it’ll save us both, but it still stings like a bitch. One day I’ll be able to write incredible things about those years, but this short paragraph will suffice until the scars have been left alone to knit together a little tighter. As a final note, before our names take shape in your mouths, please respect that only me and him will ever know our story in full.

On a happier note, I passed my Master’s degree with flying colours off the back of a year from hell! I’ll graduate with a Distinction in MA English at the winter ceremony in December. For what it’s fucking worth. (I told you I’m having a bad day). If another person says to me “so what you gonna do with it?” I’m going to lose my nut.

Its been just over a month since I handed in my last piece of work… I think you need to calm the fuck down if you think I should’ve sorted my career out by now… Ah, who am I kidding? These kinds of questions frighten me; they make me worry that I’ve done something wrong or that I’m letting people down. That’s why I’ve been bothered enough to write this.

For example, I gave my stepdad a lift in to Weston this morning and he spent the whole journey reeling off places I should apply for and careers I should look in to. He even said, “I thought you did English so you could be a teacher, I thought that was your dream.” I don’t think I have ever expressed that. That said, when you study English, plenty of people assume you’ll become a teacher.

Teaching wasn’t my dream at all. English itself was my dream. When I was 17 and applying to university, I loved to read. I had fallen in love with the magic of the written word, with poetry and metaphor and hopeless romance... All I knew for sure is that I wanted to carry on talking about it forever. I didn’t care if it translated in to a career, and between you and me, I still don’t. I’ve had some moments of true passion during the past four years, moments in which words closed my throat, forcing tears from my eyes. I would study ‘pointless’, enchanting, beautiful language and literature all over again given the chance. In fact, I’d fucking LOVE to.

I know he and my mum love me, and I know they want me to do well, but I also know that they measure success in accordance with money. They want me to go and get a ‘good job’ and buy a big house and find a respectable husband and have two kids (one boy one girl) and go on package holidays twice a year.

That’s nice. It could certainly be worse. I just don’t want it. I’m starting to worry now that I’m convincing myself that I want things I don’t really want at all just because that is what they’re telling me I should want. Applying for jobs I know I would find ridiculously unfulfilling. My head’s a mess. I’m tired from working 40 hours a week just to try to accumulate some money and my family’s attitude is making me feel like I might as well be unemployed.

I also want to address those people who have said to me, “you haven’t been away for a while. That’s not like you. I thought you loved to travel.” I used all of my money getting my Master’s. The loan barely covered my course fees never mind my half of the rent, bills and food. I waitressed for 20-30 hours a week on top of my studies and keeping house just to afford my supposedly ‘pointless’ qualification.

In response to that comment, not being able to go away is destroying my mind. I feel trapped, lonely and sad. I feel… Grey. Like there’s a thunder cloud following me around.

This is transient. I say that to myself a hundred times a day. I’ll be somewhere else in a year. A different person once again. Maybe I’ll have a ‘good job’, maybe I’ll have enough money, maybe I’ll have found somewhere I can call home, because I haven’t really felt at home since we left Ash Close.

I don’t give a fuck about any of those things, as long as I’m happy. I don’t know quite what that happiness will look like yet, but I’m starting to think it looks like a one-way ticket, just as it did all those years ago in the darkest part of Winter when we were 17 and 19.

A Great Taste in Lipstick and a 1st Class Degree

Once, I was discussing my intention to become a university lecturer with a colleague at an office job. She was telling me how her daughter had gone in to accounting, and that ‘she used to have blonde hair, but she started dying it dark because you can’t be taken seriously in business with blonde hair’. I was gobsmacked, not only because I was surprised by the sheer stupidity of what she’d said but also because my hair was down to my hips and shiny, beachy blonde... The fucking CHEEK.

As a heteronormative white female, I can only speculate that the everyday interactions people of colour and/or none-cis individuals are underpinned by their identities as black, gay, trans etc. I hypothesise that this is the case based upon the fact that I experience something similar as a result of my gender. Specifically, in the context of academia.

Heads up – this is an account based solely on my personal experiences over the past 4 years; I’m not laying claim to some sort of objective truth here.

As you may well know from previous posts, I am an MA English student at the University of Nottingham. During my time in higher education, I have received some very sociologically interesting feedback.

Just as my old office job colleague demonstrated, many people in the context of university and beyond have blatantly taken one look at me (I’m tall, slim, wear make-up and have long blonde hair) and decided that I ‘don’t look clever’. Of course, nobody has ever SAID that to me. Rather, they start meticulously explaining things I learned at A Level even though I’m now a master’s student, or make ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, or suggest I look at the ‘more straightforward’ essay questions.

I actually don’t mind this. It makes their thinly-veiled surprise when they read my transcript or speak to me for a few shifts much funnier. Guess what? People don’t have to be just one kind of person. We aren’t stereotypes. We’re 3 dimensional. So what if I’m a clumsy slut-dropper with great taste in lipstick and a 1^st class degree?

Most poignantly, however, is the response I’ve gotten from female lecturers compared with males. On numerous occasions, female lecturers have been curt with me, taken a general disliking to me or been actively unhelpful.

Bear with me; I know this is a controversial statement, so I’ll back it up. One gave me 69 in an essay (one mark below a 1^st) and when I asked her why I didn’t get 70, she said ‘because I didn’t get a first when I was in second year’. Logic.

Another wrote me a bad reference because I forgot to ask permission to include her as a referee. Despite the fact that it was essentially my mistake, I think it was uncalled for and unprofessional. I was a 19-year-old undergrad, for god’s sake.

I have to be especially vague about this last one because it happened very recently. I sent the same email to two lecturers from the same module, one male and one female, and the female replied succinctly (almost robotically), while the male teacher engaged with my comments and proceeded to offer further advice and support. Weird.

So here’s what I’ve surmised. This pattern is less to do with MY social position as a woman and more to do with THEIRS. Based upon my own experiences, I think in the context of academia, women feel like they are on a back foot. It seems that especially high intelligence is not indexical of femininity. Therefore, there is some tension between their identity as a woman and their identity as an academic.

Perhaps female academics feel the need to be assertive because they had to work far harder to achieve the same positions as their male counterparts. I don’t know, but what I do know is that my role as a woman seems to become more and more relevant as I move through the education system.

Fragments

As many of you will know, on Friday morning our weekday normality was shattered by a chunk of roof tile.

We were running late, as usual (I am one of those people who is perpetually late). My car is an absolute state at the best of times, so for a split second I thought the tile was just another piece of shit I’d gathered on my travels that’d ended up on the passenger side floor. At the same time that I spotted the tile, I registered that it was chucking it down, so I flicked the wipers on. What was left of the back window rained in to the boot. My heart lurched to the tinkling tune of breaking glass.

“What the fuck…”. It was Joel’s voice. I glanced from the gaping hole in my car to the piece of tile on the floor and his eyes followed. “What the FUCK,” he repeated, lurching out of the car to open what was left of the boot.

It was becoming increasingly clear with each passing second that I was about to lose my shit. I don’t know why I said “what was in the boot” at this point, my voice shrill and melting in to a sob by the fourth syllable. I knew what had been in the boot.

.........

I don’t carry a handbag, I carry a backpack. It’s a habit that’s left over from my football-playing, boy-fighting childhood. I’d carried that burgundy Jack Wills one around the world, from Australia to Europe to Iceland to America to the Maldives to Southeast Asia…

At the bottom of the bag were the tokens of my journeys. Tickets, keyrings, Disney badges, GoPro accessories, an underwater case for my phone, all manner of currency. Gifts that Joel had gotten me for our very first anniversary.

In addition to all of that, there was a lot of shit (e.g. a 5 year old pack of Microgynon – remember that girls – and random bits of A Level revision). Joel had been on at me to clear that bag out for years. He said the stuff I was hoarding was taking up space that could be used for stuff we actually needed, hahaha.

I’d been to uni on the Thursday evening; I’d needed to renew a couple of books at the library. That bag had carried many many things in its time, and that evening it contained all of my notes, 2 library books and my purse. I should’ve taken it out of the car. Of COURSE I should have. The one night my purse was in my bag and not in the house… But isn’t that always the way it goes?

That night, Joel had football and I had a gin (or 3). I was stressed about money. We did manage to scrape enough together for the rent but I haven’t shopped for everyone for Christmas yet. That makes me miserable because my mother deserves an island for Christmas and all I can afford is a fucking selection box.

I went to bed semi-drunk. I was upset with myself for not getting a job sooner, for not ringing home enough, for not making enough of an effort with friends and more importantly, with Joel. Of course, I dealt with that by shutting off from everyone and not waiting up for Joel. Classic Dover behaviour.

.........

So, you see, when I realised my backpack was gone on Friday morning, I was already on the brink of an absolute meltdown. I think Joel thought I’d actually lost my mind. I was distantly aware of him taking my phone off me as a screamed the fucking house down. “Shhhh Char… Char… Char, I’ll get your mum”.

My mum is my reset button. No matter how much I screw everything up, she evens it out again. I told her this and she said, “Just don’t fucking get arrested there’s nothing I can do about that.” I don’t think she’s giving herself enough credit. Sure enough, everything is OK again thanks to her, gramps and Julian. What a phenomenal set of parents I have.

One thing I do want to comment on as part of this post is the fractured state of our emergency services. Of course, as well as my mum, we phoned the police. A kind officer came around to the house having found some of my stuff. Shame about the torrential rain, though, because not a lot of it was salvageable.

Anyway, she took some details down and I pointed out the CCTV camera on the house opposite ours. The family who live there are really lovely and had helped me cover the broken window with sheets of plastic in the pouring rain (probably because I looked like a blubbering nutcase). She said she would have a look at the footage but if there were no clear faces “it probably wouldn’t make any difference”.

As in, “there’s probably nothing we can do about it”. That message was loud and clear from the police on Friday. My car is a mess of rainwater and glass, my precious things are gone or ruined, I have no money to fix the window… And there’s nothing you can do about it.

That isn’t anyone’s fault individually. Our emergency services are a casualty of the cracking economy. Today, the police are nothing more than an illusion of protection. 3 times in my life I have found myself needing the police, and 3 times in my life a lone officer has given me a crime number and said, “there’s probably nothing we can do about it”. I thank god I haven’t yet needed an ambulance.

I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist (you should hear Joel), but this is not sustainable. There is nothing deterring people from committing crime anymore. Officers patrol alone and cover impossibly large areas. Theft and vandalism are being ignored and, to be honest, it frightens me that one day I might be raped or worse and hear those gutting words, “there’s probably nothing we can do about it.”

The hands of the police are tied. Our great NHS is on its knees. I’m not clever enough to figure out what we’re supposed to do about it, but we must do something. If we don’t, the jagged fragments of our country will cut us open, one by one.

A Job's Worth

Alongside my academic pursuits and in between our ‘world tours’ (as grandad calls them) I’ve had a part time job since I was 16. From the moment I stepped out of Priory for the last time, Trace was on my back to get a job in a shop or a restaurant to make some pennies and learn some life lessons.

Around the same time I started my A Levels, I got offered a job at The Catherine’s Inn where grandad used to take me and Charley Williams every Monday lunchtime in between our college classes. I was thrilled (mostly because it would get mum off my back).

I distinctly remember my first shift, in which one of my now-colleagues slammed a door in my face, I took the wrong thing to the wrong table too many times and my now-manager called the lady on table 1 ‘fat cunt’. I was fresh out of school and way out of my depth…

In time, I grew to love the crazy pub life. I learned how to run with hot plates for 8 hours without a break. I learned to swear like a sailor in the kitchen and smile like an angel out front. I learned that if you’re too slow, you’ll get the shit ripped out of you. Have you ever worked in hospitality? Its NUTS.

I stayed at this job for 2 years, until I met Joel in 2014. Back then, his sister was the manager at The Cellar Wine Bar, and he worked in the kitchen there. As soon as I met the girls and did a shift with them, I knew it was time to leave the Catherine’s. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I bawled my eyes out at/about that pub, and yet when I handed Justin my notice, it was with a heavy heart. That place grew me up, and I made the most unforgettable friends.

Justin, I appreciate now how nice it was to have you as a manager. I’m back in hospitality now and it’s so weird without you! Hope all is well up there.

Anyway, The Cellar is gorgeous; a quaint, homely wine bar which doubles up as a café during the day. A little (lot) more high-class than the Catherine’s, which was an absolute dream to now 18-year-old me.

I am so pleased to say that I’m still working at The Cellar every other weekend. My very best friends work or have worked here, and The Cellar feels as much like home as anywhere else in the South West.

Recently, we’ve been faced with the realisation that Joel’s full-time job isn’t enough to run a house (and keep a hungry little Tiger). I would’ve liked nothing more than to focus on my MA but there we go – real life is unforgiving. I applied for a load of jobs and, in the end, I heard back from 2. A pub and a beauty counter at Boots.

I went to both interviews and the pub offered me a job on the spot (I’ve been waitressing since I was 16 so I kind of expected to get this one). They even said they were happy for me to go home every other weekend to work at The Cellar and see my family. Nothing from Boots which I was a bit disappointed about because I fancied trying something new. Oh well, I thought, I only need 16 hours. I started working at the pub and everyone seemed really lovely. The job was similar to the Catherine’s (hard work but somewhat fun when you get in to it).

Weeks later, Boots called. They said they’d like to offer me the job. I said “great”, hung the phone up and immediately regretted it… There was no way I’d be able to manage 2 jobs in Nottingham and still be able to visit the family every other weekend.

In the end, my decision was made simple by the Boots rota. They had put me on a short six-week contract (to cover them over Christmas) and wanted me in throughout December with little room for manoeuvre. They had me on 25 hours. Joel’s birthday is in December, The Cellar Christmas party is in December, and Santa comes in December, too, of course. Some things in life aren’t worth compromising. It is a part time job – not a career. I told them I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice important time with my family and friends and left it at that.

I’m loving the pub job to be honest. It gets me out the house, I am making some lovely friends and a little bit of money, too. Most importantly, the managers understand my other commitments, from uni to going home to live my old life every other weekend. I’m way less stressed working for people like that than people who aren’t willing to acknowledge that a) I have a life outside of my part time job and b) my future career (and my heart) is in Language and Literature, not, in fact on their makeup counter...

With regards to the hospitality/retail debate, I think everyone’s different. Joel can’t stand waiting tables but he worked in Tesco for a long time without complaint. I did 2 shifts at Boots and didn’t enjoy the sales-driven atmosphere at all. I’ll take the late nights and the running about any day of the week.

Remember, fundamentally, a part-time job’s worth is money, especially when you’re doing it alongside another job or education, but it can be more than that. An understanding of your needs and your existence as a 3-dimensional human being makes it more than that. Your team make it more than that.

I’ll tell you what my mum said, shall I? Part-time jobs in retail and hospitality are ten-a-penny. If they aren’t willing to employ you as a person, only a number, then fuck ‘em. Go work your 16 hours somewhere else.

A Master of Arts

The amount of people going to university is on the rise, which is advantageous for a number of reasons. Number one, the more educated people are, the better. Graduates are skilled critical thinkers, no matter what their discipline; statistically, they are likely to be more conscientious socially and politically than those who did not attend university.

That said, a side effect of the growing HE sector is that universities are first and foremost operating as businesses, not as student-focussed institutions of education. I place most of the blame on our failing government, though, not universities themselves. Indifferent decisions are made by rich white men who have never had to struggle for anything (a topic for another blog, perhaps) to continue to increase fees for those who wish to better themselves academically. Every year, they slap a discouraging £9, 250 price tag on our learning. Why? To make sure that the working class stay working class. To keep everyone under their glass ceilings. Anyway, I digress.

As I mentioned, in spite of phenomenal increases in uni fees and students’ cost of living, university applications are flooding through UCAS like never before. That abstract idea of debt in excess of £30,000 is not scaring young people off because, let’s face it, what’s the difference between a lot of debt and a LOT of debt?

Regrettably, this means that more people than ever before have donned a cap and gown before entering the world of work. Jobs are fiercely competitive; degrees are judged not on individual merit but on the status of the institution. Many find themselves struggling to set themselves apart from the thousands of other graduates who join their ranks every year.

Now this is not an advert for The University of Gloucestershire, but they were actually very switched on to this. ‘Your Future Plan’ promoted internships, extra awards, employability conferences… You name it. There was a real pressure for us to add more than just an undergrad degree to our repertoire. And aren’t we thankful for it now! Largely thanks to them, over 95% of my fellow graduates have now entered full time work or further study.

I’m very grateful that I went to Gloucestershire, despite saying something to the opposite effect probably a million times in my first year. I weathered it out and really came in to my own in 2^nd year. I got a first – we graduated last Thursday. Thinking of the things I overcame to get there makes me deeply proud.

It is overwhelming how proud I am of my entire cohort, to be honest. I know that some of them struggled at times, too. They were all welcoming, caring and warm when I needed them, and I hope I was able to reciprocate in some ways.

Aman, Emily and Zo, thanks for battling through Lit and Lang with me – it may not have been the most organised course at UoG but we smashed it anyway! Alex, Meg and Nicole, thank you for making me feel like I fitted in. You have no idea how much I needed you three at the beginning of 2^nd year. Lauren, you are the most loving person I’ve ever met. Your kindness eased my stress time and time again. You all deserve the world, truly.

After graduation, I met with my ex-tutor, Arran, for catch up. On the way, still in my graduation dress, I stopped beside the lake in Pitville park. I have stopped at that same spot innumerable times over the past three years. I thought about all of this. Quite often, my thoughts in moments like these take the form of language, it’s just how my brain works. I’m writing some of them here.

I never walked to uni via the lake in first year, so the first picture was taken at the beginning of second year. The last was taken just after graduation.

Flash forward to today. I’m in Nottingham now, sitting in the uni café waiting to meet one of my MA teachers about doing a PhD (a PhD!!!!!!!). The application itself is several thousand words of work and I have deadlines coming up, too. Things aren’t perfect, though I’d have loved to finish this post off with ‘and they lived happily ever after’…

I miss home, more than I ever thought I would. My mum is an absolute soldier of a woman and I feel a little uneasy that she and Julian are over 100 miles away from me. My brother is struggling to manage his time just as I am, and it pains me that I can’t continue to be his best friend from here, at least not very effectively. I’m fortunate that he has Britt.

And, well, whenever I ring grandad he asks if I’ll come home. He counts days on his calendar until the next time I’ll see him. He pleads with me to not do my doctorate so that I can move back. I put off phoning him some days because I don’t feel strong enough to say no anymore and I’m worried I’ll just get in the car and go to him. It isn’t his fault, he’s just old. I miss him just as much as he misses me and will try my best to move home next year.

At the moment, Joel works full time (and more) at a primary school and I’m juggling three jobs, housework, uni work and PhD applications. Money is tight (which is a disgrace because a full-time job, part time jobs and student loans should be more than enough to survive). Joel’s football is becoming more serious which is great, but it means we see each other very little – maybe two evenings a week. I’m on my own a lot. It’s hard, I won’t pretend it isn’t, but I’m told life is a constant learning curve, aka an uphill battle...

I came here because I wanted to be a Master of English, but suddenly the stakes have gotten very high... Now I must master washing dishes, paying bills, driving across the country every fortnight, working a job in Clevedon and two in Nottingham, meeting deadlines, juggling relationships and getting accepted on to a PhD. I just can’t afford to drop a ball.

In the interest of ending on something positive, we recently adopted a gorgeous kitten, Tiger Lily, to keep me company and bring life and happiness to the house. She is playful and very very sweet; she follows me around and sits with me while I work on the laptop (a lot). I write a lot about the intrinsic value of non-human life in my essays so it feels weird to oversimplify it like this, but animals are the BEST.