Left to fester in Colchester

If ever I needed a sign from the gods that giving up my job, moving out of my home and away from great housemates Cordelia and Michael, and pesky cat Chairman Meow, and moving into a chapel with a man I didn’t even know a year ago today, then a week in Colchester was the clear as sky, smack in the face sign that they sent.

Colchester sucks. Or rather, it is as if someone has sucked the life right out of it. After one week working in the biggest business park I’d ever seen, living in the smallest Travel Lodge I’d ever seen, I was ready to tie my own noose.

When people hear that I work for the glossy women’s magazines they get so excited about the cloud of glamour they envisage me floating about on. Not so. Travel lodge, business park, Colchester. It doesn’t get much better.

Although, my room was en suite and I got my own kettle, which was most exciting. I set myself a challenege of spending as little as possible and so spent all week resisting the lures of the Little Chef next door (tempting thought it was) and instead being my own little chef with some noodles and sweet chilli sauce. It got boring. I missed the additions required to that recipe to make it a thai green curry.

I must save money – if I get invited out on some shindig I will recline, I promised myself. Needn’t have worried – the full time writers were obviously bored of the constant stream of shift workers passing through, like a one night stand, never sticking around long enough to learn their names, just in and out in a blink. So I was not invited anywhere and made it back to the lodge of my travels every evening in time for Paul O Grady – what a treat.

The highlight of my week was that Cesca, my long lost best friend now living in Sarf Afrikkka, called to tell me that Mike, my aforementioned former housemate, had proposed. About bloody time too. They’d been together so long I was beginning to wonder if I should nip in front of him and get to her first. I’m ever so excited. Oh! Just like the film – My Best Friend’s Wedding. Except I won’t be trying to woo the groom as - sorry Mike - Dermot Malhoney he ain’t.

So it was a week of highs and lows. High to hear of Cesca’s nuptials, low to live in Colchester. High to find inventive ways to make noodles less boring, low to live in Colchester. And so on and so on, my voice trailing off as you fall gently asleep, but don’t ever presume as sleep takes over that I am not still listing things that end with ‘low to live in Colchester’ because I am low to live in Colchester...