For the greater good

I decided that if I can't get another job, then I'll just work for free. Got to be better than sitting around at home all day. So firstly, I took it upon myself to be the prime ambassador for my Morris Dancing group's recruitment drive. I emailed all the local papers suggesting what an interesting article it would make for one of their reporters to come and have a go at a practice night and write up the experience from a newcomer's perspective - one of whom actually agreed! I had also managed to persuade a cameraman I met recently at a party to give it a go (I'd like to think his acquiescence wasn't JUST 'cause he might fancy me). So buoyed up was I by my own success, that I took along a celebratory cake. I had come close to persuading Chippendale, a fellow hasher, along to practice too; but again, an excuse was eventually presented - in his words - "My wife, Sex Slave, does the Lytchett Striders every Thursday with Dirty Bitch and we only got one car...but don't write me off just yet..."

Having proffered the excuse of lack of roadworthy transportation at the last minute, I didn't let the young newspaper journalist get away with it that easily, and picked him up to take him to the practice. To his credit, he pranced around with them best of them and did a pretty good job of it, along with Joel the cameraman. I somehow managed to successfully juggle my two young men and make sure they felt welcome and had a good time. I even let Joel plant his goodbye kiss on my cheek - the things I do for the Morris. (Although I did politely decline his invitation to join him skiing the following week.)

The other way in which I was more than willing to whore myself out for the greater good was in agreeing to write a couple of articles for the very newspaper that had sent along the young prancing journalist (I'll whip his job from under him yet). The funny thing was, I'd lined up a meeting with the paper's co-founder, who just happened to be the same reasonably handsome young man whose office window I used to walk past when I lived in Wilton the previous year, casting the occasional flirtatious smile in his direction. My admission of this sparked no recollection on his part. I am now pretty sure he's gay.

It hasn't been all work and no play, however; this week I have been brewing my own beer. An issue arose, however, upon realising I had miscalculated (ok, not bothered to calculate in the first place) how many empty bottles I would need, nor how quickly I would need them. Taking samples and recording the specific gravity of my two vats full presented me with the challenge of needing to find something to put it all in for the secondary fermentation, and fast. A fellow middle-aged morris dancer heroically came to the rescue with his enormous plastic barrel (a gesture made less heroic, however, by the fact that he let himself into my flat without knocking while I happened to be sitting on the loo with the door not quite shut).

I still needed more bottles, though. It was late, and it was dark, and I really had nothing better to do on a Valentine's Day night (the Snowbobbing group I had signed up to on the internet had been cancelled), so I nipped out to check my recycling box. Nothing; I'd been on the sloe-gin-and-tonic last week. So, headtorch affixed, I crept around the street, braving the rain and howling winds, surreptitiously raiding my neighbours' recycling boxes. To my dismay and disgust, it appears that the only things my neighbours digest are wine and the Telegraph.