September 30 (Thursday): Today, get up, get in, grumpy. Today, you’d better stay out of my way. I see Sara up online but don’t bother getting in touch; people are only a pain in the arse.

I waddle into work rather downbeat, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be around these people (fortunately Stevo isn’t in).

I finish off my English homework and it begins to come together and I begin to feel a fair bit better.

At lunchtime, I go around town and do it on the cheap. When I get back to the office, I get bored in the afternoon and call up Mark and apologise for last night’s blow out and get the story on his job interview (which he probably really wanted to talk about last night, hyped). Over the phone, he basically talks himself out of the job/position to me; hanging more to a dream job (ie fun but poor pay) at a newspaper he has an interview for/at next week.

When I get in from work I receive a text from Mark: “i’ve just got a three month internship with a brit company in tokyo. Leave monday. Hell fire-came out of the blue a bit. Still couldn’t turn it down. Talk soon�.

Tonight, after much procrastination, I have decided to go to my English class instead of watching Millwall’s second leg in Hungary against Ferencvaros. The game (the second leg) for some weird reason is not on Bravo (as with the first), instead it is an £8 job on Setanta Sports Channel, a channel I refuse to watch or endorse. So there you go, what a crappy fan I make. As we settle down for this week’s class, Stevo texts me to tell that “the BBC are reporting that it’s kicking off in Budapest already�. Tonight, the Ipswich fan actually speaks to me and asks me if Millwall are going to win (“nah�). The lesson this evening is hard work, once again I am shattered from work. I sit next to a pretty young girl who once more says nothing to me and sit opposite some young mother who sometimes I catch staring this way. The class carries on and teacher says she could describe Arsene Wenger as “debonair� but looks at me and goes “you could hardly describe Dennis Wise as debonair, the man is a thug�. I stare at her and calmly go “the man’s a prince�. At break time, we do the rounds to downstairs where all the handicaps are in the café section with us and I check my phone/GPRS and it turns out that Millwall are losing 2-0. Fucking hell. By the time, the remainder of the lesson is quits, I put on Radio Five Live and Millwall is the main game on air and now they are losing 3-1 and were even 3-0 down at one point. Hungry and depressed, I pop into the chip shop at the top of Barrack Street and listen to the last twenty minutes of Millwall’s UEFA Cup history as the month of October dawns ever closer. The game ends at 3-1 and Millwall’s dreams of rioting in Feyenoord are over but there is still the hope of one last clean out in Hungary before coming home.

I got to bed in resignation.

np: Estelle - Free