Living at the bottom of the financial food chain in London is no fun. Especially when all your friends seem to have more spare cash than you. You are constantly wondering where your next meal is coming from, but you always seem to find spare cash for that quick pint, weed, the odd pill or that sneaky line of coke.

I guess that you had a comfortable upbringing, with your parents being fine upstanding citizens of the middle class brigade; sedated within the cradle of the semi-detached suburban environment; ford escorts, land rovers, 2.4 children, college, a respectable university, a degree in whatever.
Then you move out. Pushed away from home comforts, out of the hedonistic cushion of university life, into the world of work, of seeming responsibility and of apparent adulthood.
All of a sudden your life has spiralled out of control and becomes

Friday nights out on the lash,
Saturday morning head fuck, Saturday night all-nighters,
lazy Sunday afternoons I’ve got no mind to worry close my eyes and drift away...
All this followed by a deeply depressing sense of monotony when it comes back around to Monday.
You begin to realise what it means to live for the weekend. You get to the stage where the weekends seem to last longer than the working week.

You are not entirely happy in your job. It doesn’t pay enough; and you constantly have to ask the bank for another loan/overdraft/a break. Your boss hates you, and all you think about at work is escape. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. Disillusionment sets in.
It’s a sad feeling when you wake up and realise you’re not as free as you thought you were. You realise that this is what real life is about.

Then you discover sex in the city. Cold, hard sex with strangers; people who you’re barely acquainted with. “I shagged a friend of a friend of a friend who I met at a party the other week, I can’t remember his name. I think he works in computer programming. No I’m not seeing him again.”
The transience of the city permeating into every aspect of your life. Everything is cheap, overpriced, washed-out, grey and all too quick. Or not quick enough.
You feel empty, shallow, and in need of a bath. It seems as though everyone else on the planet can cope with this; you are too sensitive, with naive expectations of what the whole thing entails, about what you expect in return from whoever it might be.

You’re salary doesn’t support the standard of living you have been used to. The banks have turned on you now that you have a job and they are bleeding you of everything you own. It’s a running battle between you, HSBC, Barclays or the NatWest.
“Who will win this month? Will you still be in credit? How will this financial tragedy end?”
Your career looks good on paper. There’s an element of smugness when you tell people that you’re in computers/media/publishing/banking. But for people like me it’s all a front. Because at the end of the day, you rarely get any joy from your work, you sold out, and you’re still skint.