First day back in the office after the shoots. Wow. I haven't been as cold as I was yesterday in a long time. But we got the whole thing in the can.

As I was driving in to work this morning on petrol fumes wondering how far I was going to make it in before the dog and I had to walk the remainder and stay here until the cheque clears, I decided to check and see if my switch card was working yet. I pulled over in Tescos at Midsomer Norton and put it in the cash machine...

It was! I took out £10. I took out £50 in case I was imagining things. Oh my god.

Then I went a little bit bat crazy.

I've been without any money for so long, watching the petrol gauge more than the road, living on 8p instant noodles, duty free cigs I'm given and tiny jars of coffee... being able to get £50 out of a money machine in one go kinda sent me a bit nutso for a bit. I filled up the car till it was full. I bought a full trolley of shopping. I bought a carton of 200 fags. I ran into Tesco's carpark yelling "arrrrrrgh"! Such a release of pent up frustration and anger. Felt so good.

Okay so it went a bit pear shaped when I tried to pay my Telewest bill to get my phone turned back on, and my card was "declined". (I really HATE that word by the way. Can't they just call you DEADBEAT!!!! in front of everyone in the shop?) I was flummoxed. How could I use my card after weeks of it being trapped and now it's trapped again? Must call the bank tomorrow and find out WTF is going on.

As part of my shopping I bought Ted a game, Mario Cart DS, for his new Nintendo DS. I didn't really get him anything on his birthday, but I promised I would as soon as I got some money. I also said I'd pay half of the price for the DS so he had some of his money left over to buy another game. That really cut me up to have nothing for his birthday but I literally had no options. Never mind, he's chipper again now.

Ted's been having a bit of a rum time of it, having the teenage heebie geebies, they all get around 11-12 years old. Hormones kick in, notions of mortality bite hard for the first time. It's a rum time and I remember it well happening to me and my mum bears this out. Hattie went through the same thing at his age. I called his teacher and told her about all this and she's going to talk to the school counsellor. She's really cool, according the Hattie. Ted's happy about that.

With the phone and internet off Mia and I baked buns all evening till about 1am. Mia wanted to take some in to work and we arranged for me to give her a lift into work tomorrow to help with that.