Saturday

Woken up at 8.30 by an alarm I seldom have to set - more often than not K's phone alarm is set early enough that I am woken first by its noise and then again, later, by her gentle pottering and dressing activity. K's not here this morning, however - she went to her parents' house in Gillingham, Dorset, last night while I finished work and went to the pub.

Felt very hung over this morning, more so than I have recently. This should be expected in that I managed to get through a pint with the girls from work in the Duke of Edinburgh, two cans at home over a baked potato and several Alpines in a variety of Sam Smith's pubs in town before getting the nightbus home at 1am. This one hurts, though.

I head to Waterloo at 10.30 for the 11.20 train to Gillingham. On the way I continue reading Andrew Collins' third memoir That's Me in the Corner, which covers his journey from layout-boy at the NME in the mid-80s through his editorship of Q magazine and various appearances on TV and radio. His story is not one of an inexorable rise to fame, interestingly - more one of doing bits and pieces of work and moving around different jobs to make himself more happy or have more fun. If anything he is less famous now than he was in the 90s, which makes his story (like his current podcast partner Richard Herring) an unusual one in the scheme of 'celebrity' memoirs.

I'm finding the book incredibly inspiring, in a way. Mostly in that he is doing the things that I want to do, and, at 25, the things I feel like I should now be on my way to doing. This new blog is, I hope, a step in the right direction. I want to be writing for a living - and if not for a living then at least for some adventure. It's something I've come close to before with Rock Sound and am building towards with Who Are Ya?! and, in the summer, an established football website. I'm also still planning to build the book pitch Who Are Ya?! is supposed to be the source material for. The time I have planned to make that pitch is just over a month away...

I feel like I might currently be wasting opportunities. I don't write enough in the evenings when I'm essentially just killing time until, firstly, K comes home, then until bedtime. I am sticking to my New Year's resolution to read more - now I need to write more. I have also developed some decent contacts in the worlds of journalism and publishing over the last year or so - I need to exploit these more.

I'm therefore resolving today to get my book pitch together then maybe sniff out some small pieces of freelance writing work. Neither of these are beyond me - as ever, I just need to focus.

I also need to work on updating Who Are Ya?! more often - the founding discipline of 1000 football-related words every week has proved difficult to stick to (particularly since starting the Football Basement podcast) and yet I feel proud of myself every time I complete an entry.

I arrive in Gillingham by 1.30 and soon we head off to Stourhead (a National Trust property) for a nice walk in the early Spring sunshine. We have a half-pint in the nice little pub they have there then head back to K's parents' house for dinner and a few more beers. In the evening we watch the ever-enjoyable Harry Hill's TV Burp followed by a terrible and seemingly interminable Cameron Diaz film called In Her Shoes on ITV, then send K's sister out to get Chinese at 10pm.

I end the day a little drunk, certainly sleepy and feeling more resolute about my career path - after all, writing is the only thing I've ever been really good at.