The weekend before last, I ventured back to the musical youth I would have had if I’d been slightly older and cooler, and took in a My Bloody Valentine concert.

MBV concerts are notorious for their volume, and in fifteen years of gig going it was the first time I’d seen posters recommending, nay pleading, that punters take up the offer of free ear plugs on offer.

And if you think I’m being something of a pussy boy, check out the following extracts from some of the reviews in the mainstream press a couple of days later.

“They even reprised their old finale, which they used to call their "holocaust": an explosion of tinnitus-inducing white noise that erupted in "You Made Me Realise" and was sustained for at least 15 unforgiving minutes. A demented light show added to the sensory assault” (Financial Times).

“Anyone for tinnitus? My Bloody Valentine made their live return after 16 years of slow-motion procrastination this weekend, handing out free earplugs to anyone who had forgotten what ruthless sonic assaults their gigs used to be... Finally they reached the most famous part of their set — You Made Me Realise, more than 15 minutes of cacophonous, single-chord madness and the most intense live experience I think I’ve ever had. Some audience members looked genuinely in pain, many kept their hands in the air like the brave ones on a rollercoaster. It was far from enjoyable but it made clear why, so long after their creative peak, people still speak with awe about this remarkable, deafening band” (thisislondon.co.uk).

“The night ends with You Made Me Realise, the 1988 single that famously contains 40 seconds of screaming noise instead of a middle-eight. Tonight, it lasts 20 minutes: if you tentatively remove an earplug, it is like being punched in the side of the head” (Guardian).

I guess, judging by the varying length of You Made Me Realise, that the Guardian reviewer was made of hardier stock than the other critics (although I have it on good authority it was actually 24 minutes long).

In all honesty, I can’t say the free ear plugs made that much difference to the volume of the band (at least not without the added aid of my hands pressed to my ears). My tinnitus was so bad the day after the gig that I simply had to email my boss and say I wouldn’t be in work that day.

But what the ear plugs did filter out was the sound of irritating chatter from nearby punters during the evening. There’s nothing worse than having a group of people next to you who have to talk all the way through the gig, especially when it’s about things that have nothing at all to do with what’s going on on-stage.

It’s bad enough having some cunt chanting the name of the song it’s completely obvious the band will do (Verve gigs are ruined these days by blokes chanting: “Go on! Do ‘istory! ‘istory!”), without listening to someone recount the weekend’s activities and what they’re having to eat when they get home after the gig, during the song you’ve been waiting over a decade to hear played live.

The only drawback to having earplugs in is that when you try and hold a conversation with someone it does sound akin to someone masturbating and talking at the same time. I’d recommended everyone try this at least once (the talking with ear plugs in bit, natch).

Now all I need are a set of nose plugs, and post smoking ban gigs might start to become vaguely pleasurable activities once again.

Although I have the culinary know how of a service station cook, it’s surprising the amount of times food has been a divisive issue in some of my past relationships.

An example of this would be the incident that determined the eventual break-up with my first lover.

I have never, ever, stood anyone up. I may be the Yves Saint Laurent of time when it comes to being fashionably late, but it’s a dead cert that I’ll be around at some point on the day I arrange to meet someone.

So getting stood up by my then lover was the penultimate straw.

But not the final one.

It wasn’t the fact that she’d stood me up that really got my goat.

Oh no.

It was when I called her to find out where the fuck she was and found out that she was at her flat.

Eating crisps.

The fact that she was shovelling crisps down her neck when she should have been meeting me outside a freezing cold Holborn tube station really stuck in my throat (pun intended).

And we never saw each other again.

But faced with a choice between indulging in comfort food or providing immediate sustenance, I hoped that I’d never make the same mistake.

But a couple of nights ago I almost did.

For reasons I’m not going to go into (until we break up), tuna is very much a four-letter word in our relationship. All I’ll say is that, having dated vegetarians before, some really are more obsessive than others.

And t’other night, in the midst of an emotional confrontation, I had to choose between letting things cool down for a few minutes and having a tuna roll to pass the time before having a go at digging myself out of the hole I’d dived into, or sorting things out immediately before I ended up having to put my (unused) Durex stash onto eBay (the used ones are currently up for auction...).

Trust me: never has a tuna roll looked as delectable as it did then, encased in a M&S baguette like an oyster in a clam.

But, wiping a tear from my eye, I walked over to the open window and dived out of it threw the roll in the direction of the bins (I live on the third floor, so its downward trajectory was all the more dramatic).

And did my great sacrifice have the desired effect?

Er, eventually.

And to immortalize the moment of great sacrifice, my lover took a photo of the decomposing roll the next day (minus the tuna, so MJohnson’s rabid cat, Tubs, has evidently followed his master to Finsbury Park and is continuing to stalk me).

And whoever thinks that poignant moments can’t be found standing next to the bins by a stale roll with ants crawling over it, they have no imagination whatsoever.

TKK: ever willing to compromise in the name of continued regular sex relationship harmony.

Although you can fuck right off if you think I’m going to stop smoking.

Productiveness can be a very subjective state.

These days, in my super ultra mega unmotivated work situation, I now assess my productivity on how many job applications I’ve sent off.

This week I’ve sent off two, which is an almost Stakhanovite display of productiveness compared to my normal output.

Thing is, I’m getting desperate.

So desperate, that I’m prepared to work for nothing.

The market for assistant psychologists is intensely competitive, not helped by the bottleneck in the system for clinical psychology training. As a consequence, many fledgling clinical psychs fail to fly the nest, meaning there’s less worms on offer for the baby birds.

Add to this the apparent general lack of NHS funding (although psychological methods of treatment are increasingly the indicated treatment for many mental health conditions) and you have conditions ripe for exploitation.

Hence I’m applying for an unpaid job for a minimum of one day a week. Maybe if I’m prepared to work five days a week unpaid then it’ll enhance my prospects...

So seeing as this all being done for the goodness of psychology, you’d think they might enhance the job to make it worthwhile.

Wrong.

Check out this little doozy in the job description:

To assist the Administrator in administrative tasks including filing, photocopying, sorting questionnaires, moving files to storage, purchasing items, information gathering and data entry.

So leaving admin land for the sunny shores of psychology still means no escape from the three Fs (filing, faxing, photocopying).

But then I am sitting next to someone who wore a dog vomit and blancmange combination outfit (picture to follow) to work yesterday. Someone who has spent the morning whining that she can’t wear flowery wellies because they draw attention to her big feet.

Maybe being broke and destitute, but being occupationally fulfilled at the same time, isn’t such a bad alternative.

Back in the day when I started this blog, stuck for subjects to write about, I started compiling a top ten of my worst jobs.

Like many a project I’ve started in life, it remained unfinished, stalling at No.5 with a post titled ‘Just about any NHS department I’ve worked in’.

I’m starting to think that title may well be my epitaph.

Rather optimistically at the time of compiling the top ten (or no.10 through to no.5), with my psych graduation in sight, I felt the future was so bright I was gonna need shades.

Fat chance.

It wasn’t just the job top ten that stalled.

My ‘career plan’ has, er, careered since those halcyon days.

Today I was supposed to be in a job interview. I had my resignation letter ready, so convinced was I that this interview was going to be the one.

Fat chance.

I received a phonecall last Thursday to inform me the interview was cancelled due to withdrawal of funding for the post.

When I informed the bearer of bad news that it was ‘just one of those things’, I was at that moment the master of understatement.

Because, and let there be no mistake, I absolutely hate my job.

It seems that in life you have some measure of control over your friends, partners and pets, but when it comes to work colleagues and family, you’re fucked.

The enmity towards the pigeon-faced geriatric I sit next to is well detailed in past blogs (and now my blog media space has increased x30 I’ll have to upload the video of her losing her Oystercard). But do imagine sitting next to someone you never ever speak to (unless you count the swearing under my breath) in work, unless it’s unavoidable.

It’s depressing having to spend so much time in the company of someone I despise so much, and explains why I see my new girlfriend so often.

Me Julie thinks I’m crazy about her and that she’s both treasured and cherished. Instead, the real reason she’s so often in my company is because I don’t want Doofus to be the person I spend the most amount of time next to in my life.

But not speaking to Doofus doesn’t save me, as it still means I have to endure her banal conversation during the day. Here is an example of why I’m considering enlisting in the Foreign Legion at the end of the week.

Doofus: *has ecstatic look on her face as she walks over to a colleague* I had a crab paste sandwich last night!

Colleague: *bemused look and unsure how to respond*

D: Yeah, a crab paste sandwich. That’s crab paste and bread together.

C: ...

D: *walks back to own desk*

TKK: *puts shotgun into mouth*

Youth may well be wasted on the young, but retirement is completely wasted on the old.