As usual, the whole dream is pretty sketchy. Some parts of it involved driving around town in an open topped bus, even though it was raining. I was also in this house, although the inside of it was much bigger than it is in reality.

Andy was in it, and I think possibly I was sharing the house with him, and another woman.

The time was some point in the future, and I was happily living my life, when one night there was a knock at the door. I went to open it, and looked through the spyhole first.

FKM was there. Dripping wet, Looking so abjectly miserable.

Of course I let him in. Andy was giving me the most disapproving look, but I took him in, gave him a towel, helped dry him off, hugged him to warm him up, sat him down to find out what his troubles were.

What pisses me off so much is that if this happened in real life, that is exactly what I would do.

Nine months ago he was crying down the phone to me, depressed, fed up with being “Good old FKM,” who helped sort out everyone elses problems, nobody giving a flying fuck about his.

Guess what fuckface - I feel the same damn thing!!!

First one to my parents, who are back from their holiday today. They had a 10 day holiday in Austria. My favourite quote from my mom about the hotel - “It was halfway up a bloody mountain.”

What did they bloody expect in Austria?

And of course my dad moaned about the food. Because they don’t cater for the British like the Spanish do…. No dad, they give you the food that is normal for Austrians…..

As I was trying to extricate myself from the phone call, luckily my landline rang. “Got to go, someone is ringing me…” I thought it would be Krazy K, as I am going round there tomorrow for dinner.

Even better, it was LELI.

God I love that bloke. No matter how annoying and irritating he can be, I miss him so much. Looks on the cards he will be moving back - not locally unfortunately, but he wants to be in the Big Smoke. I can’t wait!

I went to aerobics and pilates again tonight.

I feel all warm deep inside my legs.

Could someone please tell me what that strange thing in the sky was this morning? It was all round and yellow, with a pale blue background, with white fluffy things moving around up there. It made a nice change from the gunmetal grey that has been an almost permanent fixture this year.

I thought the world was going to end!

I went to the aerobics class I used to go to on a Monday before I started my new job tonight. Bless her, it is actually quite a boring class, but I guess it is good for me, as it is one of the few I can keep up with for the whole class - most of the others I really struggle about halfway through. And in no way was it ‘easier’ - I sweat like a pig all the way through (there’s a nice image for you!).

I then went to the yoga class - I have been to other aerobics classes, but I haven’t been to yoga for months and months. There were only two other people there, so it was a really nice, intimate class.

And, even though I haven’t been for so long, I found I am still pretty flexible - I thought maybe I’d have stiffened up, but in some cases I was even going further than I have previously.

I am knackered, but I feel pretty good.

All set for aerobics and pilates tomorrow!

I can’t believe I am so worked up by them.

Two words. In a text message. I assume he meant them in a jokey sort of way.

But he couldn’t have written anything else which would have made me feel more like a piece of meat.

I really do find it hard to sympathise with really stupid people, who get themselves too deep in debt.

Yet another article about the ‘credit crunch’ in the BBC today - this time concentrating solely on the cost of owning a house. The article can be found here.

The first couple just typify it for me. They have a combined income of £30,000, yet they borrowed £122,500 - whichn incidentally is £6,000 more than their house was worth at the time. They bought at a time when, for the last couple of years, it has been widely reported in the press there is a slow down in the housing market. For fucks sake!!! They were already in a negative equity position when they bought the bloody house.

What really gets my goat though, is the fact that they have already ‘missed a couple of payments’ - for buying Christmas presents.

I’m sorry, but how much common sense does it take to realise that paying your mortgage is more important than buying Christmas presents?

I am also a little confused, because the numbers don’t add up. Using the BBC’s own mortgage calculator, inputting a loan amount of £122,500, at 5% fixed rate for 5 years, over 25 years requires a monthly payment of £724, not the £800 quoted. And as skint as they say they are, £75 a month is a hell of a lot of money.

And don’t get me started on the last bloke - a combined income of £105,000, and he “can’t get a mortgage, despite going to 3 different brokers” - there is a damn sight more to his story than is being told. The only reason he would not easily get a mortgage of circa £300k is if he has a very bad credit history.

What annoys me so much is that it is not that long since it last happened. So people really don’t have an excuse for being so stupid.

I bought my first house with my ex back in 1991. We borrowed £58,500, on a combined salary of about £26,000. Mortgage rates were stupid at the time, and we managed to get the bargain interest rate of 12.9%, fixed for 3 years. We took out an interest only mortgage, with a linked endowment. Our total payments including the endowment was over £600 a month.

18 months later I lost my job.

The first thing we did was go and see the mortgage provider, explained the situation. We assured them that we would do everything to ensure the monthly payments were met.

We worked out a budget - basically the ex’s salary covered the mortgage, endowment, his travel to work and most of the bills.

I was getting dole - about £40 a week - and out of that we had to feed two of us, cover any incidental expenses - oh, and buy any Christmas and birthday presents.

It was bloody hard - I remember weeks when the ex had to take lentil and brown rice salad to work for his lunch, because we couldn’t afford to buy a loaf of bread until I got my dole cheque. We were fortunate in that we had a lot of store-cupboard food - tins of stuff, frozen food, dried beans and lentils.

But we made sure we had a roof over our heads - what use is a big telly, nice furniture, fashionabe clothes, if you actually have no house in which to put these things?

We never missed a mortgage or endowment payment once.

Okay, that’s my rant over. For now anyway.