Jay's funeral

I went into CNN and carried on plugging away at the Open Skies Stuff. I'm so bored of it now. There's just so much information and companies don't seem to want to give out too much information in case it affects share prices.
Eventually at around 11am I got the chance to get my producers attention. I told her that it was Jay's funeral today and could I leave about 1pm. She seemed to think that I'd just turned up even though I'd been there for an hour and a half and she said 'so you're asking for the day off then?'.

I said I'd just need the afternoon off if that was OK. She said it was fine to go at 1pm.

At 12.30pm she asked me to create a table of all the companies that had bought Boeing 787's since 2004. She didn't suggest where to get the information from but I looked on the Boeing website. There were press releases and so I worked through each press release for the past 4 years and compiled a table for her. She didn't look impressed when I gave it to her and asked where I'd got the information from. I said Boeing and she seemed to accept it.

It was now 1.30pm and I had to get home, get changed and drive to somewhere near Lewisham by 3pm. I eventually left my flat at about 2.30pm and proceeded to get horribly lost. I eventually got the crematorium for about 4pm.

There was nobody there. But when I saw Jay's name on the wall in the list of funerals for the day it hit me that he was dead. I started crying. I'm glad nobody else was there.

I called Clae and he said that they were at his brother Terry's house for the wake. He told me to meet him at the end of the Rotherhithe tunnel and we'd take it from there.

I got lost again but I met him and his friends by the funeral directors car park. Clae was in the kilt that he got married to Jay in. I said it was strange to see him in it again and he told me that he was only wearing it because everything else decent that he had was lost in the fire that killed Jay.

That blew me away.

We walked up to his brother's flat and everyone was there. It was nice to see people again but not under those circumstances.

Psycho David was there and having his own drama about how much Jay's death had affected him. I didn't even bother with him this time and just got chatting to some lesbian care worker and Clae's other brother Matt. The view from Terry's flat was amazing - you can see right across London and Canary Wharf looks stunning from that angle.

Terry was lovely and looked after me and Matt and I sort of flirted. He told me about his ex-boyfriend having cancer but not wanting to tell him the details even though he knew he was going to die soon. I got chatting to Clae, Matt and Terry's mum and she was lovely. It was strange to see Jay's mum there as she'd flown out from Cape Town and she did look so much like him.

Slowly everyone left and I ended up on my own with Terry and a bottle of wine. We chatted until about 1am and I left. I got home and into bed for about 2.30pm.

I'm dreading work tomorrow. When will it end?

Starting work at CNN

Starting your first day at somewhere like CNN with a hangover is never a good idea. I'd woken up feeling rough as fuck and decided to have a Bloody Mary for breakfast to try and make things better.

So I probably turned up smelling of booze. Not great.

I got there and my producer showed me to a desk that was not really anywhere near hers. She said 'use this desk and find out all you can about which companies are flying out of which airports once the Open Skies Agreements take place in March'. Then she left me to it.

Did I know the log on password to turn the computer on? No.
Did I know where to start looking for the information she wanted? No.
Did I know where the kitchen, the toilets or anything of use was? No.
Did I feel capable of anything? No.

I eventually got her to tell me what the log on was and what exactly she wanted. That was pretty much the last contact I had with her all day.

I said hello to the girl sitting across from me. She replied "Er, yeah hi" and turned her chair away to face the other direction.

Basically the whole day was horrible. It's a really fast paced news room with no natural lighting, recycled air and lots of loud American people shouting over the room at each other. Nobody spoke to me. When I passed people in the office nobody even looked at me. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own things to notice I was even there.

It got to about 7.30pm and I was starting to wonder how long I was meant to stay for. My producer was still typing away and didn't seem to want to be disturbed. I eventually asked her when I could go and she asked me to show her what I'd done. I did and she said she wanted it in a table that could be easily read rather than the way I did it. There is so much information about the Open Skies Agreement that it was all a bit daunting to be honest.

I got out of there and called Clive. He was down at Green Carnation waiting for Robbie. I said I'd go to meet him for a drink. On the way I called Nicola. She was lovely and talked me through the day. She said that News Rooms aren't chatty places but things will get better when I've been there a bit longer.

I met up with Clive and Robbie and had a few drinks. That made me feel a bit better and I went home and had some food before bed. Spirit was looking a lot better today and the lump on his neck had gone right down so I felt relieved.

God I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Spirit's chemotherapy starts

Spirit's health has gone downhill so much since I first found a lump on his neck. He's dying.

He can't even climb onto the sofa without help and sometimes when he walks he loses his balance. He's taken to spending all his time sleeping under the bed and hardly eats a thing.

He's also starting vanishing and this morning I couldn't find him anywhere. I almost resigned myself to the idea that he'd gone to find a quiet place to die. It was pouring down with rain and freezing cold but I went out to look for him. I eventually found him on the door mat at the back of blind Tony's flat and when I picked him up he let out a very strange wheezing noise.

I got him into his carrier and took him to the vets. He was making horrible noises all the way there and I really felt like I was taking him to be put down. I was begging him not to cry and the tears were flooding down my face.

I got him into the vets and the lovely Dr. Lars took us through to the surgery. He explained everything that would happen and I said goodbye to Spirit. I'm sure they know what they're doing and I hoped things would be OK. They told me to come back and get him around 6pm.

It was a very long day and I tried to busy myself as much as I could with tidying and stuff. Eventually the time came for me to go and get him. They said he'd been good as gold and everything went well. They gave me some pills to give him each day and I paid the £130 bill for this week.

I got Spirit home and opened his carrier. He didn't seem to want to come out so I reached in and helped him. His back legs didn't seem to work and I was worried but they did say that he was going to have a few side effects. I fed himand he seemed happy to eat so that was good.

Slowly as the evening past I noticed him getting better. I opened a bottle of wine and cooked some food to celebrate him being on the mend. He definitely looked chirpier and I wired my way through the bottle of wine. And then I got another one. That went too.

So I eventually got to bed at around 3am and was rather drunk.