I'm going to be out of a job soon. It's not the first time that advances within the industry have made me change career direction, but I fear that this time it will mean an end to my association with television for good.

I have been employed in television for the last 22 years and my career gives me a huge amount of satisfaction. I have worked with a number of wonderful people over the years - and John Prescott (who has to rank as the most unpleasant individual ever to grace my camera lens) and I would ideally like to carry on for a few more years at least, but times are changing and craft editors are a dying breed.

Times are hard and budgets are tight, and it it's now considered acceptable for just about anyone to edit pictures and sound together. It's a brave, new world and I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I love my job and have extremely high standards, but it seems that being an award-winning editor doesn't really count for much nowadays. Standards in television are declining so rapidly that I find it hard to keep up with each new reality TV nadir. I thought that the worst I would see was the moment that Rik Waller was asked to clean up after an incontinent dog on 'Back to Reality', but I had reckoned without 'The Farm'. It speaks volumes of the show's producers that they were happy to broadcast Rebecca Loos giving hand relief to a pig; it speaks volumes about Rebecca Loos that she was happy to indulge in a bestial act in the name of entertainment, but I think that the boar in question should have exercised a bit of restraint, given that he was probably more intelligent and urbane that all of the contestants put together. It makes me so sad to see how low we are now prepared to go in order to shock and titillate, and I think that now is a good time for me to get out of the televisual mire for good.

Having job security is pretty essential for a widow and so I am now faced with a difficult dilemma. What do I do? I could consider working for other television companies as a freelance, but my heart just isn't in it anymore. I need a new direction, and writing would seem the obvious way to go, but writing a free online journal isn't going to pay my mortgage. I love carpentry, but given my history of hand mutilation, I fear that it would be a very short career. It's time for a change, and if any of you have an idea for a new job for me, then I'd be most grateful for any suggestions.

Anyhow, enough doom and gloom, life's too short to be melancholy. Today my girls wrote their Christmas lists. Alice's list presents me with a bit of a problem; she has asked for a dog (which she won't get until I am able to devote sufficient time care for one), and has also asked for a daddy. I have searched through the Argos catalogue and I'm damned if I can find one. It must rank as the most difficult Christmas present to obtain since the great Power Rangers drought of 1996. It's not like I'm not actively seeking a new partner, and it's a measure of my desperation that I am now willing to accept invitations to dinner from people that I don't even know, because I feel that there may be a spare man present. Even the faintest possibility of social interaction with a potential suitor turns me into a gibbering, sycophantic idiot. Yesterday, whilst inspecting the building work at Walker and Deb's new house, a woman came to call. She wandered up the rickety staircase, looked me in the eye and said, 'It's you I've come to see. Joan, I was wondering if you and these small people would like to come to supper next week?' Now, I'd never seen her before, and I'm pretty sure I'm not called Joan, but presumed that age and an excess of trauma at a young age had wiped her from my memory. She seemed to know me very well, and so I provisionally set a date for next Wednesday. I even agreed to drop a note through her door, even though I had no idea where she lived. All this seems so ridiculous as I write it now, but at the time I was paralysed by the English affliction of extreme politeness, and didn't feel strong enough to contradict her. This was only a temporary affliction, however, because she then proceeded to step off the normality gangplank and take a dip in the sea of weird. My conversation with her went a bit like this.

Lady. 'It'll be great to hear all your news. I wanted to thank you for all your hard work with the church. I think it's wonderful.' (looking over at Deb, who just looks confused, and Walker, who is hiding behind a door frame, sniggering).
Me. 'But I don't do any work for the church.'
Lady. 'Yes, you do, and it's so wonderful what you've done for your Grandfather, Joan.'
Me. 'I think you've got the wrong person. Both my grandfathers died many years ago.'
Lady. 'Ah. I see. Oh, well. When you come you must tell me all about 'him downstairs'.
Me. 'I'm not sure what you mean, the only man downstairs is a plasterer called Pete.'
Lady. ' Ah, I see.' At this point Deb stepped forward and told the lady that I was just visiting and that she was the new owner of the mill, and the conversation continued.
Lady - (looking a bit confused). 'So that'll be five for supper then, will it? And you can tell me all about your grandfather and how he's doing. It's so wonderful, the work that Joan has done for the church. It was lovely to see you and your girls again Joan, make sure you give 'him downstairs' my regards.'

I have to confess that is was the most surreal conversation of my life. You only got an abridged version, but let me tell you that the full-length version was enough to make me question my sanity, but not before I had questioned the sanity of the wellie-booted lady on the stairs. My girls are now calling me Joan, and I have the strangest feeling that I may have experienced a blackout at some stage of my life, which caused me to miss a whole episode of ecclesiastical philanthropy, the resurrection of my grandfather and the adoption of the name Joan.

Coupled with this, I now have another present to add to Alice's unfillable stocking list. She now wants a pink plastic knitting machine. It comes with two balls of wool, but I know that she'll soon run out, which can mean only one thing - a trip to the wool shop. Now, for the benefit of those who haven't read my book, I have a rabid aversion to wool shops. I can't bear them. I would rather have cocktail sticks jammed under my fingernails than to have to go inside one of those fusty emporiums of matinee jackets and mohair, but now I know I'll have to do just that, and it's making me come out in hives. I hope Alice realises that she's making Christmas very difficult for me already and were not even out of November yet. I think I may combine her presents and knit her a daddy; he'll be ready for Christmas and can sit on the sofa with me each evening and keep me company. We can nestle side by side, watching endless repeats and listening to the noises of jollity coming from all the village Christmas drinks parties that I'm not invited to. What an exciting prospect, I can hardly wait.

And finally, I would like to answer on of my regular readers, who wrote to comment on my previous entry, 'Flake'. Jane McIntyre wrote: "You made yourself sound suspiciously what my mother used to refer to (behind hand) as ` a bit of a collar and tie job`. I was never sure just what she meant....but it was you all along!!!!"

I didn't realise that my private pipe shame admission would make me quite so risible, and I'm only glad that I didn't admit to the glue addiction or the centrefold in Camping and Caravanning Magazine, in which I was pictured sprawled naked on a tartan rug, stroking a thermos flask.

For the benefit of Jane, and for anybody else who now believes I now bat for the other side, please can I state for the record that I'm not a lesbitarian or even 'a bob each way', I'm a perfectly normal, heterosexual woman, who just happens to have indulged in a real-life pipe dream many years ago. But I promise I'm a reformed character and that I'll never do anything quite so weird ever again.

'Nuff said.

Anyone seen the Uhu?


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