Over the last year, James and I have divested ourselves of the trappings of our bourgeois life: house, car, steady job, savings etc in the hope that we can replace them with, er, something, er more, er creative and er, well, fulfilling. (Bourgeoiuse, by the way, is one of those words I am never quite sure how to spell; since my first attempt hasn't got a red line underneath, I'll use that).

This has involved camping in the spare rooms of various kind friends (thank you, thank you) and in my case, not achieving an awful lot and becoming rather confused. James, I feel has rather more to show for his time. Today, I had a phone interview for a sort-out-the-archive-from-scratch-kind of job. Oh, God I hope I don't get shortlisted. I really don't want to do it. I've had enough of all that malarkey.

I have thought of a solution to the dilemma of where to live, what job to do, how to make money questions. It's unrealistic and I wouldn't do it. Buy a camper van, drive it to cities requiring short-term archive work, live in it while cataloguing the latest bizarre collection that comes my way, which usually has some kind of Jewish connection. Or a narrow-boat. But that might be too responsible for James, who does not wish to maintain any vehicle or building.

But sometimes, I don't mind admitting, I am very tempted to get a nice steady archive job in local government with a pension and sick pay. The Dutch Squeeze and the Other Gremlin agree with me that there is a reason why people become bourgeois. It's because it's quite nice.