Actually if it does work I’ll get her to do some positive thinking about me keeping my job.

Penny

My period started this morning.

I just want to die.

Why did I let myself hope? How could I have been so pathetic? I don’t know why, but I was. What with the crystals and the ley lines and the positive thinking and everything. I just thought for once I’d get some luck. Just for once it would be me who was lucky. But of course it wasn’t. Obviously. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Why me?! Why bloody me?! Some women scarcely even want children and have them.

I want nothing else! All my life I’ve wanted to have children. Right from the first game I ever played, I’ve known I wanted to be a mum. It’s my life’s fucking ambition.

But I can’t do it.

Sixty-three periods! Sixty-three fucking months of trying and trying and trying and nothing! I feel wretched, just wretched (quite apart from these God-awful period pains). I keep thinking, why me? I mean, why should I be the one who can’t have a little baby to hold? Why? My sister’s got two. Melinda’s got one. Every bloody woman in Sainsbury’s seems to have about twelve. I know I shouldn’t resent them but sometimes I do. It just is so unfair! Of course I know that lots of other women are in the same boat as me and all that but I just don’t care about them. That’s all. I don’t.

Dear Self

Well, the Primrose Hill Bonk bore no fruit. Bugger.

I’m afraid to say that even I had begun to get my hopes up a bit. Poor Lucy was being so positive that she made me feel positive too. I was even having fantasies about what life would be like if we had one. Just tea-time and story-telling-type fantasies, that sort of thing. Loading up the car to go camping and I’m going to stop now.

Dear Penny

I was alone at work again today so I spent five hours on the phone trying to get through to Dr Cooper to see if I can get a referral to have a laparoscopy. Most of the 247 “getting pregnant” books that I own suggest that this will probably be the next step and Dr Cooper certainly said it would be. The alternative and homeopathic books of course do not approve of this kind of brutalism but what is one to do? I’ve tried so many things and honestly if I gave up eating and drinking all the things that some of these books tell you to give up I’d starve to death before I could conceive.

I couldn’t even get through to the surgery. There’s some sort of flu epidemic on and it’s obvious that they’re a bit pushed. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to consider having it done privately. I don’t like to because Sam and I have always felt very strongly about the NHS, but I don’t think I have any choice. I mean the waiting lists are so long now that even though you want to do the right thing you can’t. Funny, really, because these days I actually feel that because the lists are so long I should go private anyway if I can afford it, just in order to free up a bed. Extraordinary. I remember when Mrs Thatcher had that operation on her hand and said, “I didn’t add to the queue,” we all went potty at dinner parties all over London and now we’re saying exactly the same thing.

I am so depressed.

Dear Sam

Lucy wants to have a laparoscopy done privately because she can’t get through to Dr Cooper. I said absolutely not. I pretended that it was a matter of political principle and expressing our solidarity with the NHS. The truth is it’s the money pure and simple. What with my cock-up over Above The Line Films and the fiasco with the Prime Minister it’s now pretty much a certainty that Nigel is going to shaft me and until I know what the future holds I can’t countenance any additional expense.

I went to Oddbins today and downgraded from single malt to blended.

Dear Penny

I am really quite proud of Sam. He was absolutely immovable on the private operation bit. I had no idea he had retained such a firm grip on his political principles. Good for him.

I’ve booked the private operation for the end of next month.

I mentioned my political fears to Sheila at work because she’s a bit of an old lefty and she said something awful. She said, “Yes, but the reason that we all worried about Thatcher’s hand was because it was about essential surgery, which is what the Health Service is for. Fertility treatment is hardly essential, is it? It’s more of a personal indulgence.”

She actually said that, and she was trying to be nice. Well, I suppose it’s what a lot of people think. Perhaps I’d think it myself if fate had dealt me different cards.

Dear Sam

Well, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the axe fell and it fell today. I finally lost my job. I think the whole corridor knew before I did. Trevor avoided my eye and Daphne looked distinctly upset. I’m a pretty easygoing sort of boss and I think she’s scared they’re going to give her to some twenty-eight-year-old Armani clothes hanger who thinks only American sitcoms are funny.

Anyway, there was a warning sign in every face, so by the time I got to Nigel’s office to which I’d been summoned I was ready for anything. In a way it wasn’t so bad.

“Radio,” said Nigel.

“Radio,” I said.

“Radio,” said the Head of Radio and Television, who was also in attendance. “I’m extremely keen to up our light entertainment output in sound-only situations. Your massive experience in bringing on the best of the new comedians and writers makes you the perfect person to head up this major new entertainment initiative.”

Which of course means that it would be more trouble and expense to sack me than to shift me to a job where it doesn’t really matter what I do. On the other hand I had been expecting immediate redundancy, or, at the very best, the post of Programme Coordinator: Daytime South West, so this was, in a perverse, reverse kind of way, quite good news.

“What’s the job title?” I asked.

“Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio,” said the Head of Radio and Television.

I let it hang in the air a moment, waiting for the words “deputy” or “sub” or “Midlands” to follow. They didn’t, but you can’t be too careful. I heard a story of a bloke who went to see the DG and thought he’d been offered “Controller, BBC1” but actually after the DG said the word “one” he coughed and in that cough managed to add “Planet Green Initiative, Bristol Environment Unit.” The poor man was on the train pulling out of Paddington before he’d worked out what had happened.

So there I was, the new “Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio”.

“What about the money?” I said.

“The same,” Nigel replied, to my delight, “if you go quietly and don’t write any bitter whistle-blowing articles in the Independent media section or Broadcast magazine.”

And so the deal was done, effective immediately. I was to clear my desk that very day. One slightly dispiriting thing. I’d asked Nigel if I could take Daphne with me over to Broadcasting House (where my new office is to be). He said fine but then she refused! I could tell that she thought that radio was a definite step down and could see no reason why she should have to share in my reduction of status.

“No, thank you, Sam,” she said. “It’s very kind of you but I’m the personal secretary to the ‘BBC Controller, Broken Comedy and Variety’, which is a television post. I am not personal secretary to the ‘Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio’.”

So there you go. Was it Kipling who said they were more deadly than the male? (Women, that is, not personal secretaries.)