Bunny Boiling, The Green Goddess* Of Northwick and Offender Profiling.

The clearest indicator that it's the New Year is that all the single people I know are on a mission, or two missions, actually: to get fit, and to get themselves a boyfriend or girlfriend. The profits of gyms and dating websites must be going through the roof.

I feel quite left out, though I suppose I could always try some form of keep-fit as part of my mission to improve my sex-life. Probably something with a more externally-obvious effect than Kegel exercises. I can hardly wear a sign on my head advertising that I do those, after all.

I decide to experiment with the exercise ball Connie bought for Max a few years ago but, although I finally find it hidden in the cupboard under the stairs, it's gone completely flat and, by the time I've pumped it back up, I'm exhausted.

Then, when I try to sit on it, I promptly roll off backwards and end up stuck between the ball and the wall, while Max tries not to laugh. I don't know what he thinks he's got to laugh about, though - he was so offended that Connie thought he needed to exercise that I don't think he's ever used the damned thing.

"Stop laughing and help me," I say. "I can't get any purchase with my feet. This bloody ball keeps moving."

"Can't," he says, "I'm on the phone. Oh, hi, Sam. How are you, mate?"

Oh, bloody hell. I could be here all day if I can't get a grip - which is not something that's easy to do while stuck atop a giant purple ball. It won't stay in one place long enough for me to gain any equilibrium and I'm still wriggling around ineffectually when Josh comes in to the room.

After he's done his share of pointing and laughing, he finally comes to the rescue and pulls me to my feet. I'm quite touched by this, until he says,

"Mum, aren't you too old to be starting an exercise programme without seeing your doctor first?"

"No," I say, though now Josh has mentioned it, I'm not so sure. Pride does come before a fall - and it's certainly impossible to maintain it after one. Knowing my luck, I'll break a hip next time I fall off, or tear all my stomach muscles simultaneously. Once I can actually find the buggers.

It's probably safer to content myself with searching YouTube for videos on how to use the ball for now - so I join Max on the sofa and open my laptop. This has the added advantage of allowing me to eavesdrop on his conversation with Sam.

"What? You want Molly to do it?" he says. "Are you sure that's wise? You know she's compulsively truthful."

Since when has that been a bad thing, for God's sake? Everyone should try it. Especially husbands. I glare at Max, but he just waves at me dismissively and continues:

"And are you sure you want to keep going with this online dating thing anyway? You know you're a bloody loony magnet. Mol and I watched that Love, Virtually thing on Channel 4 last night and those women scared the shit out of me."

That's true, actually. Max went white when the women using the websites started talking about how they cyber-stalk their dates, and even paler when one of them said that she was "immediately" suspicious of her new boyfriend because he "had sixteen female friends on Facebook". (She didn't say that any of them were Thai, so I don't think we were talking about a Dad-style scenario, either.)

Max kept repeating, "Only sixteen?" and Josh just sat there muttering at the presenter:

"Yes, well, you can't get a long-term relationship out of this, anyway - can you? Not seeing as it's your job to blog about bloody internet dating."

Honestly, Josh is such a cynic. I can't think who he gets it from. I was quite enjoying the whole Bunny-boiling thing myself, as I figured it might make Max far more grateful for what he's got: i.e. me.

I don't think he made the connection, though, so then I had to point it out to him - which rather diluted its effectiveness.

"Well, whatever site those women were on is probably called mentally-disturbed-dating.com," he said. "But I'm sure they're not typical of all the single women out there."

I really didn't like how positive he seemed to be about this at the time, and I still don't when I recall it now. It sounded far too much like the voice of experience, but I haven't got time to think about what it might mean at the moment as, when Max hangs up the phone, he announces that he's just promised that I will write Sam's profile for www.mysinglefriend.com And that I'll have it finished by this evening.

"Oh, for God's sake," I say. "Why've I got to do it tonight? It's only another dating site, after all. What's so bloody urgent?"

"Well, Sam says he hasn't had sex in ages," says Max. "Weeks, if not months."

"Perhaps he's finally ready for marriage, then," I say.

It's probably a good job Josh got me off the exercise ball when he did as, judging by his expression, I think Max would have been more than happy to have left me there all night.


*Green Goddess - Diana Moran, purveyor of relentless cheerfulness in the godforsaken early hours, back in the days when I could still find my stomach muscles. This video is worth watching just for her saying, "Take the rhythm, the lovely rhythm." Innocent times, before the advent of www.mentally-disturbed-dating.com

Call That An Interview? Abandon Your Dignity All Ye Who Enter Here.

Josh has his interview at the cinema today. I'm keeping everything crossed, which is a little uncomfortable, though maybe that'll compensate for my failure to do regular Kegel exercises. I suppose it's a bit late to start them now, seeing as I am meeting Johnny on Thursday.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if Josh got the job, though? Throughout the day, I keep drifting off into reveries in which Josh owns a chain of cinemas, and is able to keep his mother in the style to which she would like to become accustomed. Then I could tell The Boss where to stuff his job next time he makes me deal with a total lunatic without security. Or if he ever pretends that he has fallen asleep while I am speaking again.

This fantasy is so compelling that I almost manage to convince myself that I am just working out my notice, and so I even manage to stay calm in the face of Richard Levinson's demands that the Government "grows some balls like Sarkozy, and chucks out all those bloody gypsies" who are, apparently, the only reason that Richard and his fiancee aren't being given a three bedroomed council house all to themselves. I rise above all this, lost in my imaginary universe - and very nice it is too.

Reality makes its presence felt the moment I get home, though. Josh is back in ranting constituent mode as soon as I step through the front door. Can't say I blame him. What on earth has happened to interviews? When did they become about how much a candidate is prepared to humiliate him or herself?

Apparently, the Jobcentre sent about eighty young people for the interviews at the cinema - which rather undermined the impressiveness of Josh's achievement in being one of them. They were split into two groups, and then set some of the most stupid and demeaning tasks I can imagine.

These included being asked which fruit you are, and why. (What the hell kind of stupid question is that?) Then came an exercise in recalling and repeating everything the previous ten people had said in one of those "I went to the shops and I bought" tasks so beloved of 1980s TV improvisation shows - you know, the ones which starred Josie Lawrence and occasionally John Sessions (before he got fat and unrecognisable).

If the candidates hadn't already lost the will to live by this point, they then had to say what their favourite film was - to which Josh was, unsurprisingly, the only one to say "Mrs Doubtfire." Next, they were each paired up with another applicant to act out dialogue from film scripts.

I mean, I know this is a job in a cinema, and Josh did have high hopes for his Film Studies A-level, but really - does he actually need to be able to act and recite in order to sell tickets and over-priced popcorn? He reckons he's in with a chance of getting the job, though, as he says most of the other candidates were dead from the neck up and could barely remember their own names. Three of them apparently chose vegetables when they were asked what fruits they were - which Josh thought very appropriate.

He finds out sometime in the next two days if he's been successful. It'll be very worrying indeed if he hasn't been. In the meantime, maybe I should start asking constituents what sort of fruit they are - though the answer would be bound to be "cake."