Sedated in Stevenage

I can safely say that I've had better fortnights. In fact, the whole thing was a complete waste of time, so rather than write self-pitying drivel here for a whole fortnight, now I've got a bit of perspective I can write it all now.

It got off to a flying start when I failed my driving test, again. One more and it's going to become a routine.

But really did it was being stuck in Stevenage for the whole two weeks. My employers have decided to introduce a new IT system, neatly reducing the whole messy business of care management with an extremely complicated series of boxes. The idea being that rather than spend money on professional IT trainers, they'd spend a fortnight training staff to be trainers.

The writer in me felt the old filing system had an asthetic advantage, with its dusty old letters and scrawled notes it managed to convey a sense of narrative, a personality emerging that the electronic system goes out of its way to avoid. The part of me that has to train the team how to use it (in three blocks of five, in two and a half days each), turned to drink and non-prescription tranquilisers. They're called Naturacalm, and they put me in space for about two days.

The rest of the time I just moped. It wasn't just the early mornings, and that I spent £70 on fares, therefore having no money all week. It was also the fact that I hate working in IT. People have been telling me all month that "There's a lot of money in IT you know". I'd just find working in computers all the time extremely boring and surprisingly maddening. I didn't get into social work to do IT, and people are always going to be more interesting than computers. And let's face it, two weeks in an IT office was enough to drive me cuckoo.

Oh well, my brief spell as an IT teacher starts in a fortnight. My colleagues would be the first to admit that they're not exactly technically minded. And the senior managers weren't much help."I'm just not convinced that I can teach this to the majority of my team.""Why not? Which bit don't you understand?"

The worst bit's over anyway, I hope. I just need to rest, calm down, and work out why the hell O2 just cut my phone off.