Tonight saw me laid off from my job at BHS, having failed to make the cut. It's the very news I had expected when I first received the letter telling me that my contract had come to an end. Soon, I will be back to having to rely on unemployment benefits, which I do not want to go back onto. But I must claim them if I want to avoid losing my home.

There is something I've noticed about my country's society as a whole. When I'm employed, people treat me with respect, even if I feel I don't deserve that respect. But when I'm not employed, people look at me as though I'm the worst person they have ever met. That's how I feel right now, coupled with having barely posted any new written material for the whole year. But the way the job market is right now, Christmas is the only time of year I have ever been able to find work; most other businesses simply rejected me straight away.

I have no desire to rein in the New Year, so don't ask me to do any celebrating. I feel like the scum of the Earth. If you think that's simply because I have no job, then you're correct. The only upside of this is that I never have to see a bigoted colleague I hated again. Before I started this job, I thought that Eastern Europeans thought they were superior to the English, but now I see that the reason some of them treat us with contempt is people like him. At least I'm nothing like him. But finding another job before next Christmas is something I believe will be totally impossible no matter how I try.

BKT