Start with the good news. A position came up at work for a section coordinator on Foods ( I work at M&S), and despite insisting I'm leaving (been saying that the entire 10 years I've been there) I decided to go for the position and in short I was successful. Start on Monday.

On the negative side it is still too short (£16,555) a year, but it does now make it easier to find a second job to go with this to finally make up the £18,600 needed. 6.5 hours on minimum wage a week to be exact, down from 16 on my old wage.

Long way to go yet but it's finally a start, plus it will go down well on my CV to help for the millions of applications I send!