I’ve been back in the office now since Monday and am already getting back into the swing of the holidays and working full time. This time around I have the added pleasure of Alex working with me for two weeks as she is doing some work experience in the same office. Tonight we’re attending the launch of a new martini at Kensington roof gardens so have packed our most expensive-looking clothes and are looking forward to some free martini!

The Vangos (Dave’s band) have another gig in London on Friday but the rest of the time I’m going to try to avoid doing anything which will cost me money. In other words, avoid doing anything.  There are rumours going around my house at the moment about a family meal out being on the cards in celebration of Father’s Day which my mum is away for next week. The prospect of which is making me very excited indeed.

All in all this is going to be a tough month as I managed to spend way beyond my means last term. Apart from a trip up to Manchester next weekend there isn’t much that I will need to spend my money on. I’ve even been packing my own lunches to take to work (although remembering to bring them to work is a different story).

I am starting to wonder if my reason for existing is merely to make my existence harder. This seems a little self-loathing I know, but to be honest, I have been feeling that way inclined these past few days.

It all started on a hung over morning on Saturday when I woke up at 1pm to the rather excitable Natalie who proclaimed that her boyfriend was cooking us all a post-summer ball fry-up. How lovely. I trudge downstairs (looking an absolute treat I might add) and greet the troops who have gathered in the kitchen. I grumble my good mornings and offer to help Chris with the cooking just as he throws, yes throws, some sausages into a frying pan full of oil.

Maybe I should just mention this thing I have going right now called daily burn. It's pretty simple, I burn myself at least once a day, mainly on cooking appliances but I've had the odd hair straightener incident and cigarette burn too. Well this was the worst daily burn yet as the oil covered my left arm and leg and has left me with lovely scarring blisters.

Feeling pretty down I decided to quickly grab breakfast and start to get my life in order (I was supposed to be leaving for London at 2pm so that I could catch the final of I'd do anything at home with my mum). After my shower I realised that when I 'packed my stuff up so that I wouldn't have to do it hung over on Saturday' I really had just shoved everything into the corner of my room. So i get to work and sort most of my stuff out.

Just as I'm about to pack my car, I realise something. The makeup bag which I had left at John's in Manchester which had my bank card in, also contained something else rather essential; My car keys.

Cut to me sheepishly approaching John and asking him very sweetly if it would be highly inconvenient for him to drive back to Manchester in order to get my car keys and bring them back to Leeds. Just a 2 hour round trip he had to make because of a mistake I made, nothing really.  Luckily he didn’t even complain and got straight in the car to retrieve my keys.

This gave me time to continue packing my stuff and even box everything that needed to be moved into the new house so that I didn’t have to make a later trip to move it in myself. What did I do instead? Well there was talk of coffee and cake with Alex’s dad, why would I decline? John returned back to mine at about 6pm so I decided to watch the final in Leeds instead and thus began the drive home at around 7.30pm arriving home close to 11.

The next day John, Dave and the other boys were playing a gig in Camden and so I drove down to my local station where John and I caught the train to meet the others. I managed to pick up John’s wallet, say that I had it and then put it back down again on the seat of my car. Not very clever, although it did mean that he got to spend another night at my house where as the other boys had to camp out in their car which they needed to put a ticket on at 8 the following morning.

We managed to enjoy a relatively cheap night in London because apart from the £6 to watch their gig, everywhere else we went was free and seeing as I was driving I didn’t spend any money on drinks.

The Leeds Universities Summer Ball is a huge event boasting 6 tents and over 12,000 students with entertainment from huge artists and DJs. This year I managed to have loads of fun without getting so drunk that I was ready to go home around midnight (last year’s mistake).  I even managed to keep my spending to a minimum and came home with change, yes, change from a night out – a first for me.

We started drinking at our house first so that we didn’t have to buy too much alcohol there considering a bottle of wine was £11. By getting a minibus instead of the coach we were able to maximise pre-drinking time and get there just when it was starting to get busy.

The night was really good as we managed to visit most of the tents and dance the night away. Getting back to find that we were locked out of the house with no-one stirring to come and let us in was not that brilliant at four in the morning. But all in all it was a great night for those of us who lasted.