I'm not at all sure why I'm doing this. It seems terribly self-indulgent. My partner has often suggested it , but I suspect that's because he wants me to waste more time to lessen his guilt. But here goes. I'm flailing about a bit with the technology, but no-one will read it anyway so I don't suppose it matters.

I am a journeyman, a day labourer. I get up each morning and go to see if I have any work. If I haven't, I don't get paid. This seems to me exactly like the situation of my great-grandfather, who was a docker and went down to the docks every morning at around five. He had the advantage of me, though, because he took the Telegraph which, in those days, carried the shipping news so he tended to know when a ship was due in. His peers thought this was uncanny, and hung around with him in the hope that some of the luck would rub off, which - naturally - it usually did.

My children mock me when I point to my precarious working-class status. They show no respect. They point to the thousand things about my life that prove I'm middle class. When did patterns of consumption, rather than labour, become the key determinants of class? How useful is consumption as a class indicator? To be defined, and to define ourselves and each other, in terms of our possessions and the way we spend our money?

I hesitated over having a good rant about idle husbands at this point and decided against it. As I don't imagine anyone will ever read this, I don't quite know why.