Postcard from the Unemployment Lands

It was a surreal walk to the job centre yesterday. Still, everything seems surreal these days. It was so blindingly hot, and I wasn't quite sure where I was going. Portslade seemed an odd place... provincial and urban simultaneously. My interview at the job centre went okay. Everyone there seemed nice and helpful (unlike the dreadful insincerity of the HSBC bank staff yesterday) though they all seemed to have wandered in from the 1980s. I couldn't help but notice that the window looked out onto the train station, and the footbridge over the tracks. I wondered what it would be like to work there, to come in on bleak grey winter morning, and watch that bridge crawl from one night to another. What would it look like at twilight and in the rain? In hazy October sun and buffetted by wind?
As I waited for my appointment a half familiar voice said hello. I couldn't remember his name - Abdul? Ahmed? He was a customer at the petrol station, used to work at Toys R Us in the retail park next door. Married now with a child. I first met him when he was 19 and just wanted a car. Now he's the same age as I was when I first met him.
I walked back along the Old Shoreham Road. Hot again, but I was feeling strangely optimistic, though unsure as to about what. I came home, and after dinner, fell asleep for an hour or two. I didn't do much when I woke. As I was going to sleep I felt wind shake the window.
The weather had certainly changed today. Vast banks of grey skies. I finally headed out of the bedsit at about 1:30pm. I headed down the beach, and as soon as I got to the beach it began raining. A slick, half-heavy summer rain, lukewarm and the opposite of refreshing, like feeling mildly ill when you were a child. I headed up to the Marina, though did not reach it. A wave of despair overcame me. I felt absolutely overwhelmed by everything.
I came home and slept for a few hours.
When I woke, I opened a letter that had come from the administrators. My P45 and last payslip, they informed me, had been sent to my old address at Wilbury Crescent. They advised me it would be worth my while to obtain it. So I went round, and thought that I had been given what I needed. I opened it and discovered it was an advertisement for DFS sofas.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
It's now 7:15pm. A week ago, I had just left work for the last time, though I didn't know it, and was mildly worried about how much my trip to Worcester was going to cost me. Seven days later and I am living on £2 a day. Strange how quickly things can change.
I wonder how things will unfold from here.
I really can't see at all.