Somehow, a while back, I found out that banana plants were actually giant herbs. I told this to some people and they ridiculed me.

‘Giant herbs?’ they said. ‘You’re making stuff up.’

‘It’s true!’ I cried. ‘I’ll show you. Let’s look it up on Wikipedia.’

Wikipedia is, of course, the fount of all knowledge. Imagine my distress, then, when there was no mention of ‘herb’ in Wikipedia’s banana article.*

‘But it’s true…’ I said plaintively.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ they said.

I started doubting my previous conviction.

Unexpectedly, while visiting the Palm House at Kew Gardens, I received long overdue vindication.

‘I told them so! I told them!’ I shouted.

Yap passed on some more interesting banana facts.

He said, ‘There is a disease killing all the bananas, you know. It’s gradually reducing the worldwide banana production.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that! It must be because all the bananas are clones of each other.’

Yap nodded. ‘In fact, due to this disease, some experts have announced that we have reached peak production.’ He paused. ‘It’s peak banana**.’

* The Wikipedia article on bananas now does have a reference to it growing from ‘herbaceous plants’ in the first line. I swear this wasn’t there when looked.

** I thought Yap was joking and I laughed hysterically. But I just now looked it up on Google and found that there are indeed people writing about peak banana.

I’m pretty good at spelling. But I tried to spell that word that means really big, starts ‘c’ and rhymes with ‘fossil’. I tried to do it three times: callosal, collosal, collosol. I don’t think I’ve ever used it before! I was completely baffled.

Turns out it is spelled ‘colossal’.

It started on Friday night. I went to a nice quiet bar with my team mates to bid farewell to our team leader, who is leaving for hotter and more lucrative shores. At 11pm, the quiet bar turned into a thumping night club. So I checked my bag and jacket into the cloak room and boogied past the time that Tube trains stop running.

When I stepped out of the bar/club to take a night bus home, I discovered that my Oyster card was no longer in my coat pocket. I ran back to the bar but now that it had turned into a club, there were four burly bouncers at the door and a line of people waiting to get in. I was locked out.

To get home, I had to pay more than twice the normal bus fare by buying a fare from a ticket machine. Okay, fine, I deserved to be punished for being careless. But — I had no coins in my red wallet to feed the ticket machine! For a few minutes, I contemplated having to walk for 90 minutes in the middle of the night to get home.

I had an idea. If I could find a shop open, I could buy something to get some coins for change! Then I could get a bus ticket.

McDonald’s saved the day. I bought chips (yum!) and then had the coins I needed.

The next day, I bought a new Oyster card and loaded it up with a couple of pounds. After a weekend of travelling around London with friends, my Oyster card balance was £2.70 — enough for one more Tube trip.

I slept badly on Sunday night. I woke up at 3am because my feet were really cold. I got out of bed to put on two pairs of socks and still my feet were icy. I curled up in a ball and hung onto my feet. They must have warmed up because I eventually fell asleep.

Being tired the next day probably affected my thinking. I used up £1.50 of my Oyster credit to get to work. This meant that there was £1.20 credit left, not enough money to get back home but I planned to call Transport for London to transfer the £20 on my lost card to my new card. This they did for me — but it will only be available tomorrow. That was okay. I would top up my card with the 30 pence I needed to travel home.

Today, winter began in earnest, and rain bucketed down. I stayed in the office until 6:40pm. Monday is my dance lesson night. I had to get to Covent Garden for 7pm.

I packed up my desk, changed into my t-shirt and shorts, then stepped out into the night. Only there, standing at the front of the building, did I realise that there was no umbrella in my bag. I had left my umbrella in my weekend bag. Being tired this morning meant that I had forgotten to transfer things between bags.

Having missed my dance lesson last week, I was determined to make it this week. It was only 15 minutes walk. A little rain never killed anyone. So I headed off, grabbing the first free newspaper offered to me by a street spruiker, and held the paper over my face.

By the time I got to the dance studio, the paper was soaked through and my hair was dripping. At the reception, I reached into my bag to get out £4 for entry fee. My purse wasn’t in its usual place. I suddenly got a mental picture of my red purse next to my green umbrella at home. I knew it was fruitless but I dug around in my wallet some more while I thought about what to do.

I admitted to myself that I couldn’t go dancing today. So I ventured out back into the rain, unconvincingly batting away raindrops with my rapidly disintegrating free newspaper.

I very quickly realised I had another problem. The £1.20 on my Oyster card would not get me home on the Tube. I didn’t have even 30 pence to top it up.

I thought about begging.

Well, really, I was lucky I had enough for a 90 pence bus fare. Imagine if I hadn’t! I would have had to walk an hour through the rain with my bare legs sticking out from under my brown woollen coat to get home! Now though, I just needed to walk 10 minutes in the rain to get the bus, then another 10 minutes in the rain once I got off the bus.

By the time I reached home, my shoes were soaked wet. I was a drowned Joanrat and my feet were cold again.

Last week, our landlord gave us a month’s notice to vacate the house. It was a bit of a shock. Although he had been talking about selling the place, considering how sickly the housing market was doing, I figured we had a while yet before eviction.

I’ve spent a week obsessing over house ads on Gumtree and Moveflat. In a week, I visited five potential houseshares and flatshares. I’ve been trying to move within walking distance of work. For a place near work, I am willing to pay:

• £80/month, due to travel cost savings
• £40/month, to save 10 hours commuting time
• £15/month, to avoid the vagaries and germ-spreading of the Tube (although, really, I love the Tube and its glorious convenience)

At the end of Saturday, I found a place in north London. It’s a new neighbourhood for me, having lived in south London since last November.

It’s 20 minutes walk from work and 10 minutes walk from Regent’s Park. I’ll be living in a maisonette with a couple (I think they own the place).

I was first a bit worried that it was too expensive for me. After some pondering, I now think it’s probably worth pay the £10 a week premium for the niceness of the flat, the size of the room, the fact I won’t be sharing it with a zoo of people, the lack of long-term contract (I will pay month by month), the interesting neighbourhood, and, of course, the location.