P lets me do quite a few jobs by myself these days. I've become really expert with the loo plunger. P says I'm better than he is at it, but I think it's because he doesn't really like these blocked loo jobs. Frankly, if it wasn't for the money I'd run a mile, but it pays really well.

We spent nearly the whole weekend in a new block of apartments behind the Commercial Road, just tightening up all the loose radiator connections and leaky pipes before they put the carpets in. Whoever did the original plumbing contract wanted shooting, according to P. In truth, considering there were about 200 apartments in the block, we didn't find many actual faults, but as P says, there shouldn't have been any. A leak from a 20p junction can ruin a grand's worth of carpet.

Terrific views from the top floors of the block, across the river, toy boats, toy streets full of toy traffic, old churches standing in little patches of green among all the concrete and tarmac. I think it was the first time I'd ever been that high with the opportunity to spend time looking out the window. P showed me where our house is, but there was too much concrete between to see the actual building, though I could see the top of the old factory in the next street.

Less than a month to go to the trip. That's what I'm looking forward to now.

We've been studying a huge catalogue of very poor photos of the site we'll be excavating in April. Also another catalogue of black and white photos of some of the earlier finds - pots and metal tools and jewellery etc. It's almost impossible to make out what most of them are. But what's clear is that they are from all sorts of periods. It looks as though this site is a total mish mash of settlements all on top of each other. Well that's not uncommon, but there's usually a more obvious reason for a site to stay popular for centuries, like being a deep-water port, on a trade route, at a sacred site or something. But this place is miles from the sea, off the beaten track and there's no sign yet of a temple or statuary - just the foundations of houses and a street, and some huge blocks of stone as if there was a plan to build something.

The madness continues. W has been arrested, charged, appeared in court, released on bail and everyone's going around as if he's going to get off altogether if there's any justice. Doh.

Went out with D again last night. When I get home, Mum said "You're late."

I said, "But I'm later than this every night."

"It's different when you're working. I hope you're still a virgin."

Where did that come from? I wondered. Then realised it was all about P's spot of bother with M. I just glared at her. A catholic priest once told me that a lot of nuns were in the convent because they'd tried sex and didn't like it much. On this basis I'd qualify for a nunnery. I have no difficulty telling Mum I'm a virgin. I'm not, but I might as well be. D has other ideas, though.

We had a nice briefing today on the ruins we'll be looking at in Greece.
As far as I can gather, there is no building projecting more than about three inches from the ground, the whole area has been thoroughly turned over years ago for its pots and jewellery, and the turning over has confused the site.The finds were dated at between 100BC and 1000BC, which makes them really uninteresting.
There are no Mycenaean or Minoan or Hellenic connections, so what we have here is a settlement of common folk, no kings, no palaces, no exotic religions involving blood sacrifices. All the nice pottery and jewellery has already been carted off to a museum. Still, beggars can't be choosers, and I'm a beggar these days.

Back to normal, then with the disfunctional plumbing of East London. Quite a relief to be encountering the same old problems. I've learned so much in the last month!

P, though, was looking pretty shifty last night. I finally wormed out of him that he is having an affair with some woman whose central heating he fitted last year, and M's suspicions are well-founded. The smug bugger actually said he was pleased I'd been suspected and cleared by M, because it would lift the pressure off him. Turd.

M called - P's wife - full of apology. The story? P had had a fling with some girl before Christmas and M thought it had all started up again. Apparently, P convinced her that he could never fancy me. Well, there's a compliment, isn't it? Anyway, it's OK if I work with P. Well, thanks very much, Mandy. I managed not to spit in her eye, because I need the job.

P called again later and I'll be working tomorrow as usual.

If I thought my troubles were over for the week I was wrong. It was three o'clock in the morning and P and I are sitting in the all-night caff with all the taxi drivers and the early-shift underground workers when in walks P's girlfriend, M, a nice girl I knew at school for heaven's sake, and starts laying into us as if we were having an affair or something. I didn't know where to look. Anyway, P took her outside, all the men in the place leering at me like I'm some kind of whore while he's talking to her in full view of the window and she's weeping like you wouldn't believe. I didn't know where to put myself. Then P walks off with her soaking his shoulder and I'm left there with a cup of sugary coffee and a sticky bun for twenty minutes till I left and walked right home. I haven't heard from P since so I don't even know if I'm working tonight and his mobile's off. I am thoroughly sick.

So D and I went out again last night. It was a repeat of last time at first. But when we went to the pub, there was one of his friends there - I  forget his name. Well, I don't know how it started, maybe the friend was too nice to me, but suddenly they were both on their feet glaring at each other. It really looked a bit dangerous for a minute. But then D's friend backed off a little and it was all over. D came over all apologetic to me. But the friend went all pale and walked out. It was all very worrying, and I saw D in a new light altogether. I took a cab home.

Then this morning D calls me all butter wouldn't melt, and goes "Let's see a movie." I made an excuse.

P actually let me do a job all by myself last night. It wasn't much really. Just one of those sink trap blockages, but we'd just arrived at the customer when he got a call to a burst pipe nearby so he left me there with a pipe wrench and some spanners and I fixed it and I caught up with him later.

He was nice enough to say that he gets through a lot more work with me helping than he used to on his own. And he has raised my pay! I'm saving as much as I can for this Greek trip.

Well, D finally got his date last night. It was OK really, he didn't force himself on me or anything but I can't say I'm smitten or impressed in any way. I made sure I dressed tidily but not too alluring. We went to Carlotta's and had spaghetti bolognese. I insisted on going Dutch, but he bought the wine, which was one of those tourist-trap Italian bottles with straw wrapped round it that taste like dishwater. I mostly drank water so he had most of it himself. Then we hit the Fancy Tart - a pub named after some admiral or other. We had a few drinks. We talked archaeology a bit which wasn't too bad. It seems this dig in Greece is at any rate quite new and undocumented.Then he walked me home. By this time I'd made sure he knew I lived with my family, so there was no nonsense there. I quite enjoyed the evening because I haven't been getting out much but I didn't think he did.

So I was quite surprised when he txtd me this morning to say he'd enjoyed our date and we must do it again. Maybe he was just being polite, but he doesn't seem that kind of person.

No definite news about the trip to Greece yet, but D said today he was sure it'd be OK. Then he invited me out this Saturday. I'm working the midnight to eight shift with P, so I told him I had a night shift starting midnight. I didn't tell him what my other job is. I'm not sure that'd be wise! It's not a very feminine occupation, nor a particularly scholarly one. He gave me a strange look and didn't suggest another alternative, so I hope I haven't shot myself in the foot on this one. What if he finds someone else to wangle on the trip? But then I don't really fancy this assignment being dependent on dating D.

I suddenly realised that I was going to use initials instead of names here, but I've mentioned Peter and Dave by name, and my own name's real. So much for discretion. I'll revert to P and D now, and revise the other entries some other time.

One of these Docklands jobs in a stylish new apartment was worth a laugh. We were called in by this guy who had discovered that when he flushed his loo several times in succession, on the second flush the flushing water was warm, on the third it was hot, and on subsequent occasions it arrived steaming. I didn't get it at first, any more than the punter, who had been in the brand-new flat for months without noticing, so it seemed to him that it had only just started to happen. Of course, Peter got it right away. The cistern was connected to the hot water system instead of the cold. It came in cold the first time because it had had time to cool before the next flush. If it had been in our house, it would have been boiling the whole time. The loo doesn't feature much idle time at the Campbells.

Another problem at one of the new apartments in the same block was the mysterious stream of scalding water that shot from the overflow pipe of the central heating. This geyser could erupt at almost any time of day, and the pipe was directed into a little courtyard behind the flats. Everyone was terrified to cross the yard in case it was time for Old Faithful. Even the local cats avoided the place. It almost  stumped Peter, because everything seemed connected up OK. It turned out that the inlet and outlet pipes on the boiler had been reversed, and it was a miracle that it worked at all, which it seemed to mostly.

Got a whisper of a job on an ancient site in the Greek islands this morning. Dave, one of my classmates from final year is going on it, and he says he'll try to wangle a place on it for me. I'd never really noticed Dave before. He's a big red-haired guy who I didn't think I liked very much, but if he can get a job for me he'll be my hero. Seems it's been planned for ages but there have been a few drop-outs because it's at an awkward time and it's not a very interesting site. But, hey, any real archaeological work will do me, especially when it's in the sunshine. Please let it work out! Some of the students in my class have had zero difficulty getting jobs. I wonder if it's racial or sexual discrimination despite I got a better degree than most of them. No point in worrying about that, though, because I'll never know. Dave seems to think that a beard is part of an archaologist's uniform, so he's growing one, he says. I don't think I'll bother.

I'm beginning to recognise the various customer types that Peter services. There are the terribly poor ones who can hardly afford Peter's rather expensive rates. They tend to be in the council flats and only call Peter when it becomes obvious that the  council are not going to turn up and make the repair for them. And when the situation is almost out of hand. Then there are the estate management  people, including, sometimes, the council themselves, who are looking after a building. They are usually spending someone else's money, so they don't care and they'll call out Peter for a trivial job and pay the full callout fee and exorbitant hourly rate without a blink. Finally there are the well-off people in these Docklands developments, with fancy interior decor and what Peter calls 'slick' plumbing.

It was a quieter night from the plumbing point of view and Peter and I spent a couple of hours sitting in his kitchen waiting for another call. When we'd talked about plumbing for a while,  he asked me about archaeology, that's the second time he's done that - and he's the first member of my family to listen to the answer.  I think he was really interested. Then we got another call and it was madness again for an hour or two.

Well. My first night shift over, and a few tales to tell already. I'd sort of expected to be sitting around half the night, waiting for a phone call, but it wasn't like that at all. We must have answered a dozen calls. I'd always imagined that plumbing was all about fixing burst pipes, but there was only one of those.

In a filthy kitchen showing all the signs of a recent "domestic", a sink had been pushed a good six inches out of place, and a mist of water sprayed out from the twisted joint under the tap. Peter found the supply valve and turned the water off. We wrestled the sink back into place and Peter fixed the connection.

There were two blocked toilets, utterly ghastly. What a stink, I tell you. Peter says they always leave it too long before calling him. He has a strange flexible plunger sort of thing that he rams down the loo. It worked both times last night, but Peter says it doesn't always. He didn't mention what he does if the plunger doesn't work, but I hate to think.

In most cases it was a blocked sink and involved taking out the trap and clearing it. One of these was truly  silly - someone had poured jelly down the sink and it had set solid.

Despite the fact that Peter is my cousin, I don't really know him very well. He was very nice, explaining everything he was doing, and letting me pull the spanner from time to time. In between jobs, we talked a lot, and he seemed very interested in my archaeology, saying I should stick to my guns and not be bullied into some dead-end profession.

I've been offered a job and it really is ideal because it allows me to have most of my day free for archaeological pursuits - at least those items that can be pursued in the college library. I remember my cousin Peter watching me on New Year's Eve, when the whole family were on about me earning a living, and he was the only one who wasn't on my case. He phoned up this morning and suggested that I take a job as his assistant. He would pay me a percentage of what he earns and I would just help him and learn the trade at the same time. He mainly works at night - he has a franchise as a 24 hour emergency plumber. This doesn't mean that the job is 24 hours, you choose a shift, and you only get called during that time period. He takes the midnight to 8am shifts because he has his brother's shop to look after. You can see there's a tradition of hard work in our family and why it there is such pressure on everyone to get a job!

So, anyway, I start tomorrow, Monday.  A plumber!

I suppose that I'd better fill in some background about me and my family. My great-grandmother came from Jamaica. She married an Irishman recently arrived from a famine-stricken Galway. At the time, they were both representatives of the underclass, but together they forged a dynasty of industrious workers. I am an exception, and Mum loses no opportunity to remind me.

The Campbell clan varies quite a bit in appearance. Some of my cousins are very dark, Peter in particular. I am almost white, but the mirror reminds me of my Carribean origin. Those lips. But at least my hair is reasonably long and straight and I don't spend half my life in the hairdresser, steaming out kinks, plaiting them into cornrows and threading in beads and extensions. No wonder hairdressing is a growth industry in the East End of London, my sister and several other female relations being pillars of the profession.

I don't really like the way I look. It's been quite comfortable at University wearing jeans and baggy sweaters and I am confident that a professional archaeologist can spend most of their life wearing just that uniform.

Suzanne keeps trying to get me into make-up and posh frocks, and perch me on shoes of unlikely height, and I have to admit that she looks really good in all the war paint and finery, but I haven't got the patience for all the effort.

So I'm not exactly under siege from boyfriends, and I think most of my relatives of my generation think I'm retarded - half of them are married or at least in a "meaningful" relationship by my age. 22 in case you're wondering. I'll post a photo up here next time I'm all dressed up for a party. Till then, you'll have to use your overactive imaginations.