Zetec engine.

Just bought this as my first car and love it but... the gearbox has, um, character. Basically, 3rd and 4th are both an inch left of neutral, 1st and 2nd are miles off to the left, and reverse is just a pain in the neck. Sometimes if I'm facing up a hill and go into 1st the gearbox will say, "Hey how about 3rd instead?". I'll SEE that it's in 1st but then I let go and it's somehow sprung into 3rd. Also, jiggling it around in neutral seems very messy.

I had a friend go through the gears while I looked under the bonnet at the shifter cable and it looks as if something's loose. The cable has a barrel on the end of it (imagine a cork with some string cored down it) and this barrel seems to pop out of a hole in what I'm assuming is the gearbox, and then it has trouble finding its way back in there on every other shift.

Is this barrel supposed to be coming out of the hole at all? And if so, is it supposed to be able to do it without missing or jiggling around? Could the shifter cable be a bit slack? Any help from some more learned people would be amazing!

Many thanks :)

Has it had a clutch done ? Down under the plastic cover on the box where the cables are one has a yellow clip ( don't push it) and if you push this clip in it gives you what you are describing , I cant remember off the top of my head how to realign as last one I did was donkey years ago but it does involve lifting the gear lever cover and aligning 2 holes up and locking them with a right size drill bit and setting the levers at the box and the said yellow clip, google I suppose could help , my memory is very poor sorry, but its a start maybe....