"Eeee, are ye alreet, pet?"

I am lying flat on my back on a sheet of ice and snow, an old woman of about ninety-thousand is peering down at me with concern. She leapt about a hundred yards with the grace of a gazelle and is now offering to help. Brilliant.

Yes, I think to myself. I am fine. Why would you ask? It’s very comfortable down here. I just fancied a little lie down.

It is 8.40 in the morning.

“It’s OK.” I inform her as I begin moving upright again.

Fortunately she moves on before she sees me perform the ‘Spastic Duck’ – an odd move performed when attempting to stand up again on a sheet of ice whilst your feet splay away from you before you can gain any sensible purchase and you find yourself briefly dancing on the spot like Donald fucking Duck.

She’s nowhere to be seen by the time I right myself. Amazing.

Sadly the surprisingly attractive woman who got on my bus (most people who use public transport in my neck of the woods have weird teeth and eyes that point in different directions) and sat opposite me for my journey is still in witness distance.

I resolve to regain some dignity and make it the rest of the way to my office upright so as to massively impress this creature with my ‘walking like a normal person’ abilities.

And promptly perform the ‘Idiot Crab’.

This is mastered by arranging to have your feet slip into the air in front of you and to begin falling backwards. The trick is to then put your arms back to break your fall and briefly scuttle on the palms of your hands and heels of your feet whilst facing the sky.

I pull it off perfectly.

I arrive at the office to discover that almost everyone in the building has had to stay at home because of the fucking snow the pussies.

This will be an excellent day, I think.

Merry Christmas.

I have developed a worrying fascination with the tramps that occupy the city that I work/spend most of my time in.

The thing that sparked it off was a brief incident in a subway in Sunderland when a gentleman of the street wondered if I could ‘spare’ him a few pounds in order to top-up his mobile phone.

True.

I ask you. Where did he charge it?

Don’t even ask me about the absurd script I began writing for a pilot episode of a television show entitled ‘HoboCop’. The central character had amazing investigative skills based on his experience of rummaging through bins and astounding observational and surveillance techniques – no-one pays any attention to a tramp. He hid lock-picks in his beard. The young ‘maverick cop’ type he teamed-up with had a long-lost father and everything – could it be HoboCop himself? I actually gave this some thought.

Anyway.

The other morning I walk to my office past the sleeping homeless person who makes his night-time abode in a sheltered area across the street from my staff entrance. As ever I am irrationally narked about the fact that he is enjoying a lie-in when I have to be at work. Upon reflection one presumes that if he did have a job to go to he would be up by now. And would have somewhere to live.

Another tramp approaches him. Wearing a Santa hat.

Honestly. Where did he get that?

They have a chat about something or other. Private investigation techniques probably.

I pause outside the door to my office to finish my cigarette. Professional Wendy is there, doing the same.

Professional Wendy: Morning.

Me: Fuck off will you.

Some silence. I’m not a morning person.

PW: Did you see that tramp?

He is 'used to me' and doesn't realise that I am 'not joking'.

Me: [sigh] Which one?

PW: Santa.

Me: Yes. But I don’t actually think it was Santa.

PW: How do you know?

Me: Christ. Are you still stoned?

PW: Think about it. He's UNEMPLOYED three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year. And the ONE day he works he doesn’t get PAID FOR! That COULD BE HIM!

We both stare at the strangely jolly gentleman with the white beard spreading a bit of goodwill with his fellow homeless folk whilst wearing his Santa hat.

Me: Mmm. So far as I know he doesn’t have kids. It’s not like he’d get Housing Benefit. Not on his income. Or Family Tax credit. He must me on his bones.

PW: [Very excited] Oh my God! That's why he always insists upon sherry! THE TRAMPS FUCKING LOVE THEIR FORTIFIED WINE! THEY LIVE OFF IT! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!

Me: Lay off the green. See you later.

I Decide Never to Leave the House.

I’ve often been told that I can change the atmosphere in a room just by walking in to it – the manner in which people tell me this suggests to me that I rarely change it for the better – but this is just ridiculous.

I’m sitting on a bench in a barber-shop (not a hairdressers) waiting to have my hair cut; a necessary evil I have yet to find any way of avoiding.

The barber and his lady colleague are having quite the chuckle, loudly joking with each other and their respective customers. The barber himself is shouting at passers-by on the street asking if they still believe in Santa Claus, his colleague is singing to the unbearably up-beat music blaring from the stereo.

It seems this will be more of a chore than usual.

I’m in no mood for spontaneous jollity with strangers, especially whilst being touched in a ridiculously over-familiar manner by someone I’ve not even met.

The lady barber is – without consent – giving her young customer a bizarre mullet-type thing clipped around the edges that makes the boy resemble a foolish badger. I am hoping her colleague is finished first.

My God they’re loud. These really are a couple of happy cunts.

She finishes off, gives the boy a lollipop and announces that she is off to get a coffee. Thank Christ.

In a moment or two the barber is also finished with his customer and cheerily bids him farewell. I take my seat. There is now only the two of us in the shop. The compact disc in the stereo comes to an end. It suddenly seems very quiet.

Barber: [Needlessly jovial] So! What’s it to be.

I give my standard ‘amusing’ response that if he were to make my hair longer and untidier that would be ideal.

Barber: HAHAHAHAHA! Just a bit of a tidy-up then!

Me: Please.

He starts snipping away. I pretend I am somewhere else.

Barber: So! [Here it comes, I think.] All ready for Christmas then?

I’m going to have to embark on a short period of fake cheerfulness with this fool aren’t I? I really haven’t the energy.

Me: No. I haven’t done a thing. I’ve been moving house this week so I’ve had other things on my mind.

Idiot. IDIOT, I think to myself. You’ve just given him some PERSONAL INFORMATION! He’s fucking got you now. It’s going to be ‘amusing house-move anecdotes’ a-go-go from now on you prick.

He pauses for a minute and looks at me in the mirror.

Barber: [Quiet now] Yeah. I know what you mean. Had a lot on my mind myself this week.

He silently snips away some more, with a troubled expression on his face.

Barber: It’s been the worst week of my life to be honest. My wife had a miscarriage.

It’s silent for some time.

Me: [Helpfully] Oh.

Barber: It was early on but …. Our first you know. I was all excited about being a Dad, just getting my head round it when ….. Don’t suppose you ever really get over …. you know.

Me: [Still helpful] Mmm.

I suppose I could have come up with something supportive, some learnt experience that I could have passed-on but really, I’ve come for a haircut and on top of that he’s really making a meal of trimming the hair on and in my ears – something no-one has yet been insensitive enough to do. He’ll be offering to dye my grey pubes next.

Having wordlessly completed his task, I settle-up with this gentleman.

It is for many an unpleasant time of year and he’s obviously not had the best of it anyway.

I give him a tip of fifty pence.

I Accidentally Do Something Nice and Live to Regret It.

“Alright Tired? Going for a drink after work tonight?”

It’s not an odd question given that it is a Friday afternoon and a few of my colleagues and I regularly gather for drinks after work at the unbearably swanky bar next to our building.

What is odd is that a man I barely know is asking it of me. Perhaps he is just making conversation.

Me: Expect so.

Shaved Chimpanzee: See you there then.

I imagine this to mean that he is meeting his own acquaintances there and that perhaps we will – literally – ‘see’ each other.

But no. He tips up and joins my actual friends and me without knowing any of us and believes himself to be ‘one of the boys’. He has ‘invited himself’. That is ‘against the rules’. You wait to be asked. This went on for three weeks. And I hate him. We all hate him.

How can I even begin to describe the extent of the unbearable nature of this gentleman? To assume you are ‘mates’ with people you don’t know and invite yourself out with them is a bit ‘off’, but forgivable if you are a half-way bearable human being. But he isn’t.

He’s a boor. And a bore.

Again, you could forgive the fact that he is a human slouch, that his absurdly-shaped head does not suit the buzz-cut, especially when he has so much stubble (which is not of the ‘designer’ variety but of the ‘homeless’ type) that it makes his head look a bit ‘upside down’ and that he genuinely believes that dress trousers, brown BROWN shoes and a white shirt that resembles something his Mam would have bought him for school topped with a FUCKING white and gold NYLON ANORAK is suitable attire for the workplace.

But not the boorishness.

There is a special category of ‘stupid’ for people like this. The man has an opinion on every conversation, whether or not the conversation includes him. And insists upon giving it from some imagined lofty height as if gifting us with wisdom from his imaginary ivory tower whether anyone is interested in hearing it or not.



He is the genuis-type who will inform us that the Middle-East situation is 'all about oil' as if we would all shit ourselves with surprise and suddenly understand the world because of that when actually it is down to such complicated religious, tribal, cultural, economic and political factors that NO-ONE in the western world will ever fully understand it.

Don't even get me started on the al-qaeda who apparently live across the road from his bed-sit.

Unaware that actually he is THICK AS SHIT and everyone is so embarrassed by the nonsense spilling from his foolish hole of a mouth that they dare not say anything at all for fear of making him feel small. Which gives him the impression that he has silenced everyone with his massive intellect.

He is beyond ‘stupid’. There are individuals in the world who are non-too-bright and are aware of it. I know a few. They are unassuming, work hard, probably earn much more than me and are fantastic fathers to their children and are great fun to be around.

This individual however is SO stupid HE DOESN’T EVEN REALISE HOW DENSE HE IS. He’s so mentally retarded he THINKS HE IS ACTUALLY QUITE FUCKING CLEVER.

I would like to murder him. Not because of the above – although that is a perfectly good reason - but because he has insinuated himself into my small, selectively-chosen social group and most of us are too nice to tell him to Fuck Off.

The Friday Before Last:

I’m outside said swanky bar having a cigarette with Uncannily Similar and the Fucking New Kid.

Uncannily Similar has one difference from me in that he always takes the new recruits under his wing. Hence the presence of Fucking New Kid, which I tolerate.

Shaved Chimp ambles out, grazing his knuckles on the ground as he walks.

Realizing that he is getting no conversation from either Uncannily Similar or myself, he turns to Fucking New Kid, who is in his early twenties, is probably tweaking from having his first proper job and has worked in our dauntingly large building for three days.

Shaved Chimp: [Unwarranted superior smirk] So what is it with you young fellas anyway? Don’t you realize your hair makes you look a bit gay?

The hair on Fucking New Kid’s head is more than an inch long and he seems to have made some effort to make it look as though he has not just got out of bed. He may as well be George Micheal as far as this cunt is concerned.

Do not misunderstand me. I have no special love for the Fucking New Kid. He’s ‘new’ and that bothers me – I don’t like people I don’t know. But this is out of order. And I’ve had more of the Chimp than I can bear anyway. I have a tipping point.

The following exchange is based on hazy memory and eyewitness reports.

Me: Chimp. Yeah. You. Can’t be many mirrors in YOUR house.

Chimp: Eh…What?

Me: You look like a PILE OF DIRTY FUCKING LAUNDRY.

Chimp: Err…

At this point I am told that I am almost nose-to-nose with the man. I remember losing my peripheral vision and my heart pounding quite a lot.

Chimp: Well…..I think it’s a waste. Em. Ur. You know. I don’t make an effort for WORK.

Me: Fucking CLEARLY. Where’d you get the ANORAK? Fucking CUNTS R US? And who FUCKING INVITED YOU AND YOUR FUCKING OPINIONS ANYWAY? NOBODY LIKES YOU!

He steps back and goes inside. I finish my cigarette. Uncannily Similar silently shakes my hand.

When we return to our Goodfellas-style reserved table we find that the dreadful baboon is wordlessly necking his pint of idiot juice and leaves without another syllable. Never to return.

This Friday afternoon.

Blonde Colleague squints at me after hearing this silly story from Uncannily.

BC: [With a mixture of confusion and surprise] Eh? You did a nice thing?

Me: No. I told a prick to fuck off because no-one else would.

BC: No. You stood up for the Fucking New Kid. You stuck up for him.

Me: Shit. SHIT. You’re right. That’s EXACTLY WHAT HE’LL THINK. Bollocks.BOLLOCKS.

BC: Hahahahahah. He’s your friend now!

She’s wrong, I think to myself. It’s fine.

I go for a walk down a random corridor to clear my thoughts. By astonishing coincidence Fucking New Kid is coming my way.

FNK: Alright Tired? Going for a drink after work tonight?

Me: Expect so.

FNK: See you there then.

And so it transpires that the weak of will, the hangers-on, the people that no-one really want but who are half-way smart enough to make you feel bad for them never really go away – like Energy, they just change form.

I don't know what I'm going to have to do to get rid of this fucker.

Small Moments at Work #2

There is a plumbing problem of some sort in the building that I work in.

Or perhaps a ventilation problem.

It’s a fairly large building with about a thousand staff. It could be anything really. But the odour in some of the corridors is not exactly that of wild roses at times.

Grant From Work: …so I was talking to a guy from maintenance about it and he was all like ‘well, it’s an old building you know’…..

This is sort-of true. It was built in the nineteen-sixties.

Grant From Work: …. And I’m thinking "Eh? Castles are ‘old’. They don’t ‘smell of shit’".

Small Moments at Work #1

Thug Colleague: Either somewheyns mekkin the bread tae big, or somewheyns mekkin the toosters tae smaall. And ah divn’t care whey it is, ah just reckon they shud git thar heeds t’githir and sort it oot.

Thug has a capacity for massively angry over-reaction to the smallest things - a quality I am beginning to quite admire. He is actually smashing things around his desk. It is five minutes past nine in the morning.

He fixes his glare on me.

TC: What dae yea reckon?

Me: Do you buy that ‘Toastie’ bread?

TG: FUCKIN’ AYE! Theym cunts fit intae NAE TOOSTER ON EARTH! Why fuckin’ call it that?

He throws a biro at his monitor in frustration.

I have no answer for him.

But am convinced he has also imagined the same ‘Annual Toaster Manufacturer and Baker Conspiracy Meeting’ that I have, in which leaders of their respective industries get together in Geneva each year to figure out new ways of pissing us off.

I just haven’t the heart to get that cross about it anymore.

Insomnia. Fucking again.

Seriously. What the cock is up with this shit?

I'm boring myself now. It's not the first time I've written about this I'm sure.

The last time monkeymother came up with the initially helpful suggestion of listening to Radio 4. Which I did this evening at nine and fell fast asleep.

And here I am. With, after some weeks of unsuccessful Radio 4 fandom, a worrying fascination with the Shipping Forecast.

Have you heard it? It must be CODE for something surely. Who can sleep after listening to that?

Anyway. Instead of staring at the inside of my eyelids and listening to my heart pounding I get up and do this and think aloud and delete it all in the morning.

Why can't you sleep you twat?

I miss my children something dreadful.

Given. But you couldn't sleep when they lived in the same house as you. Prick. Next?

If I'm honest I miss their mother as well.

See above. And you had your chance.

I hate the night. I used to love it so this is a new torture. I love the day, and work. At work I'm surrounded by men with gambling addictions and women with shining eyes and sharp tongues. And they can do anything. And so can I.

Gay. So what?

This isn't like me. Not now. I've worked hard to not be like this and it frightens me.

Really REALLY gay. Have you been drinking?

Now you mention it.....

Oh you WEAPON. Mister fucking 'sleep disorder expert'. You know that's the worst thing you could do. Go and do some ironing, read a book or something. Cock. And stop having imaginary conversations with yourself on the internet. It makes you look nuts.

“If you were a cheese, what sort would you be?”

It must be a slow day if Professional Wendy has come up with one of these again.

I call him this because if he were to excel in any profession, it would be ‘being a complete Wendy’. He’s just had TWO MONTHS off work with ‘the depressions’ for fuck’s sake. Here’s an idea son – stop spending every evening sitting about in your pants smoking weed all night, put in a full months work for once and earn your way in the world instead of relying on hand-outs from your mates and you might find you fucking cheer up a bit. Anyway.

Blonde Colleague: Just cheddar I suppose.

PW: Why?

BC: I’m straightforward and you know what you’re getting. You?

PW: Mozzarella.

BC: Why?

PW: Because I’m a bit boring but I’m really nice.

He’s got a point and I suddenly realize why he annoys me so much. He is genuinely quite a ‘nice’ bloke. And I dislike ‘nice’ people – they bore me and I find myself tormenting them just to pass the time. It also occurs to me that this may be a personal character flaw of some sort. Oh well.

PW: Tired?

Me: What?

PW: What about you?

Me: Mmm? Dunno. Parmesan I suppose.

BC: You and your fucking parmesan. ‘Freshly grated’ I suppose you twat.

Me: I say that so as to differentiate it from that horrible stuff in the white tubs-

BC: NO-ONE CARES you cock. And who says ‘differentiate’ anyway? ‘I’m Tired Dad, would you like to listen to my stupid words and taste my fresh basil?’ We all know you eat Findus Crispy Pancakes every night anyway. Knob jockey.

PW: Why?

Me: Why what?

PW: Why parmesan?

Me: Oh. Emm. Because I’m quite hard work but there are times when nothing else will do.

BC: WAAAAH-HAHAHA! Where’d you get the last bit? Fucking www.opposite-is-true.com?

Me: That’s my line.

BC: Fuck off is it. You probably stole it from someone anyway – you’re always stealing mine.

Me: No I’m not.

BC: What about ‘I suggest you build a bridge….and GET OVER IT’?

Me: That is quite good. But I gave you ‘shitweazel’.

BC: It’s hardly a ‘line’ is it?

PW: [quietly] It was like this just before my parents divorced.

BC: Anyway. I thought you were going to say you’d be parmesan because you FUCKING SMELL OF VOMIT.

Me: It’s only the stuff in the little white tubs that smell-

Without warning BC throws a tightly-screwed Post-it at me with such ferocity it makes an entirely unexpected ‘clacking’ noise as it ricochets off my forehead. She storms out of the office.

PW: Christ. That wasn’t very nice.

I check my emails.

It's Saturday Night.

And I'm cleaning the cooker.

Bring it on.

"Some Bloke's Just Shown Me His Cock!"

I put my drink down at gaze at Newly-Gay Friend for a moment or two whilst I process this information.

As my pretend name for him suggests, he has recently been a man of some surprises.

He announced his new lifestyle decisions to me some months ago whilst we were enjoying Uncannily Similar’s stag weekend. After an evening that involved – in no particular order – lap-dancers, cocaine, prostitutes and foolishly heavy drinking – it was an additional new experience that pretty much ended my patience with the whole night. After a man-hug that went on longer than strictly necessary I put him to bed and then had to deal with the police who raided the apartment the eight of us had rented for the weekend. (One of us tried to break in. Someone reported it.)

But that’s another story. And is not as interesting as it sounds.

I look around me. We and three other friends are in a cosy public house in the Lake District - the former stamping ground of the Romantic poets which is now mainly occupied by middle-aged people clad in Berghaus and sporting unkempt beards.

It does not strike me as a hot-bed of cock-waving.

Me: You fucking what?

To be honest, after nearly four years of knowing this man the whole ‘gay’ thing is a bit of a thinker after zero indication whatsoever. Presumably his wife of sixteen years and ten-your-old son are also scratching their heads.

NGF: Seriously. Some bloke just got his cock out right in front of me!

I don’t really understand ‘how you roll’ when you become ‘gay’. Maybe this alleged incident happens to you all the time once you go down that road. But I think it unlikely.

I glance around me. Absolutely no-one has their cock out, but there is a stunning view over Lake Bowness.

Me: Where exactly did this happen?

NGF: In the Gents.

Me: Oh for fu-

Glancing over the lake I notice a boat named The Silly Sausage glide by. True.

Me: Right. You’ve been in public lavatories before you were all gay and that? You must be familiar with the phenomenon of men taking ‘themselves’ out of their trousers before now? You can’t have just noticed?

NGF friend starts singing very loudly. Once again I take him to our accommodation and put him to bed. Since his recent decisions he has become a full-blown alcoholic, but for a drinker he is shit at it.

Me: [we are sharing a twin room] I’m not going to have a problem with you tonight am I?

NGF: [amid much drunken burbling] Fuck off. I’d never fancy you.

I get back in my taxi and rejoin the rest of my friends. But find myself irrationally irritated.

“He could fucking do worse” I think to myself.

I Have Two Followers.

I have no idea what this means and it sounds faintly sinister. But 'hello' whoever you are.

Books.

Nicholson Baker may not be the greatest novelist in the world. He’s certainly better than me. I’ve never bothered.

But by God his choice of reading is dreadful.

He wrote a piece recently in the Guardian about eBooks and that.

He didn’t go so far as to say that the complete digitization of all literature would be good or bad, he just described his experience of the new methods of reading novels. Digitally. If one felt so disposed. On a screen. A screen that only Amazon would sell you, and only Amazon would supply content for.

This screen would allow you to download any novel you fancied – so long as Amazon stocked it – anywhere you liked. Anywhere with a broadband connection. Or free wi-fi.

I’m not as widely read as Nicholson Baker (he seems rather fond of ‘thrillers’) but here’s some of my experiences of books:

1) A paperback copy of Life of Pi by Yann Martell. Bought in a charity shop for next to nothing. A fabulous book about belief, stories and faith. And not what you would think upon initial reading. The inside cover was written upon in biro-

‘Rose – get beyond the first hundred pages and it really picks up.’

I’ve no idea who Rose is. Or the (I assume) man was who gave it to her. But it was sensible advice. I don’t know why Rose then gave it away to a charity shop.

But I think of them, whoever they are.

I then lend it to somebody else. Because I like the book and I like the person I lend it to. Like the person who gave it to Rose. Although I’m guessing Rose wasn’t too fond of it.

2) An Encyclopia in my Grandfathers ‘study’. It was really his front room, but even then he didn’t set foot in it. Amazing to a ten-year old boy. All the knowledge in the world, in one massive tome. The pages smelt of wisdom and escape.

3) The works of A.A.Milne. Worn and battered by generations. Red hardback covers hanging off, spines barely clinging. Read to my mother, read by my mother to me, read by me to my younger brother and sister and one day hopefully to my own children. Old books, literally falling apart and smelling of love, however misplaced.

4) Bookshelves. I’ve been massively fortunate growing up for one reason. There were always books. I doubt my mother or indeed any of the illiterates she married ever read any of the books they populated the book-shelves they insisted upon, but at least they were there. And for every three Jackie Collins (deeply alarming to a thirteen-year-old-boy) there was at least one Angela Carter (slightly more alarming but for better reasons). There was some Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath and Raymond Chandler. At least they were there.

But now they’ve invented this ‘Thing’. Upon which you can see any book anytime, like the online catch-up service of the BBC or 4 on-demand or whatever it’s called this week.

Sony have a competitor model called the ‘Kill all emotion and meaning let’s just digitize it all MK2’ or something. KAEAMLJDIA#2 is the production name.

They’ll probably win. And the losers will be people like me, who quite like seeing the odd coffee-cup ring on the page of a well-loved book. Who like giving or lending or reading to someone a book that they adore.

And Nicholson Baker will no doubt get by.

If It Weren’t For the Photographs I Would Deny It Forever.

I am making my way from my office to my bus stop. A female colleague rushes up to me. She has not uttered a word to me in three years. Something I have not lost sleep over.

Female Colleague: Tired! I just wanted to say you were brilliant on Friday night! Really convincing.

Me: You what?

Roughly forty-eight hours earlier.

I am standing in a beer cellar with Uncannily Similar, taking alternate large swigs from a pint of lager and very large vodka and tonic. He is gazing forlornly around us.

Uncannily Similar: This is a nightmare isn’t it?

Me: Mmm.

U.S: I mean. Surrounded by all this drink. And we can’t have any of it.

Me: [Adjusting my skirt] Not really what I thought you meant.

U.S: Oh. This? Yeah. Do you think I need some more lippy?

Me: I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. Be a man. How has this happened by the way?

Two years ago I had resolved to start doing things that were a little out of character as my default behavior hadn’t really worked out as well as it could have. These ‘things’ usually involved daredevil antics such as sitting on a different seat on the bus to work or eating feta cheese. But this is just silly.

U.S: [Glancing at my legs] You’d have looked better in the fishnets.

Me: [Irrationally insulted] You fucking what?

U.S: Well. The black-and-purple stripes aren’t doing you any favours. You look like Beetlejuice.

Me: Fuck off do I.

The door to the cellar opens a crack. We are due to emerge from this and then from behind the bar and behind the audience who will be expecting us to emerge from the stage in front of them. In terms of 'stealth' it would probably be the strangest Splinter Cell add-on pack ever downloaded.

Our Boss: Five minutes girls. You look fabulous.

She vanishes again.

Me: Anyway. Your tits are wonky.

U.S: Don’t tell me that now!

Hearing our ‘theme’ we dash onstage and make complete buffoons of ourselves in front of several hundred of our peers.

Fourty-eight hours later.

Me: What do you mean, convincing?

FC: Oh. Emm. Nothing. Just you were really good.

Me: Fucks sake.

FC: Really. It was just a funny panto. Loved your dance at the end. Did it take long to rehearse?

Me: I have to catch a bus.

Six hours earlier. I walk down a corridor past two gentlemen I do not recognize. Assuming they are past my earshot one of them turns to the other and says:

“You should have seen him on Friday night. FUCKING TERRIFYING.”

Football.

This is the last thing I fucking need, I think to myself.

I have the sort of job that sometimes you just can’t walk away from at five-thirty. It involves things that sometimes can’t be left until the morning. The morning will be too late.

This is one of those sometimes. The public transport system in the city I work in tends to think ‘fuck it’ after business hours in the assumption that anyone needing to travel after six is either a drunkard or a pervert. As such I have a wait on my hands.

Raymond Chandler wrote an excellent passage about the alchemic pleasure of a bar that had just opened for the evening. ‘Farewell my Lovely’ I think.

It’s not the same now. They never really close. But there is still something about a two-thirds empty bar early in the evening – usually populated by disoriented commuters far from home, burnt-out business types and hard-core alcoholics. A stillness, a melancholy. A place to reflect in peace, populated by people who want nothing more than that themselves. People who want to be elsewhere but are either temporarily or permanently stuck. It can be quite soothing if you know you’re only visiting.

Having half an hour to kill I decide to visit a quite-nice one near my bus stop. It’s either that or the only other place open is Starbucks and I’m not that fucking far gone. Those cunts are really lost.

I push through the glass doors to be greeted by a wall of noise and approximately eight million braying lumps of flesh yowling at a plasma screen as though it were some sort of vengeful god.

Having stepped through the doors I am past the point of no return. No man in history has ever walked into a bar and then promptly turned around again.

I order a drink, making a point of not purchasing a big pint of idiot juice. Fortunately I’ve been here before and am aware of the perpetually empty ‘snug’ area which I promptly make for.

It is removed from the main bar, contains big leather chairs and only a couple of tables. The ‘wall’ facing the street is plate-glass. It is relatively quiet. I take a comfy leather chair and sit, determined to ignore the gurning festival of homoeroticism in the main room. I place my drink on a glass table-top that turns out to be one of those old arcade machines. I find this not amusingly ‘ironic’ or ‘retro’ as I’m sure I should but actually faintly depressing.

I sip my drink and stare at the skyline. My thoughts are far from here.

A man the size of a small outhouse comes barreling in and looks directly at me. He is wearing a football shirt which is puzzling as his physique is not one of an athlete. Or indeed of most normal humans.

Random Man: Thank fuck for that!

As he has not introduced himself I can only assume he imagines he has known me for some time. This is, however, not the case so I do not reply. I am not about to be involved in some nightmare scenario in which two strangers act as if they have been acquainted for years. That would just be weird. We’d be wanking each other off next.

Random Bloke: [Undeterred by my lack of response] Did you hear? [Insert name of football player here – I don’t know any] just scored! Fucking brilliant!

I gaze levelly at him and don’t respond. I can’t say if I actually shrugged, but it sounds like the sort of thing I would do.

Random Bloke: [Showing a firm grasp of the available evidence] You’re not watching it then?

Me: No.

He physically staggers for a second, but I think it’s the drink.

RB: So what you’re saying…. You’re…. Is that you just don’t give a shit about the football?

Me: Yes. I suppose so.

He steadies himself on a table. Must be the booze.

RB: But….. Fuck, man………Just trying to be friendly…….Christ……..have a bit chat and that. Jesus. Don’t have to be a CUNT.

He staggers away, his face a mass of confusion. I swear there were actually tears in his eyes.

I finish my drink and wait for my bus outside.

Escalation.

It all started quite normally and then went terribly wrong.

Interior. Office. Day.

Me: [Gazing out the window] It’s a nice afternoon actually. I’m looking forward to getting home and sitting in the garden for a while.

Blonde Colleague: [Looking at me as though I’d just announced that gang-raping her mother would be quite the chuckle] You fucking what?

Me: Em. Well. I’ve a back garden now. Bit of a novelty. Thought it would be nice. Seems like quite a pleasant evening. Maybe.

BC: What the fuck do you want to do that for?

Me: Em. Because. You know. Sit in the garden. Glass of wine. Cigarette and that. Just relax I suppose.

BC: Oh yeah? You’ll be fucking freezing. You can do all of that in your front room AND watch television.

Me: I don’t really watch televi-

BC: Don’t even get me started on that one you fucking freak.

Me: Anyway. It’s July.

BC: Yeah? And in the winter? Genius?

Me: Well –

BC: Oh. You’re going to get one of those fucking gas heaters [said as though her mother had indeed been gang-raped by some awful gang of libidious gas heaters] aren’t you?

Me: Now you mention it. That would be good.

BC: WHY?!

Me: Well. I could sit outside in the winter as well.

BC: WHAT?! You can sit inside! And not have bats in your hair!

Me: It wouldn’t be the same. [I am sensing that this is becoming an ‘outdoors versus indoors’ argument and that I have not made my case sufficiently strong. And that I’d only said that it would be quite nice to sit in my new back garden anyway.]

BC: So you’re going to spend money to sit all year round in your garden doing EVERYTHING NORMAL PEOPLE DO IN THEIR FRONT ROOMS without being able to see your telly with bats in your hair and moths and butterflies living in your silly beard?

Me: Look-

BC: And do you know what’ll happen? ‘Cos I’ll tell you. Your neighbours will be on the phone and they’ll be all like “ Hello is that the police? It’s just I think the man next door is a peeping-tom. He’s really skinny so he thinks I can’t see him hiding behind his fucking gas heater but I can see his beady little shrimp-eyes sticking out and his weird E.T. fingers. Can you send a car straight away?”

Me: Ok.

BC: Good?

Me: Not as good as when you told me I look like a cross between Pierce Brosnan [good] and Stephen Hawking [bad].

BC: [Small amount of snot coming out of her nose] Did I say that? I am ON FIRE! You do look a bit crippled though.

Me: Mmmmmm.

I’d just said about the garden and that.

It Rains.

It’s a dark day at work.

The 'positive' announcement from the M.D. is 71 more people will lose their jobs. This will ‘safeguard the future of the company’.

Which is ‘good’.

The 71 people will not know who they are for a month.

Which is not so good. But I suppose they know already. Either way.

I stare out the window. I have much to think about.

The general mood is not fantastic.

Thug Colleague: I reckon we just organize a massive dance-off to decide who keeps their jobs.

Random Colleague*: I’m totally your wing-man on that one like.

Grant From Work: That’s you fucked then Tired. I’ve seen your moves.

Me: Mmmmm.

Some more time passes and I think unhappy thoughts. I tune-in again to hear this:

Thug Colleague: …the spacka school her daughter went tae. By, there were some reet ones there, like. Weird thaw. Some a theym looked nawmal. But there were some reet parsnips an all. It had a canny football pitch thaw. Ah mean for a flid school and that. Their team wasn’t that bad either. Had to put a fucking bell on the ball mind.

I gaze out the window some more. The rain is so heavy I cannot see the other side of the street.



* I've worked with him three years. Never bothered to learn his name or indeed make up a pretend one.

Love.

I’m not a very demonstrative person.

Physically.

Some months ago.

I am trying to figure out how to effectively market a client.

Said client has all the answers to chronic fatigue syndome, ME, depression, insomnia and anxiety attacks. There is a brand new method she is bringing to the market. Involving magnets or crystals or something. Whatever. It could be an enormous solution to these woes.

I’m puzzling over this. Some sort of online campaign methinks. The 'internet people' love this shit.

Grotbags glances at my screen.

Two years ago Grotbags nursed her mother through terminal stomach cancer. At home. Whilst maintaining her job and raising her two biological children and one child from her husband’s previous marriage. She changed her mother’s bandages daily and personally swabbed her intestines when it finally ate through the walls of her stomach. She died at home in Grotbags’ front room.

We argue daily. She's right about everything and so am I. Neither of us ever win but have massively entertaining blazing rows.

Grotbags: What’s this then?

I don’t have much to say on the subject. It sort of speaks for itself.

Grotbags: [Reading my client’s amazing talents] Fuck ME? She can actually cure things that DON’T EVEN EXIST?? She must be fucking amazing! What would happen if she turned her hand to REAL illnesses? Anyway, you out tonight?

I don’t hug her, although I have in the past. Drunk and that.

I shoot her a sidelong glance and a grin. That’s all.

She winks at me.

That’s all.

I’d always thought that was quite enough.

We both know.

Things I Must Never Forget #!1

The shiny apple.

I take it out of the shopping basket. It’s not something important. We don’t need it right now.

The evening has been difficult. Due to a badly-scheduled (by me) Parent’s Evening myself, Tired Mam, Favourite Son and Favourite Daughter are in a supermarket way past bedtime purchasing ingredients for a very quick very late meal.

The soles of my feet are riddled with pins-and-needles. They are wonderful children and this has just been impartially verified. My daughter has demonstrated amazing story-telling abilities and has shamed me. I resolve to start my silly blog again. My son is not the push-over I was beginning to fear he was, but is merely a little man who knows how to keep his own counsel.

My nerves are jangling. The little chairs don’t help, the physical closeness to Tired Mam is not ideal. The brief sensation of shared unconditional love is a bit intoxicating. The whole talk of ‘we’ and ‘us’ when we speak of our parenting. It feels like a charade. As if we would leave the premises and cackle to ourselves. ‘We FOOLED them! For another year! They think we’re happy with this!’

Me: We don’t need that tonight sweetheart. Let’s just put it back.

I’ve just pulled-off a first-class impression of a caring, involved father. I almost convinced myself. I am both but not actively; circumstances are against me. Tired Mam and I have spoken to teachers as if we both daily make a huge effort with their education. When only she does. But it was kind of her to pretend.

Favourite Daughter: But Daddy…

I’m not having this. She’s six now. She knows that you can’t have things purely because you feel like it that moment. Life isn’t that simple.

Tired Mam glances at the contents of the basket.

Tired Mam: It’s two-for-one on ALL the Covent Garden Soups.

A wave of irritation washes over me, familiar and care-worn like an old friend. I wordlessly double-up the soup quota.

There is some debate about bread that is resolved with minimal difficulty.

Their teachers had been talking about the next academic year with total confidence. As if they were sure. That our children would even reside in the same part of the world as they do now in a few months time.

Favourite Daughter: It’s REALLY shiny.

We’re all together but the air is crackling with unsaid things between Tired Mam and I. And I’m doing my best ‘everything is ok’ impression. I couldn't care less how shiny it is. I have other things on my mind. I want to get through this in one piece.

At the check-out I pay for the supplies and also call a taxi for Tired Mam and our offspring. It’s dark and cold now.

As they leave, I think about this:

I have taken the apple out of Favourite Daughter’s hand. It’s not a ‘right now’ thing and this is a ‘right now’ moment. Something hot, quick and nutritious is required.

As I place it back in the weird molded-cardboard that it came from I actually look at it.

I know that Snow White herself would have been taken by this fucker. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It appears to be made of lovingly-polished glass of the deepest deepest loveliest red ever. It is perfectly shaped; think of the word ‘apple’ and this thing will pop into your head. In short. It is gorgeous.

It’s too late though. It fits snuggly back in its cardboard womb and I inform Tired Mam that the two-for-one only applies to the Wild Mushroom variety that isn’t actually very nice.

I should have bought her the shiny apple.

Meeting.

People have to really be Something to impress me. I am not easily won over. But Grant From Work is my new personal hero.

I digress.

It’s strange how a business meeting can bend the space-time continuum.

You’re in there for three days, but when you leave the meeting room a mere thirty minutes have passed.

I have a new boss. She is all about the meetings. Every morning. Each identical.

Each so stultifyingly tedious I would gladly eat a tramps cock to get out.

I have ground my teeth until I am merely mashing gums. When we have the chance – because normally we are stuck in dreadful meetings – all any of us have the time to do is complain about the number of tiresome meetings we have to attend before we are called into another one, the subject of which is usually to do with lack of productivity due to meeting-related activity.

Tedious Boss: We know things are really hard at the minute, what with the current economical climate…

Yes. We do know that. Thanks for reinforcing it though. And it’s ‘economic’ not ‘economical’.

Tedious Boss: But we’ve just got to get out there and do our best…

As opposed to what? Staying at home, doing nothing and getting fired? Genius.

And so it goes. For half an hour each morning.

This Friday morning, twenty of us endure another daily identical meeting with Tedious Boss. Grant From Work has been up late the previous night, or at least looks it.

The following is 100% true.

Grant From Work yawns. In the middle of the meeting.

Not a little yawn. But a Bagpuss yawn. The sort of yawn you would imagine Henry the Eighth performing after eating 10 wild boar, drinking a gallon of mead and fucking fifteen wenches. It was a big old yawn right there is my point.

Flies stop in mid-air. All is silent.

A minute passes. Grant From Work does not appear concerned. All eyes are on him.

Tedious Boss: Oh. I’m sorry Grant From Work. Am I boring you?

Another minute passes. Literally. Grant From Work gazes expressionless at Tedious Boss. Some more time passes. Nineteen people are clenching everything they have.

Grant From Work: [Deadpan] Yes.

Another minute.

Tedious Boss: Well. Ok. Do you have any suggestions as to how we generate new revenue in this economical –

Grant From Work: Actually, I’ve got a client I need to call and a deadline so –

Grant From Work leaves the meeting room. Eighteen other people make grumbling noises and follow him.

I instantly forgive him the fact that he looks like a boogly-eyed daddy-long-legs when he dances and repels every woman I do not accidently assualt.

Tedious Boss is left alone with a flip-chart.

It actually happened.

Ants.

This is a new one. Something I hadn’t noticed when last it started happening.

Thing is, I can put up with all of it except the fucking ants.

I doubt you can imagine it.

The incessant buzzing noise in the back of your skull is bearable compared with the sensation of their crawling.

The thick tongue is tolerable. As is the constant taste of metal in the mouth.

The slow-moving glaciers of your exhausted sluggish thoughts that occasionally crash into each other and shatter into splinters of nonsense.

The uneasy feeling that you are also making other people uneasy when they speak to you. Because you have to stare at them blankly for a few minutes whilst your brain grindingly processes the noises that have come from their mouths.

The short- to medium-term memory loss.

The sensation that your eyeballs are filled with sand.

The less-than-uplifting sensation when friends of several years who have not seen you like this, who don’t know about it, take one look at your eyes and say ‘Fuck, what is wrong with you?’

Bluffing your way through work, speaking to clients when you can’t remember a meeting from a day ago let alone what they said thirty seconds ago. And coming out of it ok, but only just.

Using the traffic lights. It’s a big city, you’re a big boy. But you just don’t trust your reaction- time. Not now. Best to be safe. Wait for the lights with the blind and the old.

The short temper. You say things. Things you would normally quell for the sake of an easy life. The astounding thing is that when you drop any social etiquette toward people you dislike they are so befuddled by it and by the dead look in your unblinking eyes that it actually makes life easier for a little while. But not in the long term. And you’re so detached you feel no sense of satisfaction or victory anyway. You just ARE. You exist. Because you have to. And if you stop, the momentum may just disappear forever.

And so you eat. Not because you are hungry but because you have to.

You laugh and socialize. Not because you want to. But because you don’t want people to think you hate them. Which they would, if all you did was stare, which is almost all you can do.

Four days now. Either asleep by twelve (late for me) and awake by three or wide-eyed-awake until three and awake again at five-thirty. It’s a new pattern I do not understand.

All of it would be tolerable but for the ants under the skin of my forearms. Crawling.

My lower back too.

That would be fine were it not for the fuckers under the skin of my cheeks and the back of my neck.

The worst thing is that it makes you feel like yourself again. A self that you worked hard to get rid of.

Meeting.

A lot of my working time is spent in meetings.

More so now that my boss has returned from her holidays.

I shan't go on about it. I'm sure the world is awash with 'hey! Aren't meetings a bit pointless!' stories and mine'll probably not be as good.

This morning's theatre of foolishness was not one of my best however. I can normally disrupt these things with earnest-looking absurdity but have not the heart due to an unpleasant sleep problem I had thought long-since conquered.

I drift through.

I hear one salient point that I vaguely think may be of relevance and absent-mindedly make a note of it on my pad without really listening.

Two hours later in a fug of sleep-deprivation I check my one-and-only note from the morning's meeting. It reads thus:

'Lesbians all have different names.'

I gaze blankly at this astonishing piece of information. I resolve to try and sleep now and then and pay more attention.