My (ha!) "Book"

So I've not posted for a while. That's not to say nothing's happened (although some sex would've been nice).

Instead I've hit a writing slipstream and am making actual progress on this 'book' I've been working on for several years. It's come and gone in several guises, starting with a variety of sketches and truly terrible chapters I shat out in my twenties, to a completed travelogue of my India trip back in 2001 that was pretty bad.

Okay, both were awful, bordering on evil. I still didn't learn and a few years ago I finished my first fictional novel - based on the principle of writing what you know. Clearly, what I knew was leaden characters, a vague plot, no real ending, a beginning of sorts, and a kind of wishy-washy middle. That had been enough to kill any dreams of my becoming a writer, leaving me to deal with the stale corpse of an aimless man that remained.

And then, waaaaay later and at the beginning of the year, I started to reorder this blog chronologically. I've since been merging all my real-life work together such as my India book and a travel blog to Asia, and everything else in between. Not only did I discover how truly eye-bleeding some of it was, I've improved and revamped it all into what I'm working on now:

My autobiography absolutely no-one's asked for.

I'm not quite half way through but seeing as I started to gain real momentum about a month ago, I've been charging ahead almost non-stop and it seems pretty solid and readable. I've also managed to ignore those voices in my head calling me a shitty piece of shitty-write-shit, so I'm on target to have a first draft done in the next couple of months.

And considering I'm such a pedant and I'm editing a hell of a lot - almost too much - as I go, my first draft is likely to need just one mighty sweep from beginning to end, so Draft Two will become Final and good to go around this summertime, middle to end-ish.

The plan is to self publish via Lulu or somesuch, with Kindle versions a la me old mate Martin.

I've taken writing what you know to an absurd level as I couldn't even invent a fictional white male Englishman with more personal issues than an... ugh, too early in the day to think... so this is all I've got....   This blog.... but new and improved and in order with a whole lotta narrative and progression 'n shit...

Coming soon.

I hope.

Women Are Like Buses - But Sometimes You Have To Call a Cab

It's no secret that I've been single for years. The reasons are threefold:

1. I no longer work for medium to large sized companies staffed exclusively by transient young things, many of whom are ladypersons who in the past have looked favourably/ taken pity on me. Instead for 7 years I've worked in a tiny London office with the same four blokes.
2. My ageing social life has slowed to a crawl, syncing with one or perhaps two other single mates where together we've accepted our lot in life and boxed any 'fun' into a few drinks at the weekend with a movie or perhaps meal thrown in.
3. I have the social skills and confidence of a corpse.

I've always known I'd have to do something drastic to change all this and I'd begun with a long and successful diet and a wardrobe revamp, not that I'd manged to quite follow through. I lost the weight and began buying better clothes, but my inner slob has for the last few months been blaming the cold and wearing jeans everyday, which means boots instead of smart shoes, and - oh - eating utter shit since the summer, meaning I've gained all that weight and no longer fit into my new gear.

So now I'm at a crossroads: I had dieted and revamped my image slowly Seizing the Day, and now I've Reversed the Day and Gone Back to Square One, so what does this mean for my 'I'll date when I'm fitter' bullshit? Basically it means I'll have to lose that weight once more before I look into that again.

Except it'll be a 'Tomorrow never comes' scenario. Instead, I've come to acknowledge this is less about my weight, and more about my balls (as in confidence, not my actual balls.) I'm not so fat that I'm consigned to a bed needing to be rolled over by three people so they can wash my back crevices. I'm not even mildly obese and even if I was, no-one should be excluded from being mutually in love. (Yes, I've been watching Undateables a lot)

I could sense for the last few weeks my brain coming to terms with this. It's been clear I can't just walk up to women on the street and talk, no matter what this fascinating if essentially fucking miserable lifestyle claims, so it's back to the equally miserable if infinitely easier internet dating I swore off years ago - as many years as the last time I had a girlfriend, if memory serves.
All I needed was a kick up the arse - and 3 days ago, it arrived.

My chum Ed, of summer holiday to Crete and the last half-dozen New Years' Eves fame, was nearby one night as I finished work. We went for a rare midweek beer where he described a story he was thinking of writing, which reminded me of a tale from my youth. You may recall it - it was one of the stories from the 1983 Twilight Zone movie, a Steven Spielberg segment called 'Kick the Can.'
Ed, to my surprise, had never seen it, yet it remained as vivid in my mind as if I'd seen it in all its schmaltzy entirety yesterday.

'So it's this old peoples' home,' I began, 'with all these old people. A couple of them are feisty types if a bit delirious, and there's this old English guy, or posh at any rate, remembering how he used to run around pretending to be Peter Pan, the "boy who never grew up", right? There's this lovely old woman there too, reminiscing about how much she loved to dance when she was younger, and this one crotchety old guy who complains that his kids never come to visit, and it's no fun being old. Anyway, this stereotypical Hollywood wise, kindly old black guy arrives, and he's listening to their stories. He produces a can - to a Jerry Goldsmith harpsichord, so it's clearly magic  - and says they should all go outside and kick the fucker once the nurses send them to bed. The crotchety guy gets all crotchety and tells him he shouldn't get the others all excited, and tells everyone to act their age, yet they're all up for it. So this Nurse Ratched type calls it a night and gets everyone into their dorm and turns the lights out, and after a pause they all sneak outside in their dressing gowns and into the garden where they're slowly stumbling about kicking this can. Meanwhile the crotchety guy's still complaining, but they're having a great time. They're all laughing as the camera closes in on their feet as they kick the can to one another, then you realise their pyjamas are getting baggy and their slippers enormous, and their laughter and chatting have become chil-'

My throat seized. 'They've all turned back into chi-' I croaked, and had to stop as tears welled up in my eyes.
Ed looked mildly disturbed. 'Jesus christ!' he said.
I looked at him, and shook my head. I couldn't continue, and was now fairly shocked myself as I couldn't recall the last time I'd got emotionally overwhelmed in private. Getting tearful in public, that would've been maybe twenty years ago, at a fucking death.
'I've only had two pints!' I squawked, but it was too late. If I hadn't captured the fluid held behind the dam of my eyelids, tears would've plummeted down my fat hairy face like an overturned lorry down a cliff.

The last time I'd thought about 'Kick the Can', I'd been a child. Now I was half way through my life and nothing in any grand way had changed, and it scared the shit out of me. It was such a daft tale about growing old, the simplicity of youth, and the wonder of life, and there I was single-handedly doing nothing with mine.

I was so shocked that when I got home, I took out my credit card and paid for an online dating agency I've had an inactive presence on for years. I met my last girlfriend of 5+ years ago there, the American lady I'd not been able to commit to due to LDR and cowardice, and despite our flurry of emails at the beginning of the year, we'd reached a kind of saturation point. I woke up one day and finally 'got it', realising I was always going to miss her but enough was enough; it wasn't going to work and we both knew to leave one another well alone. And in the 3 days since I've been back on this website, I've looked at the dozens of emails stored up over the last few years I'd not been able to see before, and sent some new ones off. Tonight, I had two replies back I'd been hoping to receive.

And then, as I'd opened up my email, a new one arrived. It was a picture from my ex, of my ex, apropos of nothing, just to say hello, and I felt a little gooey and stunned. I really didn't expect I'd hear from her ever again. And now I'm full of guilt. I have new angles for the first time in years!
But oh yeah - new guilt.

I know what your advice will be. It's the same as mine and I know what choices I should make.

I just feel bad, and sad, and shit.

An Unnecessary List of Documentaries No-one Asked For

Okay, so it's a new year and I haven't even mentioned it. I didn't even comment on Christmas, so just take it as read that I attempted to eat my own bodyweight in crisps and pork chipolatas every day in December. Oh, and January too.

New Year's was in a pub in King's Cross. I went out with my New Year's Eve attendee* Edward, got drunk, and went home.

(*Now in new Summertime hols Edward too)

So for the rest of this year, I've decided now I've regained most of the weight I lost (no idea how that happened) that I'll throw myself into this damn, neverending 'book' of mine and complete a draft. It will not be fiction, as I have to concede I can't do fiction. So instead I'm expanding on my blog, writing, if you like, my autobiography - 'cos that's what the world really wants, right?

I have to do this. It's driving me mad. And once I've done it and eaten myself up to 16 stone and beyond, I'll go back on a diet.

I think I just like having something to battle against.

But I'm posting today to bring you what's been stopping me creatively all these years; documentaries. This is what's curtailed my doing a good night's write; scouring YouTube to watch things instead.

In no particular order:

North Korea

'Propaganda' - Fascinating documentary from North Korea about Western propaganda, that is in itself propaganda. Made for viewing outside the DPRK as I can't imagine their squalid little junta showing conspicuous consumption and modern foreign cities to their impoverished, imprisoned citizens

'Welcome to North Korea' - excellent primer on this secretive Stalinist state

Politics

'Rob Newman's History of Oil' - Okay, so this is stand-up, but it's the best Rob Newman's ever done, with some interesting facts (or "points of view" if you'd rather call it that)

'Inside Job' - Frustrating Matt Damon narrated documentary about the 2008 crash, and those who profited before and since


'The Power of Nightmares: the rise of the politics of fear' - Amazing documentary from Adam Curtis about the "War on terror" and radical Islam:

Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

'Century of the Self' - Also from Adam Curtis, this four-part documentary series examines how Sigmund Freud's work, via the world of 'Public Relations' his nephew invented, have taken Freud's concept of the 'self' to manipulate us into giant, easily led consumerwhores

Parts 1 to 4 on one handy page here

History

'Britain's Real Monarch' looks into the possibility that Edward IV was an illegitimate child, thus barring a claim for himself and his descendants (i.e. Queen Liz and her entire clan of crooks). The programme then traces the theoretical legitimate line to where the 'real' King of England resides, Jerilderie, in New South Wales, Australia

'Robespierre and the French Revolution' - with lots of acting if you prefer your documentaries dramatised 

Religion

Jesus Camp (Apologies for the Portuguese subs) - notorious documentary about a kiddie camp for Christ. In America. Obviously

'The Bible's Buried Secrets: Did God have a wife?'- Just brilliant. Utterly brilliant. And presented by my wife a woman I like and will never get to meet

'The Bible's Buried Secrets: The Real Garden of Eden'

'The Story of God pt 2 of 3: No God but God' - focussing on the three monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And lots of fun that is.

Geeky Linguistics

'The Story of English' - A beautiful and informative 9-part documentary from the mid-80s that looks at the history and evolution of the English language. Only for the committed but well worth it, you'll have to click on episode 1 part 1 below and follow the YouTube links (on the actual YouTube page) to continue to parts 2 to 7, repeating 8 more times for the other episodes. So that's over 60 clips in all but it's bloody worth it:

Part 1 (of 7) of episode 1. Then you're chasing clips...

One-off feature length must-see documentary

STOP PRESS: Absolute tearjerker I saw a few years ago and have literally just found. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is a must see. I won't say anything else, other than it's a very tender and personal tale, and a perfect example of how you tell a story. And of course it's all true...

 

So there we go. Enjoy! I said enj...

Hello?

Cats, Twats and Cults

My life hasn’t changed since I bought a cat on a whim (aka: Making tentative enquiries about a cat that accidentally snowballed into actually buying one, because by that point I was too embarrassed to say ‘Nah, I was only asking. I don’t need a cat, thanks). Things have merely shifted into some kind of bizarre neighbouring dimension where nothing's changed, except now my misery has company in the shape of a furry being trotting around my apartment as if she owns it.

Occasionally, I'll be approached so that I might for a brief moment stroke her thrice, upon which she’ll walk away and collapse onto the rug always an aggravating stretch out of reach of my desperately needy hand. She's also for some reason like a small diode giving us electric shocks, which I'm pretty sure is hindering the whole bonding with me thing.

It’s a crying shame too that she’s not the picky-uppy kinda feline I had in my youth. Whenever I lift Rebecca to my chest (she came with that name, so don’t blame me), she struggles to get away almost instantly. The best I’ve managed is about 6 seconds one morning when, being hungry, she needed me. She knew it, as did I, so I was granted some hold time as she judged me through angry blue eyes before thinking ‘Fuck this!’, and struggled for the floor while I screamed: ‘LOVE ME!!!!’

The flat meanwhile hasn't got as filthy as I'd thought. The litterbox is more like a litterhut and doesn’t stink (but then I’m on my knees daily, scooping out Becky's crap and solidified chunks of urine). The worst smell is her food, and the biggest inconvenience clearing that (dried cat food – the hardest substance on earth), and for my troubles I’m afforded some mildly sub-thusiastic leg rubbing during dinner preparation that misses me altogether 70% of the time.

In fact, true to female form if I want her attention I just have to ignore her. It’s a pity I hadn't learned that when it comes to my former girlfriend (American). Once again, leading a life as ladybereft as a sweaty gentleman's leather club in Vauxhall, I have no other option but to pine over the last woman to accept me sex-wise. Perhaps it was a mistake during my Crete holiday for me to email if she wanted some freshly pressed olive oil (being a big fan of just being given stuff, she readily said yes). Perchance it was a bigger mistake to add several packs of Lindt chocolate to the package once I'd returned home. Maybe it was a mistake on her part several weeks later to email that she was considering ‘popping over’ to London, a missive that had me more excited than a child arsonist with ADHD watching his school get firebombed by robots.

In the flurry of digital conversation that followed, I offered her a place to stay on my couch, intending to honour and respect her privacy with every fibre of my being (but if she wanted to sexually assault me, I didn't intend to put up a fight.) Yet a pattern emerged in that flurry, the same pattern of the last SIX BLOODY YEARS where I, the twat, pretty much instigated all contact, and found myself having the last word. So I thought, ‘Screw her,’ and don’t contact her for a week - a whole week! - then I’m in the pub with a friend who tells me ‘She was definitely The One, you know. Marriage material.’ So I think, ‘Yeah, sure, whatevs,’ and go downstairs to get my round but find myself walking outside to casually call New York on my mobile to say, ‘Hi!'

It's needy and pathetic. I think about her daily, because I miss her, and because I don't have the balls and/or confidence and/or will to go out there and begin that painful, awkward hell of meeting other desperately lonely people via the fucking internet date. And as I get older, I realise my natural inability around women is only getting worse, and more awkward and cringey. At our office party in a small restaurant, I made smalltalk with our waitress that wasn't supposed to make her ill-at-ease and creeped out but it did. I tried guessing where according to her strong Slavic accent she was from, and she grunted "Europe" before leaving to get our drinks. She smiled easily at my colleagues whilst frowning at me to such an extent that I thought this was deliberate juxtaposition aimed at getting me to back off, which was horrible to see as I'd barely even leaned on. And when we got up to leave as she stood with waiting customers nearby, she said an abrupt 'Bye' whilst staring at the wall as if she was trying to burn through it with her eyes rather than look at me.

So that's basically what I'm capable of when I try and engage in a little feel-good flirtation with a young lady in the service trade, meaning I'm stuck with Internet fucking dating. It'll never happen at work, because I'm still embedded in a tiny all-male office, which is also confusing the hell outta me as my boss is making restructuring plans involving him at the core and me, his Number Two (poetic), with opportunities for huge theoretical wage increases. 

The trouble is, I don't really know if I want an utterly magnificent wage doing a job for the rest of my working life I never wanted in the first place. And that's a biggie. My boss's plans will take us both (he said) into £-stupid, company director’s wages basically, money I never considered I’d earn. And it’s getting me down. I feel like I'll be selling my soul to the highest bidder, still sat in the same place I told myself several years ago I would be leaving soon (around the same time I'd started an LDR with an American I was ambivalent about).

I think I’d rather be poor, yet happy. I’m almost 63% certain of that. But on the other hand, I'll be earning more than my most successful friends, which obviously is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD. They’ve long done way better than me with their beautiful wives and pretty children and houses with stairs, so earning more money than them will mean I’m winning for once, even though it's by accident, and in a game I'd lost interest in. And not very good at. And bored with.

Basically I'm still in a rut, and realising I'm not just horribly timid among the opposite sex but generally just crap in careers too.

And then last night, I went to PostSecret Live in London. My mate Russell was helping his brother arrange it, and it lifted my mired fucking spirit. Essentially it's that website on tour - the one with the postcards with people's secrets on them - featuring the originator Frank Warren talking about it, and showing some of his favourites on a giant projector. Even better was the fact that it must have been 80-85% young women there. It was like they'd all been stored up over the several years I'd managed to not be in a room with any of them, and it cheered me greatly to get occasional glances that didn't end in their vomiting. (It helped being one of about twenty blokes in an auditorium of several hundred women though).

There was something so feelgood, so life-affirming yet simple in Frank's message. It helped that he's a slight, bespectacled kindly American chap gentle of voice (not to be confused with the gruff cockney fist-flinging promoter of the same name), and his message that we're all valid and worthy. It was no wonder the whole place was filled with impressionable young women - and me. In fact I was so moved and blissed out that I came very close to stepping up to the microphone to calmly reveal my secret was that I'm petrified of public speaking. But it's probably good I didn't, as I almost definitely would've felt empowered enough to go on to reveal that I once slept with a prostitute. Instead, I sat there as (mainly) young girls revealed they were more upset that their hamster died than their uncle, or they're compulsive Icelandic liars.

There was one point during the whole event, during the clapping after each confession, or the cheers of support as someone stepped up to the mic only to be seized with emotion, that it dawned on me that this is what cults must feel like, and I started to feel really quite cynical. But then I remembered there was no promise of paradise at the end of it, or group commitments to be made - unless you count the website, I suppose - and I started to defrost again. Instead I sensed that we're all human and beautifully imperfect, and that I really should give up on that woman who long ago gave up on me - and if I really want happiness, instead of chasing wages I should chase my dreams.

If you happen to know what my dreams are, answers on a postcard please.

Social Anxiety

I've just had another weekend that could be filed under ‘Dull’. I didn't really go anywhere or do anything, barring Friday when I left work to meet Ed, and Large Northern (former) Flatmate, and chatted to his work colleague which was fine until she pointed out her boyfriend. He was sat in the corner observing us and the pair of them began miming across the pub while I could do nothing else but grin and blush, and go silent as I casually broke out in a sweat.

Otherwise my weekend was largely spent ‘in’, drinking alone and eating comfort shit. I ran a couple of errands in the day, such as buying a cat scratching post and a cat litter tray because a woman came round and proclaimed my apartment suitable to house a small furry mammal that meows... and now the truth is starting to dawn in my insecure, doubtful mind that this is a big commitment and I don't really know what I'm doing. I just liked the idea of having a pet again. I was surrounded by them as a child and my life seems kinda empty now, ergo: cat.

I asked my family, and Twitter, what they thought about me getting one (both said yes), and I solicited the opinion of a few friends (who said “'why?”) and now this just seems to be happening anyway, my life about to be turned upside down along with my flat, when I return home to a shredded sofa and the contents of my bin scattered all over the floor. A cat is going to curtail my exciting life - not that I have one - although spontaneous weekends away are likely never going to happen again - not that they ever did.

And then last night, as my health regime died a death while I sat in front of the internet feeding crisps into my face, I made a discovery - and it wasn't porn. I was reading about Daniel Tosh. He's an American stand-up who recently became persona non grata when he made some unpleasant comments about rape. I'd not heard of him even though I'm pretty knowledgeable about stand-ups, and have even entertained the notion of dabbling in stand-up myself were it not for my crippling shyness. And fear of public speaking. And crowded rooms full of people with their silent gaze and endless negative thoughts you can actually see being compiled behind their cold, narrowing eyes as they judge me all to fuckery. 

Anyway, I wiki'd Tosh. I was bored and playing for time as I didn't want to go to bed yet. and noticed he suffers from Social Anxiety. Marginally curious, I clicked on the link only to be floored.

That page had me described in eerie detail; all my foibles and issues under one broad canopy I would've first crept behind as a fat adolescent. Now I really don’t like self-diagnosis, particularly lazy internet browsing on a nascent Monday morning. It all seems like clutching at straws, just half-assed guesswork in place of considered professional opinion, yet the associated link on Social Rejection, bloody hell, it was like whoever’d written it had been thumbing through my childhood diary. 

There were common forms of anxieties; falling to pieces over people they fancy, peer rejection, fear of public speaking, blushing, near constant self-consciousness, overly critical of past behaviour, even being unable to 'go' in a public toilet because dammit!, someone's hovering nearby, I recognised practically every anxiety I read: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, if it's socially awkward, I've done it, or I'm doing it right now. Or to put it another way; everything I read on those pages I've already blogged.

I still don't like to diagnose myself over the damn internet, but the whole thing fitted me too well. I've got loads of anxieties, and they've got a historical basis. I’ve mentioned before my crappy teenage years although I'd long stopped caring. I just see it as a shitty past that has no bearing on my present, although I'm starting to realise that perhaps it's more important than I thought.

From a social point of view, school was miserable. My home life was fine, but socially it wasn't much better. I grew up with a bad-tempered sister who refused to talk to me. She never wanted me around and even now, at 44, she never gets in touch and I can’t remember when she last phoned me about anything. My stepdad was nice enough but kept out of my way, and mum seemed more interested in the casino where the pair of them would go most nights. In fairness to my mother, she is disabled and when I'd complain about her constant excursions, she would counter that gambling was her only fun in life.

I would’ve been hanging out with friends at that crucial age, but I didn’t have any. I was ostracised at school, and punched or spat at. I admit this wasn’t a daily occurrence, but from what I can remember, it was rare to go a week without at least a passing insult from someone, such as being called a ‘son of a cripple’. Looking back, I liked to think I had friends (perhaps because I couldn't bear to think that I didn't), and I was hardly the fat, silent kid plotting in the corner. I was more jovial than that, and eager to please. The friends I did have were - what's the word? - Not really friendly - and didn't give me the time of day because I was fat and uncool, and hanging around me was bad for your status.

By my mid-teens when I left school, I had no-one. I was probably more desperate for friendship than ever before, and was now convinced that at my very core I was at least deeply flawed. My only sibling continued to yell at me when I approached her, and my parents still took off in the evenings which wasn't so bad actually, as I got to watch TV and eat crisps and hug the living shit out of our pet...OH MY GOD, IT ALL MAKES SENSE…

Anyway, good news was right around the corner when a couple of years later, I'd gone to University and formed genuine and sincere friendships with kind, decent people – and Jamie – who accepted me for who I am etc. Finally, I decided I was going to show those spineless, shallow, spiteful little fuckers from school that I'd be a great success doing 'something'. It would be financially fabulously successful - obviously - and live happily ever after.

Cut to no success whatsoever, just a weeded over non-karmic landscape of whatever.

Point is, my crappy past is clearly a bigger part of me than I've ever cared to admit. It's made me hypersensitive and aware of both how I interact with people, and how they react to me, which isn't great as I overthink everything. I live in constant fear of embarrassing or humiliating myself, which I realise now is one gigantic self-imposed limitation. For example, I won't go online and arrange dates (even though I work in a tiny, all-male office where all I'm guaranteed is a lifetime of lonely cynicism), just because I can't bear the blind date job interviews, the pre-meet fear, the awkward introductions, the judgemental free-for-alls from her and everyone around us, and the silences, all topped off with a general desperation because those formative years fucked me up so much.

Basically, I have Social Anxiety, that's what I'm saying. I think I do a bloody good job of deal with it though. Honestly. Don't look at me like that....

Crete

I'm tired and grumpy. My motivation is in the gutter. I am the poster child for lethargy and crushed spirits, although I feel like I am slowly on the mend. I have been back at work following my summer break for four days now, and I can sense my brain shifting into change like a junkie coming to terms with their abstinence.

The holiday heroin I'd mainlined was Crete, which we chose so we could give something back to the proud Greek people in their austerity, because what they really need when $400 billion in debt was two pasty men haggling in a tourist shop.

My travelling companion Edward and I had never been to Crete. We chose it because it was in our Goldilocks zone of being new (at least to us), warm, and relatively 'nearby' with attractions that lifted it above the package holiday hell of Costa Del Brit.

Yet it was a shock to find our EasyJet queue formed of my fellow fat countrymen, sporting more tattoos than at a Maori wedding. In fact, by the time Ed and I walked out of Nikos Kazantzakis International that evening, it was clear that Crete was not unlike that south coast of Spain, but with more ruins.
And in Greek.

We stayed in the pleasant hillside village of Piskopiano, on a steep elevation just off of the main road which led to the equally pleasant village of Koutouloufari. I say village, as I can only guess what they must've been like fifty years ago when that term would've been accurate. Today, these villages seem to cater only for tourists, with its string of back-to-back restaurants and shops selling olive oil and wicker hats - and little else. Occasionally this pattern was broken up by small mini-marts selling soft drinks, Ouzo and fags, and lighters that resemble bullets, plus a wide selection of olive oils.

In the main, 'pleasant' it was, even though it was near impossible to walk the length of the road without molestation from touts stood outside every restaurant. We tried to ignore them with their rictus grins and purposeful smalltalk, but guilt got the better of us as we visited most places during our trip. The main lessons we learned; 1) Restaurants with picture menus are largely shit, which was a shame as 90% of every eatery in Crete had picture menus. 2) If there was a tout egging you in, it was also going to be largely shit. 7) Crowded restaurants really speak for themselves.
Our favourite places a) were full, and  p) had no reason to tout. The one exception to this rule being Sosos cafe in Old Hersonissos that was always empty, but we were never pestered at once.
Apart from by him.

I did try to be a gentleman abroad but it's hard in that bloody heat. Dignity and, let's be honest, manners, die a death south of Dover, and my uniform of necessity became t-shirts and shorts; practical, if completely undignified. And it really wasn't long before I was shedding my snotty middle-class pretensions by being that guy, drunk and on holiday, being filmed singing Bohemian Rhapsody in an Irish pub on karaoke night to an audience sunburned and silent.

Ed followed this by singing an incredibly polite and restrained version of James' 'Sit Down', which I videoed with particular emphasis on the breasts of the cute girl behind him (I'm pretty sure she never noticed).

But that was, regrettably, elegant compared to what was to come. Edward, being a more mature chap, knows when to call it a night.
I don't.
I soon found myself headed downhill to the large coastal town of Hersonnisos on Mission: Fun. What I found instead was a blonde Ukrainian I somehow ended up dancing with in a magical style that was part peacocking, part groping. Needless to say it was a tremendous success. Through the haze, I vaguely recall thinking 'What moves am I supposed to do now to elicit sexual congress?', by which point she'd walked off in disgust as the grinning observers stood next to me asked me where I was from.

Then I recall chatting to two German girls and leaving them to hug an Israeli (male, indifferent - and my actions in light of the aforementioned nationalities serve no historical relevance... or indeed any relevance), then I wound up next to an African American who seemed to take my statement, "What the fuck are you doing here?" with good grace. I even think he bought me a drink. I really can't recall anything by now.

Then I was in a beachside Irish pub with a pint...

... then eating a kebab (a more legitimate activity over there)...
... then I was placing that pint glass on a phonebox in a deserted part of town...
... sat back on the beach
... now panting uphill...
... then waking up the next day naked.

Ed was pretty amused, explaining to me the following morning via the medium on non-amusement, about how I woke him up unnecessarily to get back in. He'd got karmic revenge as I'd stripped and fallen into a booze-sodden coma on the sofa. I'd left the windows in the doorframe open, thereby affording every passer-by heading to breakfast the hellish sight of a beached whale, snoring with his cock out.

Mostly, Ed and I walked and sweated around Crete a lot. We'd purposefully booked a resort with a gym, except this gym was a lie, containing the type of rusting, broken equipment more normally found slung away in people's sheds. Instead we played a lot of Ping Pong - their best functioning item - and moved whenever we could. We also took tours and headed south to Samaria Gorge, Crete's alleged top tourist attraction, and walked all ten of its majestic miles to the Libyan Sea. The views at the top of the gorge were simply stunning, although it became apparent as we traipsed almost constantly downhill for the next four hours that we'd spent most of our time looking at the ground in case we slipped on loose rocks.

Here's some bloke who looks exact Fuck it, it's me...

The hike became quite monotonous after a while, although Ed only complained about it for the last eight miles or so. Remarkably I was holding up well. I'd been exercising for a couple of months beforehand and walking 3 (admittedly flat and paved) miles a day for work, I had only aching knees. For some reason Ed perked up in the last few metres and decided to make a break for the exit when we saw it, which inspired me to sprint for the fucker too to beat him. We'd literally walked the length of Europe's largest gorge and I was in touching distance of the enormously moustachioed man collecting tickets in his hut when I twisted my fucking ankle in the run, and spent the next two days limping.

This far into our trip, the summer heat I'd dreamed of in London was taking its toll. My underwear was yellowing (in the absence of women, fuck it, I was wearing them several days straight), I was getting heat rashes and peeling the occasional gland free from an inner thigh (my testes, my thighs, in case you're wondering), and I had enough mosquito bites that I resembled a fleshy dot-to-dot puzzle. The vacation magic was beginning to wane.


Our last tour was to Knossos Palace, the impressive remains of the Minoan civilisation that once flourished in Crete, although it lost its appeal almost instantly thanks to the huge numbers of competing other tours, and the suspicious amount of cement that made me think a hell of a lot of it was reconstructed. Even this, a picture I took of what I was told was Europe's oldest road...

... turns out (at least via t'internet) to be a guess, as that claim also goes to Egypt, or possibly Rome, or maybe even Britain.

Then the tour took a turn for the worse as we wound up at a monastery. I tried to take something spiritual from the place - not easy for a Jewish atheist - but all I got was bored. Even the Nuns were on their phones.

Thank Zeus then for Zeus's cave, a total bloody highlight of the trip of which I have no readily accessible pictures, so HERE's a link. The Dikteon cave walk takes about 20 minutes to ascend, up a mountain it took our coach about half an hour to get to, and is the supposed birthplace of Zeus, father of Gods and men. It's easy to see why the cave became the stuff of legend (or in a parallel universe the pilgrimage place of an ancient and highly respected religion, had St Paul never made it to Crete to convert everyone), as the entrance to the cave overlooks a stunning plateau of farmlands and villages, all fringed by distant mountains.

Then we were driven to another fucking tourist shop to buy more crap.

The trip proved to be a great holiday, even though a leather goods salesman, and the customs guard checking my passport as we left both said I looked like ginger monobrowed footballer Paul Scholes, a comparison I'm pretty thrilled never to have had before.

And then, after a three-and-a-half hour flight next to a huge former paratrooper who WOULDN'T. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP for the entire trip - even when I pretended to be asleep - and through 20 seconds of turbulence so utterly violent that the other passengers screamed and I genuinely thought as my fingertips gripped onto that well-known safety device, the edges of the stowed tray, that we were going down and I was going to fucking die, I was suddenly alone, and back in bloody Watford.

The following day, as I walked to Marks and Spencers to replace the trousers I'd singed a pattern into ironing for the holiday, I was given evil stares by some young ragamuffin walking towards me. By the time I reached Watford town centre, a gang of teenagers were having a very real fight in broad daylight. When I got to M&S, their cleaner was mopping away the purple dye and footprints left by an inept thief as he fled the store.

I was back in Britain.


It has taken me all four days of work to go from being ruthlessly desperate to kill myself, to just relatively miserable.

Now what have I got to look forward to? Anyone? Jesus...

Seduct-off

Well the whole seduction thing's off, that's for starters. I think it had something to do with it all being completely crass.

Although basically it's more to do with me being a lilly-livered coward.

I like some aspects of it, such as the bettering yourself stuff - in my case the weight loss and the dressing better, which resulted in the pipette's droplet of vague confidence that somehow found its way into my beige head like a corpse scavenging worm. That's all been good. But the actual devil-may-care, too cool for school lady-approaching moments? Well that never happened. I was raised by good, strong women to be a decent man, dammit, so basically I'm terrified of that whole hornet's nest.

I don't think I want to be a smarmy sleazy scumbag. You know those guys; any hole's a goal, only care about themselves, constantly having loads of random, meaningless sex with a string of women they've just met on the train, or in bars, or in libraries and coffee shops and pools and unable to take that shit-eating grin off their chops.

Meanwhile my life continues slowly, and uneventfully. And yes, as you ask, I am in contact with my ex-girlfriend (American) again, where she's obviously in between jerks and is forced to re-evaluate me and my need for emotional contact even from 4,000 miles away.

Sort of. She contacted me a little bit, and I replied a bit in return.

So things are, y'know, still kinda meh, in that barely-blogging-anymore, more-or-less-resolved-to-die-now sorta way. The stone-and-a-half I regained this year (when 2012 dawned and I realised I was cold and bored of exercise so I jumped on the Doritos and chocolate brownies Express) has been re-lost, somehow, and I'm in reasonably great shape. What's more, in six days time, SIX BEAUTIFUL DAYS time, I will be sunning myself on a Cretan beach, or hiking down a Cretan gorge, or perambulating along a Cretan temple - basically I won't be at work, that's what I'm trying to say, as I'll be on my summer holiday with my mate Ed.

Because that's what I live for, that annual two-week window from work when I'll be anywhere but There, away from that motherfucking phone, and people who demand I do things for them, having been cruelly awoken from my perfectly good slumb-

- - It's my job, isn't it? It all comes down to that job that I do, that stop-gap, get a job fast that I've somehow bumbled along in for the last seven years.

I've lost the weight, I've quit smoking. I have to do it. I have to quit my find another job.

Oh balls.

The 7 Year Itch

I had a strange feeling at work today, and it wasn't the raw, stabbing pain of my second mouth ulcer in a week. Instead it was a sense of something sorta important - but not that important - and I couldn't quite place what it was...until my brain started to drift during my walk home;

It's my work anniversary. Right now. Today, on August 1st. It is exactly seven years to the day that I started my temporary, stop-gap, I'd-better-get-a-job-'cos-I-need-cash-quick means to an end I blagged back in 2005.

I was 31. The year before I'd attempted my version of a gap year backpacking around SE Asia (i.e. travelling for just 2½ months a full ten years after leaving University), and returned to get any job I could find. That job was in telemarketing, officially The Worst Thing I've Ever Done, work-wise. My direct boss was basically a Chelsea hooligan, with moods that became violent and jittery and nose-wipey after one of his many visits to the toilet.

If ever there was a good example of willpower and dedication in my life, it was lasting 6 months in that place as I scrolled down bottomless spreadsheets, phoning up people who didn't want to be phoned to sell them tickets to some dumb conference.

I left after panicking myself into an employment cul-de-sac. It was like some unpleasant epiphany realising I absolutely could not spend one more minute in that office with those people doing that thing anymore even if they paid me, which obviously they did.
I took the afternoon off "ill" - half true as I walked out for lunch and the merest thought of walking back became a Sisyphean task. I would not, could not, roll any more rocks for that place.

Just before I quit, I'd been forced to move out of my house share I'd lived in for three years, as my mates had got themselves 'girlfriends' and moved in with them. (They're now their 'wives', and they're all 'happily married', with 'children'). Meanwhile, I'd drifted from one friend's sofa to another, then ultimately back to my mother's, which was humbling.

Cut to the summer. I was now unemployed, and living back in the bedroom of my youth when some indoctrinated scumbags suicide-bombed London during the rush hour. I'd been going for job interviews at a place my stepbrother had put me on to, and that station had been one of the bombed. It was eerie because I'd been there days earlier for a job interview. Which I got. And a few weeks later, on 1st August, I'd started.

Seven years ago today.

It's my longest stretch of employment ever, this temporary, stop-gap job of mine. I actually quit it, a few years ago. I snapped, and said I'd had enough, and stormed off to get my lunch. I'd calmed down afterwards, and realised I didn't know what else I'd do instead. My boss didn't bring up my resignation again, and neither did I.
That was in 2007.

A year later, and we were at our desks watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. It was impressive for two reasons. Firstly, it was really impressive. Secondly, the BBC were streaming it live over the Internet, and I was impressed at how we'd effectively stopped working to watch TV. Call it a high point, if you will.

And then, not long afterwards, there was a housing crisis in the US, with all its talk of sub-prime mortgages, toxic debt, and some kind of "credit crunch" - and neither did it seem to stop. People over here were starting to say "this is bad." Within weeks, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, followed by Iceland, the fucking country of Iceland.

Worldwide economic Armageddon.

Like everyone else, I panicked. Now I was counting my lucky stars to just have a job, so I decided to stay put for a year or two to see how things panned out. With a bit of luck, I thought, all this would've sorted itself out by 2010 or 2011 - certainly 2012 at the latest. That, if you like, is my explanation for not bettering myself.


It had been even worse, though. These aimless years had been more wretched; I not only had a dead end job. I lived it above a chemists in Chiswick with a Large Northern Flatmate, and a mouse.

These days, I live in a nice cosy flat. I still have this dead-end job, but my days flatsharing in shitholes are over.I no longer have to strive for anything meaningful in order to escape that rut. I've contented myself spending my evenings in watching Mad Men, or Game of Thrones, or the Wire, or the Sopranos, or Breaking Bad, just about anything that allows me to splay myself out semi-naked on my Big Bastard Sofa (all mine, in just 21 more payment's time). And it's a bearable, liveable kind of existance, one where I never quite really live. And I can stay here forever, cocooned in beige-carpeted cosiness and quality American drama, anesthesia for my soul, while I try not to think about the job I do that I really don't mind, really, and that's way, way, way better than telesales and, y'know, pays the bills, keeps me ticking along, and besides, you know full well I have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT ELSE I COULD DO....

But still, seven years...

... Seven years?


I don't remember breaking a mirror...

Seduction?

There's a modern-day tribe out there that walks among us. I first read about them last year in a book that changed my life, albeit briefly, when my natural inclination for laziness, carbohydrates and booze was temporarily put aside.

I was vaguely aware of that tribe and that book, The Game, and 'The Secret Society of Pickup Artists' it details. I'd avoided the book for several years because I found it crass, and I still do. In a nutshell, it's all about sad, lonely men trawling bars and streets looking for women to talk into bed.

That's it.

Okay, there's much more to it than that, but essentially that's the point. Every possible social interaction is dissected and analysed, and framed in militaristic language and acronyms. Groups of people are known as sets, and it's the PUA's (Pickup Artists) job to open those sets in a variety of ways depending on factors such as gender, environment, whether you're playing day- or night-game, etc. You have to ignore your "Target" at first, getting instead the approval of the set as a whole and ideally hitting on the target's friend(s) in order to provoke jealousy. Going out on the prowl is called Sarging, and Seduction forums are alive with FRs (Field Reports) where PUAs discuss and debate tactics from earlier that day. Thought you were with your friends having a drink in a bar? Nope. You were a target in a set in the field.


I've been looking into this for some time and I still feel it's a world of unabashed cuntery populated by sad, pathetic men who have to rely on canned openers, negging, and DHV spikes to make up for their lack of actual personality.

But here's the uncomfortable part: It seems to work.

Now bear with me here, because I get no joy admitting any of this (again): I have a problem with wankers, specifically of the smug, self-satisfied genus. I don't like them or their fatuous, shit-eating grins, their lack of body fat, their boundless, unfounded self-belief with their square jaws and confident swagger that suggests they're better than you, and they know it.

I used to have issues but I'm totally cool and relaxed about it now with absolutely no hangups at all. These two guys, PUTRID, FESTERING SCUM and EVIL DRIBBLING SLAG are two such wankers from my past who fit the aforementioned description. They were PUAs who never needed the manual. Their life's work had been (and perhaps still is) fulfilling their desires via as many vaginas as possible. Trouble was, some of those vaginas belonged to friends of mine. A couple were owned by women I even loved a little bit, yet Scum and Slag still won them over. Not only did they barely have to try (square jaws and all), but they weren't nice guys, and that was NOT how I was expecting the world to work. I was, after all, the fat, faintly innocent bloke brought up mostly by women, and taught to respect everyone.

And it made not one jot of difference. I know the world is phenomenally unfair in vastly more important arenas, and if anything reassuring can be said about losing in that great Battle of Love to a pair of selfish dickheads, it's if that's the worst thing that ever happens to you, you've been lucky.

But here's the part that galls: Nothing, for me, has changed. In fact, time has stood still.
I last had a girlfriend in 2006. I'd like to say I've dated since, or at least 'played the field' in that time, but regular readers will know that all I've done instead was accidentally pay for and copulate with a Thai lady whose business was in such transactions - and as funny as that awkward story ended up being, it's also tragic.

I have a woeful dating track record. After falling for various women that all went unreciprocated, I met my first girlfriend through a friend of a friend one weekend in 1998. She was followed by a drunken one night stand, then more pointless unrequited love at work. Months of staring at ceilings came to a brief end after another night out when I slept with a girl I worked directly opposite (Awkward Factor: 1 Billion). Cue my next official girlfriend, another work colleague, which lasted a couple of months. That ended badly, and months of brooding later I'd dated and split up with my third girlfriend at that company and indulged in another drunken one night stand. By now it's 2005 and I'm on dating websites where I have my final one night stand with a girl who essentially had to yell at me repeatedly how horny she was until the penny dropped. My next two (also my last two) girlfriends continued in the same awkward dating website vein with horrendous meetings in pubs that made me sweat and panic for days in advance.

And then I had sex with a prostitute.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm doomed. I've never really taken charge as I have the confidence of a kitten in a bear-pit, and on looking back at my unlucky thirteen years since V-Day, I've been pretty lucky to have got this far. Most women I met through friends, and work, whilst drunk. Since 2005 I've worked in a small, male-only environment where we don't socialise, and most of my friends are all married and settled (thus they don't socialise much either). I shouldn't really be surprised at my situation.

This Seduction world is crass, but there's a lot of information there that makes sense. I lost a lot of weight last year solely because I read The Game and realised that I have to be the best goddamn Me I can. I am a classic AFC (Average Frustrated Chump) and have taken to listening to podcasts and watching clips from humourless seminars about attracting women like I'm some balding, overweight 50-something who's close to shooting pedestrians from clocktowers if I don't do something soon.

Last night it all solidified, both my lack of ability, and the scant progress I've made thus far. I met up with Ed and Large Northern Former Flatmate, who dragged us to the birthday of his work colleague. This was an event that's as rare as hen's teeth for me, so it was nice to even be considered. So imagine my surprise to be surrounded by young and attractive women, none of whom spontaneously vomited when I arrived.

One lady, let's call her The Target, was an HB8 with big brown eyes that seemed to shine and dance. I spotted a few IOIs from her such as prolonged eye contact and repeated hair pulling (although I noticed she did this with others too). I engaged her in conversation which was easy enough as the set was self-starting thanks to me being with a bunch of people everyone else knew. I refused to use any cheesy routines such as The Cube (mainly because I haven't learnt it, plus it's shit), and stuck to my tried and tested conversational skills making sure I threw in an occasional neg, added the odd DHV here and there, plus some mild kino. I allowed the conversation to move on with other people, but ensured my back was to the wall so people could face me. This allowed the Target, who was now facing me from some distance, to observe others surrounding me, adding value. I made sure at this point to make next to no eye contact with HB8, although when I did, she was looking over and smiling.

When it was my round, I got Ed's order and Large Northern Former Flatmate's, the latter being engaged in conversation with HB8. I felt bad ignoring her when I was in drink-buying mode, but I've easily wasted hundreds of pounds buying drinks for complete strangers over the years, mainly women and barmaids. Besides being a waste of money, it's also a huge DLV (Demonstration of Lower Value) as I'm essentially trying to buy someone's affections. Instead, rather than just ignore her I told her I'd buy her a drink once she'd racked up enough points. I have no idea what this meant as I was getting pretty drunk but it seemed less awkward than just ignoring her. I was now sat with Ed at the bar with my back to HB8, and whilst I chatted to him I made a point to chat to the two barmaids stood next to us. It was a quiet night and they had no-one else to serve, yet neither were they interested in talking to us but in speaking to them occasionally, what HB8 would've seen if she looked over was three women validating us by talking to me and Ed.

And then it all went wrong

Ed left to go home as he had work the next day. I realise I am now only staying to 'close', but I hadn't got that far in all the shit I'd read. That was a whole new level and I had no idea how to progress. I knew I had to isolate the target, but because I'm new to this stuff (not to mention vaguely repulsed by it) I'd only been dipping in tentatively. Looking back it would've helped if we were sitting in the dark alcoves at the back of the bar, but instead everyone remained standing in the centre. I decided to go to the toilet - which meant doing something when I got back. I ruined this by, for some reason, depositing my half-full glass on the table behind LNFF and HB8, thereby physically thrusting my drink between them despite there being empty tables all around us. It just seemed odd, and may have suggested on a symbolic level what I inteded to do when I returned.

Post-bathroom, and my mood had obviously changed. I must've become serious or at least less fun as panic set in. I also had no idea what I wanted; a date, a number, a handshake and a promise to meet up again, it all seemed a bit odd. I'd last asked for someone's number several years earlier in an equally clumsy manner by yelling, 'Uh, can I have your number?' which bizarrely worked (although it shouldn't have - and besides, I ruined everything by calling.)


LNFF quickly, oddly, walked off to leave us alone while I sipped my coke. I don't recall what I said to HB8 other than generic blandishments, but my mood must have changed enough for her to now look anywhere but at me. I was now confused and stuck for conversation, and as a silence descended. I remember wondering how I'd could've taken what had felt 100% textbook thus far, and turned it into that familiar fucking awkwardness. I was now beginning to doubt everything. She clearly wasn't keen, and if she ever was, I'd just ruined it. I've never been any good when it came to that pivotal moment with women I'd just met and was never going to see again unless I made some kind of move. I was being awkward, I was making her feel awkward, and the whole thing was turning very, very quickly to shit.


The only way I could make the whole thing go away was by doing that myself.
'Well, goodbye!', I announced, suddenly deciding to go home as if that had been my plan all along.

In summary, I'm going to be studying a lot more of this shit. Sorry, folks. I have to.