Dating on Steroids

I know it's been a while since I've posted. Over two months to be exact, but that's because my life's been in limbo. I had lost a shedload of weight, and appeared this year to be trying to regain the lot via as much reheatable beige food as my mouth could accommodate - which is quite a lot.

There hasn't been much to talk about, really. It's been as per the last 6 years; work, drink, work, drink, work, unceasing masturbation, and the inevitable paying for sex with a transgender hominid from Bangkok. Mainly I've been commuting to and from work with a small company comprised of only men, and that's it.

And then, last night, I went Speed Dating. This was quite a challenge as I haven't actually talked to women not already married to friends of mine, since 2006. In fact it's safe to say I was fucking terrified.

Long story short:

• My mate Danny tells me he knows of a speed dating gig he can't attend, but tells me as I'm single and pathetic and desperate. 
• I text my mate Ed. While I'm single and pathetic and desperate, Ed is independent, solid and picky - yet he's keen to tag along too.
• I've had TWO beers. I'm in that zone. So when Ed texts me a go-ahead, I get out my phone and credit card and buy two tickets before my brain has had time to think this through. It's a movie first, then the dates. I convince myself it's no big deal.
• I actually begin to believe it's no big deal.
• For four days, I couldn't give a shit. I'm almost cocky. 
• Then it hits 2pm on the afternoon of the mass blind dates.
• I start to feel ill. 

"Speed Dating," a friend once observed, "is the chance to repel a large amount of women in the shortest time possible." Suddenly those words felt profound. They feel like ancient wisdom. Religions could've sprung from that font of knowledge, and I would be its highest priest.

Don't misunderstand me; despite this constant well of misery and bleating here (now less often), I don't want to give the impression that I'm terrified of women. I'm really not. Seriously.

I'm terrified of me.

I am single. I have an unblemished, 100% track record of failed relationships.When I have had a window of confidence and approached a woman girl, I'm told to fuck off within seconds. On another occasion, I found myself in the company of two women girls where I forced myself to endure a long and painful conversation that literally made me sweat and panic.

Suffice to say those two events, mere threads in my broader tapestry of angst, left me unable to trust myself any longer. I can talk to women - I can talk to anyone - but I have an abiding fear, a real and honest terror, of awkward silences, or being immediately told to fuck off.

And that's my problem. I've erected a wall of safety around me that's now insurmountable to overcome. And last night might - might - have been the night I began to tear it down.

The butterflies began yesterday afternoon, and I didn't like it one bit. I had a commitment for once, and it wasn't fun. I texted Ed and arranged to meet after work at 6pm - except I was late.

Ed was pissed off. This was a big deal for us. We were both on tenterhooks, and I was already ruining everything. Ed was having a sandwich in Pret when I found him. I barely had time to eat one myself but necessity called, and as I wolfed down my spicy, unidentifiable early dinner, I had a colossal change of heart.

'Let's not do this, Ed. Let's just go to the pub.'
I could see the pub in front of me (*not literally. Ed was in front of me, and the soulless grey wall of a popular sandwich chain.). As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I realised how much I didn't want to go Speed Dating. Something bad was going to happen, I just knew it. I was going to stutter in front of someone attractive.
Or I'd wet myself.
Or I'd bring up my speed sandwich in a vast, vomitous arc onto the feminine yet understated dress of a delightful girl from Brighton.
Whatever it was, it would join my repertoire of cringing moments my scumbag brain likes to throw in front of me just as I'm about to sleep. 

Ed ruined everything with a sigh. 'Nah,' he said dejectedly. 'Besides, you've  paid for it already.'
'I don't care,' I said, now eager it appeared to throw £30 into the ah-fuckit ether.
'Naah,' he replied like some kind of sighing bagpipe eating a baguette. 'Let's get on with it.'
And with that the pair of us headed to purgatory.

The thing that intrigued me about this event was the movie first. You watched that, in a cinema like any other film, then headed to the bar where you'd engage in table-hopping from one single woman to another. I liked the set-up. Firstly you could pretend you were actually going to a movie before the truth set in. Secondly, during the 'dates', you'd have something to talk about.

Now I don't want to give the game away - and by that, I mean mention anything Googlable - but the film wasn't exactly the best to precede meeting a dectet of unattached ladies. For starters, it was about a doomed relationship.
Make that an abusive doomed relationship.
For seconds, she kills her abusive partner. Violently. With a fucking knife.
Then for thirds, she takes the knife and kills herself.

Ed and I were squealing during the aforementioned homicide. It wasn't exactly the stuff of dates. We were laughing by the time the heroine killed herself, mainly because we were seconds away from approaching ten women with a cheerful, 'Hi!'
The laughter was also pretty inappropriate. Somewhere in that darkened cinema sat those women.

I tried to talk Ed out of it once we'd left, shellshocked, from Screen 2.
'I really don't want to do this,' I said.
'Naah,' Ed said. He seemed strangely determined to go through the ordeal while every fibre of me wanted to turn and run. Instead that energy somehow propelled me into the gathering where we checked in to the event on autopilot. I was now playing a role, that of a guy pleased to be there.

And it was fine.

Fine.

The women were lovely. All of them. None of them were my type though, as my type is woefully out of my league. I go for Beyonces and Kelly Brooks and the delightful woman in the 'India Big Tits' video on YouPorn, yet the evening was fascinating. I was intrigued by the spectrum of women in attendance and their varied personalities; the boisterous, the shy, the eager, the bored, the curious, and how that all alternated as the night wore on. The date part was a misnomer really. You're just chatting to other people, gently crisscrossing lives for a matter of minutes, and it felt great. All those faces you normally see walking past on the street or sat on the tube, this felt like a chance to meet some of them and I couldn't help but ponder the number of lonely souls who must be out there all the time.

I also admired the dedication and confidence of those who'd turned up alone. Ed and I had needed one another - I'd certainly needed him - yet everyone else seemed to take it in their stride. They hadn't arrived or left in a group, at least not as far as I could tell, and I sensed that maybe, maybe, I'd allowed a couple of unpleasant earlier experiences to dominate my life for too long.

It was gone midnight by the time I got home. I was utterly exhausted, but strangely euphoric. Even when I received my email today telling me how many matches I'd had.....  None .... it didn't matter. The old adage about taking part really counted. It meant a huge deal to me.

What matters now is that I do something similar, and soon. We all have to push at the boundaries of our comfort zones until we're really living.

* * *

As a postscript, I'll never know how many ladies had my name written down as a person they liked. Had I written their name too, there'd be a match and a date lined up, but that wasn't going to happen. I only handed back one name at the end of the night; that of the hostess.
She wasn't even taking part. I may as well have written Beyonce.

New Year's Eve in Madrid

So Happy New Year, I s'pose. Whatever. So far 2012 holds the promise of exciting new things (clearly non-financial exciting new things) as I've managed to shed nearly two-and-a-half stone or 33lbs beforehand, and even a miserable doom-admirer like myself can't find fault with that - except I now seem hellbent on giving that up and never returning to a gym again. All I can think about now are huge family-sized bags of MSG coated bacon flavoured maize strips, and tiffin.

My chum Ed claims this is just January blues, nothing more, nothing less, and suggests I don't board the cravings rollercoaster. Oh god.

Anyway, New Year's. Having spent the last 4 of those overrated 31sts with said Ed wandering round London in the hope that one of the world's greatest cities would have something to offer (it never does), we'd decided that this year (i.e. last year) we'd go abroad. After conceding that we (i.e. I) couldn't afford New York, we plumped instead for Madrid. There was no particular reason for the Spanish capital, other than it appealed 'cos it wasn't London, and spending 6 days there meant we could extend that traditional evening of enforced jollity via booze into cultural perambulations along wide boulevards and inside shops. For the first time in ages, I wasn't going to see out the last few days of the year crying alone in front of a TV 'til New Year's Eve arrived. Now I had an Ed in a Madrid.

It's a nice place Madrid, though truth be told I prefer it under an intense summer sun where its propensity to offer very little suits. Nonetheless, it's still quite pleasant in wintertime and, as explained, it's not London. Temperature-wise it's similar to our unseasonably mild UK at around 12°C, except with bluer skies and no wind. If there were downsides though, I guess it felt quite small for a capital city. I wanted crowds and action, although the few people that were around did provide the requisite Big City surliness by barging into us without apologizing, which gave me something to complain about.

Ed and I arrived in the middle of the Gran Via in the centre of Madrid and checked in to our basic 4-star hotel (3 of the stars we felt were awarded for location alone), and headed out for some fun. We found a lively looking district to the northeast with chaps milling about, and ate pizza where I tried to catch the eye of the indifferent white-Beyonce-alike waitress who had me pegged, correctly, as absolute male detritus, and ignored my winning smiles. Ed meanwhile took in his surroundings and shifted uncomfortably while I chowed down on a crispy pizza laden with barely cooked pig.

A short while later in a neon bar, those marbled strips of ham were blasting out the other end of me whilst I leant forward attempting to keep shut the broken toilet door. Once I'd staggered back to my bar stool in some considerable agony and shame, I was cheered by the absurd Spanish measures in my whiskey mixer (approximately 8 parts Ballantine to 1 part coke), then ruined the atmos by asking the barman quite loudly what Ed had suspected for some time: We were in a gay bar. In fact, we were in a gay district as Ed realised when he'd eaten his pizza facing me and several well-dressed men having romantic dinners.

Our last days of 2011 comprised of late starts, gentle amblings around town, the occasional Metro ride, and cake. In other words, bliss. We attempted just the one museum, oddly not the Prado (my guidebook called it a "Must See"), opting instead for the Reina Sofia mainly because it was in front of us when we decided to stop walking and go inside somewhere.

We wandered through their exhibition, From Revolt to Postmodernity, which makes perfect sense having just Googled it now. At the time, we wandered through video montages of chainsmoking French Socialist art collectives in berets debating Vietnam (with Spanish subtitles), traversing (and falling over in) pebble-strewn rooms with parrots, and staring in utter confusion at avant garde video art featuring a still man wrapped in BacoFoil stood next to a colleague thumping disjointed chords on a piano.

I was close to tears at this point as neither of us had any idea what the exhibition was about. All explanations were in Spanish, with the only readable thing being a collage of Daily Mail newspapers from the Sixties. And even that didn't help. As I recall the stories were about childcare.
The whole thing felt like a walk through an acid trip within Salvador Dali's head as he read The Communist Manifesto.

By the time we walked into a room made up of schematic blueprints of an irrelevant and anonymous building that, even more irrelevantly, led on to a room playing Eighties clips with Spanish equivalents of Kiss and The Ramones (but crapper, and less competent) performing to an audience of bemused and straight-laced Franco-bred teens, we'd had enough. We fought our way out to the more sober part of the museum to stare at Picasso's Guernica with 200 other tourists, then left.

Disgracefully, the highlight of our wanderings was to an enormous tourist shop that among other items specialised in medieval and Samurai swords so impressive, they rendered the ones emblazoned XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS tacky. More so. I was strangely transfixed, and decided that while EasyJet would probably stop me from bringing on board a 4-foot hand-forged Japanese katana, they may not object (except on taste grounds) to me buying a Goya print to frame and stick up on my wall. Thus Ed became as obsessed with calling me Tatman, hunter of cheap crap for adorning my Tatcave. (I bought nothing in the end only to regret it, and spent the next two days trying to retrace our steps working out where the hell in Madrid that fucking shop was. As far as we know, we both dreamt it.)

New Year's Eve itself started rather disconcertingly. We'd prepared by buying a dozen grapes at a Carrefour supermercado (the Spaniards like to fling one down with the 12 clock 'bongs', each representing a sweet month to come), then tried to find a place to eat. We knew of the Continental's love of late starts, but began to panic as we wandered down dark, empty streets. The scant restaurants that were open didn't appeal and had pricey New Year's menus, and after a good half hour's panicked swearing, we stumbled upon what was essentially a kebab shop for grown-ups with atrocious table service. We spent the better part of an hour in there which was predominately made up of waiting, even for our drinks, with just the last few minutes spent eating kebab on a plate. Then we left the 'restaurant', repeating the same worried hunt for life anywhere this time in bar form.

We found a bar that was actually open as well as barely patronised, which was shocking in itself bearing in mind this was now around half eleven on New Year's Eve. It was on a street called Colon, which I found doubly amusing as the barmen were gay. They served us beer - cocktails weren't going to be offered 'til 1am - but on the plus side they were pretty ambivalent about actually billing us. We were even given free beers for no particular reason that reminded me, with tears in my eyes, of the joys of European liberalism when it comes to alcohol. And we needn't have bought grapes either. Those fuckers had free bunches.

As we'd guessed, the actual crossing into the new year was just the beginning of the night in Europe, as opposed to the whole point back home. In Spain, you start drinking once you've flung grapes down your fruithole as an elegant couple in eveningwear does likewise on television. It was quite fun watching Spain's coverage of the heaving multitudes cheering in Sol, the capital's centre, just a half mile down the road from where we sat. Within 20 minutes, it felt as if the lot of them were packed in the bar with us. Things then moved at a pace. We had a Wifi connection so I videocalled my sister at home (She should've been more impressed than she actually looked). We got talking to two French girls, one of whom was a Gallic Jennifer Garner, and I hit my booze high yelling to Ed about The Game as if I actually had a clue about any of it.
In short this meant I acted happy to be around the girls, but not as if I needed them around (hard to tell if this worked. They never seemed disinterested, but neither did they try to sexually assault us either). Furthermore I prevented Ed from buying them drinks (this demonstrates low value, and is a waste of money. If I got all the cash I'd ever spent buying women drinks, and this includes barmaids, I'd get back sixteen thousand pounds and my dignity).

They asked if we knew any clubs - we didn't - but we both left to escort them. It felt strangely liberating not feeling like I had to indulge in smalltalk. Instead I just led the way with my guidebook map and made a few comments when I remembered to. Then we found a crappy club, saw them off there, and headed into a bar more conducive to our ages while I tried to convince myself via Ed's ear that it was absolutely the right thing to ditch the broads.

The bar was overpriced, and not very busy. A street. People are now milling about and this is more like New Year's. An effete young chap hands us tickets for free drinks and I ask if everyone's gay. "Some yes, some no, some everything," which sounded good enough so we go in for some Mojitos poorly produced save for a respectable amount of rum by a picture postcard butch lesbian. We find seats. The establishment had a mix of bog-standard young kids, a couple of gays in tight shirts, specs-wearing Hipster scum, and a transvestite.

Now I am a heterosexual male. One particular event notwithstanding, I am not attracted to transvestites, transgenders, or common-or-garden cross-dressers. That said, the one tranny who happened to be there had pulled it off quite well, even if under the lavish wig she had the face of a docker.
More impressive yet was the blonde lady stood next to her. Really attractive. With legs and the tits and everything. But we wanted to expore all the bars in Madrid and just wanted to stay for the one.

I am now quite drunk though, and telling Edward, a 40-something man of the world, about The Game and all that it entails. We prepare to leave, but I have a gambit I want to try.
"I'm going up to the tranny," I yell. "I'm gonna tell her she looks fabulous."
"Okay," grunts Ed, deadpan. If he has any opinions about my latent sexual proclivities, he's keeping them firmly to himself.
".. and," I continue, "I'm not going to look at the blonde at all."
"Right."
"I want you to tell me exactly what she does once we're outside."

And with that, we get up. I approach the transvestite and beam. "You look fabulous!" I squeal. Even if they can't speak a word of English, I'm animated enough for her to get my meaning.
We hug, as I recall, and there may have been pecks on cheeks.
"Happy New Year!"s are yelled.

I didn't so much as look in the blonde's direction once, or their companions. I had been completely transvestite-fixated. I stood outside, awaiting Ed's report.

"Yeah," he said. "She looked pretty put out".

"Yessss!" So the theories carried weight. I had negged the blonde - not directly, as I didn't actually talk to her at all - but in not acknowledging her, I'd piqued her interest. I hadn't approached her, the attractive blonde. Instead I'd complimented a man dressed as one.

The night wore on. In fact, it gets vague. I recall us drinking a pair of really well made Pina Coladas and dancing like buffoons... and then Ed goes bed some time around 5am, whereupon I'd thought, 'Fuck it!!'

I found a bar that had a quite high level of desperation. It was half empty and seemed filled with people like me who just wanted to stay out drinking absolutely anywhere. The only difference was they'd had friends with them.

Then I'd gone for a sandwich in a huge, brightly-lit cafe on the Gran Via. I'd ordered a baguette but was mesmerised by the rows of strong liquor behind the teenage till-pressers. So naturally I ordered an Irish coffee too. I sat down and found myself talking to a pair of attractive Basque Separatists. Now things are really hazy, but I recall being so impressed about sitting in a McDonalds-style establishment at 7am that served alcohol, that I got in a double G&T for the road


I woke up screaming. I hadn't had much sleep, and was still hammered.

Suffice to say, paella is not good hangover food. I'd also forgotten than I don't like paella. And neither do I like prawns, unshelled or otherwise, or all manner of water-based lifeforms.

So the seafood paella was a bit of a mistake.

In fact, that first day of 2012 was a write-off altogether, with all we had left to look forward to a plane back to London, and imminent work. It's always a shame to wander aimlessly around a foreign clime you've just holidayed in and are about to leave. Even more so when as a single man, your only physical interaction with the opposite sex has been with the same sex in a dress, or aggressive hookers.

We wandered up and down the Gran Via on our last night, chatting, and taking in the cool night air. To quote Ed from his holiday notes:

'Fweng was twice accosted by prostitutes whereas I had none. This meant 1 of 2 things. They chose Fweng over me because;

1) They found him more attractive

2) He looked more likely to pay for that sort of thing'


Happy New Year.

MI Fuck!

It's been a few days since I received the email telling me I didn't get the job.

Frankly, I was relieved.

But I had to apply for it. It was a vacancy that required candidates with a good grasp of English, like what I got. It also offered the promise of an exciting career, something a tad more important than selling plastic bags to bored Polish shop assistants who don't even know what the fuck it is they want.

It was a job with MI5.

When I first read the spec, I felt a wave of eagerness rush through me. It was a sensation I'm unused to, which I know now is called 'Being Alive.'
The role seemed to speak to me. After months, nay, years, of reading "Spineless team member sought with ruthless blind allegiance - must possess degrees you don't have, with a thorough knowledge of programs and processes you've never heard of..." it was refreshing to finally encounter something I could not only do, but might also enjoy.

So I applied.

The initial tests were online, the first gauging your common sense, the second testing your data reading skills. This was fun, so I was surprised to receive an email telling me I'd passed. It didn't say how well I'd done, only that I was eligible to go on to the 'proper' application now that I'd gone through their initial filter.

And this is where I'd panicked.

Question 1: Do you keep a personal online journal?

I stared at the screen. Well, discounting this actual blog, I don't. Maybe, I thought, I could just tick yes and be honest, but underneath, it said 'If yes, please type the address here____________________________'

Shit.

'I could tell them', I reasoned. After all, they'd get to see 6 years of written English produced in my own time for fun. That's a goldmine for any potential employer, right? - provided of course that they overlook the endless bitter introspection, the junk food addiction, the relentless swearing, the Class A drug abuse, the prostitute sex, the heavy drinking, some cunt with a car, and the ceaseless, relentless bitching about my day job.

So I ignored it and soldiered on.

HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN DRUGS?

Oh bugger.

IF SO, PLEASE LIST THEM

'Cannabis', I began, 'Esctasy, once' (although it was more like 5 or 6 times but I felt like I was being sorta honest as I never took more than one in any given evening - I think.

And then I typed 'cocaine' and stared at the screen. Nothing made that word seem fluffy and innocent and it looked utterly out of place on a job application. It was the word equivalent of a piss-stained tramp passed out on the floor of a 3-year-old's birthday party. So I deleted it and ticked the box that said I'd quite like to discuss my application with someone later, please.

And then I clicked submit.

To be fair, I was very happy with my application. It was sturdy, and I was confident that I was the man for the job - apart from lying about those last two points, made worse by their assertion about not lying as it was a staggering breach of trust.

Except it wasn't really lying, was it? Besides, I'd decided I would tell them about the blog and let them make their own mind up were they to ask, and I was going to tell them about the coke too. I'd just have to go through my entire blog replacing all the 'motherfuckers' with 'rotters', and generally adjust everything from XXX down to a PG or even U whilst praying they'd overlook past indescretions.

And I'd got through to the next stage, the telephone interview. I was now quite dumbstruck, not to mention full of a considerable amount of guilt. However the date they'd given me was in the middle of the week so I replied to say I couldn't do working hours as I'd literally be walking the streets conducting it on my mobile phone. They replied to say this would be fine as long as I didn't mind, so I agreed to their new date on a Friday.

I woke up to Interview day with a fair amount of nerves. And an hour in, those nerves were replaced with anger, and angst, as my boss told me the car cunt had resurfaced. This was rather troublesome, as I would've liked to have spent the hour or two before my interview hiding in the toilet to read up on the job so it would be fresh in my mind. Instead, I was debating insurance with my boss because of a scratch on a sportscar some arsehole claimed I did nearly a year ago.

Needless to say, I'd become deflated and utterly sick to the pit of my stomach about something unrelated to the call I was about to make. Then, in the middle of that day, having excused myself with the line that I was leaving the office "for a think", I instead hid down a London backstreet to phone MI5 and sound unnaturally perky and eager to please.

So you can imagine my glee when I was asked about my interpretation of the job, and about their work in general, and I had nothing, nothing, barring the generic bullshit in my head. Admittedly when I had to provide examples of specific work-related scenarios I had even less, umming and ahhing as I walked up and down the same fucking street in a state of awkwardness, disbelieving the strange optimism that appeared to be tumbling out of my mouth.

But by then I'd gone off the job. It was destined to fail when I'd agreed to conducting the whole thing outdoors and on a cellphone, with a runny nose, for over half an hour, not to mention doomed from the outset thanks to my frugal admissions in the first place.

On the plus side, I still have absolutely no impact on British security, so I guess you can all sleep easy. However, it does mean I can continue to blog with a moderately clear conscience.

Sorry about that.

There Is No God

I am not a bad person.

I care about my friends. I care about humanity. But that doesn't mean I'm immune from getting fucked over.

Apparently, the last shred of humanity in Stalin's cold heart was extinguished the day his first wife died.

Mine was extinguished this morning.


Almost a year ago, I wrote this. It is a post about how, over Christmas, I was given the office van to drive home on Christmas Eve, park it away for the holidays, and drive it back in the New Year.

During that time, I used it once when a friend asked if I could help her cousin move.

'Why yes', I told her, I could. I had the van with me, you see. The whole thing seemed almost ordained.

So one morning during the festive post-Xmas deadzone, I drove to Somewhere, London, loaded up the van, and took friend + cousin to Somewhere Else, London. Call it my good deed for the month. I was even rewarded with unexpected bottles of booze, and petrol money.

Which was nice.

So with a heart full of joy for a favour accomplished, I got back in the van, drove about 40 feet, and came to a standstill. A stationary car, a brand new, luxury stationary sports car, was blocking my path.

'Get outta the way, fuckhead,' I may have muttered.

He made a stuttering, stumbling concession, barely inching to one side, and I squeezed through, made it past, and drove on...
    .... only to be chased by said fuckhead who was claiming I'd hit him.

I got out. We examined our vehicles, and in the darkness saw nothing. He thought I may have scuffed his car and a £20-£30 polish would rectify it. Details were exchanged. And I drove home feeling more than a little uneasy.

Goodbye petrol money.

Within a few days we were talking on the phone. It wasn't £20-£30, he said. Quotes he'd got were more like £200.

I baulked, and said I'd have to take this up with my boss.


So, New Year, back to work. I told the boss. Boss is unimpressed, and says that as the van was used for my personal errand, it's my personal problem. I understand. I am essentially left to fend for my fucking self, but I understand.

Time passes. I try to get my own, cheaper quote to nail this thing in the bud. I also email and phone the other driver. We debate the problem. I continue to deny all liability as, after all, I saw, heard, and felt absolutely nothing. It was almost as if - I dunno - I drove past him and went about my business. Nonetheless, and with work not 'getting' my 'back', I want to come to some kind of agreement and get this damn thing resolved. I ask the driver to meet me half way and share the cost. It is, after all, his word against mine and I still never saw or heard a thing.

Driver says 'No'


More time passes. The driver then speaks to two luxury sports car bodywork shops. Their quotes are £1,200 and £1,800 respectively.

Now go back to my original post. Just check out that tiny fucking scratch. Go on. Have a really good look. See anything worthy of that cost? Me neither.

I send texts to driver saying this is getting ludicrous. Driver begins to quibble about the need to get it repaired 'properly' with a high-end bodyshop that'll loan him an equivalent replacement luxury sports car for the day or two that his is out. I can now add more numbers to those huge quotes.

I phone back, panicking. The driver tells me that he has no choice other than to go for the higher quotes, as the luxury sports car manufacturer has now logged this scratch as an official defect that can only be rectified through one of their own approved, overpriced repair shops.

I start to feel incredibly fucking sick.

Meanwhile, our insurers send a guy round to examine our van. He can see no comparable mark on the vehicle, like nu-thing. It was almost as if I DIDN'T EVEN TOUCH HIM.


...... Then time really passes......

Fast forward to about a month ago. A letter arrives at work. It is our insurers.As they have heard nothing more, they say the case is closed unless they hear anything further.

'Congratulations,' my boss says shaking my hand - and I'm shocked. I feel like I've dodged a bullet, although I sense a reload.

That reload was today.



Today, we got an email. It was from our insurers. Attached were the other driver's letters to his insurers. There, in black and white, he'd scanned all my emails to him, and even our phone texts;
"I can get other quotes," I had grovelled. "I can get a loan, maybe pay £180"


"Look how readily he agrees to pay up!" the driver gloated to his insurance company.

'YOUR INSURED CLEARLY ACCEPTS LIABILITY' his insurers barked at ours.

And then my jaw clenched, and tears welled up in my eyes. My offers to help were now being used against me.

'Don't worry about this,' the driver had told me over the phone months earlier. Verbally, I now realise, he was a bloody nice bloke. Verbally was where I'd reiterated how I never accepted responsibility for all this, and where I made clear that my boss was threatening to deduct from my wages any losses incurred.
'We'll work something out,' the driver told me, and I'd gone on a mission to do what it took to NOT GET MY WAGES DOCKED.

Like an idiot, I trusted him. He was a gentleman, I'd reasoned, who told me he wouldn't let this spiral out of control. After all, I'd said to him, 'Please don't let this spiral out of control. I still maintain I didn't do this....'
And so I'd done - and wrote - whatever I could to not let this get to the insurance claim stage.

Yet there, in today's email, were my old texts, disturbingly reproduced on my monitor, having been culled from his phone, then faxed and scanned to his insurers. And they burned into my eyes and mocked me.

'I'll do this,' I had pleaded. 'Let me try that...' and I wondered how the fuck I'd been so naive, at my age, with my knowledge, to put anything like that in writing.
The last of the texts reproduced on the monitor was unequivocal. To paraphrase, he'd written to me; 'You did this. I should not be the one out of pocket.'


But he omitted my reply text back to him. I know, because I checked. It is still on my phone.

'I did not do this,' I countered. 'This whole thing is becoming obscene.'

For some reason, he chose not to pass that last text on to his insurer. He much preferred all my previous ones that read as if I'd sell my own grandmother to repair that scratch.

Crossroads

Well hello there. I know it’s been a while but I’ve been away, you see – not in the geographical sense, but one of those metaphysical, allegorical journeys to Righting-Wrongston (not far from Cheersville.) In doing so I’ve shed 21 lbs (or a stone and a half in old money), mainly by cutting out almost all shit, and exercising like I’m trying to power a small Welsh village with my legs.

And I’m almost 74% sure I’m not done yet.

Bored and somewhat twitchy though I’m getting with all this healthy living, I’m still keen to lose another stone. I want to be ‘normal’ on those doctors’ charts.

By and large it’s been bearable. It's only happened through a combination of utter stubbornness, positive thinking, and a book*. And as such it’s not been possible to keep up a blog of misery.

Until now that is, because I’ve not slept and my ears are hissing like a burst waterpipe while my head throbs and I’m confused and non-specifically angry – but then again I did spend the weekend avoiding fireworks and human companionship as I sat in front of my computer watching clips of comedian Jim Jefferies at such an awkward angle that I’ve put my back out.

So things are bloody brilliant on a bullshit, superficial level, but less so on a personal one as the boring minutia of my dull life slowly dawns on me;

• Practically all my friends are married now, and with children, and we’ve all inconveniently moved away from one another.

• This means my social life is essentially spent waiting for a specific, pre-arranged night out that, besides being as rare as hen’s teeth, is also violently boozy, and I’m afraid I’m finally bored of drinking.

• You see, barring the occasional tipple, I simply can’t see the point in getting insensibly drunk anymore. It’s getting expensive for one thing, and fattening for another, plus the hangovers seem nigh on unbearable.

• In addition I’ve got a responsible job with the unfortunate side-effect of being poorly paid (last week I spotted a receptionist vacancy with the same starting salary as mine now), and what with the high cost of living plus Christmas, I’ve begun staying indoors trying to not spend any money.

Which is fine but we’re social animals – even me – and I need to, I dunno, do something that doesn’t involve seeing a chiropractor on Monday morning because I spent a whole weekend alone  in the same twisted, horizontal position while I soberly hunt down gross-out comic routines on the internet. 

Basically what I’m trying to say is I really need a girlfriend.

Still.

Which brings me neatly onto that *book I’d read that could be my gamechanger … The Game. 

That's what single-handedly inspired me to diet in the first place, which is odd as it’s a tome I steadfastly refused to read in the past, mainly because it’s about picking up as many women as possible and frankly, that’s crass.

Yet: ‘Never judge a book by its cover’.

I had thought that buying the above would do nothing more than enrich a smug, sleazy fannychaser who was trying to impress me with fatuous tales about the large number of women he’d nobbed, but after being repeatedly talked into getting it by RUSSELL, I discovered that the author was actually one of me; a gimp, a loser, a bit of a twat, until a work assignment came his way that changed his life completely.

He got into shape and smartened up, which is (almost) where I am now. He also started talking to women, an important point which could prove my undoing as I haven’t actually done anything about that yet. Bit important that one, but I hope to do something about that soon - I think.

Y’know, approach women, chat, not cry in front of them, that kind of thing.

Or I could do the other thing that’s currently infected my brain…

I could go out and buy a palletload of Krispy Kremes, and take the lot home and fuck it in a sugarcoated orgy of shame and regret.

Call it a crossroads, if you will.

There's Something About Dad

My Dad's really going downhill, and I'm - I dunno - frustrated.

He's not the man he used to be. Dad used to be a cheeky miserable bastard, but now he seems genuinely pissed off as he bumbles about slowly and asks me to do up his scrappy trousers because his hand hurts.

I know I should be more caring. He's 78 after all and to write that shocks me and makes my complaint seem unwarranted, but he's still Dad to me and I can't believe how old he's become. I guess I should've learned my lesson back when we had what I thought would be a bonding holiday to Amsterdam. Instead of something akin to a paternal buddy movie, I spent my days escorting a pensioner to cafes to eat cake, then fall asleep.

Dad invited me to his for dinner last Friday so I went, as I'm taking a month off alcohol and I've lots of free time. It would've been fun, except when I got there my step-mother told me he'd been offered a job chauffeuring that night, and no-one bothered had telling me he wasn't in and wouldn't appear til 9.

I tried not to seem generally fucking livid as he'd laid on a guilt trip about not seeing me for ages only to not be there himself - and that wasn't the first time he'd done that. Nonetheless I spent an hour eating and chatting to my stepmum, and following dessert I was asked to replace their old telly with the flat-screen TV they'd just bought.

Dad appeared as I was showing my stepmum how to use it, but found myself leaving minutes later. I'd been trying to explain that one button switched the telly from 11 channels of godawful fuzzy analogue, to glorious, pin-sharp digital, yet for reasons I still cannot fathom my stepmother began screaming at me to "Now get HD", or "Now get Freeview", or "Where's the Digital?"

I tried explaining that she was getting her terms mixed up but something incredibly stubborn inside her kicked in and she'd scream - scream, mind you - that I wasn't listening to her, all while Dad yelled "Read the instructions!" behind our backs before muttering something about being ignored. I was yelled and tutted at for several more minutes whilst I continued to explain how her new telly worked until finally, something inside me snapped. The vibe had been ruined by obstinate, screaming septuagenarians incapable of rationalising basic technology, so I told them as pleasantly as possible that I was done being yelled at, and caught a bus home.

I had to go back yesterday as Dad and I had to attend a wake, and was dismayed to find him watching the news in grainy, fuzzy analogue - and by that I don't mean it was a poor version of the same channel he could've been watching digitally. I mean it looked as if it was snowing in the studio. I told him it was like buying a Lotus Esprit so he could drive to Croydon and back, but he just yelled at me for bringing up an old argument.

So I waited for him to get changed. He took his sweet time and I had to tell him we'd be late. Moments later I was forcing together the ends of an ancient waistline around Dad's belly, and helping him replace his food-encrusted shirt with a fresh one to ruin.

We got to the wake late and in style, as Dad had been outside trying to park. I told him he was about to collide with a parked car as he tried to negotiate his way through an admittedly tight spot, to which he snapped, 'Shut up! I know what I'm doing.'
This was followed almost immediately by the high-pitched squeak of a Volvo rubbing slowly against a Mini Cooper.

By the time we arrived at the bereaved's apartment 15 minutes late, we came face to face with a silent throng in mid-prayer, all staring back at us. Dad stopped and looked momentarily stunned, while I caught sight of my sister frowning in the distance, and pointing angrily at her wrist. I closed my eyes in shame.

'Turn around!' mumbled one of the mourners to us. 'East is behind you!'

And so, in the time honoured awkwardness religious rituals provide, Dad and I had to turn our backs on a room full of mumbling Jews as I stared at the prayer book hastily handed to us to play 'Guess the page.'

Time passed. I sweated my way through another of life's awkward social situations, and regretted talking to Dad about eBay, because now he wanted me to help set it up.

People say you can give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life.
There's a modern, and more irritating version where I could eBay something for Dad and he'll sell something for a day, but teach him to eBay and he'll forget by the time he wants to do it himself and I'll have to go over there and show him again until I lose my temper and he yells back and I have to leave immediately to buy crack.

I tried to change the subject as he drove me home, and found myself on instinct asking him to keep within the white lines on the road as he was weaving, and to watch out for the cyclist he didn't seem to notice.

'I KNOW!' he spluttered. 'I'm a professional driver!'

I kept quiet for the rest of the journey until 3 minutes later when he managed to veer off the road and into a supermarket in one sweeping movement.

'DAD! STOP! YOU'RE HEADED INTO TESCOS!'

'Oh yeah!' Dad chuckled as he came to a halt, then began to choke on his rage because I was yelling at him about reversing into oncoming traffic.

Hollywood has lied to me. My Dad's supposed to be a retired, silver-haired old sage offering me kindly pearls of wisdom as we fish from his rowing boat.

Instead I've got a grizzled old maniac who yells for exercise.

This was not the way I expected things to be.

The World's Most Pointless Individual

I have hours left until my summer holiday is over and I go back to work. Frankly I am in two minds about it. On the one hand, I've gotta go back to work. I'll be rudely awoken hours before I'd like to get up, and I'll lose my liberty in a small room doing a whole bunch of shit I couldn't care less about. On the other hand, I get to rejoin the land of the living. I've spent nearly two weeks having my first staycation, not that I actually went anywhere or did anything barring the occasional night out with friends. Instead, it was to be my chance to stay at home and write like the blazes, and finish my spectacular novel. Which of course didn't happen. Entire days were wasted as I spent most of my time watching clips on YouTube, playing Spider Solitaire, and eating, and in said time I've atrophied and withered away, except in a fat sense - meaning I've actually grown. Then there's the other stuff;

• The management company running my apartments are billing me out of the blue for services rendered during a 9-month period before I'd even moved in. Thus any creative time is spent writing sarcastic and offensive letters to them and I'm now about to embark on a one-man mission to get rid of the fuckers on behalf of everyone else.
• And when I'm not doing that, I've been napping during the day. My days thus began with me waking up to eat, only to return to bed. I've reverted back to the life I led when I was born.
• I’ve woken from vast, 9 hour sleeps with a completely wet head. I’m convinced I’ve had some kind of stroke
• And when I've been awake, I've spent it sat at an unusual angle, semi-naked in a towel (No point getting dressed, you see). This has caused my right thigh and buttock to remain perpetually numb for a whole week now. When I do walk around my flat I'm limping. I'm sure it's a life-threatening bloodclot.
• My anal fissure, a tiny rip on the base of my lower intestine, has returned, providing last Saturday with perhaps one of the most agonising experiences of my life, and I'm not exaggerating. Nothing in that particular department had been happening for a couple of days as I shovelled vast amounts of carbohydrates down my neck. Then, finally, I felt the grizzled presence of a chained Doberman growling at the entrance of my doghouse. I had to literally muffle my screams with a towel and was left panting afterwards as if I'd run a marathon. With all the sweat and blood, it was the nearest I'd get to childbirth. Although I'm pretty sure that post-pregnancy women can sit down afterwards.
• I'd decided I needed more fibre in my diet so, looking for a quick fix in its absence, I grabbed the bottle of Laevolac I'd bought the last time my backside sealed itself up. Laevolac is a pretty powerful liquid laxative that hadn't worked in the 24 hours since I last took it, so I'd downed what remained. 20 minutes later, a Japanese bullet train was racing through my intestines. I am pretty confident you'll understand my eagerness for this holiday to end as I sat on the toilet sighing while hurtling underneath me to its watery death gushed the 3:30 to Osaka via that fleshy, airtight tunnel with the scar on the front

All I want from what remains of this year is to finish this motherfucking book, and perchance diet. And get a better job. It's just the doing all of that that bores me. And if I've learned anything from this farce of a holiday, it's that I'll only waste time if I've got it.

#notwriting

Last night I felt wretched.

I am currently on holiday having taken time away from the office but, for the first time in my working life I'm not going anywhere; no summer abroad, no lazing by the pool or clubbing at night as fat tears of regret roll down my sunburned fucking cheeks while orange women crowbarred into tiny skirts avoid me like I'm Joe Merrick in a thong.

The plan instead was to stay at home where I'd wake up early, hit the gym, then go to my room and write like the blazes, finishing the spectacular novel I'm eeking out like a bowel movement in the intestines of a constipated bull elephant.

I've been writing this fucker for several years now.

I knew, deep down, that if I'd managed to write even just an hour a day, a minor miracle would've occurred. Even every other day would've been a vast achievement. Instead, I managed a pretty good first few days only to atrophy into a kind of late-waking limbo where I'd watch crap on YouTube only to migrate at a late hour to my sofa to watch films once I was pregnant (and vaguely sick) with chocolate.

So it should've come as no surprise that this morning, at 2am, I found myself lying in bed having just got in it, mentally whining like a mardy teen emo except my issues were older and more boring.


I thought about my American ex, and checked my email. Despite the globally-publicised English riots, I noted that she hadn't dropped me a line to see if all was well. That would probably be because I told her 6 months ago to go fuck herself and never contact me again. And she hadn't. So I pondered another ex and had a quick stalk on my iPhone. There she was, still looking lovely in her nice black evening gown as she stood in an airy conservatory with her husband next to a playpen.

I'd dumped both women and, at the time, it had been exactly the right thing to do. Hands down. No question. But I've got as much success meeting and dating women as THIS GUY, especially as I get older and because I still don't feel 'ready'. My job's poorly-paid and can barely sustain myself. A girlfriend will bankrupt me. I also want to reach the giddying achievement of finishing this millstone of a fucking book that's hanging round my neck and breaking my back. And probably more importantly I feel too 'heavy' and would like to diet myself datable. And that's not happening while I'm trying to write. I can't do both at once.

I've been in this limbo for years. Now I'm 37. Thirty-fucking-seven. How I got this far I've no idea. Obviously time's passed but I feel like I'm 28 and now I'm boring myself.

And that's why I couldn't sleep last night, blah blah blah...

All or Nothing

Firstly I must apologise for not writing anymore. This is mainly because I’m a), finding myself coming back from work and lapsing into a lonely coma, – actually, there’s no b). That’s it. I simply go home and lock the door. If I do manage any writing, it’s for my shit novel I’m kidding myself is still in me.

There’s an added excuse I suppose, that this anonymous blog’s something of a non-anonymous joke between my friends as they all know about it, as do their wives and girlfriends, their families, neighbours, gynaecologists, and other random nouns. As a result I can no longer repeat anything here as the likelihood that I’ll offend or libel someone is enormous, thus I can only mention for example the Camden barbecue I went to last week where everyone was lovely, and I drew no conclusions from the fabulous trendy aloof young people in attendance. I was also kicked in the ribs by a statuesque blonde from upstate New York, a beating I totally deserved as I’d been arguing that “cunt” was acceptable in polite conversation, and is in the UK not just an extremely horrific and unpleasant slur against women, but a fun word bandied about by scum.

All the women I’d been talking to later walked off without so much as a wave (which I thought was fine), and I was thrilled to discover the Mexican girl I’d been chatting to minutes later having her tonsils examined by some young bland EuroFuck’s tongue in the adjoining kitchen.
The whole evening ended with Camden’s Saturday night detritus giving me a wide berth as I staggered home swigging from an enormous bottle of Malibu and smelling of steak – thus the only person I’m maligning here is me; the end.

I’ve also seen Monkey Dave when he was in London with his missus, and was delighted to have her confirm that she knew all about my prostitution altercation when I visited them in Bangkok last year (nothing will make me stop linking to that story).
Apparently she’d read my blog as I’d been using her laptop at the time. She’d simply viewed her website history I thought I’d deleted.

So basically I’d be writing daily if it wasn’t for my friends’ partners. That’s all I’m saying.

Anyway, all or nothing. For the remaining couple of months in this godforsaken summer of indifference, I’ve decided to finally quit my job, go on a diet, and complete this hellish fucking second draft of a so-called novel. That’s the bland point of this post in a blog that used to be okay once.

Job

So a colleague left a couple of weeks ago which was something of a shock. When he was appointed I made a mental note to quit so he could go up a rung and do my job and I wouldn’t feel guilty (we’re a very small company and they’re like a kind of family – of sorts). I then promptly did nothing about it, and then he went and resigned ahead of me.
So naturally, I asked for more money. I earn a pretty pathetic wage, and it’s been 18 months since my last raise. With one less employee to pay, who’d begrudge me a couple of points on my pay packet?

My boss, it transpires.

I was pretty shocked by this, as my direct boss (the boss boss’s son) seemed strangely eager to give me more money when I asked, although he did give himself the get-out of giving Dad the final say.

So with the final say being, ‘Not for at least 3 months’, I’m leaving. I retouched my CV for the first time in years last night, and applied for 3 jobs that looked moderately ‘myeh’

Diet

I’m going back on a diet. I’m a shade off 16 stone again, which is where I was this time last year before I went on a diet and dipped down to the 14 stone zone.

So blah, blah, blah, blah, WHATEVER.

Novel

Stupid fucking thing. It’s existed in one form or another for about 10 years, and the 1^st draft I’d shat out in 2009 was utterly awful.

This one is being squeaked out at a rate that can only be measured via carbon dating, but I somehow hope to have a far superior 2^nd draft vomited forth by the autumn. It’s also the main reason why I’ve barely been blogging as all my time has been going on this.

It’s still an almighty work in progress, but maybe something will see the light of day soon and now I’m boring myself... 

Needless to say,. I've got a lot on my plate. I will be blogging, but please bear with me. 

Oh, and I tweet at least once a day to bitch about something inane so CLICK ME HERE to feel like you're a better person than me. 

Good day, sir.

The Life To Do List

What follows is a personal Life To-Do list, a large majority of which will never happen even if I get to relive my paltry existence a billion times over. Several aren’t compatible. Many aren’t even possible. I also note with disgust the heavy slant towards the narcissistic and vainglorious. This was an exercise that started off fun, then (unsurprisingly) depressed me once I realised how materialistic it all became, not to mention violent in places.
There are also several references to the US that makes me wonder if I’ve been brainwashed by the American dream from the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Everything else just makes me sound like a cunt.
In no particular order:-

Win the lottery
Ride in a helicopter
Take in a cricket match
Sleep with a model
Sleep with two models at the same time
Lose loads of weight and get really buff, blah blah blah etc etc etc
Ski
Drink mint juleps under a weeping willow outside a white picket fence town hall in a quiet Southern State
Go fishing
Throw a concrete egg at the swollen, engorged head of Jay Kay from Jamiroquai
Have a lads’ holiday in Vegas
Play a round of golf (well)
Look at the Grand Canyon
DJ at an Ibizan superclub
White water raft
Cure cancer. Actually, cure MS first and help my Mum to walk, then cure cancer
Finish and publish my crap book and become the greatest comic writer that ever lived
Drop acid on the proviso that I absolutely will not have a bad trip at all
Island hop on a private yacht around the Med and assorted Greek islands
Visit all 50 US states in a Cadillac (shipping the car over to the two freak states)
Have my picture taken with Boris Becker
Perform competent and amusing stand-up that is unencumbered by debilitating, crippling nerves and a shyness that is criminally vulgar
Execute Morrissey
Ride a camel
Visit Tromsø to see the Aurora Borealis
Single-handedly broker a long-lasting and genuine Middle East peace
Find the slags that stole my last two bikes and beat the unmitigated fuck out of them with a brushed aluminium bat until they plead in the name of every holy book and every non-existent deity in the sky to never again help themselves to anyone else’s belongings
Sire a battalion of charming, trouble-free children and raise them in my large detached house in central London (having first married Kelly Brook who still gets giddy with oestrogen flushes every time I wander past)
Open a bar in Thailand
Fire a gun
Fire a gun at Sir Fred Goodwin
Jump up and down on the bullet-riddled corpse of Sir Fred Goodwin
Appear in one of those ‘Top 100’ programmes as a talking head spouting devastatingly witty bon mots
Go to the Rio carnival and overdose on caipirinhas and cocaine (in a fun way)
Own a variety of morning suits, dinner suits et al, and wear them at appropriate events as I swan about with an overinflated sense of my own self-importance
Become a brick shithouse master sensei ninja or something, and take out the trash as I traverse the land righting wrongs and defending the underdog
Visit Egypt, Iran, Japan, China, Russia, Belarus, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Hull

And theoretically bungee jump, surf 40-ft waves, leap from an aeroplane, and paraglide, although I suspect it'll all be a bit scary, the end.

Things Only Women Can Say

These words are the privilege of women only. If any man uses these, they must be thinned from the herd Sparta style as they will eradicate humanity in the long run:

Squiffy
Tipsy
Icky
Scrummy (and scrumptious)
Tummy
Tum-tum
Foo-foo
Bot-bot
Ladygarden
Hat
“To die for”
Tinkle
Winkle
Winkie
Whoopsy
Shoes
Glee
Tippy-toes
Relationship
Foundation (unless assembling a building)
Delish
Ridic
Gorge (As in “He’s gorge”, and not “Let’s gorge on hookers and crack”)
Divine
Fascinators
Manolo Blahniks
“We need to talk”

Also…
Sarcastically ending a sentence in “much”
Sneering at me
Crying 

EDIT: Addendum - "Ew"

This post was brought to you by the Association for Crass Gender Stereotyping, Scunthorpe

NEGATIVE

Curse these posts. They're less about something to say, and more a vague update, particularly now I'm getting (gratefully) nagged.

Suffice to say I'm in limbo, drifting like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream, but it's a good limbo, like that drunk Victoria Beckham-a-like in a denim skirt with no knickers lady. (WARNING: Link NSFW!)

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty Not-Shit™, and for two fleeting reasons:

Fleeting Reason 1) ~ I've stopped working my shit novel. It was shit, for one thing. Actually, that's the main thing. I just wasn't feeling it anymore, and it was making me unhappy.

Since completing my (worse than shit) 1st draft over a year ago, I realised that my real life was more interesting that the world I'd invented. Thus I began to rewrite what was, in essence, a fictionalised account of my own biography, which as a nobody I found overwhelmingly egotistical on one hand, and pretty lame on the other.

I had Imposter Syndrome big time, that's what I'm trying to say. Whenever I tried to write, I felt like an amateur just play-acting, and when I thought about it, I was a lousy storyteller with no better story than my own.

But I'm pretty happy. I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off of me. I'm not saying I'll never go back to the story, but in the short term I'm backing off, like people with vaginas near me in a bar.

Fleeting Reason 2) ~ I'm back on a diet again, and there's nothing quite like Doing Those Things You Know Are Good For You to give you an endorphin shot in the brain.

I regained over Xmas (and January, and February, and the last couple of months) all the weight I'd lost the previous summer and, in true Really-Not-Good-For-The-Heart fashion I'm going to relose all that shit again. It transpires I'm a Hibernator. When the cold nights draw in, I like to snuggle up on the sofa with deep-fried tubes of Pringles and a barrel of scotch. Now I'm going to fuck myself healthy with lettuce for dinner and running on a treadmill till I cry pure lard.

All this means I can concentrate on really important matters-

a) ~ Get a new job.
This may prove awkward as I returned from the Easter break to discover our 'New' colleague of the last couple of years has resigned. It's now my boss and me. And I'm not sure how to play it - the timing certainly sucks - but I have to move on.
As I may have mentioned several billion times, the pay's not great, my hours are too long, and I'm bored and irritable there. It'll be a death sentence of the soul if I stay on.

b) ~ Get a bloody girlfriend.
Because this is getting silly now. I'm completely out of practice too. A couple of weeks ago I went to a gig and met a female friend of a friend and I sweated, actually sweated, in blind, abject panic, all because I was talking to a woman - So basically I'm regressing back into a virgin.
I've got a lot of work to do, but jogging myself out of my man-tits may help, even if just turning 37 doesn't.

But on a happier note I emailed the American ex and told her to extricate off, so that's that loving chapter finally closed.

And there's nothing else. Really. Just a dull update following my recent birthday where I decided to have a post-work pub gathering which was tremendous - barring my decision to furnish my guests with some buffet snacks. I hadn't specified a limit and ended up paying £130 for a metric ton of onion rings.

I also accidentally wound up in Spearmint Rhino on the eve of my birthday, where a Brazilian lady whacked me repeatedly round my head with her fake breasts for approximately 20 seconds, a rate of £1 per second, an act I found so unerotic it was strangely erotic, as well as seedy and completely pointless and slightly humiliating.

But on the plus side, I have since had an AIDS test, following that sex I had with a Thai prostitute. I panicked when I first received my results, as it didn't read correctly. But the truth quickly kicked in, so come and get me ladies --

I AM NEGATIVE.


PS - although you already knew that. I've been out of the loop of my own blog, I forgot I mentioned that nearly 2 months ago.
Tschh. Idiot.
PPS - Oh yeah, and I mentioned the ex-girlfriend thing in the post before. Not really sure why I bother.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed

Whinge, Bitch, Moan & Bleat

So here’s the post I’ve been intending to write, but only because it’s been a while. Truth be told I’ve been putting it off because, Boo hoo, it’s going to be whingey.

And that’s ‘cos nothing’s happened; nuh-thing, other than the passing of time. And gaining weight. I’ve tried eating a salad or some fruit, but it broke my pampered fat soul. So now I’m back to cake for breakfast*

But my main whinge is time. I don’t seem to have enough of it anymore (barring the weekend, but more on that in a moment).

I get home from work each night no sooner than 7pm, by which point I can barely be bothered to do anything thinky as I mainline Youtube whilst force-feeding lard down my neck. And there’s a delicious irony in lackadaisically watching TED motivational videos in my pants whilst playing Spider Solitaire.

Thus, motivated I ain’t, and it’s considerably hindering My Brilliant (ha!) Novel, a novel which I have been writing in one form or another for several years now. This last year for example – an entire year - has been spent plucking up the courage just to read my first draft (which I did in January. It was absolutely, utterly awful) – So my current re-write is ostensibly a brand new draft, and that’s the problem. This is becoming the Project that Never Ends, and I’m wondering why I’ve set myself this mother of all personal homeworks.

On the plus side, it isn’t too bad. There’s an actual story for starters.  But on the minus side, I’m not actually writing it. Oh, and get this; my lack of imagination is so woeful that it’s essentially my autobiography. It transpires the fiction I’d attempted to invent was nowhere near as good as the crap I’ve actually lived, even if said life is now in its death throes.

So if I do ever finish this, it’ll be a one-book wonder.

But I’m not sure I’ve even got the time.

That’s because I’ve somehow found myself taking a leading role in my apartment block’s ‘Organisation of people what live here too’ (I could word that better, but I’m terrified of using keywords my neighbours could Google only to find this fucking blog).

Thus I’m spending my weekends at meetings, and contacting several ‘Companies what do Cleaning and Insurance and Stuff for Domicile Condominium things’.

This has wound up being massive, as I single-handedly discuss thousand-pound plans on behalf of 180 flats and houses that don’t even know I’m doing it. However, I have single-handedly sorted out our ‘Room with lots of Fitness Things in it,’ so I’ll soon be able to feel guilty about never bothering to visit the place just two floors below where I cry myself to sleep.

Although I’m single-handedly also fucking myself ragged on a daily basis - normally before I cry myself to sleep.

So, I dunno, I really seem to abuse my spare time. I don’t have friends anymore, so my weekends have become an orgy of measured excess, if indeed the definition of Excess has become ‘(noun) The state of waking up late, walking to the Co-op and buying one’s body weight in crisps and Fairtrade chocolate chip brownies, then going home to watch The Atheist Experience clips on Youtube before wanking into a sock and hiding under a table in foetal position as one’s body shakes with quiet sobs whilst every single mistake and lapse of fucking judgement spools through the mind’s eye like an eternal, neverending You’ve Been Framed! of regret.’

So come Monday, having managed to avoid writing more than a paragraph of my Brilliant (ha!) Novel, I don’t feel justified to write my blog, see?

However I’m trying to make my free time a little more beneficial. Last night, for example, I managed to finish season 1 of the near-decade old The Wire , and brilliant it was. It may also explain why I thought it a good idea to shave my Horrible Scrappy Red Beard™ into a goatee. I normally hate this peculiar fashion error but it wasn’t until I’d done it that I realised I’d subliminally accepted into my head  that programme's several handsome alpha-male black men acting themselves silly with the same beard.

Trouble is, I’m not black, or handsome, and I’m barely a delta-male. But now it’s too late and I’m walking around with a ginger-fringed cakehole.

And that’s where I’ll leave it, I think. I have other issues, such as a perpetual weak left knee (that my boss has scared the living shit out of me by deciding it’s arthritis), and my head’s riddled with tinnitus - a consistent, neverending whistley hiss that gets louder the less sleep I’ve had the night before. Although I suspect inserting small buds into my ears and blasting House into them at high volume isn’t helping.

Oh, and I had an AIDS test because of the sex I had with that prostitute.

The results came back negative, which confused me for about three minutes. Positive, to my mind, is good. Negative ain't.

You get the idea.

*I’ve not actually been eating cake for breakfast – well, not lately. I just like the way it sounds here. And tastes, on occasions when I have done it.

ADVERTISING BREAK 2

My Childhood's been ruined. When I was a kid, this advert was massive. Really massive. Note how well it's actually performed, a little story with a happy ending to boot in 50 flipping seconds!



The name J.R. Hartley thus became embedded in the nation's subconciousness, or mine at least. I'm pretty sure most Brits of a certain age would be familiar with it. It even inspired comic sketches, viz:



And then my mate Ed tonight drew my attention to this. I have nothing else to say, except perhaps I hate 'trendy' modern advertisers.
And bad acting.
And the French   #irrelevant

ADVERTISING BREAK

Found just now as I was watching the latest Alan Partridge Mid-morning Matters, the advert I was bizzarely forced to audition for a couple of months ago...



I'd gone for role of 'So what did they say?' man - yes, the guy in the chain holding the lotion - back when they were casting for someone stockier and gingerer. I see the script actually became a lot more groinal.

Thank god I didn't get it.

I think.

Removing Polyps and Ex-Girlfriends

I'm not at work today, which makes this one of the greatest Mondays on Earth. This is because this morning, I had to go to hospital where a nice lady injected an anaesthetic into the side of my tongue, and sliced out a tiny polyp.

This abnormal growth caused me no pain, or even made its presence felt, but was always there lurking in the background like an oral Jedward. The whole procedure from stabbing in my mouth to removal and stitching took about 3 real minutes, having initially been spotted by my dentist a couple of weeks earlier.

Now all that remains is a dull, irritating pain, like an actual Jeffrey Archer.

And in my excitement on phoning work to be told 'stay at home', I've done some spring-cleaning (I really can't tell you how exciting it is to be sat at a desk not covered in a 10-month old layer of grey dust), and washed my DNA-caked bedsheets which were as rigid as floorboards when I crowbarred them off my mattress.

All such new leaf-turning can probably be subscribed to a final war of e-words with my erstwhile Lovely American ex-Girlfriend, downgraded to ex-girlfriend (American), only to become, last night, 'bitch'.

It's all very unkind and a trifle sexist, but necessary if I'm to get the fuck on with my life. I probably have Tired Dad to thank for his helpful last comment to "Grow a pair" (although admittedly he could've been referring to a number of things I've been bitching about)

So how to best summarise this? We'd got back in touch (Me and my ex, not Tired Dad), she re-friended me on that fucking website. Pictures were exchanged for some reason, mainly from her, mostly when she was on holiday, or having returned from the hairdressers.
And I bemoaned my ever having dumped her (as I have been doing, admittedly, for several years.)
So I called her up a couple of times, and it was nice. And I invited her over to my warm cosy flat now that I'm all living on my own and independent, and she topsy-turvied that shit by inviting me over to hers instead, just a short, 6-hour, half-a-grand journey away - a little unfair as I'd been the last person to go over there 4 years earlier when she inexplicably treated me like shit and made me sleep on the sofa.

So I've been mulling over this potential new trip to the States for a couple of weeks now, even though it's been tempered by feelings of overwhelming stupidity. And I've been emailing her to gauge just how aloof she'd be if I'd turned up again.
And her response has been pretty aloof.

Which is odd, as she's been emailing me the occasional semi-naked picture of herself and telling me that there were many things on her mind that she'd been brooding over and wanting to tell me, then never actually telling me. And I'd let a couple of days pass before attempting any contact, but she'd be away with the fairies and nicely irrelevant when I did, and for nearly two weeks I'd tried to get a line of communication going until finally, yesterday, I got a lengthy e-lashing for, in short, bugging her.

So I replied to say it wasn't fair because really, she was sending me mixed messages. And as such, I didn't know where I stood, and I didn't really think that was particularly sporting.

I was about to press send when I felt something rise within me; Pride, I now realise. I re-read what I wrote, and saw that she was being pretty unfair. In fact, I had a bloody good argument on my side, so I added that I thought she was playing games.

That felt good, so I continued that it wasn't nice to fish for emails and phonecalls, then ignore them. And furthermore, it was also pretty childish to drip-feed me nuggets of attention, then pretend it hadn't happened.

In fact, I found myself typing, Fuck you, you silly little girl, and it occurred to me how utterly angry I was and how stupid I felt and I realised that I'd rather never hear from her again if it was going to be this one-sided forever so, with nothing else to lose, I told her never to contact me again.
What's the point if it's just to shore up her ego?

She surprised me by replying immediately. Apparently there'd been an enormous misunderstanding. She'd thought in my 'take the hint' email below that I was referring to her to leave me alone, but she wasn't particularly bothered. In fact she sounded like someone trying to gain the upper hand.

Angrily, I informed her she was completely mistaken. I reaffirmed that it was her loss, and that has been that. The chapter is finally closed as far as I'm concerned. Our relationship, even our friendship is doomed and no matter how much I'd like to see her again for old time's sake, too much water has passed under the bridge.
To use another old cliche, I'm drawing a line under the whole thing.

Which is a shame. Because this morning, as I came back home from the hospital eager to spring clean my living room, I accidentally came across the letters Rachel had written to me several years earlier.
I winced as I flicked through them, her neatly written messages on colourful paper that retold how her first trip to England to meet me had surpassed even her greatest expectations, another from a later time about how much I meant to her and then, finally, the love she felt for me which ached inside as she knew I didn't love her back.

That was the girl I was chasing, the one I'd hurt. The one I wanted to hold again and apologise profusely and run into the sunset with. The one who'd offered me her heart but I'd spurned it because I'm too fucking stupid and male and scared to realise what it meant. And now that heart has hardened and it's too late.

So that's that.

Just The 5 Problems But A Twitch Ain't One

Today was a day I never want repeated in a billion decades as, drip by drip, I was shat on from above by a vindictive diahorretic deity that doesn't exist.

It's very hard for me in my white male middle-class world to bandy about words like 'unfair' as all of the above makes me pretty damn privileged from the off. I'm also not comfortable sulking about my bullshit when you consider The Biggies; cancer, cot death, Rwanda, Gok Wan.

And of course from a personal perspective, my Mum's got MS. No reason, she just got it and hasn't stood up unaided much less walked for several years now.

So it's hard for me to feel 100% comfortable sulking and pouting, but today took the biscuit, because:

1 ~ My boss and I came to a decision, after consulting our insurers. With our van full of scratches, and a man saying I scratched a thumbnail-sized scar into his sports car, I'm not confident in the slightest, much less keen, to risk an already out-of-control incident going to court. I simply can't predict our chances.

The worst-case scenario, I concluded, will be a wage cut of £50 p/month over the next two fucking years.
"And that still puts me out," my boss reminded me, "because we won't be allowed to build up a No-Claims discount for some time, and... (a number of other factors I can't recall now but the upshot being he loses out too)"

I'm still hoping I won't actually be deducted approx £1,200 of my wages to pay for a £200 paint job, yet I had to tell my boss that my morale would be significantly depleted if I had to do the Day Job knowing I was being paid less thanks to an incident largely thrust upon me, and despite agreeing a few days earlier to pay outright the original 'normal' quote.

So that was a nice start to the day, discovering that I could possibly get a wage cut through no fault of my own, which may ultimately lead to my furious resignation.

2 ~ I was still brooding over this when my Dad walked in unannounced. Although he doesn't do it very often, it does piss me off. My office is not unlike an estate agents. You can walk in off the street and there I am, sat at my desk, scowling and wishing I was in Corfu. And he always makes me feel guilty, because I feel honour-bound to pay him a requisite amount of attention because he's my father and he's come to see me, but I can't because I'm at fucking work Dad, and you didn't warn me you were coming.
So I was curt, I'm ashamed to say, and didn't want to fanny about.
'I'm busy Dad, what's the matter?'
He grinned at me, sheepishly. 'Is it your new iPhone?' I asked. 'I'll set it up soon.'
'Yes,' he muttered, 'If you could just pop round one day and show...'
'Yes, yes, yes, okay. Is that it? I've had a bit of a shitty day and I'm kinda busy,' I said as I tapped my desk, slightly ashamed that I will one day live to regret being blunt to my elderly progenitor.
'It's just,' he leant in to whisper as I turned to see my boss on a phone call, 'I want you to (inaudible)'
'What?' I grimaced, 'You want me to do what?'
'Cut my toenails...'
'Jesus Christ, Dad.'
'Susan can't do it you see. They've got very hard and she can't...'
'Yes, yes, alright, alright. Just... I'll do it,' I added as I shooed him out.

Despite it being lunchtime having not eaten all day, he actually made me lose my appetite. I didn't nip out for a sandwich for another two hours.

I have since been informed by my sources that he can book a chiropodist's appointment with the NHS, but dare I burden the system because I'm squeamish about holding a pensioner's grey foot and crowbarring a scissorblade underneath a filthy, elongated... fuck it, NO WAY. The State can do it.

3 ~ But good news ahoy! I'm back in touch with my Lovely American ex-Girlfriend (again), following her downgrade to 'Ex-girlfriend (American)'. We're swapping emails once more, and photos, and I've even phoned her a couple of times. It's just like it used to be.

And in keeping with old times, it's all gone to shit again. I'm not known for my patience, plus she's developed this annoying habit of appearing to not give a damn in the slightest. A lethal combination.
So we'd reached this impasse where I'd invited her to Jolly Old England and my new flat, and she'd upped the ante by not agreeing, but inviting me to her new apartment instead.

Now I'm not stupid - alright, I'm a fucking idiot - but I'm not so fucking idiotic as to travel back to New York to meet a girl who relished the opportunity to be aloof and indifferent to me 4 years ago. I'd been there before, and it was SHIT.

But I did want to see her again, so I emailed her in my usual tactful way; 'How mental would you be on a scale of 1 to 10 if I were to come visit you?'
She wondered in reply if there was an insult therein, but I reassured her that I was 'testing the water by being deliberately provocative.'
She replied by saying I was being passive aggressive, a concept I've never fucking understood, alright? I reaffirmed that I just wanted a sincere answer, to save us all wasting our time. Perfectly reasonable, blunt, and specific, and eventually, she tells me that 'there's more I want to say and I am simmering the words trying to figure out how to best convey the emotions.'

'Oh?' I enquire.

And then, silence, fuckin' me-killing silence.

4 ~ 'John'. For those who can remember, I wrote a post, since deleted, about an old schoolfriend called 'John' who came back into my life 5 years ago after vanishing for 15 years. We'd grown up as best friends but he disappeared in our mid-teens to get up to no good and fuck as many women as possible. This was, of course, at odds with my life at that time, which was spent home alone, eating myself senseless and crying myself to sleep (I no longer cry that much).

So John reappears, it takes a few years to finally be repulsed by his character and morality, so I'd spent the better part of 2 months avoiding him; replying to one out of every four of his texts and ignoring his calls, because I'd like him to go away.

Now here's where I join everything together.

I decided, after 3 days of silence proceeding Lovely American ex-Girlfriend's ambiguous last email, to write to her.
It was about 'John'. I described our childhood, his disappearance, his reappearance then my slow realisation that I wanted him out of my life.
'The bottom line,' I told her, 'is I'm not replying for a reason. I just want him to take the hint and leave me alone.'

I thought this was a none too subtle way of seeing if - perhaps - she might want to be left alone herself.

Lovely American ex-Girlfriend replied pretty quickly. 'Continue to ignore him. He'll eventually get the hint.'

I grimaced. She hadn't got the hint, so I replied with this picture:



This didn't go down at all well, for some reason. I hadn't realised that her delay in replying was down to her moving apartments that weekend, and in the 3 more days of silence that have passed my badly misjudged picture missive, I can only conclude that whatever words she's "simmering" to tell me aren't going to boil over into actual communication any time soon. Not being told what's on her mind is irritating enough. Imagine what it would be like if I actually went to see her.

Again.


5 ~ So I'm sat at work today, pretty fucking livid with everyone and everything and, with all this shit cluttering my head, I'd decided to text the sports car owner, the formerly decent guy who I'd kept in touch with since the accident who'd understood the insurance implications and promised he wouldn't let things spiral out of control.
I was just typing, 'Thanks for letting this spiral out of control. I'm now getting my wages reduced, AS I'D SAID WOULD HAPPEN,' when my phone rang.

I didn't recognise the number and, out of curiosity, I'd answered. The phone was, after all, in my hand.
'Hello?'
'Aw'ite mate?' said John.
Oh fuck.
'Ow's it goin'? Yer not answerin' yer calls.'
He sounded put out. Obviously. I'd been ignoring him for the last two months.
I ran out of the office and kept it light. Fortunately, I'd already spoken to my sister about him, and she'd given me some particularly good advice. 'Do NOT', she said, 'tell him to fuck off and leave you alone.'

Although I am very much of the opinion that you should man up and tell people straight, however unpalatable, this was one situation where I realised there'd be little to gain, other than a broken jaw. And my sister was right; There's something unwary about John. He told me in our conversation that after 20 years, he could tell something was up (that'll be all that ignoring, John). I told him about the whole sports car/van/insurance/wage cut debacle, and said I'd had enough with humanity and wanted to keep my head down.

Luckily, he bought it. Unluckily, he bought it. He said he wanted to meet up in February.
I said no. I was writing.
He said he had some pictures he wanted to give me.
I grimaced.
I really wish he's stop being so friendly.
And we hung up, with me certain now that I would see him again, and not because I would've reluctantly given in.

I can see this getting nasty. I can see it getting stalkery. I can see me getting the living shit kicked out of me by the hardcase formerly known as my Very Best Friend while my Lovely American ex-Girlfriend continues to ignore me and I get my wages cut to pay for a superficial scratch on the car of a prick.

Suffice to say, I could've done without a day like today. But my left eyelid twitch has gone.

Oh for fuck's sake, it's just come back.

No More Mr Nice Guy

It has taken me quite a while to traverse happy go lucky fat teenager, to sincerely embittered and disappointed fat adult; Twenty years, if I have to put a figure on it.

Back then, I had my whole life in front of me. Yes, if you're being pedantic, I still do - but I don't like what's left.
Back then, I was quite the romantic. I believed in love, and fate, and The One™ (granted, the overwhelmingly unfussy yet phenomenally attractive One).
I was spiritual too, with this vague sense that if there wasn't a God out there, then there had to be some kind of lifeforce, an energy of some wishywashy, un-thought-out kind that guided us, led us, helped us to become better people and attain our dreams to boot.

Bollocks.

There's no god. There's no nuthin'. There's us, the human being, an animal no different to a lion (barring fangs and hair 'n shit), living in our lion apartments and driving our lion cars with our lion rules and lion telly ~ Everything's random, nothing's bequeathed to us.

Basically, I'm mad about this car that I (ALLEGEDLY) scratched last month...

The scratch in question is a tiny white mark on the wheel arch. It was (ALLEGEDLY) caused after I'd used our work van to help a friend's cousin move house. I was seconds into driving home when I encountered the sports car blocking my path. He moved gingerly out of the way and left me next to fuck all to get past. I neither saw nor heard any collision, and when the driver stopped me, we couldn't see any scratch until the next day. I offered on the spot, much to my chagrin and with no admission of guilt to pay £20-£30 to get it polished out when it transpired the quote would be more like £200. It took two more weeks before I accepted, miserably, to pay that fucking figure, again with no admission of guilt - not that that makes any difference when I'm coughing up anyway.

And tonight, I received the official quote from the driver's two manufacturer approved garages; one for £1,200, and one for £1,800. Now take another look at that picture.

I am actually beyond furious. I mean that. I have gone from last week's plain furious at the thought of having to pay £200 for something I a) wasn't aware I even did whilst b) helping out a friend, and traversed through the anger to a kind of livid zen, where I'm calmly enraged beyond belief.

So, with an absurd four figure bill to pay for a tiny scratch on a wealthy man's vanity car, the walls have come down. I've had enough, and it's no more Mr Nice Guy.

I had a reputation as a man who'd never say No to a friend in need, even if it put me out. I even had a reputation as a man who'd never say no to almost anyone. I still believe in little acts of kindness, but if there's going to be a shady area where my now precious comfort zone will be put out in any way, it's tough shit, I'm afraid. No ifs or buts, I'm done doing favours for anyone.

Sadly, a very close friend recently asked for a place to stay for a couple of weeks.

And I said No.

- and if you're reading this, I truly hope you understand. This is NOT personal in a million years, but I can't have my small living space - my sanctuary - turned into a bedroom. Last month I would've accepted, no problem, bouyed by helping out a mate but the mate in me has died, killed by a man in a pricey new car who couldn't care less that he put himself in the path of a man helping his friend out. All he cares about, rightly, is a thumbnail-sized scratch he caused, thanks to vastly reducing the amount of space I had to get by. But the bottom line is that I'm liable, I'll have to foot the bill, or at least pass this on to my work's insurers where my boss - trust me - will insist I foot the bill anyway.

Either way, this is a fucking expensive and totally unfair thank you for helping a friend out. Karma my motherfucking pale pink arse.

So one or two days sleeping on my couch, yes - of course I'll help you out - but that's it, and for anyone else needing a van, or a pair of arms, or some cash, forget it. From now on, the only person who's getting my 100% undivided love, care and attention, is me.