I HATE THE EARTH

New Year's Eve in Madrid

2012-01-10T22:22:00.002Z

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!

2011-11-21T10:45:00.001Z

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

2011-11-11T23:59:00.000Z

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.

For a couple of years now, I've been saving in earnest. Finally, in my mid-Thirties, I'd started to create the tiniest of nest-eggs for myself instead of spending into my overdraft. I'd stopped smoking and have been setting that money aside. In addition I'd curtailed big nights out, and scrimped and saved as the saying goes, putting aside whatever I could. For the last few months I've postponed lunch til 2pm so I can buy from Boots something reduced to £1.

For the last few months, I've eaten stale tuna sandwiches.

I've also gone through all my belongings and eBayed everything I can. It's my Great Life Launder. Every little helps - particularly as my salary is pitiful - and I have now saved £2,000 for a rainy day, one of the few things I'm actually proud of.

... except that rainy day has taken the form of a fat, bald Lotus Esprit driving piece of shit who's frankly lied to my face about helping me out, who'll instead snatch those hard-fought savings to remove a pathetically small scratch from his status-symbol car.

I can't tell you how sick this makes me feel.

... and yes, before anyone mentions it, I am well aware that I'm bleating on about bullshit that came to light on Remembrance Day. As such I've been tormented since by feelings of profound sadness at our fleeting human existence handed to us only by the fortitude and epic sacrifice of earlier generations, whilst at the same time wanting to cave the head in of a greedy swaggering cunt.

Life is like being in love with a supermodel who adores our attention, but at the same time isn't bothered if we live or die.

Random bunch of arse.

Crossroads

2011-11-07T22:09:00.003Z

Well hello there. I know it’s been a whilebut 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.) Indoing so I’ve shed 21 lbs (or a stone and a half in old money), mainly by cutting outalmost all shit, and exercising like I’m trying to power a small Welsh villagewith my legs.

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

Bored and somewhattwitchy though I’m getting with all this healthy living, I’m still keen to loseanother 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 ofmisery.

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

So things are bloody brilliant on abullshit, superficial level, but less so on a personal one as the boringminutia 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 alsoviolently 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 gettinginsensibly drunk anymore. It’s getting expensive for one thing, and fatteningfor another, plus the hangovers seem nigh on unbearable.

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

Which is fine but we’resocial animals – even me – and I need to, I dunno, do something that doesn’tinvolve seeing a chiropractor on Monday morning because I spent a whole weekendalone in the same twisted, horizontalposition while I soberly hunt down gross-out comic routines on the internet.

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

Still.

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

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

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

I had thought that buying the above would donothing more than enrich a smug, sleazy fannychaser who was trying to impressme with fatuous tales about the large number of women he’d nobbed, but after beingrepeatedly talked into getting it by RUSSELL, I discovered that theauthor was actually one of me; a gimp, a loser, a bit of a twat, until a work assignment came his way thatchanged his life completely.

He got into shape and smartened up, whichis (almost) where I am now. He also started talking to women, an importantpoint 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’scurrently infected my brain…

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

Call it a crossroads, ifyou will.

There's Something About Dad

2011-09-22T00:08:00.001+01:00

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

2011-08-15T17:50:00.006+01:00

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

2011-08-12T12:08:00.002+01:00

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

2011-07-11T20:01:00.012+01:00

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

2011-05-25T20:31:00.003+01:00

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

2011-05-16T14:07:00.005+01:00

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

2011-05-10T21:08:00.006+01:00

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

2011-05-08T16:34:00.003+01:00

Whinge, Bitch, Moan & Bleat

2011-03-21T20:56:00.006Z

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

2011-02-24T23:58:00.003Z

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

2011-02-04T19:07:00.001Z

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

2011-01-31T16:39:00.010Z

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

2011-01-26T22:53:00.008Z

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

2011-01-20T19:13:00.004Z

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.

Happy New Same-Old-Shit (Or Why Karma's Nonsense)

2011-01-02T20:24:00.005Z

Sorry for the somewhat downcast title, but despite a largely pleasant 2010 that saw me...

* Move into my own flat (don't think I ever mentioned it)
* Lose nearly a stone and a half in weight (18lbs, to be precise)
* Even GET LAID for the first time in, christ, 5 or 6 years (except - oh never mind, unless you've stumbled here after Googling 'GET LAID', you'll know exactly what that except is.)

... I've managed to have a pretty miserable couple of weeks to end it all on.

Gripe 1: I've undone that 18lb loss by regaining it all. I honestly don't know how, but I think slamming the door shut on unseasonably cold weather (I quite like that excuse) and stuffing my upper anus with absolute junk has probably contributed to said weight gain. I would've cycled more, as I did in the summer, but...

Gripe 2: some worthless, evil, slit-eyed little slag decided, apropos of absolutely nothing at all, to declare war on me personally by breaking into our development's bike shed and stealing my beloved bike.
My last bike was stolen a few years ago and, in true 'Shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted' fashion, I bought myself an expensive lock.

Here's a picture of what remained of my bike. You will notice the expensive lock, still intact, and still attached to my rear wheel. What you won't notice is the rest of my bike, stolen by twiddling the quick release bolt on said wheel. The whole process would've taken about 20 seconds, and wouldn't even require tools:

Gripe 3: When I went to claim under my recently purchased home insurance policy, the insurers claimed I never mentioned any bike, and (I'm paraphrasing), "Go Fuck Yourself". However,

Brag 1: ... the nice lady I visited in branch made a couple of calls and gave me £200 on the spot. ON THE SPOT!
So I went out and bought her chocolates. It's not often I'm Up in life. In fact, it's phenomenally rare, and that was totally deserving of confectionery.

Gripe 4: There's been 3 deaths in the last week or two, no direct relatives thankfully but people close enough that I've been ordered to attend wakes and wear suits (that no longer fit, even after two months), indulging what I find to be hideously uncomfortable social situations. For some reason my parents get very insistent about my attendance surrounding all things Death, and any whimpering that 'I don't want to!' doesn't seem to work anymore - not that it ever did.
So that's that hanging over me like a sword of deceased Damocles.

Brag 2?: There's talk that my Ex-Girlfriend (American) may come over to see my new flat. This is great, as a) I'd love her to come over but, b) I don't think she cares. Basically my flat has become so fucking cosy that it seems empty without her. Of course, it's empty without any female presence, but I'd have to go through all that dating bullshit and I can't quite get my head around that yet. Ugh, relationship job interview - No thanks.

Gripe 5: Ah, this one's a particular favourite of mine, one I like to file under TYPICAL. ABSOLUTELY BLOODY TYPICAL.
So a friend asks me if I can help her cousin move apartments through the medium of my work van. Why yes I could as it happens, as my boss is away and in his absence, he'd asked me to look after the van over Xmas. Thus her request was a no-brainer. I had the van just sitting around, plus I was desperately bored anyway.

So I drove to Ilford, picked up some stuff, drove on to Crouch End, got even more stuff, then took everything to Pinner where I helped empty the van of boxes.

I said goodbye to my friend and her cousin and wished them well, and went to drive home, my good deed all done. I got about 20 yards down their very road when I was forced to stop. There were parked cars on either side and room enough for just one vehicle - me - and I paused as a stationary car faced me dopily.

I muttered to myself as it edged gingerly out of my way and pulled to one side, stopping once he'd decided I had plenty of room when, in fact, I had to squeeze my huge van through the tiny gap he'd left me.

Inching forward having passed his vehicle, I picked up speed - not much on the ice though - and continued on my journey to the end of the road but not getting there. The driver of the other vehicle had ran out to bang the back of my van in anger.

Apparently, allegedly, I'd hit him - a mere brush if you will - with my rear bumper. That brush I had neither felt nor heard, such was its nothingness, and all I saw when I was pulled over was a minimal scratch on the side of his brand new sports car.

I've since been called back with a quote: approximately £200. This is the same price, you may recall, as I received in bike theft replacement. I'll tell my boss when he returns next week to see if he can claim through our insurance.
I fully expect a 'Fuck yourself' however, as I was using the van outside of work on a personal errand, to help a friend in need, on my bastard day off.

So that is why I don't believe in karma, and why I expect very fucking little from 2011 unless I act on it.

If that has taught me anything, it's that any success in life, any riches or rewards or approval won't just come to you because you're vegetarian, or you're kind to mice, or you once went to an anti-War rally in LA. Success comes only through hard graft and effort.
Unles you're a royal or your Dad was in the Beatles.

And if you wait around for something to happen, you'll just get your bike stolen instead.

AmsterDad

2010-12-06T02:23:00.007Z

Hello there. If you haven't subscribed to my tweets, then you probably don't know that I've just come back from a weekend in Amsterdam with my father. My stepmum - his wife - has gone abroad to visit her daughter, so my Dad thought it would be nice for the pair of us to go away somewhere.

I readily agreed.

Now the first thing I have to say is that I love my Dad. He is after all my Dad, and all that love stuff's pretty much a given. In fact as a child, I thought of myself a mere extension of him, just a shareholder in his DNA. We look pretty similar too, or did when we were both younger, we have the same love of good comedy and bad food, and both competitive and non-competitive sport leaves us cold. It's almost as if we're related, or something.

Then there are these wealth of differences; Dad's quite the prude. He doesn't drink or swear, two things I couldn't do without. He's also socially very quiet, whereas I want to talk and debate and gossip and learn. That was something I hadn't really noticed before, and to tell you the truth it was a rather depressing observation. In many ways, I guess my old man's really quite innocent. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was still a virgin.

Secondly, vitally, I have friends and regular readers who I know have lost their fathers and from that perspective what follows may sound phenomenally ungrateful and mean-spirited, but that's not my intention. This is just a post about our trip. The destination in fact is largely irrelevant. This, I hoped, was going to be the ultimate Hollywood Father and Son buddy road-trip story.

The night before we left, Dad arrived at my flat where I presented him with new gloves, a scarf, a hat and thermal vest, as he mentioned he had none of the above and my overactive imagination saw him dying of hypothermia if I didn't buy them for him. North-western Europe is after all in the grip of this fucked up Arctic front, and we had to dress accordingly if we were going wandering around Holland's largest city in the open air.

Dad returned the favour by asking for a glass for him to leave his false teeth in overnight, then coughing and snoring so violently that despite a wall between us, I got just a few hours sleep.

By the time we'd stepped off the plane at Schiphol airport and got blasted with a -8 gale, I was pleased that I'd lent Dad a rather practical thick coat of mine, as opposed to the thin summer jacket he intended to bring. There had been very little I could do about his genteel slip-on shoes though, other than give him a thick pair of socks to wear.

We were in the cab to the hotel discussing the merits of various airports, when Dad mentioned Johannesburg.
'When were you in Johannesburg?' I asked, confounded.
'When we went on safari,' he replied as if it were a matter of public record and I was completely mental.
'You went on safari?' I squawked.
'Yes,' he replied, astonished. And that was that.
'So what happened?' I had to volunteer.
'We saw some animals.'
Silence.
'What animals?' I asked for the sake of progress.
'Elephants.' A pause. 'Tigers. No, wait,' he muttered to himself. 'There aren't any, erm...'
'Tigers...'
'Tigers, yes, in Africa.'
'Lions, then?' I prompted.
'There were lions,' Dad said, before naming a half dozen other mammals and a couple of birds ("Those black and white things..." "Penguins, Dad?") as I brooded over his neglecting to tell me for the last 2 years about the "best holiday" he'd "ever had".

After freshening up at the hotel (where Dad walked in to the toilet while I was sat on it so he could tell me something about the curtains - and no amount of my yelling seemed to make him leave), we walked gingerly through the snow as I walked beside him at pensioner-speed on full alert in case Dad slipped, until we came across a magical bar where I had my first holiday beer and Dad had a hot chocolate and cake.

It was a bit disappointing to see my father with very little to say for himself, even after I asked a pointed 'What would you like to talk about?' when my questions about his wife, father and childhood, work, wikileaks and footwear were met with vague answers or shrugs. Dad then refused to so much as taste my Dutch beer, shouting loudly that he doesn't drink the stuff after I asked him once too many.

Then he fell asleep at the table.

Once we got back to our hotel, it was my turn to sleep whilst Dad sat in the corner reading the Daily Mail - then again fell asleep. It was 9pm by the time we both woke up, and with snow falling heavily outside we decided to stay indoors and eat at the hotel's pricey restaurant. The waitress was simply adorable, not that I said much to her. All my talking revolved around asking repeated 'How's your entrecôte' to Dad as he had fuck all to say in return, so we sat there in total silence as if we'd had a huge argument except, bizarrely, we hadn't. I just have a father who, it transpires, has no basic conversational skills, and certainly not any sage paternal wisdom to impart or real interest in my life. He's just quiet, and it infuriated me; 36 years on, and I hadn't even realised. So much for our special trip, our doubtless last holiday together. Dad had nothing to say, and that was pretty much that.

The following day, having had a fitful night due to Dad's excessive coughing that finally eased into him snoring like a tranquilised bull elephant, we took a cautious taxi in an absurd snowstorm to Anne Frank's house, where he cried at the end and couldn't speak (which didn't account for much.)

We left to eat cake in silence, not because we were numbed by the fucking holocaust, more that my father was concentrating on chocolate, spooning it into his grateful gob in slow motion like a placid toddler. Once outside and with a blizzard raging, Dad, who'd deferred all decision-making to me right down to what we did, staggered so slowly to central station that we froze, unable to build up any kind of kinetic energy against the cold. I bought us both a sightseeing trip in an indoor canal boat which would've been great if condensation hadn't steamed up the windows. It also would've helped if the man sat behind me didn't repeatedly scratch the itch at the back of his throat by making those long, nasal guttural snorts I fucking despise for well over an hour. And whenever I turned to my father, I was delighted to see that I'd spent €13 for him to sleep.

On leaving the boat, the cold left us unable to browse restaurants for long and we wound up in an overpriced tourist clip joint where I ordered something a bit different - sauerkraut and sausages, which turned out to be nothing more than a chopped up Mattessons pork phallus on a bed of mashed potatoes and cabbage.
Dad ate his ham and eggs in silence, and in the process of wolfing it down, he managed to spill his full glass of OJ all over the table, my maps, one thigh, my gloves, and the floor. I didn't want to trouble the already aloof and grumpy waitress, so I grabbed a rag and cleaned up around him while he continued to eat like an oblivious baby.

Once outside, I was transfixed by Amsterdam's cannabis cafes and their brazen presence on an otherwise mundane high street, the occasional waft of dope emanating from a store and floating down the road.
"Dad, quick, stand here! Do you want to know what marijuana smells like?"
"Not in the slightest, thank you."

Instead, Dad's excitement was reserved for a shop full of tourist crap, pausing in consumer glee as he stared at an absurd floppy-eared cap in the window. It even had a pair of grey balls.
'I'm gonna get that!' he exclaimed. I shook my head and sighed. Never mind the perfectly practical hat I'd bought him from Marks & Spencers two days earlier. Dad clearly wanted to stand out in public some more.

Once we got back to the hotel, Dad didn't wait for me to remove his coat. He's developed a bad hand which has caused him to lose his grip, but is determined to ignore it at any cost. And that cost was the zip of my coat which he'd managed to wrench clean off, rendering the whole damn coat un-do-upable.

'Well that's that ruined', I said as I threw the zip into the bin.
Dad then fell asleep.

After a meal that night (I had to cut Dad's lamb for him as he was struggling with his knife), Dad realised he couldn't find his mobile phone. As far as I was concerned, this was the last straw; despite a fully functioning brain (that didn't want to trouble its communication region), Dad was entering some kind of incapable second childhood. We located his phone eventually - it had fallen from his pocket in the €8 cab we took to the restaurant, and the cabbie wanted €30 to drive back and return it.

I tried not to get angry. It wasn't my father's fault that he'd lost his phone per se, but he wasn't entirely blameless. Keys, wallets and phones, those kind of day-to-day items which are normally about ones person, should remain as such. It was yet another irritation that could've been avoided. The morally dubious cab driver turned up at the hotel some time later, and Dad handed him the last of our physical cash (I don't care how 'busy' that fucking cabbie claimed to be; I would never ask someone for money to return their stuff), and that night I got to spend more time being kept awake by Dad's snoring. I even recorded it on my iPhone for posterity, but for some reason he took it personally when I played it back to him this morning, further evidence, he claimed, that I'd been on his case all trip.

We went to the Van Gogh museum (once Dad had his morning chocolate cake) where we had an argument. He said Gauguin was the artist who cut his own ear off. Then he walked into a bench.
As we arrived at Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' period, the intense library-like atmosphere was shattered by Dad's phone screaming violently into life with his Glenn Miller ringtone. Embarrased, I distanced myself from him as he struggled to release it from his pocket whereupon it got louder, then held a loud converstaion with his equally deaf friend while he remained totally oblivious to the glares of art-loving tourists.

As it had been our first mild weather day, we managed to walk a short distance to a pleasant bar where Dad was able to shatter the peace with his hacking cough, and I could sedate myself getting mildly drunk. We took a tram back after that, then checked out of our hotel and got a cab to the airport. In fact, we got as far as Britain, Dad's car, and about five feet up the road until we were screaming at the top of our voices at one another.

It was stupid. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Dad had spent the flight fidgeting and complaining; his hand was hurting, he had pins and needles in his legs, and he kept dozing in and out of sleep. We were both knackered.
Dad had managed to drive out of the car park and down a country lane where his full glare lights were on. He turned a corner and was about to blind a car on the other side.
'Turn your beams off, Dad.' It was the kind of inconsiderate driving that's a pet hate of mine, even my Dads, as he'd full beamed a full-beamer in punishment-beam just a couple of days earlier as we drove to the airport.
'I know!' he yelled back. 'I was ABOUT TO before you TOLD ME!'

I said nothing. We drove to the end of the road, and after pulling out he took a lazy left turn onto the other side of the road.
'Turn in, Dad. You're on the wrong side of the road.'
My father sighed. He pulled left then inexplicably came to a halt.
'DAD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THERE'S TRAFFIC BEHIND US!'
'STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!' he yelled.
The car behind overtook us angrily.
'JUST MOVE THE DAMN CAR!' I screamed, furious that he was using it to prove a point. 'DON'T JUST STOP IN THE ROAD!'
Dad crawled forward, screaming. 'YOU'VE BEEN TREATING ME LIKE THIS THE WHOLE TIME, WATCHING WHERE I WALK...'
'YOU ASKED ME TO! AND I DIDN'T WANT YOU TO FALL OVER!'
'I CAN WALK! I'M NOT A CHILD!'
'DAD, I'VE HAD TO DRESS YOU EVERY DAY BECAUSE YOU CAN'T!'
'... I'M NOT SENILE!!'
And so it went on until I decided to shut up, and we sat in silence for half and hour.

By the time we arrived at my flat, I gruffly told him to wait in the car as I ran upstairs and grabbed the belongings he'd left there. When I got back outside, Dad was stumbling out of the driver's seat to complain that we'd spent the whole holiday together and now I was treating him badly. I had to whisper for him to keep his voice down as it was late. I was also aware of a man smoking in the darkness trying to be inconspicuous.
'You've acted as if I can't walk by myself or do anything on my own...'
'Sorry Dad,' I said as I hugged him and he hugged me back.
He was still listing his complaints as I muffled an 'I love you' into the collar of my now-unzippable coat.
'I love you too,' Dad mumbled as he hugged me back.
Someone shifted awkwardly nearby.

Then my father clambered back into his car, and slowly drove himself home.

The Audition

2010-12-01T22:09:00.003Z

'Good news, or bad news?' my mother had said on Monday as she cackled down the phone.
'Uh...'
'Well here's the bad news,' she interrupted as I continued to think through my options. 'There's this audition...'
'For what?'
'A television commercial for (*well known product*), and they're looking for (*essentially stockily-built easily sunburned gingers*) and you have to wear swimming trunks for it.'
'Excuse me?'
'They're filming on a beach, hence the trunks.'

I decided to give my Mum the chance to finish before I told her to get stuffed. After all, I've never had any desire to appear on the TV sets of a million people with my gut out, and that wasn't going to change any time soon.

'What's the good news?' I asked with a sigh.
'It's in (*big Antipodean land mass*) on (*hot famous beach*)'

'What?'

'It's free flight and accommodation to a 5-star hotel overlooking (*famous Antipodean land mass beach*), and they're paying (*£stupid*)!!!'

I paused. That bit sounded pretty good. I just had a problem with the public humiliation thing.
And, once I thought about it, another trip abroad, alone. Yes, I'd be with, y'know, complete media strangers, but I'd really be alone again like when I'd backpacked and met virtually no-one, and this would be a very long way from home, doing something absurdly surreal.

I sighed.
'What?,' my mother snapped. 'You don't want to do it?'
'It's just that, y'know, it'll be in public and there'll probably be a crowd of people watching, and I'll be all semi-naked and everyth...'
'Awww,' she began - not a motherly, comforting ahhhh, more an angry, revving-up to an argument - before shouting all the bullet points back at me.

Which, yes, admittedly, amazing.

'But I'll have to audition,' I argued, 'and I'm not going to get it.'
'Not with that bloody attitude.'

Damn woman. This was going to be like that audition a few years ago where I had to remove most of my clothes, and yell 'I am Boris Becker' from 4 different angles including, for some reason, the back of my head.

I didn't get that gig either, but I did vow never to do fucked-up starving actor shit like that again. Truth is, I kinda like the idea of acting. I just have no talent or background in it whatsoever.

And then, in my mind's eye, I could see me silhouetted, shoulders slumped, as I walked towards a plane and a fifteen-billion hour journey as I wondered what the hell I was doing only to strip and gurn and hideously over-act to camera, jumping up and down and squealing like a giggly schoolgirl - a fat one in tiny unflattering Speedos - and being rewarded with, okay, handsome pay and a free trip to ~~Austral~~ somewhere hot, but also tremendous humiliation as the footage is fucking televised to Great Britain between Hollyoaks and the news. And then I imagined kids stopping me in the street; 'Oi, aren't you that bloke from that (well-known product) ad?' and I still to this day don't know if 'Yes' or 'Fuck off' is the best response.

'I... I don't know Mum. No, thanks very much. No, it's not for me.'
There was a silence before she snapped back.
'Fweng?' She said, part questioning, mostly authoritative. 'You've got to do it.'
'Erm, Mum, I'm 36.'
'I don't care. It's (*£stupid*). It's a free holiday to (*etc*). You can see Auntie Anon when you're there. She's recovering from cancer.'

* * *

'Aw shit,' I yelled, 'I'm so sorry, can we go again?'
One line I had to remember, five short words, and I missed my cue. I was too busy thinking, 'What am I doing standing semi-naked next to an equally half naked actor called Malcolm?

'We'll go again,' said the guy with the camera.
'Acting. It really is basically prostitution,' I pondered as I twanged self-consciously at the elastic. My fat, the new fat I've put on since losing it over the summer, was spilling over my shorts like angry waves crashing onto battered rocks.
I stared at Malc, my new half-naked friend who treated me like I was some kind of audition-threat. He was giggling as he said his lines. Giggling, I thought, because he was delivering them as he stared at my nipple.

My strange nipple.

My strange, puffy nipp- wait, was that my cue?

'Oh fuck!' I yelled, 'I'm so sorry, I've missed it again.'
'One more time.'
And I said my line. I'm doing it, Mum, I'm doing your fucking audition, semi-naked. Happy?
I tried, but it wasn't great. The line just didn't come out well. For some reason, the whole lights thing, the being filmed; they just weren't getting my A-game.

'Okay guys,' said the cameradude. 'Swap over. Fweng, you're now playing Dean.'
'Uh, but I thought I was supposed to be the fat pink one?'
'You are, but we need to see what you can do.'

I was so fucking far out of my depth. I can't do lines. I couldn't even remember five words.
'Uh-'
I grabbed a nearby storyboard from the floor, but it was no good. I could remember the first line, "Hello..." but it was all downhill after that, once the cameraman read his part. I only had room for a sentence.
'Look, seriously guys, this isn't going to happen. I won't be able to memorise this in a few seconds. Best if we don't bother.'

The cameraman looked a little surprised, probably because struggling actors don't turn anything down. And besides, that gig's for them, not some bored office manager whose mother's friendly with a theatrical agent. It just wasn't fair for me to step in and take work from the strutting, bronzed ego-maniacs like the arrogant dickheads waiting in reception.

And when I'd dressed, and thanked the receptionist for sitting there with a straight face and wishing the other guys good luck, I called my Mum. She seemed shocked when I told her I fluffed my line, twice, and devastated when I told her I couldn't play the other role.

And that's when I realised that she really wanted me to do it, because it would have made her proud.

And then the guilt came crashing in. Guilt, and tremendous relief.

I Renounce Cocaine

2010-11-22T22:34:00.004Z

How very noble of me. Following a disturbing Saturday night, I have decided to stop crushing, chopping and snorting crystalline tropane alkaloids up my nose.

There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, I only ever do it for the buzz, and quite frankly I'm too old to sniff myself temporarily arrogant - plus I was aware that seconds after hoovering up each line, my heart started to race disconcertingly. In your Twenties, a racing heart is almost thrilling. At 36, it's a prelude to coronary thrombosis.

Secondly, I just don't know what's in that shit. I totally blame our society which deems it necessary to prohibit certain substances, despite the guile and cunning of certain admittedly unscrupulous individuals who continue to flood said society with said substances anyway. Regrettably, said prohibition renders safety controls and governing practices totally irrelevant, as said substances are fucking illegal.
Ergo: I could be snorting salt.

Thirdly, I have spent two days blowing my nose and seeing a horror show on my tissue of blood, mucus, cartilage and lung, and I'm not massively impressed.

And fourthly, boy, have I been sad. I've tried to analyse it. It's not been quite as debilitating and miserable as depression, but it has been consistent, and painful like a papercut, as if my soul's been mired in a bath of black treacle. My guess is that in getting that high, the coke 'stole' the happiness that was set aside for the coming week and left in its wake an emptiness, a hollow shell - and that's been rubbish.

I think I take drugs - no, I know I take drugs to escape reality; to do something different and daring, to be dangerous and illegal, because nothing sticks it to The Man quite like snorting. It just isn't a law-abiding verb. And in being different and daring, I'm also sticking it to my fucking day job, and the cold bloody weather, and being single, and the unceasing, relentless monotony of being woken up ahead of schedule by an alarm clock five times a week to commute myself to wage slavery.

But it's nonsense. The 'cure' in itself is as pathetic as the cold I'm trying to alleviate. The hard facts are my job I barely tolerate, an alarm I despise, a commute that bores me, and a brief, two-day window of fun I nearly always waste.

Which is why I do coke from time to time.

Or more accurately, did.

Because whatever the reasons that I do it, well, it just ain't working. It's a con-trick, an escape route. I don't become sexier, or funnier, or more confident. Okay, wait, I do become more confident, but if that's all I do it for, then it costs me £50 a gram to feel like that temporarily.

Of course, I could instead think of the Bigger Picture and write and diet and exercise and get more sleep and maybe cut down on my drinking. On the night I decimated that gram, I was disturbed to find the following morning an empty bottle of Amaretto I'd consumed almost single-handedly, as well as half a bottle of scotch and about five beers - all on an empty stomach.

Ah, fuck it. One vice at a time.

Holiday? What Holiday?

2010-11-01T09:19:00.007Z

I used to think Monday mornings were bad. I hadn't, however, considered a bleak British Monday on the back of a superb holiday in the sun, having picked up a cold some time between Friday night and now.

I'm so fucking happy.

And that's where I am at the moment; stood at the inauguration of a brand new month, totally miserably skint having sunk a grand in two weeks, feeling ill and needing to diet away those new layers of midsection as I try not to think about the paperwork mountain left on my desk last week. All I can do now is hide in my flat feeling guilty; my lovely bachelor's flat that sees no action where the only thing that gets smoothed and caressed are my Marks & Spencers shirts I seem iron every third day as I cry hot tears of routine.

- On my last night in Bangkok, the thunder outside cracked in a distinctly non-Northern European way as the monsoon rains hammered the city like a dictatorial showerhead on a reluctant cat. I was sat in a towel in 77% humidity while my friends slept. It was midnight and in 4 hours I had to get a cab to the airport and a staggered, near-24 hour journey home.

I'd gone slightly nuts on the shopping front, returning with two made-to-measure suits with my name sewn into them (Fweng Ebolo, initially), a copy of an £800 Mulberry bag for my sister, some Buddhas for some soon-to-be confounded Jews and, potentially, gonorrhoea. This had been one of my better holidays, even though I'd spent a lot of time with Monkey Dave's two- and four-year-old kids.

It had been fun at first. Being the paternal, fatherly type, I'd always regretted having got to my age without siring a small football team of offspring, but now I'm beginning to feel like I've dodged a bullet. Children, it appears, are toddling fun-obliterators I should only consider once I start to go deaf.

Dave's kids are absolutely lovely, but it's only just occurred to me, having lived with them on a daily basis, that all children are a combination of the Antichrist and the Terminator; they want to devour your soul, and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

If adults did half the things kids did, they'd be committed to an asylum and locked away from decent society, because children exhibit the most phenomenal selfishness apparent in only the most superb sociopath. On a day we'd all been looking forward to - a splendid Sunday buffet in a plush hotel with as many Mai Tais as we could knock back - it was a shock to hear "I want to go home" half an hour in, because they'd eaten you see, and thus the day was done.

And if, I noticed, we didn't keep them occupied with squawks, or pointless lifts into the air whereby the liftee (me) had to go wheeeeeeee! to make it appear that something more than casual hoisting was happening, or flashed anything - a bread roll, a dessert spoon - in front of their chocolate-smeared faces so their easily bored heads didn't have them wandering off into the main road, we were rewarded with a tantrum.

About nothing.

Ever.

So there I was, sat in the dark miserably waiting for 4am as Dave's fan made my neck freeze, when his youngest awoke. I think I'd managed to sleep through those moments the whole holiday as I'd sedated myself with scotch.
Monkey Dave had work that morning and, as I hid ashamed and embarrassed in the corner of the living room, I could hear him telling his son off though gritted teeth; "Stop it!" he whispered angrily. "Shut up!"
And that screaming, the rampant, irrelevant screaming, subsided - for about four minutes as Dave traipsed back to bed and shut his door - only for his kid to kick off again, bleating miserably as he'd essentially been suffering from 'waking up'.

I swear to god I've never seen the like and for the first time, my perpetual grass-is-always-greener brain got a seat on that other side, where I noticed things weren't that green after all.

But the holiday; it was superb. Too good perhaps as I'm now back home and off work with a redundant throat, the clocks having gone back and the days growing darker and shorter, with everything that's happened consigned to memory; the adorable women on trains (I'm fairly sure they were women) who'd stare back at me without vomiting and made me wonder if in fact I should emigrate to Thailand, the time I paused in shock to stare at the Thai passer-by in the pop-star t-shirt where said pop-star was actually Adolf Hitler, the ironic song on the taxi radio as I was driven in darkness down quiet motorways to the airport; a cover of Leaving on a Jet Plane that, frankly, made me want to cry.

There's something so incredibly wonderful yet upsetttingly fleeting about a holiday; the bliss of having your own agenda, of not being woken up ahead of schedule by a goddamn alarm, the people you meet, and places you visit, the giddying excitement of international travel as you expand your knowledge and your world view as you get that sense in a brief, two-week window, that there's a whole world out there, this real world beyind your shores, a seething mass of humanity and cultures and languages and food and women and dancing and love.

Of course, the only human beings I seem to attract are straight women trapped in the body of gay men who've had their genitals removed and had a crevice fashioned in its stead but that aside, it's nice to remember that after 50 weeks of work, you can go on holiday somewhere for a fortnight.

The miserable truth now is that I have to get out of my day job by trying to complete that abomination of a novel I'm convinced is in me, which means my days are going to be a heady mixture of an admin job I'd rather not be doing while I sweat in a gym, write in the evenings, and cry as I eat lettuce and ruin it all with clandestine cake.

Back to the same old bullshit it is, then.

:(

I've Just Had Sex With A Prostitute

2010-10-21T05:12:00.006+01:00

Not sure how to begin this, but basically I had sex with a Thai prostitute.

I don't know what to say but trust me, I never expected it to end like this; four years of blogging about an even longer sex drought, and I end up in a seedy Bangkok hotel with a girl. That just isn't like me, not in a million years, but then things that night didn't really seem that awful and she didn't seem that way and I'm not one of those desperate hideous fuckwits except perhaps all of it just is, and I am.

But I still didn't mean to do it. Of course I could've left the bar, or simply not gone in in the first place, but I didn't. The fact is she was lovely; absolutely not, in my head, a hooker - and I'll quantify that; a desperate and potentially manipulated and downtrodden poor woman - but a very attractive and extremely keen girl who I swear to god wouldn't leave me alone, and smiled constantly, and made me forget where I was and what was happening to the point that my morals and convictions went right out of the window. Men are morons, and I am one of them. I don't know what else to say; Men just want to get laid.
I know there will never be enough excuses, but let me explain as best I can:

It was my first night in Bangkok, the first night of my holiday, and I'd gone to visit Monkey Dave who's working out here. By nightfall, we'd met up with two English colleagues of his, and hit the bars. As working ex-pats, they hadn't gone out on a cliched Bangkok night for quite a while, and we'd ended up in some of the seedier joints around Sukumvit, essentially a hot Leicester Square except with more neon, and girls who'll sleep with you for money.

It wasn't long before we were approached in a pool bar, where I was playing atrociously which was a surprise to absolutely no-one, including two women - Mook and Sue - who appeared from nowhere to rub our thighs and engage in smalltalk. Suddenly I felt really uncomfortable, that they shouldn't be doing that to strange men - particularly ones like the fat old guys from Leeds I'd seen grinning and staggering around earlier. I wanted to talk properly to the girls, to find out more about their jobs and their lives, but as I asked if they "worked" at the bar, they said they did but retained a veneer of innocence about the whole affair. Far be it from me to embarrass them by stating the obvious.

So, instead, the conversation faltered. I wanted to tell them that they were wasting their time with us - with me, certainly, - that I was happy to talk but there was no way I was going to 'buy' them for my own selfish gratification, but matters never went that far, we lost our games, and left the bar, as did one of our group. The remaining three of us went on to Nana Plaza to watch football in a nearby bar - Nana Plaza, which I now know to be a kind of small, layered shopping precinct of sex. We sat outside the bar for a couple of minutes as the urge to go to the toilet took hold, and that's when things took a turn. In those places, the action tends to be inside, and once in, it's difficult to get out - both customer and management induced. An absolutely stunning girl in a bikini - and the Madam - beamed a hello and made a grab for me, but I politely shrugged them off and made for the bathroom. On my return as I headed for the exit, the Madam shoved Bikini Girl at me. She giggled, and I went red. Naturally, being British, I also apologised.
'You drink inside!' they said.
'No! No thank you,' I smiled.

Ten minutes later, we were inside, stunning Bikini Girl sat next to me.
'This country is nuts!' I yelled at the others over the Europop as they stared at the dead-eyed dancers on the podium. I'd been to places like that on my last visit, but it was what it was; pretty damn seedy, but we're blokes, doing what blokes do. Still I maintain, at that point, I never intended to do what happened next, but then I'd never had that level of attention before.

Bikini Girl - to my shame, I never did catch her name - wriggled against me with her fabulous body as I smiled awkwardly. 'No thank you,' I said when the subject of sex came up pretty quickly; 'I can't.' My crotch was grabbed repeatedly as an inducement, but I was made of sterner stuff, telling them straight, Bikini Girl, the madam, the ladyboy waitress, that I wouldn't be doing anything.
'You married?' asked Bikini Girl.
I shook my head. 'No,' I replied. 'I just don't agree with this.'
'You fuck!' said the ladyboy. The girl nodded in agreement.
'No, really.' This was the hard sell, but I just have to stand my ground. 'I can't do this to you,' I said to the girl as she pressed herself against me, her arm around my waist. 'Do you understand?' I said as I touched her bare back. 'You're a human being. I can't just pay for you like that,' and she looked at the floor. Her smile was gone and she seemed to understand. Thank god, finally I had made my point and she got it. I was a decent guy after all. Bikini Girl was tall and beautiful, with large, oval brown eyes and wavy black hair and it was horrible to see how easy it was for her to throw herself at men for money. For a moment, briefly, it seemed as if she really understood and I was off the hook, soon to be left alone, temptation well out of my way.
'I'm sorry,' I said to the side of her head, 'I just can't.' Then she turned slowly to face me and stared into me with those eyes, and brought her lips slowly to my mouth.
'Uh, I-' was all I could manage as gently, she kissed me.

I looked away and back at the dancefloor, totally confounded. I was half aware that my right hand was nestled on her smooth narrow waist, and I had been rubbing her with my thumb. Still perplexed, and also rather stirred, I looked back at her and she stared back, dangerously close. 'What the hell am I getting myself into?,' I thought as we kissed again.
'I'm not doing this,' I whispered into her ear as I caught the sweet scent of her shampoo. It had been a long, long time since I'd smelled something so innocent yet feminine, and in that place, it waylaid me. This went on for something like twenty dangerous minutes, a gorgeous, exotic, semi-naked girl pressed hard against me, kissing me, acting nothing like a desperate, manipulated, downtrodden poor woman, but rather someone totally eager, totally smitten, and she wanted me.

In retrospect, that was the moment I should've got up and announced I was leaving, but you have to understand - and I cannot stress this enough - Bikini Girl was just too much; too beautiful and too keen, and if this blog is my testimony, I'm obviously woefully lonely and desperate. It was a lethal combination. I was wavering, and it was obvious to everyone.

'She dance for you!' said the ladyboy, prompting the girl, who was grinning now, to walk up to the podium.
'No,' I yelled in panic. 'Seriously! Don't!'

And then she danced for me, slowly, rhythmically, between two other dancers, and I was in hell. I stared pointedly at the floor but had to glance back up again. The thought flashed through my mind that I could have that body - not as a possession, not to buy or rent, you understand. I hope this can be forgiven or at least understood, but at that point I needed her immediately. I'd say it was something primal but that sounds too base and aggressive. It was more like a yearning, a desperate, urgent need for a woman - for her, just her - and after such an absence in my life, it ached. I watched almost in tears as that astonishing body of hers wrapped itself around a pole and, as she smiled back at me and just me, I felt ill.

'I don't know what to do!' I yelled out to Monkey Dave.
'Go for it!' he said unhelpfully.
That wasn't the moral advice I wanted.

'I can't do this!' I pleaded with Bikini Girl as soon as she returned, jumping onto my lap and gyrating her round, g-string encased bottom into my crotch.

'Oh god,' I croaked. 'Oh no, I mustn't-' I thought as I turned to her. 'How...' I stammered, 'How - uh, what do we do now?'
She smiled and we kissed again, slowly, as my hand slid down her tanned back and under her g-string.
'We go outside?' she asked, which essentially meant that this was going to happen.
'I can't,' I whispered this time, more in pointless echo than anything sincere anymore. She wasn't a hooker. She was just fabulous and really, really keen.
... Rubbing...
Okay...
Kissing. Slowly...
Absolutely nothing wrong with this. There can't be...

And then my wallet was out I was shaking my head as I did so. Insanity.
I paid the bar a small release fee, and Bikini Girl disappeared for 10 minutes to freshen up whilst Monkey Dave cackled in my ear.
'What the hell am I about to do, Dave?'
'Pay for sex,' he laughed.

She reappeared a different woman; elegant - really quite stunning in her little black dress as, smiling, beaming, she reached out for my hand. Grabbing my scotch with the other I threw it down my neck as we walked outside and headed up onto the second level at Nana Plaza. I felt quite sick then, just a first-time John, a hooker's Trick, an Accidental Sex Tourist walking guiltily past random girls and sneering ladyboys. The place was a warren of bars and of heat and people, of neon, small chickens on rotisseries, a confusion of noise and smells and the sudden emergence of a young Western couple whose presence made me cringe with shame. I thought I was about to get killed, or mugged, but overriding it all was the thought that I was about to have sex with, okay, a prostitute, but more importantly, and to my way of thinking that night, a dusky and exotic woman.

We reached the top and a seedy hotel where a po-faced elderly Scandinavian man walked out looking neutral and unashamed. A young woman lying prostrate on a sofa looked up from her violent movie as we walked in.

'You pay 300 Baht for room,' said Bikini Girl expectantly, and I did on autopilot. Then we we walked into the red-lit bedroom, shut the door, and flung our arms around each other.

Without going into details, we spent an hour together, a very, very happy hour where I occasionally remembered who she was and where we were, but remained convinced that, despite the possible debasement, the seediness, the manipulation, it was actually incredibly tender and intimate. It's very hard even now to convince myself that I had paid for sex with a working girl, as it felt nothing of the sort. There was too much hugging, so much eye contact, and stroking - well you get the idea.

The following morning, I woke up the perhaps one of the worst,'Oh God, what the hell did I do last nights?' of my life. There were no shades of grey; I had had sex with a prostitute. I had walked into a bar, met a girl I liked the look of, and fucked her, for money. I felt awful - strangely content to a degree as I wanted to have sex so badly and treated her with the utmost respect and affection, but the basic, sobering fact had remained: I had travelled to a developing country and took advantage of a very beautiful local girl.

As I'm incapable of keeping my mouth shut, within 24 hours I was drunk again and emailing my friends in London en masse to tell them what I'd done.
'Hahahahahahahahahaha!' this elicited, and the expected jibes that I'd shagged a ladyboy.

I suppose - like this post - the email was meant to be cathartic, the secular priestly confession, but it made me feel like a braggard. The fact was she was too sweet to have been treated that way. How dare I actually tell her she was a human being, then rent her like a piece of meat anyway? Surely that was worse than just walking in and choosing her immediately? And those eyes that stared up at me from the bed, it was all so intense.
I made the mistake of emailing Danny too, who was pretty disgusted.
'Find her again,' he advised, 'buy her dinner. Or give her money for her family. If you don't want to do that, perhaps you could give money to a woman's refuge.'
I nodded at his words. They made sense, although I wasn't going to buy her dinner. Far better, I thought, to go back to the bar and somehow slip her 40 or 50 quid without management noticing. At the very least it would be one less arsehole for her to have to sleep with.

The days passed, and I pondered what to do. Giving her money I thought was best, although I was slightly worried that I'd end up in bed with her again. She really seemed to like me, something I put down to the common desire of a lot of bargirls to settle down with a Western former customer and be set for life.

But there was more, and I'm afraid it gets worse....

As the last couple of days have passed, I've continued to ponder. One of the things that's been on my mind was my friend's absurd quip that I'd bedded a ladyboy. Of course I hadn't. You can spot ladyboys a mile off as there's something contrived about them. They try a little too hard to be more woman than women, and the woman I'd slept with, well, she was too beautiful to be a man.
Although having said that, some ladyboys are really attractive. It can be hard to tell.
Really hard.
HOWEVER, thank god, there was the simple matter of, well, her vagina.
Because it was a vagina.
It's been a while for me, but not that long. Plus her vajayjay worked perfectly, and by that I mean in the moments leading up to sex, I had managed to make her very, erm, ready.
Because I'm fucking brilliant in bed.
So while I profess not to know much about gender reassignment, I'm almost 100% certain that medical science will never be able to recreate spontaneous internal lubrication in a man. How? It's just can't be possible without some kind of switch or fluid at the ready. Therefore, ladyboy? Ha! No.
End of Story, Case Closed.

But thanks to my bastard friends, they'd sown the seeds of doubt in my head. She was tall, after all; just a shade shorter than me, and for a Thai woman she was practically a giant. Then there were a couple of things that just didn't sit well with me. Thinking about them has been like living in my own personal Sixth Sense with its twist in the tale. In fact it's been more like the Usual Suspects, because as I've pondered over these last few days, little flashbacks and clues have suddenly appeared about extremely over-eager Bikini Girl.

"I don't know what else to say; Men just want to get laid."

I'd spoken to Monkey Dave when he got a quiet moment away from his wife and kids. You see, Bikini Girl just couldn't have been a ladyboy. Above all else, I'd got her wet. Really wet.
'Dave,' I'd whispered to him, 'how can ladyboys get that way? Obviously they can't, can they?'
'Dunno,' he'd shrugged. 'Some kind of lubricant, I suppose.'

I'd nodded, and wandered off, lost in thought.

There had been one thing strange about that night, now that I'd thought about it.... We'd left the bar... walked upstairs... past sneering (envious of a more convincing?) ladyboys... fallen onto the bed kissing, and stroking, and taking off our clothes, when Bikini Girl got up and stepped behind the partition.
'I have to shower,' she'd said.
I had thought it odd, particularly as I'd waited 10 minutes for her downstairs. I'd assumed she'd already freshened up then.

..... 'Some kind of lubricant, I suppose.'

And when she'd returned from her brief shower, her skin had been dry to the touch.

Then there was her clitoris. It was chubby, like a reconstructed bell-end.
And I can't remember much in the way of labia, or a hood, and although she was a picture of femininity, I recall her ladygarden being quite unkempt, when a Brazilian would've suited her figure to a tee.

Perhaps it was covering up the scars?

This was all becoming more like the Crying Game.

And then there was the last piece of the puzzle. In the crime-solving world, this is known as an admission. But at the time, I dismissed it, like an abused partner in a bad relationship. They don't see the signs, because they don't want to.

We'd walked back downstairs, Bikini Girl having wriggled that body back into her black cocktail dress and me, dazed and grinning, back into my shit shorts and t-shirt. Back in the bar, as management prepared the bill, Monkey Dave, quite pissed now, rambled into my ear;
'Mate, you would not believe how many of these birds are ladyboys.'
'Really?' I'd remarked, looking around in astonishment at the half-naked dancers.
'Hey!' I'd said to Bikini Girl not 10 minutes after I'd filled a mango-flavoured condom full of my DNA, 'Are there lots of ladyboys here?'

'I'm a ladyboy,' she replied somewhat dreamily, not looking at me but staring ahead at the dancefloor.
'Eh?' I'd replied with a smile. The daft, beautiful leg-puller.

... Some sort of lubricant...
... Men just want to get laid...
I'm a ladyboy.

The Massage

2010-10-20T04:38:00.000+01:00

'When in Rome' as they say, so in Thailand I've been having curries daily, and I'd booked myself a Thai massage. After several weeks of stress at work and an annoying trip out here it was badly needed. The last time after all I had a Thai massage was the last time I went to Thailand a decade ago.

I enjoyed it so much back then that I'd booked myself onto a course - then promptly forgot most of what I'd been taught. It started coming back to me as I was escorted to a booth to change into loose-fitting shorts and shirt, and lie on my back to wait for the squat, middle-aged masseuse to appear.

It was rather socially awkward to have this complete stranger start rubbing the soles of my feet in the darkened booth then, with perhaps more than a frisson of pleasure on her part, ramming her fingers into my thighs until I screamed, but it was sorta marvelous in a pain-inducing sorta way. She even jabbed her digits into parts of me I didn't realise were sore, such as the muscles in my groin.

'Nngh!' I stifled a roar as she leant into my crotch and giggled, then worked her way back down my thigh then back up again, where I braced myself for another round of awkwardness.
'Ungh!!' I moaned, trying to make my utterances as non-coital as possible.

If there's one good thing about ageing, it's dick control, and I was able to avoid what in my teenage years would've been the raging horn. What didn't help, however, was the brush of my masseuse's hand against nad as she got too close to the danger zone. That made things, in a manner of speaking, harder, but age won over giddying cheap thrills and what remained of my general dignity was intact.
And then she brushed the other nad. Oh well. I just had to concentrate.

Trying to avoid an erection was becoming mathematically impossible as the masseuse manipulated my inner thighs to get at the knot of redundant muscles, particularly as she was now moving from thigh to thigh, now having to physically grab and move a teste out of the way.

'Bugger it', I thought. If my genitalia was going to be touched by another's hand for the first time in 5 years, it could hardly be my fault if it gets a little blood rush. And then she grabbed the whole package, physically got hold of the full set, and rehoused it against the other leg.

I remained poker faced.

The masseuse was now sat on my legs and forcing them towards the ground and I yelled out. She giggled again, shook my penis and made a tinkling noise, and told me to flip onto my front as she massaged my shoulders. For my part, I lay there looking confused and wondering if I'd just imagined that.

'You want oral?' I thought she said.
'Huh?'
'You want oil? Oil massage?'

'Uh', I wondered out loud. My session was nearly over and frankly I was as curious as hell. Anything sexual aside, an oil massage sounded fun - mainly because it sounded sexual.

'Take croves off,' said the masseuse as she watched me remove my accoutrements and my dignity, and clamber like an enormous toddler onto the table.
She turned the lights off and, as more or less expected as I lay on my front, she covered me in oil and rubbed the backs of my legs, then my arse, paying occasional attention to my aforementioned testes.

I flipped over with a towel covering my shame as she rubbed me everywhere but there. And then, as she straddled me, the giggling started as she rubbed lotion onto my chest.
'You strong', she said. 'Muscles!' and extended her arms in weightlifting mime.
'If you say so,' I crowed awkwardly. Mostly my muscles are hidden behind layers of subcutaneous fat. Still, random compliments were nice, if suspicious.

I felt less muscular as the masseuse made her way to my stomach and began her sweeping movements as I sucked my gut in and hoped it worked.

Then she removed my towel and paused. The anticipation had taken its toll, not to mention the near hour spent being rubbed to a high buff with warm oil.
'You big!' she lied as she stared at my curious penis. 'Very nice, very strong,' she beamed.
'Thanks,' I squawked. I was about ready to explode. Then she made a fellating mime and giggled as I cried a bit inside.
The masseuse shook her fist. 'You want?' she whispered, smiling.
'Erm, sure, if it's not any trouble,' I replied casually as if she'd offered to make me a cup of tea, and absolutely not bring me off.
'Tip' she smiled. 'Good tip!'

I nodded violently. 'Massive tip'. And then it happened. The rumours were true. I was having a Happy Finish in a darkened room, being given a hand-job by a fifty-year-old. I can't say it was the most romantic thing that's ever happened to me, but it was pretty gratefully received.

'Nnng!' I squirmed, trying not to sound to prying ears in the neighbouring booth like a man receiving a quick one off the wrist. 'Guhhh!'
The masseuse's cheeky smile I noticed had now gone, replaced by a distinctly bored look as she milked me like a cow. My dignity was now in tatters as I tried to hold back from the inevitable, but she quickened the pace.
'Mustn't - come,' I thought to myself, 'Really - rude -' - and then I did, absolutely everywhere, in angry waves. I hadn't even abused myself in several days and what with the elongated massage several gallons of the stuff had built up over time and had gone christknows where - pummelling a hole in the ceiling, through the wall - an unfortunate wad even caught me on the neck, bringing me back down to earth with shame.

I was rather disorientated as the masseuse began to pump and squeeze a little longer, presumably to make sure I was empty.

Then she left, came back with a cup of tea, and told me to shower, which I did, feeling a little cheap and used and very happy about that.

Even as I type this, I still have trouble believing that had happened, but that's not the worst of it. Far more, I'm afraid, has happened, and on my very first night in Bangkok...

I've finally had sex, after 5 years drought, and with a prostitute.

It's hard to explain just how this happened, that it was an extremely poor lack of judgment that I feel absolutely terrible about, but I'll explain later.

MUSCAT a pair of shorts

2010-10-15T09:31:00.000+01:00

(Sorry)

Greetings from Oman, and forgive my potty mouth but it's really fucking hot. I'd like to be afforded some kind of protection from the sun here, but a chap at Heathrow saw fit to confiscate my suntan lotion lest there was something combustible in the remnants of a 6-year-old bottle from the Boots Soltare range, so my burnt scarlet mug is all his fault.

On the plus side, he was very polite about it.

I nearly missed my flight, as I stayed late at work (drinking at my desk with my boss), then raced to Terminal 3 cursing myself. I was the last person on my flight to check in, but I'd checked in, dammit. That did give me Hobson's Choice of seats though, regrettably within teasing sight of Business Class as I sat sandwiched between three babies to my right and two to my left in Cattle, none of whom stayed silent for more than ten minutes.
So I've been awake now for, ooh, 26 hours.

I chose not to take a (pricey) tour in the end, settling instead for my original Plan A - taking a cab or bus into town, and wandering around at my leisure. That plan was only nixed due to my Daily Mail reading parents, and I've quite enjoyed emailing them to say I've been sat in a cafe among foreign looking men with beards who stare at me with polite disgust, and listening to the Allah Akbars wailing rather evocatively from distant minarets.

In fact now that I'm here, I'm rather pissed off with myself for getting all worked up in the first place, particularly as it's charming. It's been a while since my holidays have left the safety net of Europe or the States, and it's nice to be dumped and alone in a place that definitely ain't Kansas anymore.

But the heat - Wow. I played it safe and chose to wear to work a smart, button-up shirt and a pair of dark jeans; a smart casual look that I thought, as I'd have no opportunity to change, would look nicely respectful over here.
So imagine my joy as I slid through the alleyways of the souk, the air thick with warmth and pungent spices, as I left a salty trail of sweat onto the cobblestones like a fat, sweating slug with a wet Fitness First towel around my neck, only to spot pink Danes and Germans in their damn t-shirts and shorts.

26 hours I've been wearing this shirt and these jeans, and Christ alone knows what skin rashes and steaming pustules are welling up like orphans' tears behind these stinking fabrics.

But that aside, it's now half-past midday over here and I've got 5 more hours to kill. Oh well. My wet shirt has finally dried. Time to re-soak it by walking half a yard outside.

TWAT

2010-10-13T22:16:00.006+01:00

So once again on my mission to save myself a few bob, I've gone and put myself in a rather difficult position; the middle of The Unknown.

In this case, the unknown is Muscat, even if I do know that it's the capital of Oman.
But then Oman is pretty unknown, so I'm back to square one.
i.e: Muscat.

I was quite proud in those Thailand Booking days of yore (July) to have found a return ticket for under £400. This meant a stop-over in aforementioned Oman for a mere 12 hours. (10 fewer and I wouldn't have bothered leaving the airport).

Except it doesn't help that my parents are racists with over-active imaginations.

Nor does it help that I am too.

My Dad called last night to check that I didn't have any Israeli stamps in my passport - Not for 14 years Dad, no.
Mum called last week to tell me, basically, not to walk through, talk to, or physically do anything, what with me being a) Western and b) all Jewey and everything, as I'd almost certainly be kidnapped and beheaded by Al-Qaeda (she reads the Daily Mail).

So I promised her I'd forgo the bus and gentle ambling through bustling souks and take a guided tour with a group instead.

Except I looked, I can't find (a cheap) one I like, so I'll be taking that bus followed by a wander around a tiny bit of the Middle East on my own for half a day.

Apparently I'm 36.

Oh, and if I don't get kidnapped and beheaded by Al-Qaeda - which thanks to a slow-burning paranoia I'm now convinced that at the very least I'll be surrounded by an army of Al-Qaeda sympathisers - my body's reacted to the stress of these preparations, plus the stress of being two men down at work (again), whilst trying to clear my desk by tomorrow night;

* Thus my facial skin has gone all teenage. The bridge of my nose has filled with a marmite jars-worth of pus, held in place by a thin layer of angry red skin. So the best way to clear that up will be sweating profusely under a 40 degree Arabian sun.
* I have a blood blister under my foul ginger beard.
* And my skin is peeling - despite the lack of sun (or sunburn) for at least a month.

Oh, and I still haven't packed.

But come Saturday, I will be in Thailand, the land of smiles, with Monkey Dave and several thousand hookers - that I'm promising not to sleep with.

I think.

I still don't know*

(*It'll probably be a 'no', but never discount my being drunk, and them being overly keen, and born a man)

Thai-m Flies

2010-10-07T21:45:00.002+01:00

Six months have already flown, half a year spent living alone in my cosy bachelor ~~prison~~ pad.

I'm very accustomed to living the solitary life with fantastic company (me), www.xvideos.com (NSFW) and as much illegally downloaded Offices (Offii?) and Mad Men as I can cope with. In fact, as the nights draw in and autumn takes hold, I'm eating comfort shit with petrifying regularity and going to bed later than ever.

(I lost over a stone. Now I'm going to see how quickly I can put it back)

The net result is that I'm almost psychopathically grumpy at work. I get the feeling my colleagues want me dead - particularly, for some reason, the guy I tried to get sacked. (His disciplinary didn't get him fired but did stop him taking the piss and telling me to go fuck myself anymore, so that was nice.)

And that's it. I have nothing else to say. I've spent a month since my last post juggling day salads with night Doritos, wasting all those daylight hours at my fucking day job, and drinking whiskey at home because Don Draper does it.

In fact so ~~pleasantly boring~~ busy has my life been that I can barely conceive heading over to see Monkey Dave in Thailand in just 7 days - and perhaps finally having sex.

But not with Monkey Dave.

With a prostitute.

Or three.

I did make the mistake however of telling my mate Danny, liberal Danny, liberal, left-leaning, 'Everybody's-Equal, Fair-Crack-Of-The-Socialised-Whip' Danny that, bearing in mind my sexual drought of biblical proportions I was thinking about having sex with several Thai prostitutes, he got all holier-than-thou about it, reminding me that they're "exploited human beings" n' shit, and further ruined everything by sending me THIS miserable link.

Oh, and I found all four of my schoolboy diaries in my Mum's garage, so I shredded them. They were a) childish, and b) depressing; "In maths, I got bored. Economics was boring too. Then XXX punched me for no reason. I had chips for lunch".

So that's that. I will be on holiday soon, so I may well have a lot to say over the coming few weeks - for a change. Stay tuned for that. It'll be great.

... And I'm speaking to my American ex-girlfriend again. I'm terribly, terribly lonely. Insults below, please.

Otherwise Engaged

2010-09-07T13:38:00.002+01:00

I hate engagements. Not of the betrothal kind although they’re bad enough, but of stuff, the kind of things that hijack your lonely evenings in front of the TV with a family bag of Doritos and enough crack to kill Samuel L Jackson’s character in Jungle Fever, or the kind of do that cancels out your hard earned weekends with their early Saturday starts that lead to Sunday-obliterating hangovers.

And I’ve had a lot of them, these stuffs, with their engagements to attend and politeness to feign, and as a result my private life, and my living quarters, look like shit.

I’ve clean clothes hanging wrinked in the kitchen for a week now. Pots and pans are stacked reeking and unwashed. There’s a month’s paperwork of bills, statements and assorted crap to file or forget on the living room table. My computer desk has dozens of scrappy notes with songs to ~~steal~~ download, or amazing bits of dialogue to add to the World’s Shittest Novel I first started sixteen billion years ago, a novel that I intended to restart about two months ago but haven’t quite got round to it just yet .

My diet is also in stasis, stalled as if trying to compete with the rest of my fucking life for most atrophying noun, ready to return one day but not quite. The stats are as follows; from a fat 16 stone (224lbs in old money), to a sturdy 14st 10lbs (206). I am doing my best not to go back to those ‘Old Ways’, but neither am I currently losing any further weight.

But the real backbreaker is work. My boss recently took a two-week holiday, leaving me in charge. Regrettably, he absent-mindedly allowed our driver to disappear for a week at exactly the same time, meaning I was doing three people’s jobs at once. And to frustrate things even more, said driver is – what’s the word? – a cunt, viz: when we gratefully expected him back to work on Monday so he could go back to driving our transit van around London instead, leaving me to return to my desk to crack the paperwork mountain that had now formed, I was thrilled to note he didn’t bother coming in, his phone was off, and he wasn’t replying to any texts.

Repeat: Tuesday.

And when our driver did saunter in on Wednesday morning, he rambled incoherently about non-specific “delays” for about 30 seconds before quickly changing the subject.

Come Friday, as I sat through the weeks deliveries, I asked him (fairly, I thought) why he hadn’t collected certain items, or made certain drops, and returned every single night exactly 5 minutes to clocking off whilst I’d spent nearly a week and a half doing his job and finishing everything by 2? For some reason he didn’t like this - really didn’t like this - and I’d got a tirade of eye-bulging red-mist abuse in return, and several dozen ‘Go fuck yourself’s during which he pointedly refused to let me state my case before storming out.

I’m now trying to get him sacked - so needless to say, I’ve had other things on my mind lately.
On the plus side, this Saturday is an engagement I’m looking forward to. One of my favourite stand-ups, Doug Stanhope, is playing in London, and I’d got FRONT ROW SEATS, bang in the middle. I’ll be quite literally within spitting distance of the fucker.

But, oh yeah, three months after I bought my ticket, a friend told me he was getting married that same day. I had to tell him that I was terribly sorry but unfortunately I had a prior engagement.

For some reason, he didn’t accept “But I’m going to a comedy gig!” as reasonable grounds for absence.

So I’ve been forced to sell my ticket.

Call me spiteful, but I really hope Stanhope’s shit.

A Terrifying Realisation of Existence

2010-08-09T21:09:00.004+01:00

So I'm dieting and I've lost over a stone now (15lbs, in Colonial money), and I have been uncharacteristically pleased with myself. My clothes are getting baggier as my waist shrinks and my upper body becomes more defined. Even my penis has made a reappearance.

And in a moment of continued positivity, I'd mused upon my near 10-month cigarette abstinence, and wondered how in the name of Dawkins I'd managed to turn everything around.

I didn't stay happy, of course, because no sooner had I thought that, than lurking in the background like Gary Glitter in a kindergarten bush was the thought that I couldn't last the distance; that I'd either reach my target weight and celebrate with pizza enemas until I'd stuffed myself fatter than before, or else I'd have given up in a matter of days, only to go on a Doritos feeding fuckfest (thus stuffing myself fatter than before.)

Plus I'd be smoking for good measure too, just to wallow in self-defeat, because I have to assume I'd be following in the footsteps of all my previous attempts to better myself, attempts that have all had a 100% success rate in failing.

But that hadn't been the Terrifying Realisation of Existence - not even close. All of the above are just the usual, bored, sabotagey thoughts of the cake-deprived. No, what actually terrified me was worse, far worse, and was based on something wonderful and positive - Because that's what my brain does. It imagines something marvellous, then stamps on its little positive head.

And here's what it was:

I keep not smoking.
And I don't smoke again.
I feel pretty good about that, because it was a Big Thing and a Bad Thing and I'd beaten it.

And I do lose all that weight, and what with my natural stockiness that as an overweight gentleman renders me a walking rectangle makes me, when thin, golly, it's almost too beautiful to contemplate - (cough) - Sexy.

But, and here's the thing... then what?

Then What?

And that's what's terrified me. For years now, I have put up with these supposed obstacles that I've convinced myself have prevented me from "Living", and from having this fantastic and fulfilled and effortlessly brilliant life...

... but what if they're not the problem? What if they've never been the problem, just some superfluous stuff, mere coping mechanisms that had gone out of control?

Because the real fucking problem has been life itself.

I can't handle life, that's my problem. I can't handle all its bullshit, and the bills, and the natural disasters and murders on the news and other people doing well even though they're Machiavellian bastards, and throughout it all is the stinging loneliness as I can't meet anyone because I've got a limbo-dancer's arsehole-distance-from-the-floor opinion of myself and I sell paper bags for a liv...

Oh crap. It's my job.

Ah.

That's the real problem, my Job; it's what I do, what I earn, all that makes me what I am on this spinning useless arse of solar-revolving cock.

I've gotta get a proper job, one that I enjoy and I'm proud of. A writey job. A decent job.

Oh Fucksticks.

The Little Date That Wasn't

2010-08-02T22:17:00.016+01:00

So, I went to a friend's birthday do - one of three last weekend - and got blasted, which was a shame as I was a) skint, and b) trying to forgo booze as it tends to ruin healthy spells.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself throwing shapes on the dancefloor, and generally behaving like some drunk twat in a shirt.

But even that didn't come close to the surprise in store for me later on, as I inserted with my fingers a lady's number into my phone.

I had spotted said lady earlier being all attractive and coquettish in the corner. I say coquettish, although she didn't so much flirt as just smile in my direction, which had been enough to confuse me so I paid her no mind. She was, after all, attractive and I am, after all, a fat ginger fuckrunt.

It wasn't until later in the evening, as I stood outside with the smokers (they to smoke, and me to dry off), that I found myself in the company of that charming lady, and her friend. We introduced ourselves, and I had gone off on a rambling monologue that I thought at the time was tremendously witty but was probably just an overly bitter rant about the tube, or somesuch.

And then I smashed my wine glass and kicked the shards against a wall.

Her friend left, and it was just me, and her.

I was hammered.

Fortunately, I do a pretty good line in not looking as hammered as I actually am, so I just looked merry, and stupid.

She smiled at me.

'Uh,' I began, my befuddled mind racing through porridge, wondering how I could make a kiss happen.

'Can I have your number?' I said, and frowned. Where the hell did that come from?

And then she smiled and said 'Yes'.

I got an erection.

I tried to act cool as I reached for my phone and selected 'ADD CONTACT'.

'Erm, this is a little embarrassing, but what was your name again?'

She shrieked, and made me guess. I had nothing, although it was nice actually engaging with her for once. And then she told me, and gave me a number, and I didn't know what to do next. And by that, I mean seriously. What the fuck does one do after that?

I can tell you what I did; I gave her a peck on the cheek and, trying not to think about how bemused I must have seemed, I went home. Finally, I was living. Things had gone from mundane and yawn, to THISSERIOUSLYNEVERHAPPENS.

Now, I thought, I could date her, then have sex with her (that would of course be brilliant, sex again, with a real human female and no longer my bored calloused hand). She'd see my lovely new apartment. That would be a deal-breaker, surely? And then of course she'd move in. Money's tight after all but she could pay, I dunno, £495.50 per month, bills included?

So a day passes, and I didn't call. Because I'm The Man.

(I wonder if my flat would be overcrowded with two people and a baby? )

I tell a few friends about my According to Hoyle miracle, as the second day passed. Don't mess with Mr Lover Lover.

Day Three, the Industry Standard. I'm at work when, half way through, I realise I could call her on my walk home. The daily slog would be over. I'd be happy; The perfect time to catch up.

"Hello," I said, amazed that she'd given me her real digits, "Is that Now-Indifferent Woman*?"

(*I'm assuming you realise that isn't her real name.)

"Uh, yeah?" said the indifferent-sounding voice on the other end of the line, as I squinted in confusion.

"Er, Hi!" I squawked over the din of London traffic. "This is Fweng! From the other day?"

"Oh, hi!" she said. She sounded perkier, I figured, about 7% perkier than four seconds previously.

"So yeah, I continued. "Three days minimum. I was gonna wait for five days, maybe seven or eight, but thought, 'what the hell, just call!'"

Now-Indifferent Woman made a noise. It could've been a cough, or perhaps a carpet scrape as she squirmed on the spot. She asked me how my weekend was. I admitted it was drunken, as I had a trio of birthdays.

"But I'm not an alcoholic," I added as a woman passer-by grinned at me sweating on the phone. She knew, I thought. She knew.

And that confused me. So I stopped talking.

'I've stopped talking', I distinctly remember thinking. 'No biggie. It's cool to be so laid back that you don't even talk during phonecalls'.

'Uh-' said Indifferent, breaking the silence, 'So what do you want to do now?'

I panicked. This was date-arranging. I hadn't considered that. I was just going to call, and I was. I hadn't planned beyond that.

'Oh, uh, dunno really. Let's meet up for a drink' - And yes, I now know that the whole point of the call was to arrange something, and not just reiterate that something should really be arranged.

'Well okay, sure, but I have to go out right now.'

'Cool. Well let me know what you want to do,' I added, realising I'd now left the ball in her court, and no self-respecting woman would so much as reach down for it.

We hung up, and with each step I took towards the train station, I realised I'd fucked it.

'I'll text her after the weekend if she hasn't called by then,' I told friends. 'It's only another 7 days away.'

They called me an idiot.

But I didn't want to look desperate, so I gave her a couple of days anyway. Needless to say, I hadn't heard back, so I sent her a text. It was Thursday.

'Hi. It's Fweng. Why don't we meet up at XXX in XXX? Nice place. Failing that, howsabout a couple of cans on a park bench? Classy.'

I put the phone down, and waited for the ping!

No ping. I checked it, and put it down again.

I went out to grab lunch.

I got back and checked the phone. It looked bored.

I went home, had dinner, and went to bed after checking my phone.

I fell asleep, then woke up, checked my phone, had a wank, rechecked my phone with a greater sense of loss and disgust than I'd had two and a third minutes earlier, and still I saw nothing.

I went to work. Some customers asked me stupid questions.

Time passed.

Then I deleted her number.

Wishlist

2010-07-30T22:38:00.005+01:00

* Smaller feet
* Bigger cock
* Smaller nose
* Bigger eyes
* Smaller waist
* Bigger tolerance in general. Patience, I suppose. I wish I had more patience.
* Less ginger. In fact, I wish I had darker hair, so I'd blend in with the rest of humanity.
* And while I'm at it, darker skin. I wish I could tan.
* Which in turn, meant I sweated less. I wish I had a higher tolerance for dripping like a snapped tap after a short three minute walk.
* Less fear. I wish I was absolutely fearless.
(* Sad male addendum: And rock hard, like Bruce Lee twinned with a Sherman fucking tank)
* More confidence. As fear, but somehow more positive.
* Less guilt. I wish I lived life drinking from its cup, instead of feeling guilty about absolutely everything.
* A womaniser. Sorry, but I wish I could pile through women like syphilis in a brothel.
* Charismatic? I'm clutching at straws now, but I'd like an almost hypnotic charisma, and engaging witty banter. Basically I'd like to be the bastard child of Dave Allen and Peter Ustinov, with Peter Cook as Godfather.
* Sexual mystique. I want what Sean Connery had, without the wife-beating and being Scottish.
* Yeah, okay, good looks. I admit I haven't fucking got it.
* A genuine, positive love of life, and people, and everything. Just this sheer vivacity, and joy, and happiness for being alive and sentient, right here, right now.

Actually, fuck that guy. He sounds like an unbearable cunt.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Edit :- I'm tagging people, except I'm not going to do it at all, because I'd feel guilty about anyone I'd left off.
So if you're reading this and you want to write your own *you* wishlist, then comment and leave a link to your blog. Yes, that'll do. All-inclusive, yet lazy at the same time.

Probing Myanus

2010-07-26T23:05:00.006+01:00

All things considered, it wasn't the best start to my week, lying on my side as a man with an enormous moustache rammed his finger into my arse.

I'd finally snapped a few days ago, deciding one afternoon as I ambled nervously towards the toilet that I simply couldn't take any more anal Russian Roulettes, and booked myself into a humiliating first visit to my new doctor.

Having never met said doctor before, I was hoping for an ageing and indifferent GP; a cantankerous old bastard so inured to life's ailments, who'd seen more arseholes than an LA barmaid, that he could happily be wrist deep inside a weeping, trembling rectum whilst thinking about nothing else but cricket.

As it was, I got the next best thing; a cheerful, middle-aged Indian with a moustache so thick and lustrous that it felt as if I'd been transported back to the Victorian age to see the best practitioner in the Raj.

I didn't realise he was more like Freddie Mercury until after he did what he did.

The doctor asked me what was wrong, and I approached the subject tentatively. I knew this was going to ruin someone's day and to be perfectly honest, at that stage I still wasn't sure whose. But he didn't blink when I told him. He was like some kind of doctor. I'd spent the better part of eight months shitting either cactii or bricks (the bricks being preferable as they didn't cut me up on their way out). If I looked uncomfortable admitting that, the doctor looked positively thrilled. I mean that. I told him the problem was my raw back passage and he practically clapped with glee as he stood up and told me to drop 'em.

"Oh christ," I thought as I lay on the examination table, the doctor jabbing at my bowels with ninja-like accuracy and asking if it hurt.
"Oof", I said. Actually "oof".
Plus my cock was out and he could see it.

Then he told me to roll onto my side.

"Here we go," I thought as I felt my cheeks being pulled apart and a finger - god, I hope it was a finger - prodding at the lower opening of my digestive tract.

"Does that hurt?", he asked again. By now I assumed he meant mentally, not physically.

"Yes, doctor. Very much so."

"Well blah blah blah!" he said as he cheerfully released my buttocks and trotted over to his table of gadgets. "Blah blah blah blah", he continued. I still have absolutely no idea what he said, as I was now in a very dark place and feeling more than a little vulnerable. All I wanted was his prognosis, and to get the fuck out of there.

Then it happened. No "Brace yourself!", not a damn bloody word, not that I was listening anyway. The doctor walked back to my prone body and rammed - rammed - his index finger, with not inconsiderable force, into my raw sphincter like a rat up a drainpipe.

"AARGH!" I screamed. And then he twisted it around as if I had an old dial-up phone wedged in my colon. "AAAARGH!"
I punched the wall.

"Well blah blah blah blah blah blah..." he continued as he walked over to the sink with all the air of a man who hadn't just inserted a digit into another man's rectum.

I hadn't expected that. The problem, after all, was on my outside. The doctor walked back to his desk as I pulled up my shorts and headed for the chair.

"I feel like I should buy you flowers now," I said in an attempt at levity, but he just looked confused.

I remained pretty mute after that. Pretty mute as he scribbled down the name of a good laxative, pretty mute as I sat on the train staring at the other commuters and wondering whether they'd been violated that morning, pretty mute as I got to my desk with a finger-shaped cavity in my cavity.

None of it would matter quite so much if I had actually listened to his diagnosis. Instead I just felt dirty while the doctor looked really bloody pleased with himself.

Plus I'm not sure if he even wore gloves.

NEXT WEEK: I HAVE A DATE LINED UP, AND I'M SCARED.

The Grateful Apology

2010-07-20T22:59:00.001+01:00

Right, let's get straight to the point: I'M SORRY. That's to anyone who's still around reading this thing: I'M REALLY VERY SORRY.

It's hard not to be introspective when writing a "blog" about "yourself", but bloody hell, what the fuck has been wrong with me??

I've just re-read the last few months of posts - something I never do - because I haven't written for a while and I wanted to get reacquainted... and I've found myself shocked at the uncensored, self-absorbed navel gazing; moreover the months of endless, unmitigated misery.

I didn't recognise myself. I sounded almost suicidal. I remember being advised to seek therapy and, at the time, thinking that was a bit of a harsh response, but now I understand why it was suggested. So thank you, all of you, and apologies again. Looking back - literally - I can see why it looked as if I was cracking up, predominantly because I was.

So I went on this diet, of which I'm still on, and fully intend to remain on more or less forever. It's pretty sensible, based on a little more fruit and veg in my life, and a little less Ben & Jerry breakfasts, elephant-sized packs of Doritos, and 18" pizzas as an amuse-bouche that preceeds a fish and chips main course.

The difference between this diet now, and every single diet I've ever done in my entire life, is that I accept that it's not so much a diet as 'The Norm'. Prior to this, my food intake was not dissimilar to a drug addict on a binge, where the narcotic of choice happens to be crap processed food, abused on a daily basis.

Said crap food became its own salesman too, promoting itself once it was digested and I felt shitty again and needed cheering up once more. In fact, it's only occurring to me now that my diet has probably been more responsible than I care to realise for my endless funk (which is not a good place, outside of discos).

Things came to a head when, eventually, I felt I had no choice in this anymore; that I either snapped out of this bullshit and took control of things, or else remained miserable, writing Woe-Is-Me posts, and wondering why that blonde on the train keeps avoiding eye-contact with frowning Fatcunt.

This book has helped me immeasurably: Overcoming Weight Problems using cognitive behavioural techniques, and I strongly recommend it for anyone who has struggled to lose weight, particularly using just good old willpower and lettuce.

I've given up smoking using similar techniques (in that instance, Allen Carr's EasyWay), which also, essentially, bypasses sheer force of will (which will only ever last as long as can be hacked) and replaces it with your own logic and common sense.

So in a nutshell, that's it. Sorry. And no more misery. It's too miserable.

Besides, I think I'm getting happy.

And yes, personally, if this still lasts come winter, then I'll be impressed. I should also be thinner, and possibly even having sex.

That's right, I said it: Sex.

Rage State

2010-06-29T21:09:00.009+01:00

So I'm on a diet. It's been two days. And it's boring. This is The Diet though - at least I think it is ~ the Big Kahuna, the Long Kiss Goodnight, the Cappo di Tutti Weightloss.

And it's weird, because it doesn't feel like the All Guns Blazing assaults of old. Rather this is the tired, grim resignation that I've gotta sort this shit out, and before it's too late.

You see for quite some time now (i.e. every fucking day), I've been sensing that I'm Missing Life - I'm capitalising that because I'm aware that 'Missing Life' simply is my life now; biding my time, complaining a lot, and waiting for something better to just happen. As a result waiting's all I ever do, and I do it listlessly. Whatever I'm waiting for, like tomorrow and a girl I once dated, it never comes. So I keep waiting. And I don't do anything. And I don't affect change. I just remain in limbo.

And that's a ridiculous way to exist.

I've been thinking about the trajectory I'm on, and it scares the living shit out of me. Somehow, it's given me foresight. Without any change - I'm sure - I'm guaranteeing myself just more of the same. And then I'll die.

Hurrah! Funpost.

Needless to say, I don't want that. I really, really, really don't want that, and as someone who seems unable to know what it is that I want, it's nice for once to have the certainty of knowing what I don't want, in a million, billion suns. And that's my current existence, with its lack of excitement, and direction, or exit.

But it is the easy route though, the lazy route, the path of least resistance with its HD TV promises and cheese-covered loneliness, the road to a billion wanks in the dark with a gut full of chocolate.

It was an anonymous commentator on my last post that finally got me thinking. He, probably a he but I suppose maybe a she, wrote that I should "get into a rage state, look at myself and say fuck this, ive wasted enough time," and I like that. Mainly, I like Rage State, particularly as I get those on a daily basis. The absurdity is that they're always via mundane things out of my control, like the tourists who'd stopped to listen to their guide yesterday, blocking off the entire pavement for pedestrians called Me. And on the train home this evening, I had to sit arm-to-arm against a behemoth of a man who occupied all his seat and half of mine, whilst giving a full job description to whoever was on the end of his phone, causing me to stop reading my book so I could flare my nostrils and stare intently at my shoes.

That shit gets me into rage states all the time. It envelopes my world and gives me focus to live. It's negative as hell, but it keeps my fat corpse standing. I could focus that vast reservoir of energy into self-improvement but I don't. I never have. Instead, I just get stressed, allow that tumour in my head to grow, and eat the pain away.

I checked out my BMI this afternoon. It transpires that I'm obese, and I didn't even know it; a sizable 8lbs in the over overweight zone. And that didn't do my fragile ego any good at all.
Then I read the disclaimer that the index can "wrongly suggest fatness in people who are athletic or muscular". That bit, I liked, even though I'm neither, just stocky.
Yet despite this my ego rose up to middling.

So my diet started yesterday. It didn't feel like a diet because I ended the evening stuffing huge wraps of bread down my yaphole, a technique I like to call "Eating the Evidence" as I'd forgotten to consume it during my Sunday night junk food feeding frenzy.

This morning, I decided to bin the remaining wraps.

So it's Day Two, and it's about time I did this. And when I fuck up - and I will fuck up - I'll just get back on it the next day.

Primarily this is going to be for the next two or three months, to shed a couple of stone and get my confidence back. But in the long term, I'm trying to adjust my thinking, and my habits. Because I have to do this for life.

Of course, only time will tell just how full of shit (or not) I actually am, but I know I can't go on like this. I'm now the wrong side of my Thirties. I haven't had sex in four years. I'm single-handedly ruining the best years of my life - you know, the ones where my knees still work and all bones are my originals. Plus I want to write. I want to write and be creative for a living. I can't do an office desk job dealing with customers much longer.

I'd like muscle definition and a decent career by year's end.

Failing that, I'll accept filthy, random sex. That would be a good enough consolation price.

More Of The Same

2010-06-10T22:51:00.003+01:00

When I was a teenager and I used to moan to my Mum about needing to diet for the five billionth time, or else I was bitching about school/ college/ work or the lack of a good woman in my putrid fucking life, she’d roll her eyes and sing Sinatra's "I've heard that song before."

Don’t ask me why.

Point is, I clearly complain a lot - and normally about the same old shit.
But I still need to go on a diet.
And my job sucks.
And I really need a girlfriend, but I'm getting increasingly shyer/ fatter/ older.

And for added decoration, since turning 36 and thus the wrong side of my Thirties and nearer my Forties, some kind of switch has flicked in my head. You see, I always used to console myself that things can get better, that we are the author of our own destinies plus something will always turn up, but as time passes and we get older and the positivity begins to fade, I’m beginning to think that all that might be some huge preposterous lie.

If only I had kids, I’d be living my now dead dreams through them.
But, oh yeah, I don’t.

Frankly, I’m just getting too old for this. I can’t help but notice, as all my friends plead Marriage and Children as reasons why we don’t keep in touch anymore, that everyone else is getting on with their lives while I remain mired in situations that are frankly beneath me.

A while back, for example, my sister and nieces visited, when sister had to leave for ten minutes. Oldest daughter (12) went with her, while her youngest (9) stayed at my desk messing around on my computer (I logged her on as a guest, meaning she couldn’t access my filth, even if she tried). I, meanwhile, had a badly needed shower.

When I returned, my niece seemed frightened and muted, almost as if her very soul had been permanently scarred in the five minutes she’d been alone.

It was a week later when I opened a drawer at my desk, and found pornography I didn’t even know I had. Teens With Tits 4 was winking up at me, bold as brass, with a less-than-subtle picture of a spit-roast just in case the title wasn’t specific enough. Sadly, my youngest niece is the cheeky, drawer-spying type. I know she’s seen it and I haven’t seen or heard from them since.

This wouldn't have happened if I was married, and with a proper job.

Neither would I be getting drunk. Age is making the whole process feel, I dunno, unbecoming, or something. Maybe it's not even age, but situation. Living a mid-Thirties existence that's virtually identical to my student years doesn't exactly make me feel like a grown up, particularly when I'm waking up with a hangover and a sense of dread, like I stripped naked on the train home or danced on a pub table or something. The reality is never quite that bad, although I’m clearly giving off vibes of total desperation. Last night, I went out for a drink with Martin, and found myself accosted by a group of proselytising Christians. I refused to answer honestly when they asked if there was anything I wanted praying for (I pretended to think for a bit then said, “Nope, everything’s great”), and found myself smiling politely when a nervous young woman laid a meek hand on my fat shoulder and asked her friend Jeffrey or someone to come into my life and give me a great big spiritual hug forever.

I was very touched on a metaphorical level, even if it was all pointless in reality. I also decided against telling them I’m an atheist Jew.

After being prayed upon, I asked if she could help "The man downstairs", but she looked at me quizzically and asked if I was joking. Martin then walked back upstairs from the toilets and scowled at them, and they all left.

Ten minutes later, we walked outside and got accosted by a different group with the same conversion tactic. Either the local church was on a promotional tour, or I looked really needy. I actually think it was the latter.

Things are so bad, that a friend of mine wants me to go to therapy. I’m really struggling against it. It’s like Martin’s suggestion yesterday that I buy myself a hooker for the night. Both options feel like an admission of defeat somehow.

Tonight, I went to a radio scriptwriting seminar with Ed. Then we went to the pub and had beer. In both locations, I was hoping to just bump into Her, The One, the future Mrs Ebola, but if she was around this evening, she chose to display her interest by avoiding eye contact, or scowling.

Fuck me, something outta change. This is boring enough to write. Christ alone knows what it must be like to read yet more depressing angst every other week.

Tschh.

Sweat

2010-06-01T10:08:00.007+01:00

Just in case anyone's panicking that my life seems to be going well, don't worry; everything's absolute atrophying shit.

Most unpleasant is the overwhelming feeling of loneliness and isolation I've now got in my lovely new flat with friends who can't commit to come over.

Another couple however were coming to visit a few days ago, but oh brilliant! - I felt somewhat out of sorts on Friday afternoon, and went home from work only to spend the entire bank holiday weekend either shivering and wrapped up in a duvet, or else sweating like a thieving royal in a newspaper sting. And that's all I've done. I've not left my flat for three days. I haven't even opened the blinds. I've hardly eaten - which means I'm definitely ill. All I've been doing is sleeping, or sweating to Sky Fucking TV, meaning I'm slowly turning into a moron. I knew this was happening when I found myself riveted about a possum stuck down a drain.

I'm basically turning into one of those men that when my neighbours are interviewed by the news once the bodies are discovered, they'll rightly be able to claim, "He was a bit of an odd-ball".

But even without Manflu, my self-esteem over the last few weeks has been pretty dented. In fact, it's been imprisoned in an Austrian cellar by my lack of dignity and raped lots of bad vibes into my flat, and I'm struggling to keep my spirits up.

Again.

Basically, I removed my Indifferent Ex-Girlfriend from Facebook, and have been disappointed to see in the three weeks that have passed that she hasn't noticed, or couldn't care less. Frankly, either scenario really depresses me.

The only time where I felt alive recently was at a brilliant houseparty that was full of beautiful South American women. I talked to several who were good enough not to scream back in terror. By the time I left however, I was informed that one - since gone - was "Desperate for a shag, just at that particular moment, for one night only", and I had allegedly been in her sights. She had breasts and a pulse and everything. More in keeping with my success rate however, I spotted the last girl I'd been talking to in floods of tears by the time I said my goodbyes; probably relief that El Diablo was leaving.

And finally, I went to a barmitzvah which was loads of fun as my sister's going through a messy divorce, forcing me onto 'Brother-In-Law Watch', just in case he went ape-shit crazy or somesuch. I was even asked to be on standby to accost him if need be.
As it turned out, he was fine, but I wound up sweating profusely as I found myself in a room full of people I haven't seen for a good 15 or 20 years and, well, it transpires that I've turned shy. I think this is because I've got fatter, I'm 36 and still single, and I'm paranoid that everyone's judging me and assuming I'm gay. I'm also no great success in the career and general life department, so I had nothing to offer but awkwardness and sweat, forcing myself to be unnaturally polite which was at odds with my default position of offensive drunk.

You think with all this sweating, I'd have really good skin.

Coming up next: My inevitable suicide.

Work Shmirk

2010-05-17T20:53:00.008+01:00

Perhaps I'm naive. Maybe I'm really an optimist. But deep down, I knew this moment would come. I even thought of killing off this blog as, well, buying New Place and waving goodbye to rented cesspits seemed like some kind of end-of-an-era, but it isn't. It really so fucking absolutely isn't.

The fact remains, as I marched into work this morning, that I don't want to do my job anymore. The new commute has been strangely exciting these last couple of months; catching trains instead of tubes, seeing slight different miserable faces every morning, walking to my desk from a different direction, but it's all largely bollocks ~ fripperies to make me forget that I really don't dig what I do.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not above working for a living. I'm not even sure I'd know what to do if I didn't have to. I couldn't just do nothing after all, but life's gotta be about quality, and getting out what you put in. Yet all my jobs have felt mandatory, shackle-y, rendering them all just a notch above a prison sentence with a pay packet attached.

I guess whatever I used to find rewarding about my job just isn't there anymore. You could teach a chimp to slam its fists into a keyboard and pick up phones and it could do what I do. Probably better, too.

I now despise phones to such a degree that I barely recognise myself. I hate mobiles because the voice on the other end is very rarely clear and unbroken, and unless that voice is coming out of some Amazonian goddess you'd met a few nights earlier, chances are you're going to have a very frustrating conversation. And I hate regular phones too because 9 times out of 10 at my work, it's going to be someone who wants, nay, expects you to drop everything you're doing and start helping them, because THAT'S THE KIND OF JOB I'VE GOT.

I'll be sat at my desk trying to wade through spreadsheets, preparing quotes, invoicing clients and so forth when the phone'll just ring, completely unannounced, totally at random. And you'll have to trust me on this...

... sometimes, when it rings, I can actually feel my heart sink.

And these people, our customers, scoff at the prices I give them.
Or they 'tut' when their goods aren't in, and start asking me difficult questions like, "When will it arrive, then?"
But normally, they'll just place an order and describe items in the vaguest possible terms, meaning I have to back up my spreadsheets, stop working on quotes, and drop invoicing clients because the guy on the other end of the phone wants "what I normally get", forcing me to wade through all their previous orders in a verbal version of pin the tail on the donkey.

And I know I'm in a bad way because I can normally put enough 'chipper' into my voice so they never really know that I want to pick-axe their heads.
But lately it's all I can do to sigh, and grunt in monotone. I can't be bothered to disguise my frustration anymore, to the extent that a couple of customers now refuse to speak to me. My boss has even dropped hints that I look for work 'nearer to home', as if I've moved to the Outer Hebrides or something.

But this is old news. And it scares me. Because I haven't moaned about work in a looong time. I had a completely different post planned, a roller-coasting one with barbecues and South American women and sweating visibly during awkward family situations but instead this happens, and I'm bitching about work.

So please leave a comment if your day job sucks, because if there's one thing I love, it's a whinge shared.

Man On The Verge Of A... Not Much Really

2010-05-13T22:16:00.011+01:00

There's something about living alone that's rendered doing anything so damn difficult. For starters, not coming home to a Large Northern Flatmate watching TV on a cheap sofa means I can jump onto my flash cosy one and do likewise ~ It also means I don't get any creative writing done as I used to with my evenings back in Chiswick (or at least that's how I'm choosing to remember it).

Not having another human being sharing my living space, whilst utterly blissful, is also slightly bizarre, as it sets the scene for a nice spot of mad loneliness to enter stage left; a bit of talking to myself here and there, and a spot of not leaving the flat as I'm too apathetic to amble around a park/ catch a movie/ grab a coffee on my own. (And whilst I've apathetically not done any of the latter, the former has, thus far, been so far a few world-weary sighs, and - and I remember this quite clearly - an "Oh God" on my birthday evening as I crawled into my cold bed alone.

My birthday itself, well that was a washout as it was a Wednesday and I'd kept it to myself, which proved to be a little dumb for a sensitive little sausage like me, which is why I found myself sending an emergency party email on my iPhone (now dropped so often that I haven't been able to turn it off - one month now, and counting.) I sent it to some half a dozen friends who I thought would likely be in central London on Friday.

It ended up being just me, and Martin.
My Fridays are always just me, and Martin.
Don't get me wrong, because I enjoyed it. As I said to Martin at the time, at least we got to catch up - again - and had some quality time - again - instead of some lousy larger event with more of my friends all out in one place together.

And a week on as I type, I still haven't heard back from a couple of my oldest, dearest friends to say that they can't actually make it. Not even a Happy Birthday.
Nothing.

Cunts.

Other than that, things are fine and I'm settling in to my new rut nicely. I'm getting used to the commute and its reassuring daily certainties; leaving my flat bang on 7:50am and walking to the train station past the frightening tiny schoolgirl with the head of a 40-year-old (on her shoulders that is, not in a bag, or anything).
Sharing the platform with a man who walks like a duck.
Walking to work and passing a young blonde, angry of face, sturdy of thigh, and heaving of breast.
And getting roundly ignored.

And then getting on with that job I've been doing for nearly five years, that job that even my boss is hinting I pack in for something "nearer to home", that job that is starting to get annoying again, now that the deviation of buying my own place has come to its natural conclusion.

So things look like they're getting back to normal.

Next Week: My exciting weekend self harming in a darkened room as the eerie silence is broken by weak croaks of 'Why???', until I remember I can bring some sunshine into my decaying existence with eight-and-a-half minutes of frenzied self-love thanks to a wardrobe full of porn, an industrial-sized bucket of moisturiser and a towel, leading inexorably in one direction; more sobbing as my balls empty and hot tears roll down my face with the intensity of a thousand suns.

It Was My Birthday And I'll Bitch If I Want To

2010-05-06T07:16:00.011+01:00

It was my 36th birthday yesterday and, despite my best intentions, I couldn't help feeling profoundly, utterly wretched.

I went to work as normal, and kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to broadcast the fact that I was entering the wrong side of my Thirties, and I didn't much care for the fuss. It was, after all, a bit of a nonsense; just a man-made calendar-based anniversary of my birth, hardly an achievement, nothing to write home about and celebrate.

So I went to work like any other day and answered the phones like normal.

And served customers like normal.

And queried my colleagues about mundanities like normal.

Meanwhile, I kept an eye on damn Facebook. My ex-girlfriend (American) bizarrely celebrates her birthday the same day as me, as she's exactly a year younger. She was getting inundated with 'Happy Birthdays' and 'Congratulations' on her spurious achievement of ageing one year.

I, meanwhile, received not a word. Not from her, who undoubtedly knew it was my birthday as well, not even from my sister who lives only on Facebook and where we conduct our fragile relationship as she won't talk to me otherwise.

But I was now 36 dammit, and above such fripperies.

Then I remembered the email I sent ex-girlfriend (American) the day before. Yes, I didn't mention 'Birthday' or indeed 'Happy', but I did allude to our upcoming anniversaries in my own stupid way as I sent her a cute, personalised Swedish meme currently doing the rounds.

'Oh yeah,' I recalled. 'She still hasn't replied to that. Must be busy.'

I was getting tetchy as the day drew to a close. I hadn't received a single card, much less a present as, well, my family have been instrumental in helping me buy a flat and all that that entails, so the last thing I was expecting was just more gifts.

But something, anything, just a dumb little whatsit to make me feel the giddying thrill of blood coursing through my veins on my apparently special day, that would've been nice.

The day wore on. My phone rang. Blocked number. I answered it excitedly, only to discover an automated recording wanting me to rate the services of a broadband repair line.

So desperate was I for contact that I actually relished the attention - then felt really rather deflated when I accidentally cut it off.

I considered going to Waitrose and coming back with a big cake, but felt that was a bit pathetic.
"What's this in aid of?"
"It's my birthday."

So I checked into Facebook.

'Blah blah blah voting, blah blah blah taking the kids to school...'

Unable to stop myself, I updated my status which had previously been, 'I should probably go to bed', to 'Thank you all for your kind birthday wishes. Oh, wait, there haven't been any'.

This provoked at first a couple of insults. Then a small drip of genuinely nice "Happy birthdays," followed by a slightly larger drip of a few more.

It fed my soul as the work phone rang and a colleague mumbled something about pricecodes.

It was coming up to 5pm, when I made my excuses and left a bit earlier. Just the day before, I had phoned my Mum and asked her and my step-Dad out to dinner. Thank god I did, because it became the nearest to any kind of celebration.

We arrived at the restaurant. My sister was already there with her two girls, and I felt the tension dissipate as I had a couple of beers and opened my first cards. The waiters congratulated me on seeing them - one of whom wishing me 'everything my heart desires,' which I found to be both a little over the top, and desperately brilliant at the same time.

I stuffed my face and listened, with a grin, to a waiter ramble on about Chinese tea, and caught my sister silently judging me, I thought because she thinks I might be gay - as not much else explains turning 36 with the only hint of a woman being one who ignores me from over 4,000 miles away.

Pictures were taken - and annoyingly uploaded immediately onto fucking Facebook - where I looked massive. I tried not to think about all that extra weight being a colossal contributor to my lack of confidence in the lady-dating arena.

And then I went back to my flat, my lovely, new, empty, modern flat, where I'd never felt so alone in my life.

Comfort Zone

2010-05-03T16:14:00.011+01:00

It's all I can do to sit here and not stare lovingly at my sofa as I type my first proper update from my now settled New Place.

Said sofa is in, ensconced opposite large new HD telly. I have broadband. All my furniture is bought, and I think it's safe to say I don't have to deal with any more estate agents, mortgage advisers, or solicitors.

All I have to do now is live, and I may start remembering again that I could do with a more exciting job. Oh, and a girlfriend.

But it's great being an adult. Frequent visitors may recall that this was what The Pit looked like, back in Chiswick...

Now my bedroom looks like this...

But the nicest thing about that bedroom is the fact that it's become just that, the place I go to at the end of the night to cry myself to sleep. Most of my time is now spent in the living room, pretending to write but instead surfing the net and staring occasionally at the sofa and wondering why I'm not lying across it in a drug cocktail fug...

The irony though is that I'm not doing anything else; my friends are now spread across London including Large Northern (Ex-Flat)Mate, whom I've spoken to the most as he deals with the crippling depression of unemployment in another friend's house near where we used to live.

As for me, I'm skint, having spent all my money on things like cupboards and blinds and the like that's forced me to stay in all this weekend, but I was overwhelmingly overjoyed to discover on Saturday that my newest neighbour is a single (as in "Living Alone") young lady who is really very attractive. She is also doubtless dating some gormless meathead I've yet to see squeezing her arse in the lobby one morning.

Having said all that, we did exchange fattening cake products through the window as her guests hung out of hers, smoking. Nonetheless, Gorgeous Neighbour was careful never to rise above disinterest, something I'm very used to in attractive women.

So that's everything thus far and things seem to be going well, other than discovering that part of my new development has been given to the local council housing association.

While I don't wish to sound unkind towards the less well-off in society, I'm none too impressed that my neighbours and I have paid a fucking fortune to move in here, only to discover some places have been given to those on welfare, for free.

I don't want to sound elitist, but one such recipient of a brand new house may have been the young man who last week drove, tyres screeching, into my block and gave me evils as he turned at speed round the corner.

It may even have been him who wrote 'I was here 2010' in biro on the brand new carpeted corridor outside my front door.

Either way, it beats what was outside my Chiswick front door last year...

New Place: I Am A Bit Less Hateful Towards The Earth

2010-04-26T09:35:00.000+01:00

I think it’s safe to say, 3 weeks into my move to New Place, that I’m relatively not unhappy.

It’s taken longer than I thought to settle in, but 4 Ikea visits later, my furniture’s all bought and built and fitted blinds now replace my temporary slabs of cardboard. My new HD TV arrived this morning, and my sofa’s coming in two day’s time - if, that is, they can fit the damn thing through the front door. I forgot to check that.

My broadband’s being connected this Thursday (this is being typed on Sunday for a Monday work upload when no-one’s looking), my telephone line’s finally in, and all the loose ends are finally tied up. Now I can stop to think in my lovely tiny flat with its brand new fixtures and fittings… and I’m bored. There is nothing left to do.

I can’t remember what I did at weekends at Old Place (otherwise known as Chiswick, corner of Goldhawk Road and the High Street, just opposite the now defunct VW showroom and above the chemists), but I think having a Large Northern Flatmate a mere yell away in the next room with an off-licence below us and Internet everywhere, I was covered for the most basic of non-isolated-feeling weekends.

Yet here, in Nameless New Place Nearish London, I had to go for a walk yesterday just to get out and feel some sun. I found a very pleasant park nearby, ruined by some teen scamps drinking lager and staring. Then I found myself in Sainsburys, toyed buying some Amaretto, and bought pizza and wine instead to consume in the dark.

In other terribly exciting developments over the last few weeks:

I sprayed some WD40 into the squeaky cupboard that houses my fridge. My food still smells of lubricant.

I instructed a friend to park in my allocated, numbered space that I don’t personally use as I sold my car 6 years ago. We returned to find a car blocking him in, with a neighbourly “Thanks, Dickhead” note on his windscreen by a man who thought that the space was his. (He’s since apologised.)

I left a friendlier note under my new neighbour’s door, as it transpires my bedroom wall, and thus my head and ears, are about 5 mil from the back of their washing machine which they’d ran ‘til midnight on a school night.

Some other new homeowner in this development is a selfish bastard. Some evenings, notably Friday or Saturday nights, I can hear the muffled slam of a front door around 1am, followed by heavy footsteps somewhere, followed by more door slamming. I have yet to hear yells but I did hear the hard, rhythmic thumps of someone demanding someone else shut the fuck up, which neatly demonstrates why I really, really, really love other people.

I now have Sky TV meaning I’ve recorded an overabundance of Family Guys and Frasiers. In fact, that’s all I seem to watch; that, an Australian Reality doc called Nothing To Declare, and Babestation for ten minutes once when I was drunk, although it’s utter shit.

I have also discovered a family of bats living in the eaves of the building, and a future mosquito hazard thanks to the central water feature of the development (which has currently gone green because the developers are still building and there’s no point dredging it until they’re done). Oh, there’s also the relaxing sound of hammering at 9am on weekends.

There will also be a gym ready for use in a month’s time, so I could potentially CHANGE MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE living here, but we’ll see. I’m well aware of this incredible opportunity I’ve been afforded, although I tend to fuck up things like incredible opportunities.

So there we go, my first update in New Place. I’ll have broadband at the end of the week, so expect plenty of lonely angst in the coming months.

Limbo

2010-04-16T13:46:00.003+01:00

Internet being installed at my new flat approx last week in April.

Typing this out frantically at work.

Loving the new flat; shame about the lack of anything to sit on, and the cardboard covering over the windows in lieu of actual curtains.

Still not had sex yet.

Thanks for the hundreds of comments demanding an update.

(That was sarcasm. I've heard nothing.)

And now back to work :(

Deterioration

2010-03-24T06:49:00.004Z

I am a disaster zone right now. In two days time, I will be driving the van home from work and lugging boxes of accumulated bullshit to my new home, but only if I can handle it.

The problem is, I'm deteriorating. I currently make Joe Merrick look sexy, providing he's been hosed down and crowbarred into a Ted Baker.

And yes, I'm aware he's dead.

And the Elephant Man.

I can't breathe very well; my nose is blocked. I have a sore throat, just a couple of weeks after I got rid of my last sore throat. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and can't get back to sleep, and I'm going through those medicated balm tissues quicker than a Premiership footballer goes through dim orange women.

And last night, as I sat staring at the TV double-sneezing and with my left eye weeping, I noticed the (thankfully very weak) skin condition I've had for years on my knees and elbows starting to explore my calves and ankle regions.
I'm basically turning into a giant wart.

But it's - ugh - this throaty sinusey thing though. Somewhere up behind my nose and at the back of my throat is a sea of gunk, a bit like that underground river in Ghostbusters 2, except this is solid and not running as freely, and Dan Aykroyd hasn't fallen in it.

It's completely impervious to Lemsip, and it's itchy too, which is irritating as I can't quite reach in to scratch it.
I don't know, this is all like some kind of cold.

It's an odd one though, as I still have my sense of taste. It's like full-on illness, except just a notch below it, just one stage under 'Close The Door and Go To Bed', thus I get to go to work to cough and complain and eat shit sandwiches.

Oh yeah, and I have a painful mouth ulcer, not to mention a rectum that feels like a bleeding Hula-Hoop trying to pass a tank.

"Hello Doctor, please can you probe my anus?"

I think this is Zen, pissing on my housemove.

Fucking planet.

Pack Waitmove Thingy

2010-03-21T22:38:00.002Z

My life is currently on hold as I wait to move house. I should be writing stuff, any stuff, but I can't. It's not in me. My mind is blank, my muse missing, presumed dead - at least until all this flat-buying nonsense is over.

I can't even come up with decent titles anymore.

But then, the theory goes, I'll be living in my own one-bedroomed bastard ~~house~~ flat with a greater sense of my own destiny, and all that writing 'n shit should just fly out of my head.

(Yes, I'm aware that it won't.)

Truth is, buying my own place, and fulfilling all those (admittedly tragic) fantasies about what sofa to own and what type of wood veneer I should get for my Ikea bookcase, is all rather fun and life-affirming. I got to measure the rooms up last week during the home tour, an event that half my family attended and where my sister mentioned to the site manager at least three times that she was my sister, presumably to prevent him from assuming that she might be romantically linked to the abhorration that is me.

I am used to women doing this.

I've already started packing, and slung out a worrying amount of pornography I forgot I had. I shall be borrowing the work van this coming weekend for the Big Push to a different part of London, seeing out my life alone as I cry into my Tesco's meal-for-ones. (This differs from my current life, where all my gluttony is conducted under the jealous gaze of Large Northern Flatmate. He'll be moving in with his girlfriend, telling me and moreover himself that it's only temporary, and it's absolutely not a commitment.)

But I am aware that all I'm doing now is counting down the days, and with a smile on my face. When things are this good, and when my work colleagues are commenting that I'm uncharacteristically happy for once, it's rather difficult to keep up a miserable and self-deprecating blog. (Oh, and hello colleague, by the way. I'm assuming you've found me due to my unfortunate habit of having a backlog of 'I Hate the Earth' headed emails visible at the exact moment you're looking over my shoulder at the work I'm not doing.)

But anyway, that's why there's been a lack of posts lately. Things are going okay. I can't write miserable and sucky during okays.

But thanks for all your comments. I will not be killing this blog just yet. After all, things are about to get very, very lonely, and I might just find myself with a whole raft of new shit to complain about.

I dunno. Consider yourselves lucky.

AD/BC

2010-03-15T22:06:00.004Z

And to think I pride myself of being all zeitgeisty 'n stuff.

This is only, erm, six years old - an excerpt from AD/BC: A rock opera, a parody of Jesus Christ Superstar with a bunch of my favourite comedians. No idea it even existed until about twenty minutes ago...

Towels and hot wateeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!!!!!!!!!

Moving On Up

2010-03-03T20:51:00.003Z

I know it's been a while. I know I've not written for three weeks, and during the last month of February, I'd shat out just one post.

But things are happening; "Moving House" things. It isn't the moving house that's stressful. I haven't physically done that, for one thing, but it's all the bullshit that surrounds it.

Tonight, as I crawled back from work, I noticed a letter from my solicitor (Check me out with my Solicitor, n' shit). Apparently, they'd received the mortgage offer I'd got only last week, and can I sign here and here, and have it witnessed here?
Ta.

This is not a moment too soon. In the absence of anyone getting back to me, I've had to go for broke on Monday, telling my landlord in writing to "Go Fuck yourself", and "use my deposit as this last month's rent, because after four and a half years of ignoring our pleas to stop the damp, repair the taps, and remove that mouse in the hope that we might just fuck off and leave you alone instead, I now have every confidence that you will plunge into our deposit in one last, desperate moneygrab. Well you can't. That deposit is now 'March'. You are the worst landlord I have ever had, I've never even met you, and I hope your rectum develops a very painful rip."

Something tells me he's not going to take that lying down.

Meanwhile, back to the move, I am soon to be 'Exchanging Contracts,', whatever that means, in about a week. Then I will be travelling to my brand new bachelor pad - henceforth known as Magnificent North-ish London Shag Palace, or Pit Of Filth And Doom Where I Lock Myself In To Masturbate With Greater Frequency And Enthusiasm Than A Caged, Demented Chimp - to measure rooms and windows in preparation of the whole furniture buying shit.

But I'm tired, so very, very tired. I'm not stressed yet - at least I don't think I am - but this is consuming every part of me. I've got about 3 weeks left in this flat and with Large Northern Flatmate (soon to be relegated to 'Large Northern Mate'), and then it's Operation: Grow The Fuck Up.

It all seems too good to be true, to be honest. I've even considered closing this blog, as it feels as if I have some kind of 'ending' now.

Of course, there are too many loose ends; My job, for one, my sex life (or rather my lack of it), that dead body under the driveway.

So that's that. I know I've been neglecting many of you, and I'm sorry, but please bear with me. You see, I'm movin' on up now, getting out of the darkness. My light shines on, my light shines on, my light shines on.

Thank you.

Goatee

2010-02-10T22:20:00.014Z

You know you're in the midst of a major transition when you've got too much metaphorical shit on your plate, yet you don't have the time to get stressed.

Okay, that stressed.

At the moment, I feel like I'm in a real life version of Touch the Truck, except I'm the only contestant, and there's no truck - so really the only comparison with sleep-depriving gameshows where you can win a truck you've been touching is that good things await me if I can just stay alert.

Today, I applied for a mortgage. This is to pay for the flat I first saw four days ago and put one thousand pounds towards the very next day, just a couple of hours before attending a barmitzvah I didn't want to go to.

I thought I'd end up leaving said barmitzvah pleased that I'd done my familial duty, but I didn't. Instead I felt wretched, and crap. I couldn't have felt more out-of-place if I'd arrived dressed as a pig, drunk and pissing on my shoes as I sniffed coke off the tip of a bus pass and yelled, 'which one of you Jews wants a fight?'

It didn't help that the event was Black Tie and, well, I forgot. I was buying a place to live, okay?? Thus, I was the only man there in a light grey office suit, one that sliced violently into my guts because I have a) gained weight, due to being a b) cunt.

On the plus side, I wasn't the only one in restrictive clothing, having earlier forced my own father's pregnant stomach into his childsize dinnersuit trousers.

But that moment of schadenfreude was the only highlight. I was at first thrilled to see my Uncle, my father's brother with that same cheeky grin, after so many years absence, only to wish I was elsewhere as I watched him scan the room for anyone else just 20 seconds after I shook hands and started to talk. I was soon palmed off to people more my age who I last saw in 1986, indulging me as I sweated and talked about work.

I was sat next to a lesbian at dinner. This made a change as her opening words to me as soon as I sat down, and let me make this abundantly clear:- as I literally pulled my chair out from under the table and said hello, was some totally unnecessary comment about "her girlfriend", the gay equivalent of "Look, I've got a boyfriend, so don't even think about it."

As the food came out, no-one was particularly interested in anything I had to say, so I wound up brooding in silence as a viciously tight suit cut into my balls. I did attempt chatting as the lady to my left gossiped with the lesbian on my right, but it was clear they preferred holding a conversation over a strange man's head to letting him join in.

Then the speeches kicked in. Now call me old fashioned, but I ain't impressed with 13-year-old boys announcing to a dinner party that "Tonight, I am a man," particularly when three days earlier, he'd probably cried his fucking eyes out because he'd reached his highest ever level in World of Warcraft before getting killed by an elf.

Nor was I impressed with the boys that preceded him, telling us that they'd known the Barmitzvah for as long as they could remember (i.e. just under a decade), and that he's a stand-up kinda guy. He doesn't shave yet, but by golly if your balls are on the line, he'll kick some ass, presumably.

And as I watched his younger sister make her speech (she's 9), all I could see in my mind's eye was a middle-aged and heavily botoxed woman thrusting a plate at a waiter and bellowing at him to take it back.

The evening tailed off as I refused to dance, spent a lot of the time on my phone outside, and chatted to my Dad about dousing my anus with witch hazel gel to ease the bleeding. I did, however, drink a lot of scotch. It was a free bar after all, and possibly the only one in London (with the exception of other barmitzvahs) with no queue.

This made Monday back at work hell, and trying to negotiate a mortgage without my boss noticing wasn't easy, but then neither is pretending that my fat thighs haven't rubbed two vast holes into the gusset of my jeans. I can't wash them as the holes will get bigger, so I'm intending to by a new pair except I haven't, because I'm attending fucking barmitzvahs and buying houses and I'm overwhelmingly stressed but I appear to be on some strange kind of autopilot that's preventing me from breaking down again and crying.

And in the meantime, my American ex sent me some innocuous, bland email which I casually replied to, mentioning my utter disgust at her attempt to wind me up and/ or make me jealous. She somehow took the moral high ground over this, and now isn't talking to me.

But on the plus side, I've grown a goatee.

No Smoking. Or Women.

2010-01-20T22:15:00.007Z

A message from the past:

It is October 29th 2009. I last sucked on a cigarette 11 days ago. Two days prior to that, the weekend kickstarted with some beers and the buying of smokes, despite a working week's abstinence. I went to a house party the next day, and bought a pack of 20. My friend's missus had also bought a pack for me to share, placing me firmly in fag heaven.

Monday October 19th became my first smoke-free day, coinciding with (or causing) some strange mental breakdown. Then I developed a violently sore throat that's only just cleared. 11 days have passed, and I haven't stopped stopping just yet.

I've smoked for 17 years, my entire adult life, and five years longer than Teenage Me intended, vowing, as I first dabbled, that I wouldn't make a habit of it and besides, I'd've probably given up by my 30th birthday anyway, because that's how teenagers think; Age + time = stuff just happens.

But it didn't, and then I was 35. All my earlier attempts had failed. My most successful quit was 26 days, from 12th November 2005, to December 8th. (Why did I stop? My inner "Fack it, it's Christmas!")

Anyway, if I manage to quit smoking for, say, three months - if I can get to mid-Jan having not smoked, including the 'difficult' Christmas and New Year's - that'll be an overwhelming personal best, even if I can piss on such an achievement by remembering that I'm not technically having to do anything to get there.

And if I do, I'll post this up. How exciting.

Back to the Future...
It's been 3 months and one day. I've saved £244, and I've not smoked approximately 1,000 cigarettes. It's very, very strange, but I just don't think about it any more. Neither do I think my life has vastly improved.

Case in point:

My ex-girlfriend (American) and I have been emailing for some time now. It's been kinda lovely, as I still miss her. There's been talk of me going over to visit her. She's announced her desire to visit London with her girlfriend this spring, and look for work here.

Our emails have ratcheted up recently. For one thing, that evil side of her, the Hell Hath No Fury banshee that appeared around the time I dumped her, well she's gone. Now there's lots of flirting again; her telling me about her strange dreams where we're snogging in the bathroom, while I thanked Thor that I'm still wanted by someone, anyone, who's not already a relative and therefore stuck with me like some kind of growth that complains.

I held back from telling her how my soul has been torn asunder with loneliness and despair since she'd gone, unable to tell her how much I miss and care for her.
Instead, I made a few nob jokes.

Time passed. She emailed some photos of her New Year's trip Midwest for no reason. I think I sent her a picture of a cocktail menu.
I'd go to bed to her emails. She'd wake up with mine.

And then, extremely early on Monday as I eeked out what no longer remained of my weekend and contemplated going to bed, I got an email from her asking if I was still up, and how my weekend had been.

'Fucking terrible,' I replied. 'I've spent it locked in my room trying to write, just as soon as I watch a couple of things on YouTube - except I've done that for 48 hours straight, and I've written absolutely nothing. How was yours?'

And then she told me.

She gave me her list that weekend; Pilates, drinks with friends, blah blah blah, followed the next day with lunch, and a "delicious" tongues down throats/ arse groping session that was all reported with effortless ease and ending with "Swoon", just in case I didn't pick up on any sense of emotional attachment. She hadn't worded it like that, of course, meaning that I'd all but finished composing my reply when I realised what she meant.

'Oh. Then congratulations are in order,' I'd written, followed by, 'Well, it's 2am. Goodnight.'

She wrote to me the next day to continue the thread, something bland and cheerful that I halfheartedly replied to, and that's been it. We've gone from several emails a day, to nothing.
To say I'm disappointed with her is a vast understatement. These last few months of emails, a couple of texts here and there and even a phonecall, they all feel like one enormous set-up; her opportunity to raise the tempo so she can hit me with a casual, 'Oh, and Fuck You All Along!'

But I want to know what you think, seeing as a disproportionate amount of you are women.

Is my ex-girlfriend totally batshit crazy? Or is she still angry? Or is this all my fault for keeping in touch? (Don't answer that one so much. Stick to the other two.)

I'm keeping my distance in the meantime. If I'm just some conduit for her to gloat at, then she'll at least have to contact me first - Ha! And should she contact me, then welcome to Planet Polite, population: Me, being brief.

So despite the overwhelmingly obvious (viz: Why haven't you Moved On, you fucking freak?), can we all agree that the Hell Hath No Fury banshee never left?

Ageing Bull

2010-01-16T11:53:00.020Z

Why didn't anyone warn us about ageing? Why are there no government health warnings about its dangers, or programmes to inoculate you against it? (although technically that would mean being rounded up on your 30th birthday and shot.)
It was but the vaguest of thoughts in my youth that, aesthetically at least, we'll likely peak around our Twenties, and slowly decline from then on, unless wrinkles and bad backs become a turn-on. But fuck it, what did I care? I was a kid.

Ageing is the elephant in society's room - certainly the one right now in my head. It hasn't quite been omitted from our cultural landscape, but spun into some exciting goal of one day 'enjoying our retirement', neatly sidestepping the fact that we'll all be so old and embittered by that point in a world we no longer understand, that we'll just lock ourselves indoors, complaining. (And yes, I'm aware that I do that now. Thank you.)

I'm fascinated by ageing in the same way I'm fascinated by North Korea. Both are evil and unstoppable. Both seem to exist in some kind of fun vacuum where it would be great to be free and live without a care in the world except, oh, you can't. Your only chance of getting on in both states, it would appear, is either suicide, which kinda defeats the original goal of wanting to live well, or just lying down and accepting your fate like a bitch - which is crap.

I do get the feeling that I'm not the first person to dislike ageing, though. The Greeks and Romans shared a particularly interesting myth, laden with ironic profundity. Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, was rather partial to human lovers, one of whom was the Pythonesque-named Tithonus, prince of Troy. Tithonus, being a mere mortal, was going to age and die like the rest of us so Aurora, wanting to be with her beau forever, asked Zeus to grant Tit immortality. Zeus did so, but here's the kicker ~ she forgot to ask for eternal youth, meaning Tithonus eternally aged, presumably becoming the greatest complainer of pesky children in the world whilst moaning about there being nothing good on TV anymore as he shrunk down to four foot three and a half.

So Aurora turned him into a grasshopper.

But the whole point about this post is that I want to complain, obviously.
So here we go...

* I used to have a bladder made of cement and lead, or so it seemed. It was one of those nonsensical male things I used to boast about, the ability to 'not need the toilet for a while', as if it were akin to being able to recite pi to 1,000 decimal places whilst juggling cats.
Now, not a night goes by when I don't find myself being awoken at 4am by a pathetic bladder made of jelly and lace.

* My knees are weak. Admittedly, they're 35 years old now, but I get the feeling they're in direct competition with my bladder for the 'Most Atrophying Part Of My Body' award. I want to go jogging and cycle to work again (in theory), but I'm beginning to think I may do myself some real damage. (Yes, that's right. I probably shouldn't exercise ever again, just to be on the safe side.)

* My metabolism's rubbish. I used to diet as a teenager and, provided I stuck to it for a couple of weeks, strange things would happen like weight loss.
Now, I can jog and diet and cycle and cry for a month and lose just a pound, off of my little finger. This is patently, patently shit.

* Hair grows where you don't want it, and doesn't where you do. Okay, I will put my hands up at this point and thank Zeus or Allah or Thor (or maybe my grandparents) that I still have the hair on my head. I have friends who I knew back when they were devil-may-care hippies, whose scalps now resemble ox-bow lakes of hair.
But the back of my neck, my shoulders and the backs of my arms, what the fuck is happening to me? This was not in the brochure.

* I'm developing a natural inclination to not go out. This is a mental shift that I'm rather amused by, as I used to be something of a 24-hour party person (or at least 14). I'm still proud of those occasional all-nighters in the last millennium, when I'd crash at 10 or 11am the following morning, feeling like my candles had been jolly well burnt at both ends. Now, the party scales have come weighing down in the opposite direction, to wit; A hangover used to be an irritating side-effect of a great night out. Now, the hangover has become the crippling STD that follows a shag, more powerful and unpleasant than any earlier fun.

This, IMHO, is partly due to ageing into a 'wuss', as our American cousins are wont to say, because age renders fun stuff less fun . There's something about the first time doing *anything* that is bloody magical, and fresh, and golden. Now try doing something for the first time on a night out in your mid-Thirties. Unless it's bungee jumping off the pub roof and into Beyonce's vagina, my guess is that any excitement you'll have now is down just to the company you keep and how painful your bladder isn't being on that particular evening.

Last night, for example, I was in excruciating bladder pain, and had to leave early. It was as if a line of barbed wire had been inserted into my urethra without my knowledge, only for it to be pulled on viciously in some invisible tug o'war. (I ended up sweating on the tube, and pissing behind a bush. Hell.)

And speaking of hell, I still appear to be passing solids through what can only be described as a brutal ring of fire. I'm doing my utmost to ignore it, but it's not easy pretending that forcing a cactus through a solid, bleeding onion ring isn't happening.

All of which prompts images of visits to doctors which, frankly, isn't a youthful pursuit. It's the stuff of ageing, and I really am terribly fucked off by it all. I can also see an awkward scenario arising, one that is essentially a balance of pain over pride. At the moment, my pride remains intact even though my arsehole isn't. Perhaps, one day, I will have to confront a very unpleasant scenario that isn't just completely alien to me, but totally and utterly wrong in every conceivable way. If time and All Bran hasn't remedied this situation, I will have to endure the very definition of vulnerable:

I will visit a doctor and, after just a few minutes of meeting him, will a) remove my undergarments, b) turn around, c) bend over, and d) allow this stranger to peer and prod at my anus with a glove.

That isn't my idea of a good night out. It is also, I submit, why ageing is bullshit.

Two Paths

2010-01-06T21:24:00.013Z

So here we are, six days into a new year and a new decade. Are you well? Good.

I have my usual resolutions (Smoke, diet, job, house, girlfriend) and am uncharacteristically happy, which is strange.

I think I'm happy because a couple of days ago, Monday, I was profoundly unhappy, and this is its story.

I was profoundly unhappy because it was my first day back at work, and I was rather stunned to find that bullshit Cycle of Life inevitably repeating itself once again.

Christmas and New Year's bacchanalian excess was now over, and it was time to Man Up like a chump. I had spent the better part of two weeks force feeding beige junk into my yaphole like a particularly masochistic goose self-fattening my liver into foie gras. I had done so little exercise - often leaving my flat for the first time at 10pm, just to stock up on more pies - that doing nothing was making me tired.

When I did go out - New Year's Eve being a case in point - I'd done so much lazing around that I felt guilty eating crap and drinking in a pub. After all, I'd been doing that non-stop and far cheaper at home. I had my standard London New Year's do in a bar with Ed™ (now with added EdFriend!™), and such was my lack of imagination that we'd simply revisited the cocktail bar we'd gone to last year. Back then we'd had an absolutely fantastic time; the place had been full of friendly people - including women - and even the staff were shaking hands and introducing themselves. It was so good that we were in two minds about ruining it by going back this year, but ruin it we did.

The barstaff were just as friendly, still shaking hands and introducing themselves, except this time I realised they were doing it to everyone for the tips. And the women? There didn't seem to be as many around this time, and two of the nearest ladies to me had already sneered back.

Then a proper, bonafide miracle happened.

Lingering in a crush near our table was a cute, buxom brunette. She looked over in my direction and I caught her eye - or perhaps she'd noticed me trying to smoulder in the corner. These simple facts I can't remember now, but I do remember her stare that even I saw contained interest.
'Oh, jolly good,' I thought. 'Now just play it cool, you idiot, and don't blow it.'
Then it dawned on me that perhaps she just wanted our seats.

I chatted to the chaps for a bit, then casually looked up again. She'd been waiting, and our eyes met once more.
She simmered.

'Christ!' I blasphemed.

I tried to act cool, and resumed chatting to the guys. I was getting panicky now, as she seemed quite interested and I'd realised I'd spent two weeks eating myself into a nice pair of low self-esteem pants.
I looked back at her again. Yup, definitely wasn't imagining it.
Pity, really, as balls in my courts will generally be left on the ground.

I couldn't do it. Despite my cool demeanour, I felt pitiful and fat. When she looked at me all smouldery, I knew right away that whatever it was she found attractive in me was at best an illusion; at worst, a fraud.

Knowing I'd only ever disappoint, I was actually relieved when, post-chimes, Ed and Ian got up and walked out into the night. The brunette and I passed each other with blank stares. Another 20 minutes later and me and the guys were slinging sweet-and-sour chicken down our necks in Chinatown.
That, I could do.

-

Doing bugger-all for Xmas and taking advantage of the Buy-One-Get-One-Frees that dominated the potato snack shelves had taken its toll. But now it was Sunday night. The party was over, and work was soon to resume. I couldn't even begin to comprehend the monumental effort it would take just to wake up the following day.

Sunday night. Lousy night. I felt bloated and lethargic, and dazed from overwhelming underachievement. In moments like those, when the metaphorical noose is tightening around my neck... I like to kick the chair.

I don't know now what compelled me, but with mere hours of my holiday left, I decided to Googlestalk my French ex-girlfriend, Amira. I don't even know why she popped into my head. Perhaps because she was my sexiest girlfriend ever, and I was at my zenith of unsexiness. Yes, that was it; I wanted to feel better about myself as I sat in front of my computer with bedrash and a stomach pregnant with Pringles.

I typed her name into Facebook. It came up immediately, complete with a tiny picture that made my heart skip. I hadn't seen my French ex for years and now, there she was, all moody and pixellated, and with an intriguing new surname.

Amira, it appeared, was now married and, hammering it home for me in the picture, pushing a pram. She wasn't smiling either - although smiles were never her forte - and I was stunned to discover that she might now be a mother. She was hardly the motherly type. I also had to assume that she was still in England after all having married a Brit, what with that new surname and all.

So to cheer myself up, I looked at my previous New Years entries on this here blog. Two years earlier, I discovered in a typically introspective entry, I was making grandiose pronouncements about the coming year, and declaring that 2008 would be the year I quit my job.

That entry gnawed at my mind as I found myself fatter and sat behind my desk two days ago. The 'How was your holiday?' conversations lasted all of three minutes, and I was ordered, by implication at least, to just Get Back To Work.

To say I was miserable was an understatement. I fought to stay chipper. I reminded myself that I was now on a fabulous new diet (lettuce), and it would reverse all those unsightly new pounds, plus some. But oddly, starkly, as I thought about moody Amira and her new life (I sincerely thought she was too miserable for the UK, let alone marriage and motherhood), and as I dwelled upon what Could Have Been with the clearly mental brunette in that bar, and when I mused that two years earlier, I was blogging that I would be quitting my job for pastures new, it occurred to me that I have two paths:

These paths may end up being vast arcs that ultimately lead me to the same destination. That destination may even lead me nowhere but back to the beginning, where nothing has changed except for the passing of time.

Yet what dawned on was really quite obvious; even if my journey does lead me back to square one, even if it was well worth the ride or a complete waste of time, I can choose what path I take to get there.
One is dark, and miserable, and crap. The other is really rather scenic.

Goodbye Decade, Hello Other Decade

2009-12-31T14:53:00.010Z

There's a mere eight hours left of the 'Noughties' and I, for one, wish it a hearty "Sod off". On a personal level, I had sex about twice (this is a decade I'm talking about here, remember), gained weight then lost it then gained it again (repeat to fade), and aged approximately ten years as I did very little else. Although I left my mother's bosom (otherwise known as 'her house'), I bounced from one pointless job to the next as I fought to enjoy myself in a variety of bars and clubs.

I took drugs occasionally, smoked every day, laughed now and again with chums, but ultimately floated aimlessly like a fat feather in the breeze.

I thought it would all end differently, however. My American ex and I have been emailing and, even though it's phenomenally late in the day, there was talk about her getting a flight to the UK right now.

Except she didn't and I'm back to my standard London New Year's do in a bar with Ed™, starting in about 1 hour.

But back to the summary, some fuckwits hijacked planes and slammed them into buildings, ruining just about everything for everyone, 'we' then went to 'war', and Ricky Gervais co-wrote The Office only to become more famous and annoying. Disgracefully, nothing else from the past 120 months springs to mind.

But that's just my impression. What are your thoughts on the first tenth of our brave new century? Exciting? Epoch-creating? Or just bollocks?
Answers on a postcard please, or in the comments section below...

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I've started drinking already.

Anal Fissures

2009-12-19T16:34:00.003Z

I love my iPod. Aside from the fact that it's exacerbated my tinnitus one billion-fold and I've now got a permanent whistle in my head, it is the perfect aid to Christmas shopping.

Imagine, if you will, Europe's largest inner-city shopping centre the weekend before Christmas. Now imagine thousands of orange women, swaggering teenage fuckwits, couples walking in slow motion, and fat families going puce with rage as they push prams containing their revolting screaming offspring into your legs.

Yet none of them upset me in the slightest, as into my ears trilled my new hero; Tim Minchin ~

On the downside, I've got a rip in the lining of my anal canal. This made walking around said shopping centre less pleasant than it already wasn't. I have no idea how this tear occurred. Perhaps because things seem to be on the up for me at the moment, God (despite not existing), appears to want to fuck with my bottom, as it were.

I first realised something was amiss when I took a crap at work a couple of days ago and it felt like giving birth. Granted, there's a lot wrong with that sentence, but it was a fresh hell of eye watering pain and blood and lots of trill whispers of 'Why'? as I reached out to clasp wall and bang on the floor with my feet.

Two days on and there's little improvement. Although I'm pretty sure I haven't got haemmorhoids, I did attempt to buy some Anusol this afternoon if only to relieve the burning sensation that's afflicted my backdoor calamari, but I couldn't face the shame - or, indeed, find any. Besides, I'd have only been forced to buy half a dozen other items I don't currently need, just to bamboozle the cashier into not noticing; shower gel (beep), deodorant (beep), tissues (beep), medicated cream for anal ulcerations (beep).

But on the plus side, three and a half working days left til Christmas and the end of the year, nay, the decade.

Merry flippin' Christmas, everyone, and a Happy New Year!!!!!!!

Moving Story

2009-12-10T15:26:00.015Z

Okay, I’m still here. I have not had any bath/ toaster moments (I can’t - I don’t have a bath). Nor have I been necking vast quantities of paracetamol washed down with a lonely whiskey aperitif. That would kill me.

Instead, I have been plodding along as usual, and digesting your comments:
“Get out of that flat.”
“Mondays are shite.”
“The reason you're depressed is the same reason that's holding you back.”
“Your posts… used to be funny, but more recently, they make me worry for you.”
“We’ve accepted this imaginary 'dream life' (is) attainable, and… have come to believe it a right! Find joy in a few simple things.”
“I think you should do something about that job.”
“Take a break and… talk to a doctor, or take a holiday, or find a new job”
“Plan a change, one thing at a time, tell someone supportive, do not frame your change as losing or giving up (but) gaining, improving.”
“You believe in magic. You duck out of dates, you are rude to women the moment you realise you like them, you are a mixture of pride and doubt that makes you sabotage everything you do.”
“Cunt.”
“GET OVER YOURSELF.”
“Stop hanging around bars. You've got to put more effort into this thing.”

I’d like to thank you all. To be fair, I’m amused at how this blog has morphed into a vast repository of complaint; one colossal bitch about a crappy life in a crappy job and a crappy flat with no-one to ~~fuck~~ cuddle during the evening respite, a long catalogue of self-indulgent whinging with about as much worthiness of existence as a malignant polyp on a supermodel’s arse.

But, oh, it has. Whoops.

Anyhoo, in the two and a half weeks since my last post, there have been a few intriguing developments:
I saw St. Elmo’s Fire for the first time (fucking abysmal film that has dated really badly and is ridden with the worst screenwriting clichés I’ve ever witnessed. There may even have been a "You just don’t get it, do you?", as well as cringing moments like Rob Lowe’s former-student brat character paying a visit to his old college whilst his erstwhile frat buddies (never mentioned or seen before) cry with disbelief, “It’s the Man, the Legend!” and mean it, and who then proceed to throw an egg-shaped ball around before collapsing in a joyful heap to reminisce. There was also a cliffhanger ending I couldn’t have cared less about, involving a young Demi Moore rocking gently in a cold room.
For years I’d heard that St Elmo’s Fire was a seminal film of the mid-Eighties. Instead, it was just shit.

I also went to the cinema for the first time since Christ-knows when, to see Paranormal Activity. I think it’s supposed to be scary and you’re not supposed to laugh at the talc scene but ultimately, I enjoyed it. It has parallels to the Blair Witch Project (in that both were amateur horror films that did extremely well and made a gargantuan profit), yet was nowhere near as scary. Having said that, I saw Blair Witch ten years ago, long before I’d read Hitchens and Dawkins and still had a window of belief open to the supernatural.
(I watched Blair Witch again several years later and thought, ‘Hang on a minute, it’s just a bunch of annoying bastards swearing in a wood.’)

But all this needless film critique is obscuring all the day-to-day bullshit. My boss screamed blue murder at me last week. In fairness, I was being surly and difficult, openly bitching at the stuff he was giving me whilst I stared forlornly at the paper on my desk I’d been trying to wade through. His yelling – rare, to be fair – made me storm out of the office to walk for ten therapeutic minutes around the block. As I don’t take lunch per se, it was rather pleasant.

Then again, it hasn’t helped that the part-time guy my boss hired last year has now been taken on full-time and given my role, a situation that I had no say in whatsoever. Granted, we’re a small office mucking in together where the roles very much blur, but it has given me pause for thought. Mainly, I’ve thought that it’s becoming more conclusive that I quit, so this’ll be the second of my “temporary stopgap” jobs I’m about to leave. This one I’ve had for over four years except now, when I look for work, I’ll be the wrong side of my mid-Thirties, and further from my now irrelevant Media degree than ever before. And Oh look! I’m underqualified for just about everything too.
Good old Going Nowhere.

But the biggest leap to happened to me over the last couple of weeks has occurred thanks to my Mum. Since my brain went AWOL a few months ago, I’ve felt disjointed as hell; drifting slowly through each day, keeping my head down, not trying to rock the boat in case I went all blubby again and felt the need to speak to someone who’ll charge me a lot of money to listen to me whinge.

As such, I’ve been on the phone to said Mum almost every day. At one time, weeks if not months would go by until she’d call to remind me of her existence. Now we were seeking one another out because I’d become as emotionally unstable as a five-year old who’d just been told that Santa’d been accidentally gored by Rudolph and Christmas was cancelled forever.

Mum had planned something that had me shocked at first (initial 3 seconds), then mortified me (next twelve), then embarrassed me to the point that I’d refused her proposal. Her argument was that she’d be dead one day (her words), and there was little point in waiting until then to get some kind of inheritance. Better, she argued, to just cash in that inheritance and give it to me now to go towards a deposit for my own place.

It took me about two minutes to agree. I am aware that, written down, that doesn’t sound like a very long time at all, but it was 120 seconds of argument and shame before I’d decided that offers like this don’t come around very often. I’d also considered the ramifications of her proposal in light of my current miserable situation, and debated whether or not this was the key.

I currently live above a chemists about four miles west of central London with a Large Northern Flatmate. While it is a lovely area and perfectly suited to our needs, we’ve never personalised the living space as, well, it isn’t our place to do up. Instead it’s owned by the owner of the chemists, a man I’ve never spoken to or met who never bothers to get in touch when the damp sets in or mice appear. Our flat also features neighbours on all sides who, over the years, have caused me to break their fucking speakers or, more recently, intimidate the living fuck out of me.
Either way, as a base to live, it is adequate. Not ideal by a long shot, but as I’ve rented for virtually the last ten years, I’ve known nothing else. This is how I live.

So anyway, there’s me, wage monkey, no girlfriend, unhealthy and getting older, all pretty standard stuff you’ve read here a million times before, and brain goes kaput. Cue Mum to decide my problem's to do with how I live, and within 24 hours, I became an active househunter.

To date, I’ve seen six places. I have six more lined up this Saturday. I’m having to look further from London to afford the small cupboard conversion I hope to buy, but it’ll be much nearer my family if further from work.

I will no longer be able to cycle to work (or I will, except the time/ distance will triple), but I’ll be much closer to a Mum, a Dad and a sister + two nieces I currently never see.

And this, I hope, will finally stabilise me and mark the beginning of my return to the fringes of the human race.

(And no, I have no idea what my sister thinks about her inheritance forming the east wall of wherever I end up living.)

Realise Your Limitations

2009-11-23T14:32:00.007Z

That's what my old flatmate Rob once said to me several years ago; "Realise your limitations". That was back when I was doubtless bitching about my lacklustre life like some evil Emperor who hadn't, as yet, conquered anything.

'You mean you want me to just give up?' I scowled.

Rob squawked at me, and told me that wasn't what he meant at all. He meant I should narrow my goals perhaps, try to attain something a little more achievable.

I didn't. In fact, I dismissed his advice even if I appreciated his intentions. The fact was that despite 'getting' him, I found his argument repellent. I knew where he was coming from, but there was something overwhelmingly depressing about its implications. Rob could've dressed it up all he wanted (and he tried). It still sounded like: "Give up."

And that, I've realised, is why I'm depressed - perpetually, it would seem - and 3 introspective years blogging is proof of that.

After my strange wet eye scenario last month, and my attempt to avoid wheat to improve my mood (I'm having trouble - It is both not easy, and very boring), I have given my situation some thought, and I think I know why I'm feeling particularly depressed these last few weeks:

It's my limitations. I've finally realised them. Until quite recently, I'd held on to the belief that I really could do anything, and that I'm just on the cusp of a great job, a lovely girlfriend, and a decent future for once in my violently atrophying life.

But something's just clicked; I give up.

* * * * * * *

Edit 24/11/2009: Since reading your comments and emails (and thank you, by the way), I ought to stress that I'm not suicidal. I'm just very, very, very, very, very bored and pissed off with it all as the truth becomes self-evident that I can't write my way out of my well-worn rut, and I'm basically just a cunt.

Thank you.

If You Can't Stand the Wheat...

2009-11-09T21:36:00.006Z

A few days ago, seven, to be precise, I came across something online that intrigued me, and it wasn't YouPorn.

In short, it suggested a correlation between my oft miserable state of mind, and my 'Anything Goes' eating habits, and it was THIS.

So today, and for the first time in my life (as far as I know), I have eaten no wheat. By extension, I have not eaten any processed foods. They tend to go hand in hand.

My intake has been ~ lunch: homemade chicken salad (no pasta); dinner: haddock fillet with rice and veg.

And I only want to kill just slightly.

I didn't feel the need to have breakfast, because I spent all of last night gorging on crisps, garlic baguettes, 15 pizzas, a pallet's worth of Pringles, and a Belgian biscuit mountain, the kind of foodcrack that makes a breakfast redundant.

Oddly enough though, I don't see this as a diet in the conventional weight-loss sense. It's more an experiment in cutting out a particular food type to see what it'll do to my general well being.

My theory is, as I get "happier", I'll be less inclined to give up.

My gut feeling is that I'll be injecting pure carbs into my eyeballs by Friday.

Hate Thy Neighbour

2009-11-04T18:41:00.025Z

'KEEP YOUR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT!' snarled the psychopath as he scowled back at me, jabbing a finger at my face.

In situations like that, I'd normally want to be in the safety of my own home.
Regrettably, I was.

It was Saturday night - technically Sunday morning - and I was sat at my computer playing Solitaire and watching YouTube clips because I'm a sad, pathetic waste of space with no girlfriend or imagination. It was two o'clock in the morning, and I was sipping red wine.
This is how I live my life.

Suddenly, above my head came dull thuds from above, from the flat belonging to the two girls who'd recently moved in. Despite being tiny slips of things, they weren't being particularly dainty. In fact, their thudding was so loud that, had I been asleep, they would've woken me up. (Bear that bit in mind. I find it rather important.)

Some minutes passed. I continued to sip at my wine, continued watching YouTube clips about nothing, and continued to mindlessly play solitaire. Meanwhile, the thudding remained.

'Hmm', I thought to myself, 'they clearly don't know how much noise they're making. I'd better alert them to my presence as next time, should I really be asleep, they'll wake me.'

So I grabbed my baseball bat and delivered three rigid blows to the ceiling. It may have sounded impersonal, but it wasn't meant to be. After all, it wasn't as if they'd just woken me up or anything. They just could've.

So imagine my surprise when, after a pause, three hefty, angry thuds came back in response.

I frowned. That had been strange. Although I'd only seen the girls two or three times in the couple of months they'd been here, things had always been pleasant. Granted, I did once have to tell them that their late-night wanderings had woken me up because the entire structure of this damn apartment is paper thin, but I went to great lengths to be nice about it, explaining that it wasn't their fault and had to say something, otherwise they'd never know.

But those three thuds? That was odd. They had an air of Fuck You about them. In fact, such was the Fuck You air, I'd walked off to Large Northern Flatmate's room to wake him up and tell him.

'Ungh,' had been his response so I retreated back to my room, assuming the girls must just be drunk. And so that assumption remained until two minutes later when I got clarification:- a shaven-headed, heavily tattooed and incredibly ugly clarification, banging on our front door.

I walked over to the door dressed in naught but a towel, and frowned when I opened it to reveal a bald meathead grimacing back at me.

'Is that you banging on the ceiling?'
'Uh, yeah,' I began. 'You see, I was asleep an...'
'FUCKING CUT IT OUT, RIGHT?' he yelled, finger-jabbing away.
'Okay, take it easy,' I said as quietly as possible in the hope he'd get the hint.
'DON'T FUCKING TELL ME TO TAKE IT EASY.'
'Look, can you keep your voice down? It's two o'clock in the morning and our neighbours...'
'I DON'T FUCKING CARE!' he yelled. 'DON'T FUCKING TELL ME TO KEEP QUIET. I'LL SPEAK AS LOUD AS I WANT.'
'Right,' I began, wondering how I'd managed to get myself into this. I wasn't even fucking sleeping.

'The thing is,' I continued, 'I was asleep, and...'
'I DON'T GIVE A FUCK,' said the gigantic, lobotomised Neanderthal. 'WE WEREN'T EVEN MAKING ANY NOISE.'
'Sure,' I ventured, 'I appreciate that, but the walls here are really thin and...'
'YOU KEEP FUCKING DOING THIS, DON'T YOU?'
'Doing what?'
'BANGING ON THE FUCKING CEILING.'
'Uh, this is the first time I've...'
'SHARON?' he yelled up the stairs. 'DIDN'T YOU SAY HE'S DONE THIS BEFORE?'

'Well,' came the voice of a little mouse, 'yeah,' she began but I wasn't really listening. I was too busy wondering what either of those demure girls found attractive about the violent yob in front of me.
'Erm, actually, this is the first time I've done this.'
'THAT'S NOT WHAT SHE FUCKING SAYS, AND I'M NOT GONNA FUCKING 'AVE IT!'

I frowned. 'Hang on a minute,' I said. 'You woke me up.' (Yes, I was taking the moral high ground from a lie.)
'I DON'T GIVE A SHIT.' More finger jabbing.
'RIGHT,' I said, now offended. This guy was the tattooed terminator. He couldn't be bargained with. He couldn't be reasoned with. He didn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he had tattoos up both arms and on his neck.
'DO NOT,' I yelled as loud as I could without waking up the neighbours, 'STAND OUTSIDE MY FUCKING HOME AND THREATEN ME, OKAY?'

And then he threatened me.

He snarled. His eyes danced around his head as his ancient brain tried to make sense of what was happening.
'KEEP... YOUR MOUTH... SHUT...' he hissed through gritted teeth, pausing between words as he fought to compose himself. 'KEEP... YOUR FUCKING... MOUTH SHUT!'
His finger was pointing right at me, at the part I presume he was eager to launch a flurry of punches at first - my nose.

And then a weird thing happened. The urge to grimace in disgust and say 'Pscht, fuck you' deserted me.

Instead, I continued to be stared down in my own home by a cunt. 'KEEP YOUR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT!' he hissed as I did as I was told.

And then he walked off and headed to the flat upstairs.

'What th...?' said Large Northern Flatmate as he walked out from behind the bedroom door he'd been hiding behind.

'Don't!' I urged him. 'Don't say a thing.'

I shut the front door, my pride in tatters, acutely aware that I was staring at the floor.

I believe that is what today's youth call pwnage.

The 1,000 Mile Journey: Irritating Step #1

2009-10-28T21:54:00.010Z

So, I spent this last week, post-blub-in-toilet, at home where I barely left my room in an attempt to get over myself (and my cold).

It was a strange illness as it didn't really knock me out, or annihilate my appetite or sense of taste. Instead I watched the remainder of Deadwood whilst eating sausage rolls and sneezing repeatedly, to the accompaniment of feeling really pathetic.

All this excitement culminated in my mother's 30th wedding anniversary. As her only son I was expected to attend, but I managed to hang onto my cold long enough to avoid it. In truth, I felt better by then, but mentally I couldn't handle seeing half a dozen close relations, let alone a further 90 I hadn't seen for years.

So I began this week on a different path. I have made diet and exercise my very dull priority (for the five billionth time). I haven't smoked for nine days. I've cycled to and from work every day this week (i.e. 3). I weighed myself yesterday and was shocked to discover that I've reached my all-time fattest weight, again. I was last there - 16 stone/ 224lbs - nine years ago. Following the Mother of All Diets, I vowed never to return.

Whoopsadaisies.

Yet all I can think about is the newsagent below this rented apartment, and its full shelves stacked with fattening treats. Great. I'm stuck with this push/pull bullshit forever.

Why do the things I enjoy most, a drink here, a smoke there, an unhealthy snack everywhere, make me slowly miserable, and quickly dead? Is that fair? And as if to rub it in, as I scanned through today's paper following my wretched morning cycle to work, I came across this rather obvious yet mildly irritating article...

So it's official; Make yourself happy imbibing anything your heart desires, and it'll clog up before you're fifty - oh, and make you miserable too.
Or, become despicably boring and make Moderation and Discipline your ruthlessly dull mantra as you say 'No' to yourself on a daily basis, jogging all the while as you ignore the relentless screams of your inner self pleading with you to stop, and you'll allegedly be happy for keeps.

Damn you, life.

This Probably Won't Be What You're Expecting

2009-10-19T19:09:00.015+01:00

So, first thing's first; the blind date ~ She'd postponed. Despite dressing up that day in my smartest attire - I'd even worn fresh underwear - I was actually quite relieved when the lady in question emailed to take a rain check. She'd just come back from a mini-break and wasn't feeling in the best of spirits, so I'd been handed a stay of execution for a few days, and my evenings were free once again, to return to Deadwood, or drink at the weekend.

But here's the thing ~ I'm not sure if we'll keep in touch. Y'see, she last emailed me on Friday afternoon (a non-replyable "hahahaha", if I'm being fair to myself), but work kept me suitably occupied, and I never did get back to her.

On Friday, I caught up with old friends, friends who'd all met at a lousy exam board we'd temped at years ago. I got drunk and broke my 4 days non-smoking spell, greatly cheered at how well they looked; a little older perhaps, but moving on, and with better, more rewarding* jobs than I (*in both achievement, and in wallet).
On Saturday, despite my hangover, I'd crawled to the other side of London for a houseparty where I may have been abusive to a young vegan gothette who'd quite literally waded into the function handing out vegan flyers without so much as a hello.

But no, this post isn't going anywhere. I didn't meet a special someone, and nor did anything commit-ey happen with the American ex.
Nor did I email blind date lady today, Monday, as I've been too busy at work, and too miserable with a cold I magically woke up with.
I know I should take everyone's sensible advice and just get on with the damn date, but that would be bad. Very bad. Because there's a huge chance she'll spend it watching me sobbing into my arms as I'm splayed out over the table.

Because something happened today that rather frightened me.

I woke up this morning having not had enough sleep. I tubed it in as I was too tired to cycle in (again). I opened up the shop, started receiving phonecalls almost immediately as I attempted to clear the paperwork mountain on my desk whilst adding to it with each call.
I was surly, and sniffy with cold, and sore-headed. Mid-afternoon, I felt the urge to visit the toilet. It took me twenty minutes to leave my desk as things kept ringing or walking in to be served. Eventually, I made it into the cubicle, and burst into tears.

I was more shocked than anything else, although now's a good time to point out that my "bursting into tears" is silent, and apparently involves my eyes angrily watering over as I desperately tilt my head back to avoid any actual crying. In the peace of that damn crapper, I was overwhelmed with a profound sense of what a complete and utter turd I've made of my entire life. At that specific moment, that one thought felt like an almighty thud to the head that came from nowhere, and seemed fit to knocking me out. Then it came back in a wave, and again, then again, and I wasn't sure if I could leave the toilet.

It was then that my Dad's friend Michael popped into my head. He's in his seventies like my old man, except Michael never married. He just never met anyone, and lives alone in his flat in the suburbs, going slightly mad.
'He thinks there are people living up in the attic,' my Dad told me recently.
That was when I started shaking, petrified and utterly convinced that I'd end up like that. 'I'm destined to achieve nothing and appeal to no-one,' I thought, 'and one day, I'll wake up old and convinced there are people living in my roof.'

I gave serious consideration to hiding in the toilet for a few hours, then I composed myself. I coughed, walked outside, and got back to my desk as if nothing had happened.

Before I'd retreated to the toilet to discover I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown (I Googled it for a bit of self-diagnosis and yes, I'm well on my way), my Mum had called, neatly - I can see now - laying the foundations for my blubbing over the ceramic. It's her 30th wedding anniversary this week and she's arranged a big family get-together. I'd already tried to wriggle out of it once. I like my close family, obviously, but there's going to be at least 40 other people there, relatives and friends I really don't want to be around; repeating to them the job I'm doing but don't want to do anymore, sighing that yes, I'm still single but not gay, and avoiding my idiot brother-in-law, indifferent sister, false step-siblings, and generally pretending to be amiable when I'd rather be crying in the foetal postion in a small room.

My Mum took offence when she first told me about the impending anniversary and I'd asked her if I had to go; apparently, I do. When she called today, all excited about her party, I reminded her that I'd have to wake up early that Sunday to begin the four-hour round trip via a bus, then a train, then another bus and a walk plus waiting in between (then repeat) - my way of suggesting it was all a colossal pain in the arse for me.
'Then stay with us the night before!' she offered.
The only trouble with that is a) sleeping on a fucking sofa instead of my own comfy bed and, b) going to my Mum's on Saturday night? That's my entire weekend, shot down by one family commitment.
So I declined her offer with a sigh, and my mother slammed the phone down on me. She hasn't done that since I was about sixteen.

I did try calling her back, but in true day job fashion, she answered just as someone walked into the office, and I had to start the conversation with, 'I'll call you back,' something I still haven't done.

Instead, I went on to cry in a macho way in the toilets, considered resigning on the spot (again), and wondered what the fucking hell's going to become of me.

The point is this: I can't date anyone in this state, so don't fucking make me, and if you're about to leave a comment that I will die alone if I refuse to date, please instead name your favourite TV icon.

Ah, BOLLOCKS

Great, a Date

2009-10-13T20:44:00.006+01:00

Today, I remembered why I hate online dating sites.

It's not the fact that they're cold and impersonal, as you search impassively through hundreds of profiles of the desperate and lonely. It isn't the ignoring, and being ignored that might occur when contact is attempted. And nor is it the wider implications of the sites very existence, a searing indictment of how time-starved and inept we've all become.

Nope, it's the fucking blind date I've got lined up for tomorrow. I'll be honest: I don't want to go. I absolutely hate blind dates, and in the 4 years since I'd last gone on one, I'd totally forgotten. They're nerve-wracking. They're cringe-worthy. They're painful. And all this is of my own, accidental devising. The woman in question is the only one guilt had made me email out of several respondents. I'd ignored all the others, and felt awful about it. (I always want to leave a good impression on every date, and not arranging any made this easier to accomplish.)

The blind datee has insisted we meet up in a part of London that an ex-girlfriend of mine lives in, with a dozen of her mates. I'm not saying I'll bump into that ex while I'm on this awkward date, I'm just saying the likelihood is greater in that particular locale.

On the plus side, my last blind date (those 4 years ago) ended with sex that same night. She'd flown over from the States and we'd met in the hotel bar. That American lady had been my last girlfriend (and, uh, sexual partner), and by some bizarre coincidence as I spent this afternoon emailing impending date lady, I was emailed out of the blue by American ex ~ her current boyfriend has dumped her.

I have no idea what any of this even means.

And now I'm scared.

Headache

2009-10-06T22:02:00.004+01:00

I have a headache. A headache caused by the dating game, epic TV serials, smoking, and former work colleagues. Moreover, I have a headache because of the vicious ringing in my ears. Perhaps if I stopped going to bed at 3am and had more than four hours sleep before getting up for work, I might have less of a headache, but that would leave me with less to complain about and that just WOULD NOT DO.

I have an impending date lined up for next week. The date is not yet set, but it will be. I wish I could be more enthusiastic, but I'm not. You see, I had wanted to be a few pounds lighter once I'd recommenced the giddying thrill of ~~frightening~~ courting young(ish) women. I also wanted to have a better job too, but I received a rejection from the one job I applied for this year. 'Twas a shame, as I'd started to daydream about the 10 minute walk-commute to work, the shorter hours, more money (8 grand more), and the writing I'd be allowed to do. But tis not to be. 35, and I'm already on the employment scrap-heap.

On the plus side, I'm finding life rather fun now that I'm no longer spending my free time writing a (Ha!) 'novel' every day. I've been out a lot more (tons of fun, but painful on the liver/ wallet). I've also treated myself to some new clothes and a handful of dvds, one of my treats being the entire run of Deadwood - watching it for the first time five years after the rest of the planet as I make my slow, cocksucking way through all three seasons. (Please Google that reference as that, in retrospect, reads as a wholly inappropriate sentence for a straight man.)

Swijin!

Meanwhile, this afternoon, in between swearing at the ringing phones and eating a rancid prawn cocktail sandwich, I ventured out to Boots - for the benefit of non-Angloids, a popular British pharmacy (that I've also seen on the Kao San Road in Bangkok, btw) - who are, in conjunction with the wonderful if much maligned NHS, offering a quit smoking programme. My nicotinal habit, you see, is becoming somewhat worrying. I'm developing a pain in my heart that isn't for once caused by the absence of an understanding and patient woman, or the lingering resentment garnered by a perfectly good life atrophying in shit.

For £7.20, I get as much nicotine replacement in gum, patch or inhaler form as I can imbibe for five weeks, and lots of progress consultations. I can't wait. I want to feel like a socially accepted heroin addict in remission.

And finally, last week, as I stood on the tube flicking through the free evening paper, I found myself gasping in shock to the bemusement of the other passengers. There, staring back at me, was Nemesis II, looking serious and sex-pesty as the story in question had him a witness to a frankly horrific accident in which a cyclist fought with a lorry.
The lorry won.

I'd like to dwell more on the young woman who died in such a barbaric way as she made her way home from work, and avoid the irritation I felt at revisiting that twat in newspaper form, but what can I say. We are all, as Freud had it, rather self-obsessed.

I still feel awful about the whole business though, and that's miserable and gives me a greater headache.

Sorry.

Enjoy The Silence?

2009-09-27T23:59:00.006+01:00

Believe it or not, I'm an optimist. I actually believe that one of those single women from that dating website will reappear and get in touch.

This is despite a week going by, and not hearing a thing from them. That's not to say I haven't been contacted at all. Several other women have written to me and been delightful - at least the ones I've read have - as rejoining said dating website has reminded me of a certain little thing that made me leave in the first place: GUILT.

I know beggars can't be choosers, and I know that I've whinged about being single for over 3 years but, well, I just ain't that into them.

And that makes me feel awful. AWFUL.

I don't want to ignore them. They're only being nice and saying hello, but dammit, I just can't see the point in engaging in a dialogue that'll head inexorably towards a date I don't want to go on.

Having said that, a date may be happening soon with one lady. I'm slightly unsure about the whole business as I kinda only joined to desperately get back in touch with one of those women who wrote to me a year ago without my realising only to take the supposed snub and move on with their lives but, well, I'm not getting any younger.

But neither am I that bothered about a date with someone I've started chatting to because, like Pringles, she was just there.
Oh hello, More Guilt.

God, I'm confused and anxious.

* * * * *

Update: I just popped online to check if any of those women had reappeared (still No) when someone flashed up a window to chat. I pressed 'ignore'. This is absolutely horrible. Please can someone reaffirm that I'm not alone in finding these sites utterly bizarre.

FUCKING HELL!!!

2009-09-19T17:30:00.002+01:00

The weekend. I'm heartily ignoring the rubbish book I've written to masturbate to pornography, eat half a dozen doughnuts, and smoke half a pack of cigarettes. And as the thoughts of self-loathing took hold, I found myself gravitating towards finding "love" online. I checked into an old dating website I belong to and spent a considerable amount of time 'browsing', when I came across a ladyperson I liked from waaay back.

Somewhat piqued to notice that she'd viewed me before, I tried to contact her but, alas, the fuckers demanded I re-register. Instead, I thought I'd hit their 'Click' function. Simply put, you can indicate if you think you'd click with someone and, if they've already thought likewise, an icon pops up indicating a match.

So imagine my surprise when a match popped up between us.

I began to yell. I stood up in my room and my towel fell off as I scrambled, fat and naked, for my credit card.

I re-registered at a not insignificant cost, and that was when I really began to feel ill. There were 151 unread emails and messages for me.

Said lady had already written to me over a year ago. An equally lovely lady and fellow blogger had written to me a year before her. And sandwiched between them both like an oestrogen filling was a local lady who'd stolen my heart only to ignore me - except she hadn't. She'd written to me three times, only to end with an apology for ignoring me the first time round as, she'd assumed, that was why I'd ignored her. Others wrote to me including one (clearly delusional) young woman who used the word 'adorable' in a totally non-ironic way.
Too bad she's in Florida.

Suffice to say, I feel ill, and that's not just from the doughnuts. To think all these attractive, intelligent women with low standards were contacting me for the last couple of years, and I had absolutely no idea.

It's probably for the best. They're missing out on a chain-smoking, doughnut eating wanker who thinks he can write.

BEWARE OF RODNEY STANGER

2009-09-14T22:05:00.001+01:00

And one more for fun...

Home Is Where The Start Is

2009-09-09T01:03:00.025+01:00

I've been back home for nearly a week, and I'm in a strangely positive mood. It's tempered, obviously, by not being on holiday anymore, oh, and having to go to work and, oh yeah, a couple of days ago I drunkenly dropped my left contact lens down the sink and spent half a fucking hour with my hand up a stinking pipe pulling out clumps of pungent grey slurry at three in the morning finding nothing but backache and a swiftly erupting hangover. My new eye test is now booked for this week.

My twenty-odd bedbug and mosquito bites are subsiding, I've done three lots of washing since my return, spent a Saturday night ironing shirts, tidied my room, and done my utmost to enjoy evenings free of writing a shit (Ha!) novel.

It hasn't helped that 50% of said novel feedback has been "Look at it this way; at least you've finished something." All other comments ranged around immature, or poor character development, and a somewhat disturbed opinion of my state of mind; Pretty much all the things that'll make you wish you never go near your endeavours again.

But I couldn't care less. I've had a pleasant break of no sex where I realised I look like an ageing elephant in all the photographs (because the camera was pointed at an ageing elephant), so I've put myself on a diet.
Granted, a quiet weekend of wine, fags, pizza, crisps, a small homemade chocolate brownie, two custard doughnuts and a dozen ricecakes to make amends doth not a healthy regime make, but it's Sunday night and thus I'm back on the sushi.

I'm attempting to cycle to work for the rest of the year, and cut out all the crap, and, more important than that, quit my job. I feel that with a 'book' under my (large) belt, I can leave. I have no idea what for, but it's got to be for more money, and less hours, and at least one member of staff with a womb.

And with all these things in mind, I'm feeling pretty optimistic for once.

Yeah, okay, give it a week.

On the way to Ljubljana. Art installation, or someone's outdoor kitchen?

Ljubljana.

Breakfast; Kebab.

Goodbye, potential future king, hello First World War.

Downtown Sarajevo.

Uptown Sarajevo.

Mid-air whinging idiot.

Mostar.

Dubrovnik.

Barely alive Croatian cat.

Cavtat, end of the line.

You might well think this is us. I couldn't possibly comment.

Drinking in Dubrovnik

2009-09-06T11:35:00.042+01:00

I came to after six hours sleep, numb from the air conditioning. Martin was passed out in his neighbouring bed, so I woke him up to tell him to shut the fucker off.

I tried to get back to sleep, but the moment had passed. I left Martin in a near-catatonic state and staggered down to the port of Dubrovnik for a couple of lethal coffees and a dozen cigarettes. The previous night, we'd traipsed through the old town, a stunning walled citadel with polished marble streets and gleaming baroque churches. It was yet another beautiful destination to be in, far too evocative and romantic for the likes of us.

Mostar too, visually at least, had been beautiful; a picturesque town with its rebuilt bridge towering over the Neretva river, and not much else. For all the beauty of that place, the majority of its citizens redressed the balance by being surly fuckers.

And now the holiday's almost over. We've no more buses or trains or catch, our last mode of transport a large plane tomorrow, bound for Gatwick. We caught the Mostar to Dubrovnik bus yesterday, seconds before a strange Balkan downpour thundered down for several hours, shrouding the allegedly stunning coast with its islands and turquoise seas in a very British gloom. Yet my spirits were anything but dampened. It was Saturday, and we'd planned to end our trip with a bang. I was so happy that I'd even talked to ladypersons on the bus, one of whom was a stunning blonde Swede who indicated her nationality by pointing at her vast breasts with the words 'Sverige' stretched across her t-shirt.

I went red, and slunk back in my seat, none too pleased to see her leave the bus well before we'd arrived at Dubrovnik.

After lunch chatting to two lovely Australian ladies, and a nap, we'd hit the town. It felt rather odd to be drinking in bars in such a breathtaking place as we guzzled booze with all the sophistication of a knucklehead. I'd attempted more chatting; two charming English girls in the first bar we'd visited, but as I realised they were barely into their twenties and attractive, and I was waaaay out of my depth trying to chat them both up, I'd decided instead to sweat profusely and slink back to my corner from whence I'd slithered.

Then, oddly, a semi-naked woman jumped on a cube in the centre of the bar to gyrate to bad Euro-pop. I didn't quite know where to look as I didn't want to seem like a leerer in front of the two British girls, but then again, in front of me was was a semi-naked woman gyrating to bad Euro-pop.

The girls left soon afterwards, and generic guilt led us outside and on to another bar, then another, and before long we were in the worst place on earth: a fucking Irish pub. We'd only gone there for one, mainly out of laziness as we were having trouble trying to locate an amazing bar that existed only in our minds, and found ourselves chatting to a blonde Australian hayseed. Suddenly, there were three more, and I bought them all drinks because I'm a total fucking idiot. They chatted to us by way of payment, taking it in turns to nod at our weak jokes before running off to leave another luckless girl to it.

Martin and I posed for their photos which rather unsettled me. As one of them threw a drunk arm over my large shoulder, her hand brushed against my hair, my wet, sweat-saturated hair. Her "Ugh" will haunt me forever.

Somewhere near this internet cafe, that gang of Aussie birds (collective noun: a hangover) are waking up to snaps of a fat pink bloke with a damp head and eyes half-closed as he mouthed the words, "Seriously, I don't look good in pict..."

The Irish pub had been the beginning of the end. Up until then, I was in a rather splendid mood, with my smart shirt and generic joie de vivre.
I was relaxed.
I was a bit drunk.
I was happy.
"Tonight," I remarked to Martin, "something might just well happen."

And something did, if the definition of Something has changed to Nothing.

The Aussie bird chatting to me suddenly fled the pub. This is quite literal. She took off mid-sentence without so much as an "excuse me", when four Australian Burps swaggered in with their balls clanging.
"Jeffo!" she'd yelled, and sprinted off in the middle of her telling me about her family in London.
"Bye, fellas," said another as they'd walked off into the night.

"We're offta Belvederes," I heard one of the blokes tell them.
"Fuckers!" I said to Martin. "I wanted to go there. Now we'll look like stalkers."
"Then we should go to that Latin club across the road," he replied, as a fresh hell had begun.

My Middle Age became official in Club Fuego. Martin and I sat in their courtyard as braying fucksters peacocked past sneering women, whilst I chainsmoked and pondered never setting foot inside a club again. Earlier, one of the Australians had said I looked about 24 (Sign #6 of the utterly wretched: Playing 'Guess My Age' with young women), and I'd half-considered clubbing until I began to atrophy but then again, it probably wasn't a good idea taking compliments from someone who'd said wherever they travelled on earth, they'd make a beeline for the nearest Aussie bar.

"I think my clubbing days are over," I said to Martin as the club got busier and we watched a mass of people force their way downstairs. "I'm going to take one last look around, to remind myself what I'm missing."
I stood up and walked over to the back of the crush, and peered into the club proper. People were stood shoulder to shoulder, smashing into one another to a godforsaken R&B soundtrack. Occasionally, one of those heads would be pretty. Mostly, they were shaven-headed fuckhats, and more Brits than I can bear to be around when not in Britain. (Thank you, Stelios.)

I frowned, seeing little point in forcing my way through for no reason, and potentially getting into a fight. I tend to get funny, as Martin had earlier, about patting a guy several times to get past, only to be ignored.

"Fuck it," I said as I walked back to our table. "Let's go get a kebab."

The Inevitable Funk

2009-09-04T13:07:00.022+01:00

I know it's rather undignified to bitch whilst on holiday, to be hundreds of miles from my desk and work and bloody customers without a care in the world, but a couple of nights ago, I fell into a funk. Martin fell into his the following night.

Living out of a rucksack, waking up early and being constantly on the move, and drinking large amounts of 'British-Personalityjuice' every single night had taken it's toll. I had become bored, rather upset and disillusioned with the world, and somewhat unhappy with my entire existence yet a-fuckin'-gain.

It had been our last night in Sarajevo. I had decided to forgo the smart shirt and jacket look I'd adopted the previous night (women hadn't noticed anyway), for a simple black number that had been rather restrictive around my fat chest. It was odd - as it often is in those places - to be making merry in a former warzone; Sarajevo had, after all, been bombed to smithereens from the surrounding hills it's nestled within for four years, its citizens ducking from sniper fire and assault weaponry at exactly the same time I'd been having the greatest time of my life at University.

The background to my funk had been simple; joining Martin and me was that miserable git, tagging along uninvited. I'd see him now and again as we passed shop windows and caught his reflection. Whenever Martin took my picture and showed me the digital results, there he was, sunburned and grinning with his chin-gut swaying in the breeze while his sweaty forehead glistened like a honeyglazed ham.

"Delete it," I'd say after being shown the latest photo. I've since advanced to having my picture taken and watching Martin collapse into paroxysms of laughter - I now tell him to delete it without bothering to review the abominable result.

As we'd waited for our Sarajevo-bound train at Zagreb, we noticed two swaggering dicking machines. We recognised them instantly as The Enemy, a pair of young, slim Twenty-somethings, chock-full of confidence and semen. One wore his hair in dreads, the other kept his laid-back and floppy. Both wore t-shirts and shorts that weren't saturated with sweat, and looked every inch the cliched traveler. We'd clocked each other as we stood at the station, and kept our distance. After all, when backpacking, groups of men are like packs of wolves; a threat to one another as they compete for the same hunting ground, that small yet fertile land of lips and breasts and smiles that, if nurtured properly, will let you fuck it.

And thus, my funk grew. Martin and I visited the Sarajevo photo museum (sweating the back of my clothes into a stained Turin Shirt as we walked there in the midday sun), and surveyed their harrowing exhibition that shamed me with my lack of Balkan War knowledge. We'd gone back to our hotel and freshened up for yet another night on the town. We'd eaten at a restaurant where I'd had to eat profile in front of four French women - not my best angle, all chins and nose and solid, rectangular body - and winced as I glanced at them only to note their absolute refusal to look even vaguely in my direction in case they melted like that guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"I'm going on a diet when I get home," I thought as we made our way to the bar we'd end up in every night. The two travelers were in there chatting to a random woman. The night before, they'd sat with three Polish girls and left, giggling, en masse, a fivesome of travelling strangers, no doubt minutes from getting naked and penetrating one another. It was at that point that I got more depressed, guessing that us Brits tend to holiday in bars and get hammered, hoping that something sexual might happen, whereas the French, as these two lads were, cut straight to the chase.

I'd complained to Martin later that night that I was almost certainly never going to have sex again, that I had no right being in bars in the first place and besides, at 35, it was verging on sad and pathetic. My only options in life, I'd concluded, were suicide, or rape.

So imagine my joy when, upon yelling out the aforementioned ferociously tongue-in-cheek comment as we'd stood up to leave, I'd discovered sitting opposite us two English-speaking, if not English, girls. (For the record, they were with men. And for the record #2, I don't think they'd want to meet tubby, pink men who mull over self-harm or violent sexual assault loud and in public.)

I could go on, but I won't. We're now currently in Mostar, a visually beautiful if rather quiet hamlet in southern Bosnia. You may have heard of its bridge. It's seems almost solely populated, at least in its old town, by tourists. Of the locals who have to serve them and their constant cries of attention, all, barring our beautiful hostel owner, are surly and miserable.

And so we are leaving for Dubrovnik tomorrow. I'd stay in this hostel forever, if only to catch the life-affirming smile of the young lady here, but it'll only end in tears.

I'm about as appealing as AIDS on toast.

Sarajevo, With One Eye Closed

2009-09-01T10:03:00.008+01:00

I am sat in an Internet cafe, looking like a pirate without an eye patch. It would appear I've developed some kind of infection, or scratched my ocular ball, and wearing a contact lens in my left eye causes said eye to go bloodshot and make my nose run. Needless to say, this isn't a look I want to cultivate; nor is wearing my ridiculous fucking glasses as they're thicker than the combined attendees at hairdressing seminar. So I have just the one contact lens in, whilst occasionally closing the other in order that I can see. Sexy.

We're now in Sarajevo, the rather charming capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina that we've yet to check out properly. We're here for a couple more days as we cut the Croatian capital of Zagreb short due to lack of interest. I wish I could say nicer things about it, and I wish we'd done more cerebral things than just drink and eat but in the event, we didn't. I'd managed to book a hostel that was over an hour's walk from the town centre, a walk first undertaken with our heavy rucksacks whilst Martin swore at me. When we did go back into town on Saturday night dressed in smart shirts and suit jackets, we both wished we were in t-shirts as teenage girls giggled at us and hooded Croatian chavs frowned. Even among adults, we were the only ones dressed up to go out and, after a few hours wandering around trying to find Croat life, we gave up and undertook that fucking walk back to the hostel, as the trams had stopped running.

Sunday was spent chilling, and watching a dodgy copy of Idiocracy we'd found in the Hostel's common room. We were actually enjoying our evening's sobriety until, a good hour or so into the film, the fucker packed up so we'd gone to bed to be up early for the trip to Bosnia.

Nine hours on a train ain't fun, particularly as the ebb and flow of humanity grabbed seats next to us; all gruff, stinking men who'd managed to jump ahead of the lithe, modelesque ladies, who'd peered in to our now crowded booth as we got crushed by belching, chainsmoking fuckhats.

And now we're in Sarajevo. It's one of those placenames like Beirut and, now, Baghdad, that seems to resonate with images of war and destruction, but it's really quite nice - particularly as the Bosnian war's over. There's a strong Muslim prescence here, lots of white-ish looking women in scarves, and of course the Roman Catholicism of the last couple of countries we've been in now has to jostle with eastern Orthodoxy. Don't ask me why, but I keep thinking I'm in Turkey.

Anyway, I'm going to get out of this Internet cafe to look for some motherfucking Optrex for my shagged sight. I can't spend the next few days with vision in one eye only. And neither can I sit among 12-year-old Sarajevan boys as they shoot one another online whilst singing Bosnian folksongs.

Bloody hell.

In Transit

2009-08-29T12:32:00.006+01:00

I used to think, after 35 years on this stinking orb, that I knew the meaning of humiliation, but I hadn't - Simply put, humiliation is mistakenly leaving as a tip over twice the cost of the actual bill, realising ten minutes later, then sheepishly walking over to the waiter to ask for it back. The kitchen staff actually applauded when I did this, I still can't work out if it was irony, or mocking, or some bizarre Slovenian display of anger.

We are now in Croatia, where I am sat in my new hostel and it's pissing it down outside. I don't mind in the slightest. It was boiling hot yesterday as Martin and I traversed Tivoli Park whilst getting third degree burns, so a little British downpour suits me fine.
I probably shouldn't have asked the cute Australians I bumped into if I could steal some of their Aftersun. I didn't particularly endear myself to them as I stammered and managed to go redder whilst appearing incredibly cheap and cheeky.

It's a shame to have left Ljubljana as it's a charming place, a city in miniature with a tiny river flowing through a picturesque centre, and in the throes of a lively summer festival that (almost) made up for my lack of not pulling. My condoms are having a fantastic time though; last year they got to visit Poland and Hungary and the Czech Rep and Vienna, without so much as leaving their comfy little box, and this year appears to be no exception. They're clocking up as many airmiles as me, with the added benefit that they don't have to go near my aged, greying penis.

Today's train down was fun. Despite having a bladder as weak as a premature baby in an incubator, Martin nipped off to the buffet car for more water. When he came back, he took a chug of it only to freeze in horror, his cheeks bulging like a nut-gathering squirrel about to vomit as he ran to the window to spit it out. Dazed, he returned to his seat where he demanded I sniff the bottle.
'That's strong,' I said.
'Take a sip', he replied.
I did so, and gagged. 'This is fucking vodka!'
'Cheap fucking vodka,' added Martin, 'Or poison.'
'If you thought it was poison,' I screamed despite the two ladies in our carriage, 'why the fuck did you make me try it?'
''Cos if I die, you're coming with me.´

Martin returned the bottle to the buffet car once the stone-faced Croat coppers swaggered away having grimaced at our passports. Turns out he´d accidently been sold the chef's personal supply of "water".

Saturday night, and we are in Zagreb. I am about to leave this hostel's computer room and iron my shirt for the Big Night Out, except I am absolutely fucking shattered. All my sleep thus far has been minimal; I can't sleep when in transit so I hadn't caught up on the train, our previous hostel room was as hot as a Japanese POW camp (with a new Spanish couple to keep awake all night with my alleged "Depth Charge" ping of a snore, and an all-new cross between a gag and a cry of pain), and I was unable to sleep earlier as our beds back on to the hostel's common room, where half a dozen Welshmen were watching Hugh Jackman in some godforsaken movie.

So here we go. Frankly, if I'm able to so much as talk to Martin tonight, it'll be a miracle. And, oh good, we're about to drink heavily. We haven't done that yet*

(*yes we have, every day since landing.)

Ljubljana, Slovenia

2009-08-28T07:46:00.006+01:00

I've just come to in a hot, airless room, with a couple of Spaniards and a Jap.

I'm in the very charming city of Ljubljana. Martin and I arrived yesterday to boiling 31 deg temperatures at an International airport that reminded me of a 1950s aerodrome (we walked through customs directly into a dozen people facing us in a small room, otherwise known as the arrivals hall.)

There's a touch of Eastern Europe about it - unsurprisingly - having spotted as the coach tore us into town a tractor kicking up dust down a dirt track as we passed crumbling monasteries, but that's been about the extent of the stereotype.

The city, a town really, will be doomed to fall under the braying, mooning belch of British stags before long, although it's not massively cheap so it may survive that yet.

Ljub appears to be in the final throes of a cute arts festival, meaning last night was spent walking alongside their tiny town river with their outdoor cafes and occasional tango displays. We'd sojourned at one such bar for a Union beer, surrounded by attractive young women who'd dare not look at us in case they'd turned to fucking stone. A shame really, as I'd packed for the first time my filthy rucksack full of smart ironed shirts. I had thought that this was a maturity on my part, a growing the fuck up to look smart for once, when in fact all that had happened, I'd realised as swaggering, tanned teenbollocks sauntered past in their shorts and polo shirts, was I'd hit 35 and cannonballed violently into pathetic middle age.

Mart and I went on to an intriguing bar full of (literal) skeletons to take advantage of their BOGOF cocktails. Ironically, around the time I was bemoaning to him that I'll never have sex again as I gain weight and turn more fugly, we'd somehow become ensconced in conversation with the two charming Slovene ladies sat next to us. This resumed for a good couple of hours until, unsurprisingly, and following that familiar experience of two women giggling among themselves in their own language for 10 minutes, they quickly upped and left.

Up until then, the night had looked rather promising. The town is suffused with attractive young women and requsite bars... and then we got a kebab and it all went wrong. We went up to a bar stroke club accessible via a streetside elavator, and it was rammed full of generic blokes in t-shirts. The girl sat next to us who I'd spent a good 20 minutes plucking up the courage to speak to looked utterly horrified when I did so. And by that point, we'd grown utterly exhausted.

Cue bed, 5 lousy hours sleep, and a hangover that hasn't quite kicked in.

I'm starting to think that bars are vapid, soulless places, and not the greatest of places to engage in meaningful discourse with the opposite gender.

Particularly if you're me.

COMING SOON: Culture, edifying perambulations in parks, all that bullshit...

Not Enough Hours In The Day

2009-08-25T21:37:00.006+01:00

I am fucked, regrettably un-literally.

I have had so little sleep, my ears are screaming back at me.

I've balanced my cheque-book since returning from work stood on the train with my flies undone and my belt hanging off, done half a rucksack's worth of ironing, and I've not had time to reply to all my comments. Sorry.

I've ~~stolen~~ downloaded some music for my iPod, put on some more washing, and tomorrow I'm meeting up with a Uni friend I've not seen for about 10 years because she'd emigrated to Australia.

And I don't have time to write this, which is a shame as I've had an interesting few days, not least finishing my (Ha!) book and emailing the shameful pdf to a select few men.

I'd send it to ladyfriends but, well, the female characters aren't the most well-drawn of people.

Or that nice.

I did go on a singles night last week. I'd go into detail if I had the time or the energy, but I've neither. Suffice to say I'd got a free film out of it (I heartily recommend 500 Days of Summer, by the way - even if it made me feel ill because it reminded me of the turd I've spent two years trying to write), and managed to stand in a room making the most of 10 single women to every man by not talking to them as I hid in the corner with my Wingman Martin, looking petrified as we necked all much free booze as possible.

We got approached. We had nice chats. I found myself alone on a bus going home, wondering why I didn't talk to that group of single cute girls I liked.

Mart and I are off to Ljubljana in two days. Followed by Zagreb, and Sarajevo, and Dubrovnik. That is why I'm so fucking tired as I've been racing to finish writing a book beforehand.

And not sleeping.

And going to Singles events.

Not to mention having to work for a fucking living.

Christ, I'm tired. This post could've been sooo much better written. Kinda like my book.

COMING UP SOON: WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING IN SLOVENIA????

Unbearable Shitness of Writing

2009-08-19T08:10:00.007+01:00

I am tired, so very, very tired. I have not long woken up, yet I desperately want more sleep. Despite that, I have to go to the office and do a ratty day's work so I can go home later and continue tightening the final draft.

Last night, I began cleaning up the first three chapters. It was badly needed. Badly needed. I now have 53 chapters to finish in the seven remaining evenings before I fly out on holiday.

Trouble is, it's only now that I realise the whole thing's shit; utter, turgid shit.

For a 'comedy', it's not funny. As a story, it's barely existent. That's what happens when you wing it and don't plan anything to the nth degree, hoping instead it'll just emerge. And now my name's all over it. That's wot I wrote. I've already prepped my friends to read it, and now I'd rather they didn't. I can picture them reading the first couple of pages and sighing as they stare at the other 235.

Great. Two years of my life up in smoke, for a bunch of literal shite. There was me, thinking I'd get it finished, get it published, and get a great new job doing something writey. That's sooo not gonna happen.

I want to sleep for a year. I want to have a book burning. I want to inject carbs into my urethra, and drink turps through a straw. I'm 35, single, and really, really terribly fucked off with it all.

And now I'm too tired to cycle to work so I'll have to train it in. I'm gonna be late.

Bugger.

The Second Draft Is In The Bag

2009-08-17T22:29:00.003+01:00

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I've just finished the second draft of my 'book'.

Now it's back to the beginning to re-write all over again for the final draft.

Then, of course, I'm handing it out to a few friends while I holiday in Slovenia, Croatia, and Boznia & Herzegovina in ten days, then I return to read their suggestions and re-write the bastard again.

Hmm. That was quite boring. Sorry.

I've gained weight.

Happy Days

2009-08-07T00:33:00.013+01:00

My old mate Chopper has handed in his notice at his job. In doing so, he's spent the better part of two days trawling through ten years of saved emails.

Imagine my delight to have been sent these descending order gems from days gone by:

On work...

From: Ebola, Fweng [mailto:Fweng.Ebola@shit-exam-board.co.uk]
Sent: 11 September 2003 17:55
To: 'Chopper', et al
Subject: Whoops

Seeing as you chaps are fond of my petit faux pas, here's my latest.

All has not been well at work. In fact, it's been dire. We have a new manager and we fell out a few days ago when she yelled at me and I yelled back for longer. We hadn't spoken since, until this afternoon when we had a formal 'one-to-one' meeting to discuss my behaviour. She saw by my folded arms and cynical stares that I wasn't happy. Eventually, she gave me the chance to speak.

I now regret using the phrase, "I feel as if I'm continually shat on by a great big managerial arse from above", said as I looked upwards and waved my hands about, as if protecting myself from metaphorical faeces.

That comment was then added to her list of reasons why I'm crap later on in the meeting.

On returning from holiday...

-----Original Message-----
From: Ebola, Fweng [mailto:Fweng.Ebola@shit-exam-board.co.uk]
Sent: 18 June 2003 11:16
To: 'Chopper'
Subject: RE: Sleaze League Table

Well, the women are absolutely stunning, and the men were all fat, ugly, and shaven headed meaning there were huge discrepancies as models dated the hideously mismatched. I still didn't stand a chance though; the Hungarian language is impenetrable. I also saw two of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life, ever, in all my 29 years. I just couldn't bring myself to talk to them, which is probably just as well.

Don't have a clue how much I spent - was all funded by Barclaycard. Got clipped by the Russian mafia in a seedy strip club too. £10 a bottled beer and a demand that we had to spend about £50 each before we left which we argued about until we were threatened very seriously with hospitalisation. For some reason, I was the one sent out into the night to get money from my own account.
McDowall then got a picture of me passed out on the sofa stark bollock naked which I can't say I approve of.

Snogged an Aussie girl who looked like the asian one from the Sugababes though, which was nice but very brief. Think she had a boyfriend back home.
I have got the worst post-holiday blues of my entire life. I want to go back there immediately.

On unemployment...

From: Ebola, Fweng [mailto:Fweng.Ebola@personal-email.co.uk]
Sent: 01 August 2000 22:39
To: 'Chopper' et al
Subject: Self-obsessed rant

Well, I've been unemployed for five months now. I've been through a whole gamut of emotions since leaving [television] with its staff of arrogant, humourless, work obsessed, personality-voided automatons. At first, I dived into the happy hedonistic world of doing nothing and loving it. Takeaways every night, booze, shopping sprees on a lazy weekday afternoon, basically all the selfish mundane shit I couldn't do because I was stuck at work.

Then the money ran out. I'd piled on loads of weight and my job search was going nowhere. Cue a couple of months in complete depression - nothing to do, feeling like a waste of space, thinking that those former work colleagues who called me a "belligerent little shit" were actually right.

Then I joined a gym, blah blah blah, and now I feel great. Just thought I'd let you all know.

Fine - I'm lonely and I crave attention.

On ex-girlfriends...

-----Original Message-----
From: Ebola, Fweng [mailto:Fweng.Ebola@bbc.co.uk]
Sent: 03 December 1999 12:37
To: 'Chopper'
Subject: Jolly season my well rounded arse

This is the last paragraph of the last email that [My first girlfriend] sent me after a frenzied day of emailing yesterday-

"I can't have the love of my life dangled in front of my nose and not be able to have him. Its not your job to be here for me or look after me or watch out for me anymore. You want the clean break, take it, I won't hassle you again.
I hope things work out for you.
Bye
[My first girlfriend]."

* * * * * *

It was great to be able to read the ghosts of relationships past today, almost ten years after she wrote that. She has long since married with children and no, things didn't work out for me. Karma's a bitch.

Cheers for the trip down memory lane, Jamie!

Even A Wacky Title's Drawing A Blank

2009-07-31T11:13:00.005+01:00

I am tapping this out at work, which I am rather pleased with because I am on my own in the entire company. Some might say I’m ‘running the place’ myself, because I am. Thus I am able to do at work that which I never normally do; my own shit.

I sit with my back to the office. My monitor can be viewed by everyone, which has forced me to become diligent and conscientious every fucking minute of the day. With ringing phones and a constant stream of customers just turning up, as they are wont to do, even my lunchbreaks are brief and sporadic - so trust me when I say how therapeutic writing this is right now.

But it’s more than therapeutic. It’s also something of a rarity. You see, over the last week, something strange has happened. It’s extremely aggravating but I’m taking it in my stride, convinced that it’s all part of my natural, fucked up brain chemistry and ultimately I’ll snap out of it. I think it’s popularly known as writer’s block. I’d always thought that a respectable, bona fide creative obstruction was a maddening stare at a blank page or computer screen but in my case, it’s that with a strange dash of peace. I can’t quite explain it. It’s like watching someone lead a marathon and, just as the end is in sight and they’re about to cross, they come to a standstill and just look around, thinking.

I should be mad at myself for spending last weekend throwing beige food down my throat as I watched anything on Youtube, spending every waking minute in front of my computer doing absolutely no writing at all despite opening my 230-page document only to immediately ignore it. I should even be annoyed that all this week after work, I’ve written the collective total of just one paragraph but strangely, I don’t care. I really can’t explain it. In fact, I’m rather amused by it, as if my subconscious wants to punish my positivity and taking charge of my life by obstreperously making me stop.

However, it’s Friday morning. I love Fridays. They are your golden teenage years, when you were thinner, and less cynical, and less wrinkly, in day form. Fridays beckon in long lie-ins, and gentle ambles, and bestow upon you your own time to do with as you please (unless you work in a shop). And with mine, I’m choosing to give myself an ultimatum; If I cannot use this weekend to reverse this bizarre writing rut, if I cannot slap myself around the head, crack on and just finish this, then I may as well give up. And if nothing gives and everything's as good as over, I should just accept that and give in to that strange thought that’s popped back into my head whenever life has got too much:- Leave. Run. Flee.

This has taken the form of a daydream where I tell my boss I quit, tell my flatmate I’m leaving, and get on my bicycle and pedal away. I have pondered this for some time now, thoughts of filling my rucksack and cycling to France, then Italy, then central Europe, and never stopping until I attain nirvana or get laid, whatever comes first, although I strongly suspect neither.

Yet I’m well aware that I’ve run away from myself before, only to find that the fucker’s gone and followed me.

So yeah. There we go. One big existentialist burp of nothing.
Hey ho. I guess I’d better get back to my day job.
Have a good weekend, all.

The Tunnel At The End Of The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

2009-07-21T19:35:00.005+01:00

For fuck's sake...

I've written those 5 new chapters, and I'm still not finished.

So I've stopped writing to take stock of myself, only to realise I've gained enough weight for other people to notice, and I'm smoking like a laboratory beagle.

And in this absurdly slow literary process, I've realised that I'll be 70 by the time I finish which, as a smoker, I'll be lucky to get to but if I do, that makes me middle aged right fucken' now.

How the hell did that happen? I've achieved absolutely bugger all with my life, sired zero shitting machines forced out from the once-tight chuff of a beautiful woman I don't actually have, and I still live above a fucking chemists in a crappy rented flat with a fat, bald man.

I read an article yesterday about Jim Fixx, the man who made the insanity of jogging look normal, and discovered that it wasn't jogging that killed him (directly), but a blocked artery due to years of smoking.

So I've stopped cycling in case I die. The weather's gone all shitty, plus I'm finding it hard to breathe anyway.

And thus, I'm in stasis again, a self-imposed limbo that has me staring at supermarket displays for dinner options and pacing around until I plump for a shit yellow disc with cheese on it, for the third day running.

Plus I really wanna quit my job.

In other news, I've been hanging out with the lavender folk, attending Gay Paul's birthday party and meeting yet another Jewish New Yorker broad in the street outside (I managed to offend her by saying there is no god, while the gay chaps I had been chatting to got her number instead), I woke up at 4am the night after that, convinced I was about to die (I'd gone to a BBQ in East Anglia and consumed enough booze, cigs and meat to kill a herd of elephants on crack), and I spent last weekend alone - that's alone - in my room, writing til stupid o'clock, as I downed a bottle of wine, four beers, and some left-over cocaine I found.

It felt all rather Hemingway minus the talent, until I woke up the following morning with the shakes, a Eurasian-seized sense of shame and self-loathing, and a really shit book.

If this damn thing ever gets finished, it'll be a fucking miracle.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

2009-07-06T08:43:00.005+01:00

All I do now is write; write when I get home from work, and write all weekend (once I've managed to snap out of the Youtube reverie of watching anything rather than eek out a painful story that'll never get published.) I'm now 35 chapters in, with about 5 more left to write, my original NaNoWriMo 50,000 word draft now upped to a current 95k. I hope to have this damn fucking albatross of a novel finished later this month, upon which I intend to go on an ether, opiates and crack binge for the next 25 years or until my heart packs in - whichever's sooner (my money's on the latter, after about an hour).

In other (non) news, it took me about two or three days to snap out of my Lovely American Ex-Girlfriend delusion. I've spent the better part of two years dropping hints (i.e. asking outright) to go back and see a frankly indifferent and slightly bitter ex who only seemed eager to 'forgive' me a couple of months ago, re-establishing contact as we bombarded each other with emails, photos (two) and phonecalls (one apiece), only for her to casually drop the new relationship bomb in passing as I tried to negotiate a trip to her home town.

If anyone can get hold of an original folio of 'The Mourning Bride' by William Congreve (1697), please do let me know, because next to the line; "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned", you should find an etching of her prodding me in the arse with a pike.

She's now been downgraded to ex-girlfriend (American).

As for my recent road accident, my bike vs. some cunt in a car, I've still yet to hear from the Metropolitan Police. It would appear that they don't help the public anymore, burdened as they are by said whinging bastards and their fucking paperwork. I've phoned them a couple of times only to be told it's 'in hand', and furthermore, the number plate the PCSO took down might be wrong.

Oh good.

Statement Of Events

2009-06-24T20:51:00.010+01:00

At approximately 6:20pm on Wednesday June 24th, I, Mr Fweng Ebola, of a decrepit and overpriced flat, was cycling west along some road.

It was a clear and sunny day. Trees continued to absorb carbon dioxide and the crippling indifference of a cruel world gnawed at my soul like beavers felling a dam as I got fatter and repelled anyone with a womb. The lights were red as I overtook a line of stationary traffic. In front of me, a female cyclist whose route was blocked by a pedestrian island had stopped. As the lights changed to green, I slowed to allow the cyclist into the road, taking up more of the road and holding back as I did so.

On doing this, a car driven by a CUNT overtook us close and at speed, due to the driver being a selfish retarded fuckbollock who would place a stranger's death at his own hand as less important than being a few seconds late for something. I yelled out in shock as I continued pedalling. The driver was now looking at me in his rear-view mirror to gauge if I'd been the yeller.

Regrettably, I made the mistake of jabbing a finger directly at him, invoking a furious red mist that clouded the driver's rat-like and beady little eyes. As he crossed over the junction, he'd slowed down behind traffic as I approached along an empty bus lane, tutting like a pensioner reading the Daily Mail. Before I passed the driver, he accelerated into the bus lane and came to a halt. Now rather worried, I overtook his car, keeping an eye on his door which I wasn't surprised to see being flung open full length so a Caucasian, shaven-headed and lobotomised ape could lunge at me. I weaved out of his way – just – and continued unabated, now rather perturbed that a maniac with a micropenis was trying to kill me.

About 15 seconds later, I became aware of a speeding engine approaching. Determined to make me stop so he could, I have to assume, beat me into a bloody, weeping pulp who wished as he cried red tears from swollen purple eyes that he'd kept up the kickboxing lessons, the driver overtook me a second time, pulled in sharply, and came to a screeching halt. This time, he ensured I had no chance to escape as his car was now only a metre or two ahead. I gripped my brakes but with no room for manoeuvre, I collided into the back of him with such force that my rear fucking wheel bucked and landed on the pavement while a jagged pedal cut my bare leg to ribbons.

I yelled out in shock and, looking up, saw two community officers run across the road to assist an unfortunate woman who had collapsed outside a tube station. I managed to catch the attention of one of them as I was now yelling and waving my hands like Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic.

As the officer walked towards us, Cro-Magnon man must have realised that I was winning - for the first time in my lousy, motherfucking life, I. Was. Ahead, dammit!

So he drove off.

I gave the officer my details and reattached my chain, cycling home carefully as unidentified bits fell off. On arrival at my flat, I realised my back had twisted up a la John Merrick, the Elephant Man.

I would like to end by stating that the individual responsible has no business driving so much as a mobility scooter, as he clearly has no qualms about using one as a weapon. If it pleases the court, may I suggest he be hanged about the neck until dead, and his bloated cadaver repeatedly pummelled by me doing bunny hops on his twisted spine with a fucked-up bike.

Thank you.

Whoops

2009-06-22T21:04:00.009+01:00

I've just made a colossal mistake.

To those of you who've been reading the previous posts, you'll know what's currently happening - i.e., not much.

Jesus, I'm scared to even allude to her...

Oh fuck it. I've been emailing my lovely American ex-girlfriend.

And I mentioned this blog.

I don't know why. I think because I'm such a miserable bastard in general, and I'm particularly miserable at the moment, and for some reason I was trying to prove to her what a miserable bastard I am because I dumped her years ago and made a massive mistake and now she's met someone else which, okay, is brilliant and I'm very happy for her (me, not so much).... that I mentioned my many years of whinging, in blog form.

My point was, 'tschh, I'm such a cynical miserable git that I've got a cynical, miserable blog' - why I thought she'd find that endearing, I don't know - but I didn't really think much about the end part, the BLOG part, when I pressed SEND. I did pause briefly, but I'm a) phenomenally tired right now, and b) overconfident that this anonymous diary of shit is buried so deep in the dullest recesses of the Internet that she'd never find it.

In reply, she asked if it was my blog she'd read years ago, the one I much later linked to Fwengebola.

I frantically attempted to unlink it, but I got scared that I'd fuck something up and delete my whole Fwengebola account. But in doing so, I realised I'm more scared of losing this blog than I am of losing someone who's already missing, presumed indifferent.

So feel free to question why I really chose to mention anything. Personally - and trust me on this - I know myself well enough to know that I'm just an idiot.

I'm incredibly angry with myself right now.

*** UPDATE ***

I'm going on a fucking diet.

Staying Alone And Unloved In The Gutter Of Life

2009-06-20T11:06:00.007+01:00

Overnight, my lovely American ex-girlfriend changed her Facebook status from single to 'In a fucking Relationship', with some bloke.

He's in a moody black and white photo. Local to her. Looks pretty macho.

And she's 34.

Meanwhile, 4,000 miles away, I went out with the lads. I've been avoiding huge drinking sprees for several reasons. Top of the list is my desire to spend all my free time on my (Ha!) novel. Coming in a close second, I'm attempting to save money in a sincere attempt to avoid Debtor's Gaol. Not far behind is my general health. I'm not getting any younger, and I won't do my ageing body any favours throwing pure grain alcohol down my Pringle-hole and tarring up my lungs with nicotine.

Nonetheless, I couldn't face the abuse I was beginning to get when I hinted to said lads that I might not go. So I bypassed my bicycle and took the tube to work on Friday. I wore my suit jacket with smart shoes, a white double-cuff shirt and cufflinks, and a pair of dark, understated jeans. I felt pretty damn sexy, I have to tell you, yet felt somewhat disillusioned as I sat on the train opposite a frankly devastating blonde who point-blank refused to look anywhere near me, not even to sneer.

Work - with no lunchbreak as usual - was typically stressful. And when I left the office two pear ciders merrier, I ended up walking to Soho as rushhour trains and buses wouldn't get me there any quicker. I was dripping wet by the time I arrived, having nearly been run over by a taxi and called an idiot. My suit was stained with sweat, and my friends publicly mocked my 'Ginger Beadle' as I'd only shaved my neck again. (It itches otherwise, alright???)

I spent a chunk of my overdraft on booze, and received much abuse I've grown accustomed to; several 'Cunts', a couple of 'Morons', and an occasional 'fatso.'

And London's womenfolk couldn't have avoided me more if I'd been covered with weeping buboes and had one leg. I did pat one girl on the back as we stood outside the pub, after she had a coughing fit. Surprisingly, she didn't seem to mind, so I did it again ten minutes later when she hacked up again. She even smiled in return, although the men she was surrounded by shot me a several dark glares.

This made getting her number all the more difficult, but before I could even think about that, I had the far bigger hurdle of summoning up the courage in the first place. I've never had a problem talking to women when the mood takes me. My shitfest of thrills has always been entering that bewildering next stage; getting those digits, or simply doing something to indicate a desire to see a complete stranger again, in a stressful and rather less pleasant 'coffee' scenario. In many ways, I've learnt to prefer that giddying high of not repelling a new Ladyperson and leaving it at that. I'd only ruin things doing something disturbingly adult like go on a date. Jesus.

So, I woke up this morning in my stinking pit with a now uncommon sense that I'd burnt the candle and both ends as I'd rampaged through London, my wallet, and my liver. The rumours are true; Huge piss-ups with the Boys do get harder with age.

And while I'd done so, my lovely American ex-girlfriend across the pond had cemented her 'blossoming romance' and officially Facebooked her commitment to a certain Mr Finkelstein.

They'll be getting married soon. I'm pretty certain of that.

I'm not prone to quoting ageing Jewish comics with impenetrably stereotypical accents, but I once saw Jackie Mason in London, and recall this bit he did about romance. To paraphrase; "Why do people always get married at the same age? Shouldn't it be random? If it was love, why doesn't it happen at fifteen, or fifty, or seventy-two? Why is it always around your late Twenties or early Thirties when two people decide, 'You're the one!' and tie the knot?"

Ugh. Too little, too late, once again. To all the single people out there with a little daemon in their heads, Hello.

Dying Alone And Unloved In The Gutter Of Life

2009-06-14T17:21:00.031+01:00

Okay, I know I've made the point that feeling sorry for yourself is no bad thing, provided it's brief and ends with a positive conclusion.

However, I am feeling phenomenally pathetic right now, and I've only got myself to blame.

The fact is, I suffer from Male Paralysis. It is a common and rather stupid complaint, viz: If I'm not in a relationship, I feel lonely and unloved (even though not being in a relationship is my default setting; one that I'm petrified I've become so accustomed to that I will never be able to handle being someone's boyfriend).
On the flip side, when I am in a relationship, it seems so strange to have lost my perceived independence that I feel suffocated and get scared off.

Last month was my birthday, which falls on the same day as my lovely American ex-girlfriend's. I ended that relationship because of the 8,000 mile round-trips just to hang our for a coffee that would last a week, encompassing lots of hand-holding in Central or Regent's Park, sex, and dinners in fancy restaurants with the rest of decent civilisation.

However, we weren't together long when she got extremely keen extremely quickly, which scared the bejesus out of me. Being a cynical, somewhat low confidence cove, I couldn't work out why she felt that way. Her keenness, coupled with my vast collection of insecurities, meant I ended us, although I told her repeatedly and sincerely that if she lived in Britain, I would snap out of my paralysis to dedicate all my time to her. And of course, she was perfect too; Funny, attractive, and intelligent, we even got each other, dammit.

And I'd dumped her.

She took it badly. We only patched up our differences properly last month, during my 35th birthday, and her 34th. We began to email each other 10 times a day. We exchanged current photos of each other. We even called.

But then she slipped back into indifference, which bugged the hell out of me. To give you some background, I have a sister, a sibling that I haven't seen since January despite her living only 8 miles away. We hadn't said a single word to each other in 5 months, apart from the day I received a Facebook message which read, 'Happy Birthday'.

And that was it.

So I called my sister up to ask her what her problem was, that zero contact in almost half a year broken by a feeble line of birthday text on a social networking website was pretty insulting. In my defence, I told her that I hadn't called myself because it was always me getting in touch every few months to check if she was still alive, and I wondered if the day would ever come when it occured to her to ring me for a change.

So, once the yelling and insults subsided, my sister and I agreed to make more of an effort to keep in touch. She suggested doing so every other day, which I did, going so far as to leave myself calendar reminders. I duly phoned her every other day, or every three days, and did so about six or seven times. And then I stopped. The days have since turned into weeks, and I haven't heard a word from her. This is a terribly similar scenario - some would say exactly the same as before - whereby I'm the one who always has to call, otherwise I'd never hear from my sister again.

So I think it's fair to say I'm fairly sensitive about female contact.

Meanwhile, over in the States, my lovely American ex-girlfriend and I re-established this beautiful connection. She said I was still cute. I said I still missed her. She bemoaned not having anyone to take her out to dinner. And I wished we were still together.

So I started looking at flights. I was going to give her that surprise I thought she'd been leaving hints for. I toyed with the idea of doing it in a week or two.
Trouble was, like my sister, contact had collapsed into nought but one-way traffic, everything at my instigation, and pretty brief in return.

So last night I emailed to see how lovely American ex was doing. 'Fine', she wrote. 'Busy,' she added. And then she went to bed - None of which particularly inspired me to rush out and spend half a thousand pounds on flights and a hotel room. This morning, I checked Facebook. Her status had been updated to, "I'm all for you, body and soul."
That was odd, and more than a little strong considering how we hadn't been connecting all that well in the previous few days.

So this afternoon, I emailed to see if perhaps I'd done something untoward. It was nothing heavy, just a brief line of enquiry.

"Totally not pissed off," she wrote. "Just working a lot and nurturing a blossoming romance."

I paused. Then I re-read that line. "Nurturing a blossoming romance."

Oh.

It was then that I began to feel more than a little nauseous. What had gone from little butterflies flitting in my stomach whenever I saw her name appear in emails had mutated into a violent sense of unease coupled with a feeling of ruthless stupidity. And that was when Evil Fweng, that spiteful, gloating, malevolent little daemon in my head, began to cackle.

'You knew this was going to happen,' he crowed. 'You can't expect to just re-date someone you dumped three fucking years ago.'

And then he started insulting me, and it was all rather hostile, I can tell you. And just when Evil Fweng had finished his tirade, he held up a picture of the only other tenuously-linked woman in my 'life', the stunning leggy blonde Polish lady, the friend-of-a-friend who recently seemed so inexplicably attracted to me.

'Remember that phonecall from your friend? The one who introduced you to that stunning leggy Polish blonde?'

'Unggh,' I groaned.

'Remember how she was umm-ing and ahh-ing over her boyfriend, debating whether or not your useless fat self would make an ideal replacement? Well she's about to get engaged now, isn't she?'

I took a deep breath. I caught sight of myself in the mirror as I stood there in a towel, my hairy man-tits and distended gut looking like the body that haunts a thousand female nightmares.

'Kill yourself, fatty,' Evil Fweng continued. 'There isn't a woman on earth who deserves a worthless twat like you so just shut the fuck up, lie down in the gutter, and kill yourself now, you pointless, indecisive, wobbling sack of shit.'