Boxes

We moved.

I'll probably write about the whole process at some point, but for now... it almost seems that writing about it would somehow taint the purity of the agony. It was so bad that the suffering has travelled in time. Everything that has ever happened and everything that will ever happen is worse than it was a week ago.

So I need some mulling time. Maybe a little perspective. Maybe I'll realise what a privileged position I'm actually in.

But it won't be today, and it won't be tomorrow.

Instead, here's a big green asterisk:

*

National Service

At Christmas time, when I was a child, my dad used to take my sister and me to see old people.

He had a system for deciding which old people they would be, I assume. I never asked.

He was a GP, and the old people were his patients. We'd go and see a few elderly women in the run-up to Christmas.

I don't know who instigated these visits. Were these women on particularly friendly terms with my dad? Did he offer to bring his kids along? Did they ask for it? Were they clamouring for a glimpse at youth? Was it a treat for them? Was it a treat for us? Was it a treat for my dad?

Tonight, I'll phone him and get to the bottom of it.

Here's how I remember it (he may have a different, and more accurate, recollection):

• I didn't particularly want to go, but also didn't hate going.
• I was partly motivated by the possibility of a Christmas gift (A £5 book token! Just for showing up! And a card!), but this wasn't the only reason I went.
• I was reasonably bored and reasonably polite.
• I found old people's homes a bit weird, but interesting. 

I wonder if I'm remembering it all wrong. I might have complained constantly. I might have mercenarily demanded my money as soon as we entered the room.

One of the perks of visiting an old people's home was that we got to use the lift.

Children don't have much use for lifts. Most of their doings are ground floor doings. There are stairs of course - they were fun to sit on and fall down - but no lifts. There are occasional ladders (bunk bed, tree house, adventure playground), but no lifts.

There weren't many lifts in the 80s.

So to have the chance to press buttons that made slidey doors go all whoosh and clank was a delight.

The women's flats were full of Christmas cards. In the run up to Christmas, this is a joyful sight. If those cards remain up in July, the whole thing takes on a melancholy air.

They had Christmas decorations, too. These were weird. They were all different to the ones we had in our house. Different. They had a slightly different style of tinsel. Weird.

There would be photos of family members. There might be old sepia-toned snaps of men in hats and women in hats and hatless 70s holidays.

The women would ask us how school was (probably), and we'd answer (eloquently). My dad might get given a Christmas present. It would usually be a bottle of alcohol that he would never drink. But it's the thought that counts.

I wonder if our presence lightened up their day, or simply interfered with their schedule of Duck Hunt and amphetamines.

It was probably just a nice gesture. Christmas must be the worst time to be lonely, especially in an old people's home. We were a breath of fresh air and fresh blood.

I suppose they're all dead now.

***

Woo-hoo!

What a delightful way to begin a blog post! It's not seasonal, it's not a proper piece of writing, it's not researched and it's as gloomy as Eeyore's funeral.

But it's interesting to revisit things that happened to you a long time ago. Uninteresting things. Time makes interesting anecdotes of us all.

It's been quite the week here in Diamondbadgeria (which sounds like a disease, but it actually an allegorical country)!

On Monday, I did something.

On Tuesday, there was the rained-off England match.

On Wednesday, there was the England match.

On Thursday, there was the blog post about the dead Christmas old people.

On Friday, there was a mistake with tenses. And Armageddon.

But you have to keep a stiff upper lip. No point in moping around, just because the working week saps your spirit and you have nothing to hope for but an exciting coma.

People underwent greater hardships during any of the wars. You've got to puff out that chest, raise that chin, but your back into it (your chin), and keep working for Queen and Country.

It's a blessed time to be alive. In this place. It's tough elsewhere in the world, but here I am, in quite the privileged position. No need to be downhearted! I'm white and male and middle-class. I own my own shower radio in the shape of a penguin, that might still work for all I know!

Let's all be very thankful for the bounty that chance has dropped through our letterbox. Eat the free mango and ham and fruit buns that constitute that bounty. Eat them, appreciate them, and use them to fuel bounty-droppings of your own in the future! Kindness creates kindness. In much the same way as Frankenstein creates a monster that people often call the same name as his name!

I think you've been juiced up enough. Here's some proper content:

Proper Content

by

Paulo Fungi

Lance Corporal Nicholas Julian Sinclair Reynolds Chatham Davies-Wright

Used humour as a defence mechanism

Whilst serving in Iraq

His commanding officer noted,

In a wise and heartfelt eulogy,

That Nick's hilarious "slags on a lifeboat" bit

Was not an adequate substitute

For a helmet

I have no interest in metre.

Thursday

I've been downbeat today, so I'm going to try to write myself happier.

I don't know if that's possible. I hope it is. Maybe I'll find some magical combination of words that can inject a bit of joy into my brain. It wouldn't necessarily be the meaning that did it. Otherwise I could just write "puppies" or "Jeremy Kyle punched forever" and it would do the trick.

I think it might just be the sound of the words that does it. Like a note of a certain pitch that can thaw ice. I'm only writing words, so I'll have to hear the sound in my own head. And the acoustics in here are rubbish. I can barely hear myself think, and even when I do, it's all reverb-y.

So maybe it won't be the meaning of the words, and it won't be the sound of the words. Maybe my mood will be improved by the look of the words. The way they appear on the screen. Maybe the right combination of peaks and troughs and dots and crosses will be aesthetically pleasing. Like a painting. Maybe I'll stumble upon a golden ratio of text configuration. Probably not with this font, but still...

If I put the letters in the right order, it might conjure something up. The same way the word 'bed' looks like a bed.

I haven't found it yet. I haven't found the meaning, sound or look that will cheer me up. And I don't want to start messing around with colours or italics. Anyone who gets cheered up by something slanty and pink has serious psychological problems.

But I am starting to feel better. I think it's because of those paragraphs you've just read (unless you've started the blog post here for some reason - your eyes were drawn to the pink perhaps). I am happier because I've written some words and sentences and so on. So maybe the cheering power of writing is not about content or form, but about quantity.

Girth breeds mirth. We all know that. That was my school motto. It's a truism. And it's stuck with me. Whereas dozens of falsisms have fallen by the wayside (which is nearly full, by the way).

That principle probably sums up this blog. My self-esteem is directly proportional to the word count. It doesn't matter how poorly thought-out the entries are; if the text be there, the mood be fair.

We all know that. It's a truism. Or a half-truism at least.

I'm listening to some depressing music, which probably isn't helping matters. Though it is imbuing my prose with a depth and profundity that probably isn't there for you.

Why don't you re-read this entry whilst listing to it?

 

It's from that film Synecdoche, New York, which is a bit downbeat too.

I quite like bleak films every now and then. I get a bit bored with uplifting Hollywood. Sometimes I don't want to be uplifted. Sometimes I'm high enough already. Not now, but sometimes. If you're on top of the Empire State Building, you don't want to be lifted up. You want someone to tie a piano to your wife and throw her off the top of it (the building, not the piano). Sometimes you want that.

Yes you do.

Listening to film scores always makes your life seem more exciting. Even if you're on the bus. Jon Brion didn't know that his song would have a special resonance for me, having dropped my ticket onto my own shoe. But it fits perfectly. Even boredom can be beautiful if couched in the right melody.

You can't spell downbeat without 'beat'. The fundamental building block of music.

Or 'own'. You can't spell downbeat without 'own'. You really can't.

I feel a lot better now, though. So perhaps my soundtrack should change. Sad music does make writing seem better, but happy music can probably do something too.

Maybe it will make me funnier. I know that's difficult to imagine.

So, what's the most upbeat song I can think of?

How about this?

Bertha was basically the televisual forerunner to Synecdoche, New York. I've always said that. Both comment on art vs commerce; individuality vs conformity; the nature of life, death and forklift trucks.

And whilst the first song might give my writing an air of poignancy, the Bertha theme is sure to bring my words to life in a different way. Even that last sentence is better with Bertha in the background.

I feel much better now. Thanks for listening. Or reading. Or just looking.

Laughter is one of the best medicines. I've always said that.

I Didn't Delete This

I'm feeling melancholy.

Sometimes I think about the short preview of this post that will appear on Facebook. Hello Facebook people! If you don't want to click on this, I fully understand.

Who would look at a blog extract that begins 'I'm feeling melancholy', and decide to click on it? An idiot, that's who.

Hello idiots!

Nothing captures the attention more than a proclamation of melancholy.

The word itself suggests dynamism, biting political comment and laugh-out-loud funny material from beginning to end.

"Oh really, Paul? You're feeling melancholy? That's fascinating. I'm sure this won't be whiny and indulgent. Hey, are you feeling melancholy as an adjective or a noun? We're all dying to know."

I'm listening to melancholy music, just to hammer it home. Not the Smashing Pumpkins though. That's spelled differently. The trouble is, I'm listening to my iTunes library on shuffle, as I don't want too much melancholy from the same source. I like to have wistful sadness from a wide variety of receptacles, one sup from a flask of regret, then a slurp from a curly-straw of existential angst.

But not every track I have is melancholy. Melancholy is probably only around 30% of my music catalogue.

The track playing now is called Lie to Kick It by 2Pac.

Its lyrical content was disheartening, but not exactly melancholy.

I just wrote a hilarious annotation of the lyrics but have decided to delete it as the horrible misogyny of the lyrics was only matched by the horrible condescension of my analysis.

It did contain a good joke about Jordan's Country Crisp, but those are ten-a-penny on the stand-up scene.

The next song was The Guests by Leonard Cohen.

Much better.

I've lost the momentum of this post now.

That's right: momentum.

Backwards momentum is still momentum.

Maybe I should do a hilarious analysis of the Cohen lyrics instead. I think that won't be quite as good. There won't be any opportunity for jokes about Jordan's Country Crisp.

(I wonder if I'll get offered some free Jordan's Country Crisp if I continue to mention them. Like I did with Rombouts coffee.)

How about a lyrical mash-up? That sounds like fun. It will probably be poetic and beautiful. Try to guess which parts are from which song.

It will be like a game.

A fun game.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you

Guests Lie To Kick It
by
Tupac Shakur and Leonard Cohen

One by one, the guests arrive
You ain't got to lie to kick it
The guests are coming through
To them tricks and them bitches
The open-hearted many
Out to get a nigga's riches
The broken-hearted few
You ain't got to lie to kick it

But you's an old basehead kickin' too much hype
And all go stumbling through that house
yo bicentennial pipe it got rally stripes
in lonely secrecy
And if they knew yo identity
Saying "Do reveal yourself"
you'd probably be the victim of a sticking (ugh ugh)
or "Why has thou forsaken me?"

And those who dance, begin to dance

I did more of this, but it was too long and not good enough. These were the highlights. (Interestingly, Cohen wrote the the first 'ugh', and 2Pac the second. Interesting and a lie.)

This post has had too many false starts (not to mention false middles). All I need now is a false ending.

Goodnight everybody!

***

Psst.

I'm still here.

I should go to sleep now. I've gone down so many blind alleys, I've developed a form of sonar. Misleading sonar. I just keep clicking until I get reprimanded by a dolphin.

Even my atoms feel tired. I can't imagine ever not being overwhelmed by everything in the world. I might build myself a special helmet that doesn't let in any events, lights or radio broadcasts, and I can live in the dark.

With an itchy chin-strap, just so I don't forget where I came from.

Wah wah wah

I haven't been posting very frequently lately, and I'm trying to work out why.

I feel tired. But I always feel tired - especially on a Tuesday morning - so I don't think that's the answer. I read some of my older entries and I seem to be a bit more serious about things. I wrote long essays on evolution and gender politics. I don't seem to be getting that worked up about things anymore. Or maybe I do get worked up, but my confidence wavers as I write and I start to worry that I'm being pretentious or preachy.

I'm also a bit paranoid about repeating myself. It's easy to write a Wacky List!™ or a surreal dialogue, but I want to do something new. So I suppose that's what this is: a whiny confessional.

Of course, it's by no means my first one of them.

Maybe it's just a summer lull. It's difficult to find anything to write about when it's all sunny outside. Writing something on a computer seems so artificial - the antithesis of natural creativity. I should probably buy a fountain pen. Or some clay. But sculpting at my desk would probably be a bit conspicuous. As it is, the good weather is evaporating any impetus I might have to review the film Synecdoche, New York (it was quite good), or recount my latest trip to the Co-Op to buy milk (6 pints).

I'm feeling a bit impatient with everything at the moment. It's difficult to fight off a tidal wave of apathy, especially when you can't be bothered to build a boat. It would be useful to have a holiday, but I had one quite recently. It seemed to do the trick at the time, but the positive effects were temporary.

Once again, I find myself hatching schemes, and plotting career changes. And once again, I'm reasonably sure that I'm not going to do anything about it.

I want to send a demo CD to a radio station. I briefly hosted a student radio show a couple of years ago (I'm sure I must have mentioned it before). It seems like the ideal job: short hours, room for creativity, and both BBC Radio Oxford and Jack FM are really close to my house! It would be great! But I can never seem to get around to putting anything together. I'd probably have to listen to the radio stations to see what they're like. And that sounds unpleasant.

I used to write these kinds of adolescent moaning posts quite a lot when I started this blog. In a way, it's refreshing to be back! And I'm doing much better now than I was then. I have some irons in the fire, at least. Even if the fire is actually one of those joke birthday candles, and the iron is actually plastic. Yes, that metaphor makes lots of sense.

I'll have some coffee soon, which will probably perk me up. It won't make be any happier, or more awake, but it will make my tiredness a bit more intense. Like trying to improve a bad TV signal by turning up the contrast.

I don't actually feel unhappy or depressed. I feel fine. I'm just itching for something a little bit better - where I get to sleep later and have more time for incubating my schemes. Even though when they hatch, they'll probably be shrill and needy, and I'll end up getting less sleep than ever.

What do you do?

I've just read a throroughly depressing article about office work. It was analysis of how peoples' attitudes to their jobs have changed due to the recession, and a general examination of the world of work.

It wasn't a good day to read it. I've been feeling generally disillusioned, and this was almost enough to tip me over the mundane edge into an abyss of slight emotion.

Towards the end, there's a piece by Alain de Botton attempting to examine work in a vaguely wanky and philosophical way. It was interesting and pretentious - an attempt to find beauty in the mundane. I suppose that's what all deep-thinking is about. It's poetry: extrapolating the holy from the ordinary. And whilst I think it's a noble exercise, it's still depressing.

I don't want to have to make do with the mundane. I don't want to engage in a twisted thought-experiment to get pleasure from my life. It seems like giving up. I don't want to placate the grey gods of monotonous employment.

It all comes down to my answer to that most painful of questions: what do you do?

If I acquiesce to Monsieur de Botton's point of view, I have to answer: "I work in an office. It's not so bad..."

I don't want to admit that first part, even though it's true. I suppose I feel that if I do admit it, I'm doomed. I'm like Neville Chamberlain, or a battered wife, cheerfully greeting Hell by rolling my eyes.

In the back of my mind, there's a vital need to believe that this is just a job, and a way to stay alive, but that my real life lies elsewhere. Like in stand-up comedy. Or this blog. But it's getting more and more difficult to convince myself.

What do you do?

I really liked being a temp for that very reason. "I'm a temp" doesn't convey and particular conception of identity. It's just what you do for money. The temporariness is the best part. You're not playing by the rules, not part of the system. A loose cannon! What's that, boss man? No paid sick leave? Up yours! I march to the beat of my own drum (or would, if I could afford the drumsticks)!

As soon as you sign a contract for a permanent job, you've become a grown-up. And grown-ups don't have time to lie in sunny parks, or watch DVD commentaries, or come up with cartoon characters. They're too busy worrying about dental bills and MOTs.

What do you do?

There's a good bit in The Armando Iannucci Shows where he wonders why we always answer that question with our job title, rather than "I eat cold spring rolls in front of repeats of Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

I suppose the question is really:

What do you do for the majority of your time?

And the answer is: I'm tired.

For the majority of the time I'm tired. I'm tired before work, I'm tired during work, I'm tired after work.

That's what I do. I yawn and rub my eyes.

I hope this doesn't sound too miserable. The article is supposed to find virtue in the whole enterprise, and to talk about how it's not about work, but all the other little things surrounding it.

But I can't help but feel aggrieved that I even read the article and identified with it so much. I wish I had no idea about office life. But I know exactly what they're talking about.

Because that's what I do.

Who's On First

Gah.

Just as I'm feeling worried about going back to work, I read Charlie Brooker's latest column and am reminded of the pain of the morning commute.

At least it's almost summer, so I won't be getting up in the dark. And by the time winter comes around, I might have won the lottery, so won't have to get up early. If I'm still working, I might fuse a powerful halogen bulb to my head to create instant, dazzling light on those winter mornings.

As depressed as I feel now, I was very happy this afternoon.

I was listening to Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone on BBC 6Music. It's a show full of weird music, and is usually pretty entertaining. Anyway, I was listening to the music, the window was open, reminding me of the summer, and the smell of Lucy's lasagna (the actual dish; that's not some euphemism) was wafting through the room. I felt happy and content.

That happens sometimes. And it's quite reassuring. Because it sometimes seems that the miserable, discontented moods are all there is. I get get in a bad mood for no reason whatsoever. It's refreshing to find that you can fall into similarly inexplicable good moods as well.

I'm sure another good mood will strike me soon, and everything will be hunky-dory. I sometimes think the main determining factors of my mood are the tidyness of the kitchen, and how much fresh air there is in the room.

If the kitchen is spotless, and the windows are wide-open, I reckon I could deal with any disaster (lost wallet, ethnic cleansing, pubic lice, etc) with a smile on my face.

***

I just watched a good documentary on The Who on BBC4. It's called Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who. I enjoyed it a lot. Documentaries have to walk a fine line between being informative and being arty, and this one was just right.

Anyway, I quite like the The Who. But not that much. I admire their aesthetic and everything, I just don't like too many of their songs.

It must have been annoying for all the other 'British Invasion' bands, that not only were The Beatles the biggest and most famous group, but they were also the best.

Usually, the most popular things aren't the most talented, and the ultimate genius is outside the mainstream. But the Beatles did both.

Poor Who.

Phrase and Feeble

I'm experiencing rapid mood swings; no doubt as a result of living in a precarious situation. I don't have a job yet, and need money, so want a job, but hate working, so don't want a job. You may remember this cycle from the past four months of my life.

But now it's wearing thin. A really thin cycle. A penny-farthing made of hay. Thin. Yeah, thin.

My state of being is so precarious that I experience constant ups and downs of emotion, caused by the most insignificant thing.

I got a second interview! - UP

I've got to go to a second interview. - DOWN

I might be earning some money soon! - UP

I might be working full-time soon. - DOWN

I just bought a muffin! - UP

Pompey are in the Cup Final. - DOWN

Saints won at the weekend! - UP

The planet is dying of ozone and wars. - DOWN

I'm writing a list of mood swings! - UP

I hate lists. - DOWN

I don't like being so erratic. It makes me feel weak. I'd like to be able to marshal my moods through sheer willpower, but I keep getting distracted by birds and teletext.

I should be using my free time to do something constructive, I suppose. But I'm writing this instead and, although it is a kind of construction, it's not very useful.

I have probably written many other posts sharing my dissatisfaction with my situation, but it never seems to change. I should stop being boring and write about something interesting.

***

I know, I'll impart some sayings that Lucy and I have invented. They're useful for certain situations. You have our permission to start using them in conversation. If we increase usage, we can make sure they become commonplace. Given that Lucy is an insider in the Oxford English Dictionary, expect to hear more about them in the coming months.

Firstly, an expression describing something difficult, perhaps an impossible and thankless task:

Fucking the capital 'A'
eg. "Trying to get my Uncle to recycle is like fucking the capital 'A'"
The origin of the phrase is unknown, but I think it comes from a discussion about which letter of the alphabet would be the most uncomfortable to have sex with. Think about it.

Secondly, an expression stating how someone is having a highly productive streak:

Raping the Week
eg: "Finished a couple of projects, lucky at the bingo, got given a knighthood. I tell ya, I'm raping the week!"
This highly unpleasant phrase is a way of showing a triumph over fate and circumstance. I'm going to blame Lucy for its invention.

I'll post some more when I think of them.

Right, I'm going to try to find something that will alter my mood. Perhaps an online episode of TMWRNJ? That should clear away the angry voices in my brain.

A Long Walk

I went to register with a temping agency today: a depressing prospect, but a necessary one. I decided to walk into Oxford (and my lack of money concurred with my decision), which is about 40 minutes (slightly longer than I had allowed for). On the way, I saw a couple of ominous omens.

First, I saw that people had left flowers by signposts on the pavement, obviously at the site of some fatal accident. But there seemed to be flowers by quite a few posts, for quite a long way. Either no-one was sure exactly where the victim had died (the most likely explanation), or there had been several accidents on that same stretch of pavement. A scary possibility. I wondered if I was walking in some death-trap. Perhaps this pavement was right next to a bit of road perennially covered in ice and marbles. Luckily I didn't die.

The only other possible explanation for the large range of floral tributes, was that the accident was of such force that the victim was smashed into several pieces, each landing at a different location. If I had been quick enough, I could have looked at one of the cards, and if it said "R.I.P Gerald's left leg", I would have know I was right.

It got me thinking; what happens if someone is run over in a cemetery? The flower system would be all screwed up. Or a florist?

There really should be some protocol in place.

Further down the Banbury Road, I saw an advert for what must have been a careers or training company. It had a cartoon of lots of homogeneous figures going round the cog of a big machine. It asked the question: "Is there more to life than this?". To which someone had answered in graffiti, quite neatly, "No".

It made me chuckle. (Not really. I've never chuckled in my life. I'm not a chuckler. But I was amused). I wondered who had written it. Was it some smiling smartarse, or was it some depressed middle-manager on his way to work. "No. There's nothing more to life. There's no hope. I'm serious. I won't even use an exclaimation mark, as this connotes an unsuitable sense of levity."

It certainly made me feel a bit more depressed about the upcoming possibility of office work.

The registration went ok. I had to do a stupid computer test.

On my way home, I decided to take the scenic route. It's been a beautiful day. Bright sunshine, blue skies, not too cold. I decided to walk through the University Parks, and then through the suburbs towards home. I was listening to some Beethoven string quartets, which added to the whole peaceful beauty of the enterprise.

I kept walking past students, on there way to this library or that orgy, and felt a bit jealous. That lifestyle is long gone. I was treating my walk home as a last reminder of what it's like to be free.

I walked through some really nice areas, and eventually came upon Park Town, which is about half way between Summertown and Oxford. I've wanted to live there for a long time, as it's full of expensive houses, and I once saw a cool looking little old man with a hat and cane get off at that bus stop. Park Town is like my version of Hilldale from Back to the Future II (the 1985 version, not the 2015 version, full of tranqs, lobos and zip-heads).

There's an amazing Georgian terrace there (Georgian? I don't know architecture. It could be 1970s for all I know), which looked incredible in the sunlight. Here's a picture (I took one, but I found this on Google which is better):



















So, that's where I plan to live. I wandered through the similarly idyllic streets surrounding, and was overcome with a sense of tranquility and peace. There was no-one around: no cars, no building sites, no kids (and I'm sure the addition of loads of kids would have ruined the whole impression).

I thought of how working full-time robs you of these pleasures. There's never any time to do anything peaceful and relaxing and pedestrian. The weekends are too busy, and you've got to cram everything into them. I want a lifestyle where I can wander about, maybe get a coffee somewhere, or sit in the park. It saddens me to never have that option.

Then I thought about what it would take to afford a house there, and that depressed me further. I wasn't cheered up by thinking of agency work as the first rung on a ladder to more cash. I think it's more that to afford a place like that, I'd probably have to work so hard, I'd never have time to appreciate it. Unless I become the next J.K. Rowling (without the vagina). Then I can do jack shit all day!

I don't care about being rich (although a new TV would be nice...), I just value leisure time. If I had enough money to spend my days in peace and idleness, I'd be perfectly satisfied.

I also walked past the Dragon School, which seemed kind of posh, and I thought about how cool it would be to say you went to the Dragon School. I don't know if they're taught to breath fire or anything, but I hope so.

In the end I took about an hour to get home. It was a rewarding but slightly disconcerting day. I'm impressed by the beauty of the world, but I'm not sure how best to access it.

On my way home I looked for the cog-machine advert to take a picture of it, but I must have missed it. Or maybe, some idealist took it down for giving a misleading impression of the world.

"There is more to life than this! There is!" he might have said, as he was carried off into the back of a police car and beaten with clubs.

So, is there? I don't know. I really don't. But I hope there is.

When you're smiling...

What am I doing here?

I ask, not in the existential sense, but in the physical one. Why am I in this office? This office. Why am I in this organisation? This city?

It wasn't choice, was it?

That's not to say that it's terrible here. Or even particularly tedious. It's just that I'm sure I should be somewhere else. Surely, someone with such a wide range of egotistical beliefs should be spectacularly failing somewhere expensive.

I am egotistical. It's just not always clear because I'm quiet and shy, and most big-headed people have a mouth to match. (The fact that I literally have a big head and mouth is irrelevant here, I think). I don't think I'm the best at anything, but I'm pretty good at loads of stuff, and I'm exceptionally brilliant at being falsely modest.

I'm certainly more talented than, let's say, Chris Moyles. And I don't hate Chris Moyles. But I could do what he does. Except he's louder than me. That's why he's a success.

And why I'm sitting here, being reasonably well paid to do fuck-all on a computer and drinking coffee from a mug that's dirty because I'm too lazy to go to the kitchen.

I'm lazy and quiet. A dangerous mix. Perhaps I should sellotape a megaphone to my mouth and snort cocaine at the beginning of each day, and I could zoom around the city spraying feedback and invention over the fools that live each day, moderately volumed, moderately hard-working, and unwilling to whine on the internet about their lot.

I'm lazy and quiet and afraid of being part of organisations. I hate the idea of 'working my way up the ladder', or being part of a system. I like temping because it's like tying a rope around me and anchoring myself to my bed so that I can't be sucked into the real world. I hate acronyms and forms and people talking about the quirks of colleagues. If I learn the names of everyone in my office, it's time to leave.

My only hope of success in a field I'm interested in is someone important plucking me off (easy, now) the street and thrusting me into the limelight. Which is difficult because when I'm on the street, I'm listening to my iPod and avoiding eye contact with passers-by.

I'm lazy, quiet, afraid of being part of organisations, and inherently optimistic. This optimism stops me from coagulating in the mass of reality, but also gives me unrealistic expectations.

A long time ago, I realised that I wasn't the main character in my own life. Now, I'm not even part of the cast. I'm just someone who lurks on an internet message board discussion of My Life, and I sometimes think of something to say, but don't post it because I might miss a typo, or because Match of the Day is on.

Hmm.

I'm not sure what that metaphor was about. It didn't really make sense, did it? In fact this whole post didn't make much sense, either. I'm actually pretty happy, and only wrote the above because I'm cold and bored and caffeined up to the arseballs (you heard me).

Well, at least I've added to October's post count! Take that, September, you nonce!

I feel a tremendous sense of achievement in writing about myself, to myself.

I'm lazy, I'm quiet, I'm afraid of being part of a system, I'm optimistic, and I'm so fucking egocentric it makes me want to puke

or dance or something I dunno....

Ears Lowered - Check

In much the same way as I am too scared to complain about poor service in a restaurant, I could never complain when the barber shows me the back of my head in that mirror.

I think I purposely choose simple hair cuts for this very reason. Even if the reflection showed a polaroid of my mum, beaten and gagged, stapled to my neck, I'd probably just nod and smile; "that seems fine!"

To be honest, I'm not that fussed about the back of my head. The front of my head (or 'face') is more important in making a good impression. If someone's looking at the back of my head they've either offended me so much I've had to leave, or are entering me from behind. In either case, they've probably made up their mind about me.

Anyway, my hair is shorter, which has made my head transform from gallon to pint. I can only compensate by wearing increasingly elaborate hats.



***

I'm listening to some weird music on Radio 3. Ligeti's Lux Aeterna. It is kind of freaking me out, but then again I reckon anything sung by the Latvian Radio Chorus is gonna be a bit scary. They could sing Deep Blue Something's Breakfast at Tiffany's and make me want to kill myself.

Actually, that song always made me want to kill myself.

***

Sadly, my indecision about my future continues and time keeps moving at the same rate. I've applied for a BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme, and even mentioned keeping this blog in my application. I'm sure all the Harry Potter talk and rape jokes will help my cause.

I think a move back to Oxford or London are on the cards, as living in Sidmouth becomes less tolerable as the leaves begin to fall and the ice-cream stalls close and the nubile young tourists are replaced by old women wrapped in shauls, shuffling along like characters in a Chekhov play.

Everything is just too still. And yet I'm getting older.

I feel like I'm in a parallel universe where everything is running at a different rate. Maybe when we finally get to London, I'll be old and shrivelled, and all of our contemporaries will be firm and fresh-faced and ask us where we've been. And I'll choke out an answer; only the answer will be in the form of a phlegmy, rasping death-rattle, and they'll turn back to their glass of Rioja and laugh rich, fruity laughs.

I should really stop listening to Ligeti.

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Oh, I know of something cheerful! The Go Faster Stripe website sells really good comedy DVDs from people who probably won't get mainstream releases (or will fail anyway).

I recently bought Stewart Lee's 90's Comedian (I've started italicising titles for some reason) and Simon Munnery's Hello (good name) and they are both very funny. The DVDs are properly produced, look great, and even have extras. I highly recommend having a look. Next on my list is some Richard Herring.

Herring was at one of the gigs where I did stand-up, but I was too afraid to go and talk to him beforehand.

Here's a taste of some Stewart Lee:




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I'd better go and find a hat. I'm thinking... wait for it... a top hat with one of those propellors on top. I'd be King Hat.