such blissful experience

So where have I been? what have I been doing? I know you are all ears to hear. I’ll reveal all.

For the last few days I’ve been having a wicked time living in Liverpool with Nightingale. Three days of wandering by myself, visiting museums and art galleries and shopping. Only bettered by evenings of film and fun with Nightingale herself, home from work. Not merely this but we also managed to squeeze in a takeaway and a french resturant and i’ve readied each to the nostalgic banks of my brainpan.

Arriving back from said few days pretty early Friday morning and the tide is in just the right place for a sail. Again I’ve the honour of steering her, while my father and his friends recline supine with only the burden of watching the distant shore in all its beauty, give way to an ever widening league of calm water.

We raced another yacht and soundly thrashed them even with their attempt to shorten the distance against our stern in a shameful attempt to make us turn off and abandon the engagement.

Afterwards was the ceremonial drinking session, my mother joining us for this particular section of the sailing lifestyle. And there we stayed until the sun dipped itself into the sea behind us and the heady air lessened its sticky grip to the call of a soothing breeze.

There is no way I cannot romantisise such blissful experience, there is no shame in showing how truely blessed you feel to have such opportunity.

This morning saw a small brick sail through the window of my idealised world though. A man, on seeing that I did not partake of communion with the rest of the flock, decsended and started to preach to me. His words laced with the smugness of a self-satisfied mind, I was forced to smell his stale breath as well as to listen to his sermon.

I told him straight. “I have no faith and do not feel myself lacking.” Except that I do feel a lack, just not the lack of a god. It is a god-shaped hole, as I have always commented, but only in that sense of it being a borderless gap. Only in the sense that nothing is large enough, it seems, to fill it.

Regardless, I carried on. “I’m very moved that you came to speak to me, but i’m not going to be a hypocrite and drink HIS blood if I do not agree with the ritual.”

That said, he smiled a sacrimonious smile and said “Son, what’s your name?…” “Son, I think next week you will drink with me.”

“I do not know I will be here next week.” I replied.

“One sunday you will drink with me. I am sorry if I have offended you.”

“No, not at all.” Leaving it here, except within my head rang the words – ‘I’m actually glad one of you people took it upon yourself to speak to me, no one else has and its pretty clear that is the reason that this congregation is flagging.’

The simple truth is that the whole building it apathetic about its faith, afraid to get in the face of the unbelievers. Afraid to say their way is the right way. That’s a shame.

I’m glad people preach, I’m glad there are outreach programs for every system of worship. I don’t see faith as bad and surely if you believed that people you meet were going to burn in torment forever, you’d have a thing or two to say. They’d do the same if you were about to walk in front of a car, and these people believe that hell is as real as that car, so you can’t argue it is bad for them to try help us. Were you convinced of its authenticity enough to be fearful of it, you’d try and help if you had an ounce of compassion. So, they are just fulfilling their duty to their fellow man. As long as it stays as a choice that one makes for oneself then it is great.

Anyway, this guy, the loon, he just smacked of ‘L’ plate christian dogmatic fanatisism, he went a bit far – if only in body language.

Now sitting at the kitchen table, I’m reminded that most of my life i’ve been battered constantly by the wind and wave and zeal of a christian family and I’ve very rarely faultered in my own conviction. That only being that God does not, as far as I have experienced, exist. I guess that I’m desensitised to preaching, that or bull-headed. Maybe both. Maybe neither and I’m just more open-minded than my parents. I don’t know, or care. Safe to say, I’m not closing off my head to sooth my heart any time soon.

-=-

My goodness, I’m late getting this onto the net. I’m currently sitting in my seat in front of the 50-inch HD tv, watching a program about rivers. Griff Rhys Jones presents. I love it.

Okay, so. We didn’t get out this afternoon on to the marine lake. It ended up being a slagging match between parents. It ended up being a massive stress which I managed to avoid, choosing instead to keep my focus on the books I’m reading.

Right now the news is on.

Did I miss anything?

Filed under: Drinking, Existence, Family, Happy, Today, about me, hopes , afternoon, escape, Happy, Nightingale, sailing, sea, twitter, writing

kissing? really?

Mistaken Intentions.

Been a while since i’ve written on here about my misadventures.

Spurred into thought by the recent happenings on Big Brother I was thinking about the whole ‘friend with benefits’ thing. Throughout university I seemed more than capable of keeping said type of relationship alive. However, the main contender for the role of ultimate ‘friend with benefits’ has to go to…

And you thought I’d name her.

No.

It was a good thing and I still count her as a great friend. She never failed to entertain. We’d go on nights out together and have a wicked time necking at the end of the night. It was great. Without it I might have been more unfaithful to the then girlfriend.

God I was a prick back then. Maybe I still am.

Anyway.

The question on the show was can it work. Can the friend’s with benefits thing really work out. Well after knowing the girl for about 3 years, the answer is – yes.

So don’t doubt it.

I still think sex is a handshake.

A trivial meeting of flesh.

So, what do you think? Does it work for you?

Filed under: Drinking, Existence, Friends, Girls, Happy, Love, Reality, Sex, Women, Youth, about me, other people's lives

Lessons Learnt

Lessons Learnt

When I came to this land of sandstone and moody weather. This dockside city and this peninsula. When I came to this new backdrop, I had no clue what lay in store for me. I had little knowledge of who I would meet. I had still less idea what I might do to make a living. I had a small collection of belongings and a small collection of clothes.

Almost six months have passed and I still have no clue what to do to earn a living. Then again, I’m in no hurry to. However, I have met a good stock of irregular people who now form a very integral part of my existence.

Not least of those I have met one who has made a very clear impression on me.

I come to the six month stage reflectively. I met the challenge of collating my lessons and describing myself in two senses. The former self and the fresh self.

Former.

I was selfish, a liar and a coward.

Fresh.

I am selfish (though less so) and cowardly. Though I no longer lie to anyone, not at all to myself.

Former.

I drank and ate in order to sate my boredom, lethargy and to comfort a troubled heart. I was self-destructive.

Fresh.

I have used self-destructive energy to create things. Jewelry, gadgets, art, writing, video, photographs. I drink only socially. I eat only when I am hungry. I have awakened myself to the need for challenge in my daily life and my troubled heart is therefore somewhat eased.

I should not consider myself truly a better person. Merely a different one. I do think that I am better equipt for life. The previous me was a lot more giving (but recklessly so) and that secured a wider social circle. In the short term I am not spreading myself so thinly that I cannot cope with the number of people who require my attention.

With all of this thinking, comes a review of my future and how I see myself moving forward.

I’m still awaiting appointments. I’ve set up many contacts with people regarding photography and reviewing and also in the realm of music. I have a keen desire to get more involved in the visual art scene in and around Liverpool. So that is certainly a goal.

I’m still in the process of refining my ideas for the near-future. I’m organizing my focus. More will follow.

Other News.

So I’ve clearly been inspired recently to be more energetic and to that end I have started to make a list of all my books and DVDs. The hope is that I can post the complete list online and have people request things from me, in exchange for other things in return. I am aiming to be less materialistic. So the idea is that I give away one thing to get some title/book in return that I will watch/read and then I will return said title/book to the person. If they like my book, I may well let them keep it. See how much I myself like the book.

I will post later with more details.

Photography is going well. Very well indeed with my camera phone, I’ve caught some wonderful images with it. Will continue to post them to jensensnaps and hope that you will comment on a few, tell me what you think.

I’m working on making my way over to a few gigs in Liverpool in the next few days. I’m thinking it will be both a chance to take some snaps and also an opportunity to do some reviewing. See if I’ve kept my ability in that sense.

Writing.

Writing is going wonderfully. Really working hard and hope to make a writing blog shortly, until then I will continue to use the excerpts section on here.

Reading.

I’m reading Quest for Adventure: Ultimate Feats of Modern Exploration (Hardcover) by Chris Bonington’ http://amzn.com/0792279530 – which is about…

‘There is a special breed of person who thrives on risk, for whom an unconquered mountain or an unexplored ocean represents an irresistible challenge. Some are world-famous — Hillary, Heyerdahl, Chichester — while others are known only to a tightknit group of their peers, but all share certain hallmark qualities: a fierce desire to be first and best; a deep commitment to their goals; and most important of all, a kind of determination and endurance that is even more spiritual than physical.

Chris Bonington understands the powerful allure of adventure, and in this enthralling book he chronicles a generous selection of the most remarkable and daring exploits of the past half-century. A record-setting mountaineer, he’s the perfect guide to some, of the world’s most remote, forbidding, and dangerous places, from the blazing sands of the Sahara to the frigid Antarctic ice cap, from the blinding white of a Himalayan blizzard to the pitch-black depths of an underground river. Along with the first-person story of his own pioneering ascent of Annupurna’s treacherous South Face, Bonington presents vivid accounts of 16 other epics — on land, on water, and in the air.

We voyage across the Pacific with Thor Heyerdahl’s crew on the primitive balsa raft called Kon-Tiki and ride the jet stream around the world in the gondola of the ultra-modern Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon. We free-climb the vertiginous face of El Capitan and follow the footsteps of solo climbers into the Death Zone of Karakoram peaks. We cling alone and desperate to a tiny, dismasted sailboat in an Antarctic ocean gale, fight gun battles with murderous bandits during the first boat descent of the rapid-strewn Blue Nile, cave-dive hundreds of feet beneath the English hills, and much more.

This book isn’t just a lively narrative of 17 great adventures; its also an expert overview of the history, lore, and techniques of aeronautics, ocean sailing, mountaineering, and polar trekking, to name just four, as well as a wonderful portrait gallery of scores of colorful figures, familiar names, and unsung heroes alike. Finally, it’s a fascinating analysis of the wide variety of styles and personalities drawn to adventuring, observed with the keen eye of an experienced insider.

Highlighted by more than 125 photographs, illustrations, and maps, these truly suspenseful tales of triumph — and often tragedy — offer a wonderful panorama of adventuring and its all-or-nothing champions, the extraordinary men and women who feel most alive when they are on the very edge of a perilous unknown.’

Also reading some other books, but going slowly on them because they are what I call ‘food books’ rather than ‘reading books’. So some digestion is required and notes are taken to tear the things into smaller ‘bite-size’ pieces.

Filed under: Bath, Day-to-day, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Girls, Strangers, about me, books, connection, hopes, job, music, news, prose, work, writing, writing the novel

songs about me

So I’m still not feeling fulfilled.

I have a great life. No need to work. No deadlines. No stress. But I still don’t feel like I actually can be bothered breathing.

That isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m very happy at a lot of things in my life. Great relationships with people, great deal of success already with my projects.

I’ve taken to making jewellery and that is going really well.

I can now juggle. I can make my funky art. I can write (i’m really producing some amazing work). I can make clothes. Upholster chairs. Sail the family boat. Travel when i like.

I have a 32inch hd tv in my room. Surround sound. Dvd player. Laptop. Camera. Camcorder. Guitar. Typewriter. Sewing Machine. Mountains of books and dvds. I have material things to make one tear your own material to pieces in lamentation.

I’ve taken up photography and that is going really really well – as i’ve been offered a fair few opportunities of late to take photos of all sorts of events etc.

Just to touch on writing again. I’ve written the most exciting pieces of fiction ever recently!

I’ve not gotten drunk in weeks and weeks and weeks. So i know i’m not an alcoholic. I’m just a bit of twat when it comes to knowing my limit. So i learnt that lesson! lol – (On the flip side, due to not drinking i’ve picked up on inherent social anxiety, so i think that is why i drank a lot – to lubricate the old personality and push away the fact i get scared in big groups. I draw a lot of energy from people, but crowds really upset me and get me timid. Hence many times leaving parties and street festivals and declining to go on trips off to outdoor festivals too..  when i then lied and came up with some lame excuse. Least now i’m honest enough to admit i’m just a pussy when it comes to large groups.)

But it all amounts to a hill of beans when even on these bloody pills I still can’t seem the conjure up a will to live.

I had a song written about me a while back and the idea of it was – that Much came “to realise that it is life that you (I) despise.“

I’m sure that isn’t true, as much as it is too strong a thing for me to feel toward life. I’m not crying out for help, nor even really making much of an assertion past the simple honest truth.

I don’t care.

I really couldn’t care less.

With that is freedom and oblivion – but i really have no opinion on the matter of life and its vice and virtue.

The last relationship fell on a sword of my uncaring. I’d given up hiding behind a mask made of smiles. Showed a little too much of what it means to live near me. That there is very little that can stir up a case of genuine joy.

Maybe pills are making me apathetic and i’m looking back on life through these eyes, but i think i’ve pretty much always had this outlook.

She goes on to ask why I “must be so blue.” – It used to be up on last.fm, but it has been taken off now – but it is still a damn good song, despite the personal nature of it.

I really don’t try to be. I’m the life and soul. I’m happy and moving like a blur and i still can’t seem to shake this apathy.

Perhaps it is to give me a little wall between my mind and the worry of death? I used to worry about that a lot as a kid. Death became a sort of monster to me, stalking the land, killing indiscriminately, no proof of hereafter, of continuation. I feared a lack of a thereafter more than anything else. Here i am, several years later – not caring.

Perhaps i got bored of the question.

Unsolved questions will drive you mad – unless you temper it with some disinterest.

I’m quite able to hold myself out of the top floor window in my house and not fear the fall. Is that scary? Should i have vertigo to prove i mean to continue?

I’m not sure. I just get the sense that all these wonderful opportunities and skills and talents etc… are just wasted on me. I’m too ambivalent about them all.

Or maybe that isn’t true, maybe what i mean to say is that i can’t hold on to the joy of it for long? I have short bursts of intense happiness and then bam, nothing.

I don’t know, fuck it. At the end of the day it isn’t important. Except i do ache for a little purpose. I’m considering making up a god and just following that blindly. I’ve already taken up Buddhist meditation. That is too much the absence of God, but it meets with the fact i don’t care a stitch for all this junk in my room.

p.s. I’m still pretty lonely and need to meet more people to keep me entertained and motivated.

Filed under: Bath, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Friends, Future, Girls, Happy, Lonely, Travel, Women, Youth, about me, anxiety, childhood, cracks, hopes, much, prose, the novel, undervalued, vacuum, work, writing, writing the novel

photography and other modern aids to social proclivity

Last night saw the emergence of an old character. The social butterfly materialized and I was reduced to a handshake and a winning smile. Exempting of course the camera, slung around my neck like an albatross.

Cast out into an ocean of faces I was taken aside and asked, early on, to be an unofficial photographer in exchange for free drinks.

Colour me interested!!

Then again, I’d have walked around with a kick me sign to get to free drink. Not that I knew at this point it was as free as it turned out to be.

I get to the bar and I’m greeted by a delightful looking barmaid. I ask her the question, handing her the token, “What restriction does this have?” – I’m in return given a reply that almost made me weep. “None, what are you having?”

I’ll not lie, of course I’ve been happier. The point however, is that this night had changed beyond my expectation and turned into something skirting the hem of euphoric.

I ran the mile taking photographs of everything – band, broads and bouncers.

I chucked back more free spirit than I was showing and came to the band room at the back, exchanged my card with people and then left.

I woke up as the daylight vision of myself. Not at odds with anything. Not a single hairline of negative feeling.

I’ve not been this content after such a heavy night in a long time and I have only Nightingale to thank. Though she wasn’t there when I woke, I was still given the greatest chance at a glorious, sun worshiping sunday.

Filed under: Drinking, Existence, Friends, Happy, Nightingale, Strangers, connection, music, nights out, solitary

deadlines

I haven’t blogged in so long and it is beginning to effect my mood. I’m sitting here working on the first chapter of another new novel – only this one is my deadline novel that must be written by August 1st.

I’ve chosen the deadline because it gives me a focus – it isn’t even that good a story, but I think you kinda have to chose a shit idea for your first novel and do as well as you can just writing the damn thing.

Another step to becoming a writer.

So now, glass of red wine in one hand and the other typing slowly these very words you are reading. I’m getting back to the plan of getting better. Working out which direction I want to head in.

There will be more, but until then I’ll leave you with the idea for my novel.

-=- (Subject to change at any moment)

‘The Travels of Amos Wright: A Man Washed To Sea As A Boy’ is told from the third person perspective. It charts the life of Amos Wright, a man born in the coastal town of Cornhill. Deciding that he has no excuse left as to why he cannot leave the place he has come to hate – Amos sets out.

After many, many contemplative trains of thought and a bottle of rum, Amos decides to leave. In a moment of madness – that one can only reach once one is drunk out of one’s mind – he steals a rowboat and rows out into the bay and away.

Waking in a boat without oars and with only a thumping headache for company, Amos realizes that his life will now drift on, largely out of his control.

It is a novel that holds no value of any kind, is free to be its obscure and surreal self, to be read only by those who are recovering from depression. The overall message is not a secret. Sometimes breathing is all you need to do to be worthy of the life you have.

Filed under: Depression, Drinking, Future, anxiety, compass, news, novel, prose, the novel, writing, writing the novel

Wide Sargasso Sadness

“Very soon she’ll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they’ve got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it’s a long, long line. She’s one of them. I too can wait – for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie…”

Last page of Part Two. Wide Sargasso Sea. – Jean Rhys

What wakes in me is the knowledge that I am very similar to Antoinette in this novel. (Perhaps we all are and that is the glorious moot point to this whole journey. Each of us have our own yearning for a place to be comfortable. Each of us, the need to escape persecution from a life we have not chosen.) I dread to go on, as I do, about Bath – except that it is still at the core of my subject. The centre of my recent sadness. So I must re-conjure it, yet only in the explorative sense – no hint of the nostalgic.

Bath is a picture to me, a movie, a reel of film. Non, it remains as a negative for me to hold against the light. Raised as a sample. A solution, contained within a petri dish, which I will match against a depression I cannot hope to master. Trying to determine if it would make for a good culture of inoculation. A vaccination against future bouts of restlessness. I know I cannot change who I am, though I can choose a lesser pain and use it to vaccinate myself against further heartache. Allow myself to learn; teach my immune system a way of fighting off every sign of sadness.

I get restless when I am not fulfilled – as we all do – I begin to fear a lack of feeling. Then a fear of feeling too much. I rush around and try to re-ignite my own passion for life. Distract myself from what is undoubtedly on its way. I start to sit and contemplate how I have reached this point in my life. Then I am overwhelmed.

In Bath – after I realized my lack of romantic love for Much – it became clear that I was rushing around and burying myself in other people – so that I wouldn’t lose my good mood. In January things took a nose-dive out of that revelation. So that I wouldn’t dip any lower than I was I buried myself in drink and social things. Invited myself along with American students that I met randomly. Got numbers from them. Planed on sleeping with one. Except even that didn’t save me, it was too late to raise myself.

It didn’t work because, when I reached the understanding that I’d only been treading water – that eventually I’d be drowned, I couldn’t help but reel back and lose control.

So home I went. But I packed away that understanding of myself. Took it with me to pull it out when I was strong enough to look at it. I only need to refine it now. Learn from it. Move forward.

I know what helps me.

Nightingale helps me, she understands my weakness because she has already begun the journey I am now starting. I’ve learnt from her, or rather… her voice is allowing me to hear my own.

Exercise helps me. Just a little a day helps keep those blues away.

Chemistry helps me – understanding that to help myself I need to believe I am simply a mess of chemicals – that there is an equation behind and yet controlling my emotions and I can curtail any lowering of it by simply adding more seasoning. A hint more distraction. A pinch of passion. A sprinkling of spontaneous energetic activity.

As clear as it is that I am preoccupied with Bath and the last few months. As mad as it makes me appear. As obsessive and compulsive and nostalgic as I might come across. I can’t help thinking that actually, it isn’t a negative thing to examine a sadness that could save me. If I didn’t – if I just buried it – then I’d only make the same mistakes.

Much like I did many years ago, leaving the Wirral for university (leaving my first girlfriend), I buried the pain and ignored it. I became a new person like a snake shedding its skin. I’m good at it; I’ve done it many, many times since. It was the wrong thing to do. I should have been smart enough to work out that there was something to gain from understanding ‘why’ I was unhappy with things the way they were.

Maybe it is maturity. Another plateau reached on the struggle to the peak of wisdom. You know, before I lose all logical cognitive function and fall off the other side into senility.

Antoinette moved from her island home – into marriage – and back to her island again. A honeymoon in a hell that she loved. It was her, as she was it. What I read from that decision is the old idea of returning to the scene of the crime.

As she, I have come back to the place of my childhood – a place that has forced such unnumbered pains upon me. As she, I have managed to find a renewed admiration for such a wonderful place. As she, I will face my hardships head-on.

Unlike she, I will overcome the forces met out against me. Unlike she, I will bow to the unconquerable, retreat and repair, so that I may return with redoubled vigor. Unlike she, I  will win a real victory – rather than surrendering to a fact that is unreconcilable.

Antoinette had a childishness about her that never fully lifted. Antoinette retreated into herself – rather than healing, for her, came the notion of hiding. I mean to break the spell of madness.

The book held a lot of goodness in it. I will write more on it.

“Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Adieu. Never Adieu.”

Filed under: Bath, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Friends, Future, Girls, Home, Lonely, Nightingale, Sad, Strangers, Women, about me, anxiety, books, childhood, hopes, novel, writing

digging in and out of holes…

Friday night was dinner in The Egg – as usual, I didn’t eat a meal. I did have fun though, was sat there just loving every min of being with people who are lovely and entertaining, but also inspiring too!

This will be another sparse blog entry, because I can’t really focus. Also, I didn’t take my own camera, so I can’t share the photos unless you follow my friends on twitter.

We stayed in The Egg. Nightingale and I shared chocolate cake, she got her awards for the end of the contest and then Bluebird read out a poem she had written for the occasion.

Then we all moved on to a bar to get trashed. Except, Nightingale and I don’t drink. So a good night was had, watching everyone else get hammered.

After an energetic end to scriptfrenzy, the next day brought with it a certain level nature of feeling. I was still in Liverpool (crashing at Robin’s) so I woke up and headed out to a cafe to get some more writing done. Novel is well on the way! (Again)

I feel like the time-limit of the frenzy really helped me focus and, of course, a little competition takes you a fair amount of the way as well.

Another wonderful start to an amazing month. Still no need to stress or worry – everything just works like it does. No need to feel sad, no reason to hurry either.

Happy happy.

Tomorrow Nightingale is coming to The Wirral so I get to show her around.

Oh, and for the last two days I’ve been… digging a new pond. My parents bought a boat. My living room had a new fireplace fitted. I’ve started work on a song using the keyboard in my dad’s studio. Loads really.

Any questions?

hole.

mountain

Filed under: Drinking, Happy, Nightingale, about me, hopes, work

the ended frenzy…

So script frenzy is over with and I haven’t updated for a while because of that and other reasons.

Many thing have been preying on my mind lately. Mental health being the main one, closely followed by the natural course of life and all things in its wake.

Regardless, much has happened.

Script isn’t ‘finished’ finished – just 100 pages done and the whole idea is ripe in my mind. So I just need to write it out and round it off.

It concerns the exploits of Trip Ryder as he makes his way from trouble and into a new day. He comes out of a relationship with Calista Melia and discovers the more pleasing example of Gravity Hertz. Things are weighed up and Gravity wins out against Volvo Wilco’s argument that Trip should just distract his life away with misogynistic meandering.

After the win of Gravity, Calista returns to win back the only boy she’s been unable to understand. With enigma being the draw, Trip knows he has to play her at that game and dismisses her using her own words – so she can’t read anything more from things.

And that is that, the story in its infancy was nothing like the present day. We’ve more quick wit than a barrel of 20th Century Fox writing monkeys. We’ve got more aching than a dodgy tooth could muster. All encased within the guise of a love story long estranged from the normal formula. Where even mistakes are the order of the day, to lay bare the next step he must take.

The main aim is production.

Tonight – or rather in a few hours – begins the after party of script frenzy. I’m not drinking. Again. I wonder how they will stand the sober me. Things will be okay. Staying out, parents are worried, but standing at ease.

More to follow shortly.

Filed under: Coffee, Competition, Day-to-day, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Friends, Girls, Happy, Home, Love, Women, about me, anxiety, connection, hopes, much, nights out, writing

painting and god-forsaking…

Apologies for the boring nature of this post. Nothing exciting happened today and all my thought have been compressed to diamond dust under the weight of the sadness I’ve felt due to a withdrawal from hell. Except I’m on the mend, taken the right dose again, everything is shifting back into focus.

This morning I woke up, said a blissfully fake ‘good morning’ to my mother (the sentiment existed, it just hadn’t woken in me just yet).

I had coffee, pills, breakfast (crumpets) and then set about sorting what I’d do with the day. There were two niggling concerns. 1) My head docs are coming. 2) I have an appointment at the job centre to go to.

BOTH of which I had completely forgotten the exact date and time for. So I was at a loss.

No sooner had I thought it, than my head docs came to the door. I pretended I knew they were coming all along, they came in. Had a chat. Long and short is that I’ve got to chill out and stay on the meds for a long time to see what we’re up against. Wonderful.

Regardless, that felled one bird.

The next hour a call came asking if they could change my appointment from Wednesday coming (that I now, loosely, have plans on) to Thursday. All’s good says me and up rocks another knock on the door.

Opening it to a rather funny looking bald man (nose too big for his face and fish lips) he informs me that he’s here to give my father the car. I look outside and a Mercedes is sitting by our drive.

All I can think is… my god… I wish I could key-scratch it because that tin-can could have bought a great many people a great deal more than they have.

I’m hating the fact that he’s indulging himself – I have no right to think bad things – the old man sets up orphanages in India and Africa – I think he works hard too – fair play – but that taste in my mouth wont go away. Maybe it comes from never having these things when I was a kid. You just get accustomed to being on a comfortable living and then when extra comes your way – you either respect it if its occasional – or you resent it if it becomes a more constant part of living.

My motto is – ‘we can always do more’ when it comes to helping people. Except if I really look at myself, I’m not doing much at all. That is one thing that will go onto my 101 things. Help 101 people better their lives. Ticked off after  each one, but only if I’m truly honest with myself that I’ve helped.

My bad taste was transfused with a pack of saliva to water it to palatability after my father turned and told us he was taking us for dinner. How quick high-horses trot-on.

Here is the starter.

starter - pan fried tiger prawns and sweet chili on ciabatta

And the main.

sea bass

Wonderful meal.

More driving to get home. I ignore my hatred of the capitalist pig in him, thank him. We move on.

I also did the rest of the stripping, mother and father were both impressed that I was able to finish the whole room in such a short time. My lack of perseverance is legendary. The blemishes of jobs long discarded are marked on the house like battle scars. Half-sanded banisters, half-painted doors, half-…. Well you got the joke before, but I’ll finish it… half-arsed attempts to complete things EVERYWHERE.

Now I’m in bed.

Not sleeping but drowning.

(In wonderful warm coffee to keep me awake)

Filed under: Coffee, Drinking, Family, Food, Home, Today