Tracksuit bottoms. Is there any item of clothing that can make a woman look less appealing? Every few months I bow to temptation and put some on to 36
lounge about in and then catch myself looking at the equivalent of a well-fed buffalo in the mirror. Fucking hideous.
I wish I could draw. My drawing resembles that of a four year old with broken fingers. I always liked the idea of being an artist although I never got much further than potato prints. I was even shit at that.
Ended up covered in paint and what must have looked like after-birth on the paper infront of me.
I was on the train some time back, falling asleep, when something caught my eye. Nothing spectacular but it made me stare. The train had stopped momentarily and I looked out of the window at a large supermarket. On the ground floor was a woman, sat at a table in the café, struggling with a bottle of tomato ketchup. If I noticed nothing else it was the fact she looked so fucking desperate.
Forty-one
Life is like a great big pie. One with poo in it.
I went on a training course once. Introduction to Management. What really amused me was that it took me five attempts to get through the front door of the place.
When my partner was in the bathroom that night, he shouted through to me and said whilst I was at the next day’s training, could they add another session, on how to put the toilet roll on the toilet roll holder.
Fucking funny bastard.
37
Forty-two
I recently visited a web site where you can access information about the people you were at school with.
People post up their information so that you can have a nosy and see what they’ve been up to. It’s funny how curiosity gets the better of you and you end up searching for every single person you ever met at school, especially those whose guts you fucking hated just in the hope that they’re having a shit life. It amazed me that the majority of people I knew are now working in IT (note they never refer to it as information technology as it sounds a bit too sad).
Others said they were working in a crap job so that they could save up to do what they really wanted i.e.
go traveling or set up their own business. I don’t think one of them said anything near ‘I’m really happy with what I do’. I’m not criticizing as I know I’m the same but it’s a depressing realization.
Forty-three
Why do I spend my days off staring into space? If I write so much as one paragraph I feel quite chuffed. I really do pity myself.
Forty-four
I no longer want to get up in the mornings and go to work. I find it all so pointless. I’ll re-phrase that. I never really want to get up and go to work but I do it 38
so that I can afford to live. However, today I woke up with a feeling that if I continue doing this same thing day after day after day after day, I will eventually go insane. I’m not just saying that to be funny either. I think I truly mean it.
I’m wasting my life away. Each day my time just slips softly by and each day I feel worse about myself. I have a tendency to get depressed. To stare out of the window and cry. I’m generally happy with my life, it’s the work ethic which depresses me. The fact that I can’t earn a living doing something that I enjoy, which is writing. I really feel the need to do something for myself and spend what time I have expressing myself in a way which makes me feel more comfortable with myself as a human being.
I guess a lot of people would call me selfish. I know I’m not alone working in a shitty job for little more than minimum wage and maybe I should be grateful for the life I have but surely each person needs to reach an equilibrium within themselves where they can actually justify getting out of bed every day. This is my problem.
Coming to terms with myself.
Forty-five
I can see lights below us as we hurtle through the dark. I’ve no idea where we are. I’ve just woken up and can’t seem to find the energy to reach forward to the back of the chair infront to pull out the in-flight magazine and look at the crappy little map at the front which gives little indication of the actual geography of the world. It all looks so distant. If the body of the plane just vanished I would float down, smiling as the 39
lights grew bigger. A few seconds after that I’d be dead but I’m comforted by the thought. Maybe I would fall into trees, cushioning the blow and tumble onto soft ground where some kind old lady would find me outside her cottage and take me in for some hot broth. I look down through the window of the plane and smile at the twinklings of life.
Forty-six
I’ve been in my latest job for nearly a year now. This frightens me. Before that, three weeks was an age. I don’t like ‘proper jobs’, you get stuck inside them and the days start passing too quickly and before you know it you’re looking forward to your own death.
Maybe I should publish my work myself on the back of electricity bills so that I can end the hell. I’m really not surprised that so many people suffer from mental anguish. Society can have that effect.
Forty-seven
I got sacked today. Well honestly, it was only a matter of time. Dismissed. Breech of contract.
I was nice. It surprised me. I really wished I’d told the old sow to stick it up her bum.
I’ve never been sacked before. It’s a very exhilarating experience. I must say I enjoyed every minute of it.
So. Another new job. I don’t know what number I’m up to. I don’t really give a fuck. Not giving a fuck is far better.
40
I’ve got no real career path if my writing doesn’t get published. I think that’s why I continue to faff my way through life. I’ll probably be heading for a nervous breakdown when I re-asses my life in ten years time but I wont let that interfere. Stupidity really. Yet I won’t condemn myself to a life of drivel just yet.
Forty-eight
If you leave the earth and travel in a straight line into space, you will eventually come back to where you started and hit yourself on the back of your own head.
At least that’s one theory. The other is that you keep going and going into infinity. Apparently it all depends on whether space is curved or perfectly straight. We haven’t found out yet. Space may be astronomically smaller than we imagine. Stars we see could be distant reflections of ourselves, our own planet, reflected back to us by light distortion. Or, space could be expanding at an ever increasing rate so that eventually all the mass will prove far too much for it and it will all collapse back in on itself in something similar to the reversal of the big bang, crushing everything into a particle smaller than an atom before ceasing to exist at all.
Fucks with your head doesn’t it.
41
Forty-nine
I look at the menu. I have a choice. It doesn’t matter.
At the end of the day it all tastes like shit anyway.
Rehydrated shit. Chicken Kiev and roast potatoes.
Good combination. Beef Curry. No, you just wouldn’t would you. Vegetarian cannelloni.
I haven’t eaten meat for two years now however I have an urge to order the beef just so as I can sit and look at it and wonder what use all those grizzly bits had for the poor old cow that had its throat slit.
The trolley approaches. Unfortunately the smell proceeds it. ‘Cannelloni, please’, I say pleasantly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, we’ve none of those left….hang on….. Shirley? Have you got any veggie left?...No, I haven’t Emma…plenty of beef though..’‘No. I’m afraid we’re all out. Chicken Kiev or beef curry?’
I pause.