I was just a few metres from home, really. It was dark, as it is now. I was thinking about what needs doing this evening, as one does on the way home.
A strange creature was coming the other way, up the opposite pavement. Like a dog, but with a feline demeanour.
It paused outside a driveway, looked at me as if to say “I’m not a big cat, you chuffing idiot! I’m a fox!”
“Right,” I said “A fox. Well, I’ll see you around sometime then.”
The fox rolled its eyes and turned into the driveway.
When I was a kid, I used to have fuzzy felt.
It consisted of a felt canvas, probably about A4 size, and lots of little felt shapes. Because of the fuzziness of the felt, you could place the felt shapes onto the canvas and it would kinda stick there. Not in a velcro way – it wasn’t that strong – but in a balloon-stuck-to-the-ceiling-by-static kind of way.
At some point the fuzzy felt wasn’t there anymore. I guess my parents got rid of it.
There was no point to this story.
I remember when I was young, I used to lie in bed at night staring up at the corner of my bedroom. And in the strained light, I remember how my depth of vision used to go peculiar, and even though I was perfectly focused on the corner of my bedroom, I would feel like I was actually staring at a point that was a hundred metres away.
And then I’d get scared, and close my eyes, but it wouldn’t help because suddenly the backs of my eyelids looked like they were a hundred metres away. And so I’d try to sleep, but I’d have nightmares where I was standing next to things and they looked like they were actually a hundred metres away.
Those were some of the worst nights of my life. And right now, it is all happening over again. I am sat about twelve inches away from my computer monitor, and I feel like I am staring across fields at it. My hands look like they are six feet away. Everything in this room seems to be far, far out of reach.
It’s not looking good.
7:30!
Yes, tonight I was back in the flat for 7:30pm. I dropped my keys, I was so eager to get in.
I’ve got my whites in the machine, a Pulp CD on the music making compact disc player machine apparatus (the volume control creeping a little bit further clockwise with every track), and a can of Guinness Original by my side.
I have deemed it to be too cold and windy to walk to the gym, and seeing as I don’t get my car back until tomorrow evening, I have undressed and donned my dressing gown for a night of pure relaxation. I shall phone all the friends that I have been neglecting in my late evenings of working, and I shall watch a DVD from my pile of films that I bought under the mistaken impression that I would have time to watch them all.
I shall eat stupid food too. The pathetically small amount of time that I have been spending at home has left the need to buy food nonexistent, so it looks like I shall be eating onion rings, potato wedges and battered mushrooms. Certainly I have had no fruit for weeks.
And then I shall pick up my guitar and play. I shall play my little heart out. And the next time that I am home at such a reasonable hour, I shall dedicate the entire evening to songwriting, and record a little ditty and make it available on this very site. How does that sound?
I’m currently onsite at a client’s buildings, and I’m sharing an office with a crazy lady of Italian (or Sicilian, I’m not sure) origin. She’s great fun, and swears at her computer a lot. But once you get over the swearing, she’s got a heart of gold underneath.
At 5:30, as we were turning off our computers, I mentioned that I was off back to the office to do a bit more work. You see, she has the sort of job where she works pretty much the same number of hours every week, and given my current situation (the words “compulsory unpaid overtime” spring to mind), I find that an appealing prospect.
I enjoy my job, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I wish that it bore some resemblance to the words that I was fed in my interview. I made it quite clear at my job interview that I was a social person, and that I needed plenty of human contact, and I didn’t want to work absurd hours. So what happens? The number of employees halves, and I find myself working every evening for a fortnight. My only consolation is that things should be a bit better for the next two months while I am onsite.
Maybe it’s rose-tinted glasses time, but when I compare my life now to my life two years ago at University, I feel like I’m losing the things that kept me going back then. I used to be able to put time into my interests – a lot of time. I played in two bands and had a weekly show on student radio. Nowadays it feels like they are just things that I use to pad out my CV. I get so little free time that I have to use it all just to catch up with my friends.
It would be nice if time could be reallocated. There are people who are begging for tomorrow to come a little bit sooner, and here am I, wishing that I just had 28 hours in the day. I don’t even dare look at analogue clocks anymore, simply because it is too easy to tell how close to the end of the day it is.
All I can say is thank goodness for ‘bel and her daily e-tea breaks.
Scene: INT
PETE sees some blue smoke coming from somewhere down by the side of the car.
HIS BOSS: “What’s that smell?”
PETE: “Smells like brakes burning.”
HIS BOSS: “I hope it’s not us.”
HIS BOSS looks at the handbrake.
HIS BOSS: “Shit. How long has that been on?”
PETE: “Since the traffic lights two miles back, I’d guess.”
HIS BOSS: “My wife will kill me.”
PETE: (thinks: That would be a shame. Then I’d have to get another job.)
HIS BOSS: “You’d best not tell anyone about this.”
PETE: “My lips are sealed.” (thinks: but my fingers aren’t! Haha!)
My bedroom.
Morning.
I awake. There is light creeping in around the edges of my black curtains.
I look at the clock. It flashes 1:26.
Power cut.
So what time is it really?
I roll across my bed and onto the floor. I slither up the dresser and claw my watch from the surface.
It’s about 7.30. I have woken up at pretty much the time that my alarm would have gone off.
I go back to bed. Now I’ve got the perfect excuse for a lie in.