I'm sure I must earn some sort of commission for wantonly working a rubbish Wet Wet Wet song into a blog title, will remember to look into that at the first opportunity. However, my endless quest for small considerations aside, I thought it time (it being the end of a lazy, hazy and in and out phasey sort of summer) to confront the mysteries that remain unanswered in my triumphant, heroic and devil-may-care life.
As we hurtle towards my 39th anniversary (the numbers there are pronounced 'look great for your age'), the following are mysteries that remain unanswered. They trouble me, irk me, annoy me and vex me in unequal measure, but perhaps by posting them here the answers will come and I can move forward more aware of the dark conspiracies that have shaped my now. Or at least we can have a damn good laugh remembering.
1) When you say 'prefer you as a friend' - is this some sort of damage limitation exercise? Is my mere presence of discomfort to you and, as such, you want to limit the discomfort to non-sexual contact? Surely my friendship isn't preferable in that it provides a greater sexual high than the love-Dave? I want it on record that I shall be extremely disappointed if it turns out you just prefer me somnewhere else with someone else but you are too bloody chicken to say so.
2) THAT tape - I have one copy, I want to know where the second copy is. Some of you reading this know damn well which tape I mean - not my soberest night, nor my best judged selection of choice tales and phrases. I tell you this though, whilst I have no recollection of what Don looked like, I remember he was on the line that night.
3) Those bloody magic picture things - none of them are anything more than a collection of dots. Is it some great joke I am too stupid to understand? Or are the dots really hiding a substandard representation of a real life object?
4) The Harry Potter glasses phase - why did none of you tell me I looked like a freakin dork for 3 years? I was wearing round glasses, ROUND glasses!!!!! I was a best man in round glasses. Unforgivable fashion advice failings on the part of the rat pack.
5) X-Factor - the attraction is what, exactly? 4 months of endless drivel and brats with vaguely tuneful voices. Give me a break. Seriously, someone enlighten me - what the fractal is the attraction in watching it? 10 people sing a bad song, badly. And then you spend money voting for which of them you want to return the next week to sing someone else's terrible tune, awfully.
6) Big Brother, I'm a Celeb, Strictly, Love Island etc etc etc - rinse and repeat 5)
7) Toby - my beloved first cat, Toby - where did Toby go? It has haunted me for 25 years! Where's my pussy cat damnit! I realise that he would now be 33 and therefore it is unlikely I will find him, but still. And anyone offering unkind suggestions will have a pox on them I say, a pox!
That is all.
Tuesday 31 August 2010
Monday 23 August 2010
Unblock damn you!
I love to write, always have, it is a good way of getting some release on frustrated feelings, but it is also healthy when you have as active and bizarre an imagination as mine. However, over the recent few years I have found it increasingly difficult to commit anything to paper (or, more accurately, the electronica herewith that masquerades as paper). It is as if the Word Wrangler himself has been going Hamburglar on my sweet behind and stealing the words before I can arrange them into acceptable patterns.
So, I am going to write about writing, a tricksy ploy to fool the Wrangler, words smuggled out under the cover of darkness; yep, 3 years into a bad case of the block I am that sneaky. I have a passionate desire to tell you all about the adventures of Pants Cat, a sad excuse for a moggy, the very antithesis of others in that wise and noble genus felis catus, but he has been asleep under the laburnum for the past 4 years since he purred his way into my conscience. I have a splendid idea that I came up with months ago for an audience-interactive play which I have traced the synopsis for, even pictured the protagonist in good detail but I can't seem to get him onto the page, let alone the stage. I have dozens of poems buzzing round my head but I can't fathom out which words go with which meter in which piece.
I really want to start writing regularly again, I want to get back to the story of Pete and Ellie that I began 7 years ago and still has Pete heading home for Christmas 2002 and Ellie smiling at him without the faintest idea of how her world is about to shatter. She probably doesn't deserve it, and she is certainly in no hurry to leak out of my imagination to experience it.
It is extremely frustrating, I need some fashion of shield behind which I can express wantonly whilst the Wrangler twirls his moustache menacingly, but ultimately helplessly, the other side. There must be such a shield, and I must find it soon as I am certain I can hear Pants Cat waking up outside.
So, I am going to write about writing, a tricksy ploy to fool the Wrangler, words smuggled out under the cover of darkness; yep, 3 years into a bad case of the block I am that sneaky. I have a passionate desire to tell you all about the adventures of Pants Cat, a sad excuse for a moggy, the very antithesis of others in that wise and noble genus felis catus, but he has been asleep under the laburnum for the past 4 years since he purred his way into my conscience. I have a splendid idea that I came up with months ago for an audience-interactive play which I have traced the synopsis for, even pictured the protagonist in good detail but I can't seem to get him onto the page, let alone the stage. I have dozens of poems buzzing round my head but I can't fathom out which words go with which meter in which piece.
I really want to start writing regularly again, I want to get back to the story of Pete and Ellie that I began 7 years ago and still has Pete heading home for Christmas 2002 and Ellie smiling at him without the faintest idea of how her world is about to shatter. She probably doesn't deserve it, and she is certainly in no hurry to leak out of my imagination to experience it.
It is extremely frustrating, I need some fashion of shield behind which I can express wantonly whilst the Wrangler twirls his moustache menacingly, but ultimately helplessly, the other side. There must be such a shield, and I must find it soon as I am certain I can hear Pants Cat waking up outside.
Thursday 19 August 2010
Meltdown
This is a terribly hard entry to write in a blog and I am doing it in the main as a cathartic exercise. I want to describe what happened to me late last year when I went into meltdown with my OCD and depression and everything started to collapse around me.
In hindsight, I had been bubbling along on a rolling simmer for some time, certainly several months and probably more like 3 or 4 years. I started to feel ill with what I thought was a stomach bug as I couldn't eat without getting pains and couldn't digest anything properly so I took some time off work to recuperate, but the stomach was getting no better. In the end, I was off for the full week and by the next Monday I returned but I still felt odd and deep down I was starting to realise something was wrong. As I now recall, the OCD had been flaring up more and more, on occasion I found myself unable to leave at the end of my shift - staring at my phone to check it was logged out, I couldn't make myself believe I had turned it off. I would check my drawer was locked again and again and by the time I returned, I was starting to injure my hand in pulling at the locked drawer in fervent checking. Leaving the house in the morning was becoming more and more difficult, strange new routines were starting to imbed themselves in my morning checks for locked doors and on several occasions recent to this I had got to the car and onto the road only to stop, return home and repeat the checks.
Worse was to come in that week. I found that even night was no respite as I found it impossible to swtich off at the end of the day. I couldn't get to sleep and was reliving events from the recent and distant past over and over. I believe it is similar to the PTSD experience, the flashbacks were not just 'thinking' about events or situations, the taste and feeling of them was as raw as the event themselves - like a home video of your past as your reality with no way of switching it off. The noise, the fear, the confusion and the tiredness were overwhelming and I was desperate for some peace from it. The dam burst on the Thursday. I went to set out earlier than normal, much earlier and yet spent perhaps 25 minutes unable to settle upon a routine of checking the door was locked that would allow me to go. I was angry, afraid and tired and I pulled the door handle so hard I thought I had broken my hand on it. Then I burst into tears. Not frustrated tears or angry tears but a total and uncontrollable sobbing, tears of complete and crushing defeat.
I managed to reach the car and drive to work. The journey seemed to take forever and the whole way I was panicked inside, I thought I was losing my mind, losing myself. I was wracked with waves of shame and revulsion of myself, the depression had such a hold now that even thinking of loved ones, of family led me to more distraught as I thought they would be ashamed of my insanity (as I saw it). There were several episodes of tears at work and I was, by now, totally out of my own control and at the mercy of the OCD and the depression. I booked an appointment at the GPs and I really don't remember much about going there other than the constant tears, the fear and the growing sense of losing myself.
My collpase into depression was complete at the surgery - I was barely able to get the words out, the walls were closing in around me I was literally terrified that I would never regain control of my own mind, it felt as if I was being choked, strangled. That was the lowest point, that afternoon and evening - so tired I could barely focus, so frightened I didn't want to do anything, so locked into patterns I couldn't enjoy, couldn't taste, couldn't really think, petrified of letting anyone in as I couldn't bear them to see me like that and yet completely and utterly alone whilst the world screeched in my ear in total discord.
This really doesn't describe it properly to be honest, but it is a start. it has been an awfully long road back, and an adjustment to accept that my OCD is a disability like any other disability and that my focus is not 'curing' it but learning to adapt and to accept and to cope with it without damaging the rest of me, without letting the depression back in. Mental disability really is misunderstood and it wasn't until I sought help for mine that I realised the difficulty describing, dealing with and making people understand a disability with no scars or outer markings.
It does feel like I have turned a corner though. It is a good feeling.
In hindsight, I had been bubbling along on a rolling simmer for some time, certainly several months and probably more like 3 or 4 years. I started to feel ill with what I thought was a stomach bug as I couldn't eat without getting pains and couldn't digest anything properly so I took some time off work to recuperate, but the stomach was getting no better. In the end, I was off for the full week and by the next Monday I returned but I still felt odd and deep down I was starting to realise something was wrong. As I now recall, the OCD had been flaring up more and more, on occasion I found myself unable to leave at the end of my shift - staring at my phone to check it was logged out, I couldn't make myself believe I had turned it off. I would check my drawer was locked again and again and by the time I returned, I was starting to injure my hand in pulling at the locked drawer in fervent checking. Leaving the house in the morning was becoming more and more difficult, strange new routines were starting to imbed themselves in my morning checks for locked doors and on several occasions recent to this I had got to the car and onto the road only to stop, return home and repeat the checks.
Worse was to come in that week. I found that even night was no respite as I found it impossible to swtich off at the end of the day. I couldn't get to sleep and was reliving events from the recent and distant past over and over. I believe it is similar to the PTSD experience, the flashbacks were not just 'thinking' about events or situations, the taste and feeling of them was as raw as the event themselves - like a home video of your past as your reality with no way of switching it off. The noise, the fear, the confusion and the tiredness were overwhelming and I was desperate for some peace from it. The dam burst on the Thursday. I went to set out earlier than normal, much earlier and yet spent perhaps 25 minutes unable to settle upon a routine of checking the door was locked that would allow me to go. I was angry, afraid and tired and I pulled the door handle so hard I thought I had broken my hand on it. Then I burst into tears. Not frustrated tears or angry tears but a total and uncontrollable sobbing, tears of complete and crushing defeat.
I managed to reach the car and drive to work. The journey seemed to take forever and the whole way I was panicked inside, I thought I was losing my mind, losing myself. I was wracked with waves of shame and revulsion of myself, the depression had such a hold now that even thinking of loved ones, of family led me to more distraught as I thought they would be ashamed of my insanity (as I saw it). There were several episodes of tears at work and I was, by now, totally out of my own control and at the mercy of the OCD and the depression. I booked an appointment at the GPs and I really don't remember much about going there other than the constant tears, the fear and the growing sense of losing myself.
My collpase into depression was complete at the surgery - I was barely able to get the words out, the walls were closing in around me I was literally terrified that I would never regain control of my own mind, it felt as if I was being choked, strangled. That was the lowest point, that afternoon and evening - so tired I could barely focus, so frightened I didn't want to do anything, so locked into patterns I couldn't enjoy, couldn't taste, couldn't really think, petrified of letting anyone in as I couldn't bear them to see me like that and yet completely and utterly alone whilst the world screeched in my ear in total discord.
This really doesn't describe it properly to be honest, but it is a start. it has been an awfully long road back, and an adjustment to accept that my OCD is a disability like any other disability and that my focus is not 'curing' it but learning to adapt and to accept and to cope with it without damaging the rest of me, without letting the depression back in. Mental disability really is misunderstood and it wasn't until I sought help for mine that I realised the difficulty describing, dealing with and making people understand a disability with no scars or outer markings.
It does feel like I have turned a corner though. It is a good feeling.
Tuesday 17 August 2010
New Poem
This is the first new piece of any type (poem, short story or other) I have written in about 3 years. Never mind the quality, feel the width, it feels good to get something out again!
Title undecided
The midnight tears still tumble on
And keep the Fates amused.
Totemic of the tattered hope
You casually abused.
Shades of futures slipped from grasp
Still haunt my waking hours,
The cruellest hint of might-have-beens
In lovers bearing flowers.
The darkness settles once again
And cloaks the house in sorrow
Which sucks the joy from yesterday
And poisons our tomorrow.
Yet this carnage you have left
Is as nothing to the fear
That now I'll shun the worthy love
Of gentler souls drawn near.
Title undecided
The midnight tears still tumble on
And keep the Fates amused.
Totemic of the tattered hope
You casually abused.
Shades of futures slipped from grasp
Still haunt my waking hours,
The cruellest hint of might-have-beens
In lovers bearing flowers.
The darkness settles once again
And cloaks the house in sorrow
Which sucks the joy from yesterday
And poisons our tomorrow.
Yet this carnage you have left
Is as nothing to the fear
That now I'll shun the worthy love
Of gentler souls drawn near.
Monday 16 August 2010
Eighties/Nineties/Noughties shoot out
All the decades are restless again, clamouring to earn top spot in my affections. I say all, but in truth the Seventies are too busy sorting tank tops and corduroy trousers into piles to get too involved (actually, in truth the decade of my infancy has no place in the cut throat world of decade ranking, but I don't want it getting a complex)
What to do, what to do? The random list could be of assistance here, indeed several random lists - the top 5 films, songs, tv shows and gadgets of each decade in direct combat. Once I see the evidence in front of me, then surely the answer will come.
Films
80s - Some Kind of Wonderful, The Breakfast Club, Airplane 2! The Sequel, Back to the Future, Amadeus
90s - Four Weddings and a Funeral, Silence of the Lambs, American Beauty, Dogma, Trainspotting
00s - Lord of the Rings trilogy, No Country for Old Men, Vantage Point, Coyote Ugly, Juno
Songs
80s - Personal Jesus, Killing Moon, Life In A Northern Town, Walls Come Tumbling Down, Open Your Heart
90s - Common People, Paranoid Android, On Your Own, Saturday Night, I am the Resurrection
00s - Music RIP 1997 - nothing worth listening to in the 00s (slightly pejorative)
TV
80s - Yes Minister, Edge of Darkness, Boys From the Black Stuff, Naked Video, Not the Nine O'Clock News
90s - Twin Peaks, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Red Dwarf, Our Friends In The North, This Life
00s - Heroes, West Wing, The Office, Family Guy, 24
Top 3 Gadgets
80s - Soda Stream, ZX Spectrum, Walkman
90s - Playstation, widespread Mobile Phone coverage, Cappucino maker
00s - IPod, Netbook, IPhone
So, there we have it, the noughties clearly kick ass on gadgetry but the 80s clean up on music, film and TV with the 90s nowhere on anything and trail in a poor third. Noughties take the silver despite failing to provide any music WHATSOEVER! The clear and indisputable top decade is, of course, the 80s!!
What to do, what to do? The random list could be of assistance here, indeed several random lists - the top 5 films, songs, tv shows and gadgets of each decade in direct combat. Once I see the evidence in front of me, then surely the answer will come.
Films
80s - Some Kind of Wonderful, The Breakfast Club, Airplane 2! The Sequel, Back to the Future, Amadeus
90s - Four Weddings and a Funeral, Silence of the Lambs, American Beauty, Dogma, Trainspotting
00s - Lord of the Rings trilogy, No Country for Old Men, Vantage Point, Coyote Ugly, Juno
Songs
80s - Personal Jesus, Killing Moon, Life In A Northern Town, Walls Come Tumbling Down, Open Your Heart
90s - Common People, Paranoid Android, On Your Own, Saturday Night, I am the Resurrection
00s - Music RIP 1997 - nothing worth listening to in the 00s (slightly pejorative)
TV
80s - Yes Minister, Edge of Darkness, Boys From the Black Stuff, Naked Video, Not the Nine O'Clock News
90s - Twin Peaks, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Red Dwarf, Our Friends In The North, This Life
00s - Heroes, West Wing, The Office, Family Guy, 24
Top 3 Gadgets
80s - Soda Stream, ZX Spectrum, Walkman
90s - Playstation, widespread Mobile Phone coverage, Cappucino maker
00s - IPod, Netbook, IPhone
So, there we have it, the noughties clearly kick ass on gadgetry but the 80s clean up on music, film and TV with the 90s nowhere on anything and trail in a poor third. Noughties take the silver despite failing to provide any music WHATSOEVER! The clear and indisputable top decade is, of course, the 80s!!
Saturday 7 August 2010
Wetting your pants is a sign of genuine appreciation, or incontinence
Time for a random list. I like a good laugh - and the following are the biggest generators of belly laughs I have come across in my (less than 40) years on the planet. Think about what makes YOU laugh, have you ever wet your pants because your neigbour suffered serious lacerations during a misjudged lawnmower interface? If you have, you are a dreadful human being and should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.
1) Joe Beesley and Cheeky Monkey on KMKY with Alan Partridge
2) The scene in Porky's where the staff are trying not to laugh about the request for a penis line-up
3) Someone attempting to interview me using a hairbrush as a mic (don't ask!)
4) The bit in Gregory's Girl where Gregory is late and playing pretend football in the playground as the staff look on
5) Also from Gregory's Girl - the high jumper in the background who can't get over the lowest setting
6) 95% of Blazing Saddles
7) Stiffler and the Bear's dance off in American Pie:The Wedding
8) Most of Blue Harvest and Something, Something, Something Darkside
9) William Shatner on the TV monitor in Airplane 2
10) David Lloyd taking one in the nuts on tour in Australia and retiring hurt unable to walk.
1) Joe Beesley and Cheeky Monkey on KMKY with Alan Partridge
2) The scene in Porky's where the staff are trying not to laugh about the request for a penis line-up
3) Someone attempting to interview me using a hairbrush as a mic (don't ask!)
4) The bit in Gregory's Girl where Gregory is late and playing pretend football in the playground as the staff look on
5) Also from Gregory's Girl - the high jumper in the background who can't get over the lowest setting
6) 95% of Blazing Saddles
7) Stiffler and the Bear's dance off in American Pie:The Wedding
8) Most of Blue Harvest and Something, Something, Something Darkside
9) William Shatner on the TV monitor in Airplane 2
10) David Lloyd taking one in the nuts on tour in Australia and retiring hurt unable to walk.
Sunday 1 August 2010
The Sunday Proclamation
I have always fancied myself as one of the great dictators, Neroesque if you will, or Calligulastic. A sniffter of The Sun King with a Napoleonic twang, AngloStalin, PapaDave, you get the idea. Rather than ignore these fantasies, I prefer to indulge them and so I set out below these Proclamations that they may be heard and adhered to throughout the land.
The following condiments are hereby named as enemies of the state
Mayonnaise
Malt Vinegar
Salad Cream
Monday shall be replaced by an optional day which must be taken at least 12 times a year by all citizens under pain of torture
Orange is not only not the only fruit, it is also not the only colour
The decades of my life are cool in the following order cool to drab
The 80s
The 90s
The 70s
The Noughties
That is all.
The following condiments are hereby named as enemies of the state
Mayonnaise
Malt Vinegar
Salad Cream
Monday shall be replaced by an optional day which must be taken at least 12 times a year by all citizens under pain of torture
Orange is not only not the only fruit, it is also not the only colour
The decades of my life are cool in the following order cool to drab
The 80s
The 90s
The 70s
The Noughties
That is all.
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