I've always struggled to understand exactly what I want to do with my life. As a boy, I had the usual dreams of playing football for England, but I never had the desire, as so many young boys seem to, to be a fireman or a train driver or any other cliche you care to imagine. Just to clarify here, I was one of those picked last every lunchtime and so my football dreams were always going to be unrealised!
This situation has never really changed now I have (relatively speaking of course) grown up. The jobs I have had have been interesting and occasionally challenging and I have not gone short of a bob or two, but none of it has been fulfilling. Nothing really screams 'contentment'.
It is time to change all that. I am moving house on this coming Friday to a place in a quiet little North Norfolk village. A nice victorian cottage with a very long and useful back garden backing on to fields. The back garden is what has got me thinking about the future, as I will be out of my current position in the months ahead and needing a new challenge.
I've done the hellraiser bit in my teens and twenties - anyone reading this who knew me then will be able to testify to that, and I think I did it pretty well actually, but with 40 approaching hedonism seems an urealistic goal in life. If nothing else, it makes me ache. No, now is the time for something much more relaxing, something fulfilling and peaceful and gentle. Something that matches the new place.
What do I like? I like good food. What do I like most about good food? Knowing where it came from and that it isn't mass produced, over packaged and with all the flavour and character taken out by dint of travelling too far, for too long in artificial conditions. I've got enough space to grow loads of my own food. Even on the tiny plot I have at the moment I managed to get a fair bit grown, so on the huge plot basic maths has me excited. Not only that, it's big enough comfortably for a few chickens (at least two who will be called Doris and Enid but hopefully 6). You see where we are going here? That's right! Contentmentville.
The hope is this sedentary lifestyle of self-provision will inspire me in my more artistic bent and thaty housed in a nice little office space at the tail end of the garden I can write to my heart (and wallet's) content. Theoretically, this is a barnstormingly good move for me. I also have my eyes on the field to the rear of the property - now that really would be snapped up if I get the chance. Stage two of 'permanent smile' is a small flock of sheep. Well looked after, happy sheep who provide top quality organic meat from a recognised quality upbringing (that's me). If not that field, then one of the farms on the opposite side of the road might have some spare room to rent.
So, there we have it. Retired hellraiser goes pastoral. I'm looking forward to the move immensely. Just one thing missing from the happy picture - I'll tell you her name when I find her.
Saturday 22 January 2011
Thursday 20 January 2011
The Black Veil
Suffocating it descends from the firmament above,
It's wonders ashamed behind the veil.
A sick caress turns to constriction,
The black deposit a chrysallis
Within which I become bleak despair.
Shielded from joy, from hope,
Even my touch carries no sensation
Here in my lonely tomb.
Here all things are but null,
Beneath the veil where daylight
Never comes,
And to this place I will return
When the sudden bitterness brings
It down as ruin upon the fallen.
I must cherish that which milks a smile
All the more, for those times
When the veil descends,
And I forget, and the world is numb.
It's wonders ashamed behind the veil.
A sick caress turns to constriction,
The black deposit a chrysallis
Within which I become bleak despair.
Shielded from joy, from hope,
Even my touch carries no sensation
Here in my lonely tomb.
Here all things are but null,
Beneath the veil where daylight
Never comes,
And to this place I will return
When the sudden bitterness brings
It down as ruin upon the fallen.
I must cherish that which milks a smile
All the more, for those times
When the veil descends,
And I forget, and the world is numb.
Tuesday 18 January 2011
All the things I find it hard to do
Leaving the house, crying in front of you, expressing the maelstrom inside, asking for help, moving on, passing by on the other side, saying no to a pretty face, saying yes to a sour one, falling in love, doing today what I can put off until tomorrow, being serious when I can hide in laughter, telling the damn girl I think she makes the sun rise in the morning, letting my heart break visibly, watching someone elses heart shatter, taking a compliment, giving a realistic answer when hyperbolae are a billion times better, having small dreams, forgetting past pain, finishing what I start, starting something I know I'll finish, accepting injustice, keeping my anger reined in, being who I should be, holding it together, holding it together, holding it together......
Sunday 16 January 2011
Pros 'n' Cons
A debate is raging in my enfeebled old mind Mudpuddlees. Due to some recent reconnective activity with Uni comrades and the looming threat of 40 hanging like a damp and slightly musty teacloth over this November, I am having a crisis of age acceptance. I am raging against the dying of my hair (c'est le mort, pas de colour). At night I wake in a sweat, panicking about pensions and having no issue with which to carry on my legend and subject the world to another round of Mudpuddlage. Oh, and how I yearn yearn yearn for the days of yore.
As we know though, this could surely be a mere bagatelle and in fact I am much better off in my stoically heroic guise. There is only one thing for it, Decade War! Pros 'n Cons just under 20 versus just under 40, Gunfight at the OK I'm Bored etcetera etcetera.
20 Pro
Phenomenal alcohol tolerance
Sordid sexual congress
Confidence of youth
Hair! Good hair!
Uni life, no responsibilities
However, 20 Con
Took all night to get plastered and cost a bomb
Can't remember much of the congress
Arrogance of youth
Financial ruin brought on by hair product procurement
Irresponsible wretch
No money
No house
No f*cking clue!
40 Pro
Cheap date, wussy tolerance level
Cash £££ in the bank
Own my own little piece of England
The wisdom of middle age
Used to look old for my age, now not so much ;)
Have already achieved a lot, don't have the weight of expectation
Sex not so much, Love is the beer!
40 Con
Things ache unexpectedly
Sordid sexual congress = arrestable offence at my age
Have used up more years than I'd like
Yeah, 20 wasn't so damn wonderful when you compare it to now. Basically, I am grumpy because my legs ache a bit today and I got tired lumping stuff about and don't have a wee lassie here to give me a cuddle and make me a cuppa. Good excuse for a blog entry though ;) !
As we know though, this could surely be a mere bagatelle and in fact I am much better off in my stoically heroic guise. There is only one thing for it, Decade War! Pros 'n Cons just under 20 versus just under 40, Gunfight at the OK I'm Bored etcetera etcetera.
20 Pro
Phenomenal alcohol tolerance
Sordid sexual congress
Confidence of youth
Hair! Good hair!
Uni life, no responsibilities
However, 20 Con
Took all night to get plastered and cost a bomb
Can't remember much of the congress
Arrogance of youth
Financial ruin brought on by hair product procurement
Irresponsible wretch
No money
No house
No f*cking clue!
40 Pro
Cheap date, wussy tolerance level
Cash £££ in the bank
Own my own little piece of England
The wisdom of middle age
Used to look old for my age, now not so much ;)
Have already achieved a lot, don't have the weight of expectation
Sex not so much, Love is the beer!
40 Con
Things ache unexpectedly
Sordid sexual congress = arrestable offence at my age
Have used up more years than I'd like
Yeah, 20 wasn't so damn wonderful when you compare it to now. Basically, I am grumpy because my legs ache a bit today and I got tired lumping stuff about and don't have a wee lassie here to give me a cuddle and make me a cuppa. Good excuse for a blog entry though ;) !
Thursday 13 January 2011
Moonlit Stroll
She shimmers in the moonlight,
As I watch her from afar.
Her gentle contemplation soothes
Beneath my evening star.
Her hair cascades and tumbles
Yet none seem out of place,
An impossible perfection
Which frames the softest face.
Her figure graced the evening
Each curve a wave of joy.
Unparalelled in beauty,
Demure, reserved and coy.
I wish that I could tell her of
The love that burns inside,
But hope must linger, dwindling,
As it stands against the tide.
Time will take her from me,
And leave me as before,
Half a wistful melody
On an uncompleted score.
As I watch her from afar.
Her gentle contemplation soothes
Beneath my evening star.
Her hair cascades and tumbles
Yet none seem out of place,
An impossible perfection
Which frames the softest face.
Her figure graced the evening
Each curve a wave of joy.
Unparalelled in beauty,
Demure, reserved and coy.
I wish that I could tell her of
The love that burns inside,
But hope must linger, dwindling,
As it stands against the tide.
Time will take her from me,
And leave me as before,
Half a wistful melody
On an uncompleted score.
Sunday 9 January 2011
Through the decades
I might as well say, before I start, today's entry isn't going to be light reading. I have hit the buffers somewhat, as I often do just after Christmas. Maybe its the inevitable comedown after the highs of the festive season, but it is what it is, and I feel how I feel.
I've been watching Every Number One Of The Eighties on MTV classic, and it made me wistful for that decade, as if transporting myself there would be the solution to all of life's problems - a decade when my memory would have it that I had no responsibilities (or responsibility) and everything was relaxed and fun. Of course, being who I am, and having the reflective nature I do, I couldn't let it lie there, and now find myself disecting the past and reflecting that it wasn't all I crack it up to be.
I look at things through the prism of what I shall charitably call 'my mental issues'. In truth, they are not some recent phenomenon (indeed I don't think I ever thought they were) - but of course, back there in the past they had no name. I was just Dave, not understanding why my mind worked the way it did.
I've spent a great deal of my life trying to hide parts of myself away. Always terrified of being questioned or probed about why I am doing something or what I feel the need to say. As a teenager it is not east to explain why you have to walk the same way to a location, and it was torture trying to undertake one of my little rituals without being seen and mocked. Looking back I cannot begin to really recall how much stress I was under, but there was always that numb sensation at the back of the mind that the floodgates will not hold out forever, at some point the world will burst into my bubble and I would be lost in it, unable to cope amidst the noise and the chaos when all I ever wanted then was peace and order. That's the thing with OCD, everything needs to be in order, just so. I used to physically recoil at, for example, a car backfiring. I was so wound into stress at coping that I was a ticking timebomb. It amazes me to this day that I held out so long before everything disintegrated.
As a young adult in the late eighties and through the nineties, again I suppose life was not as rosy as daydreaming about it suggests. Perhaps this was when I was first truly aware that everything was wrong. I've never been good at sharing pain, especially so to people I feel closest to. How do you tell someone you love that everything is wrong? How can you face up to them when you are blue and explain that it is not them, it really is not them, but that you cannot be anything but blue? Then of course I was still hiding rituals away to get me through. I must have appeared so distant at times as I tried to cope with it all in secret.
I tried different ways around the problems back then. Drink was one way, something I relied on very heavily until I was about 30. Drink suppressed the immediate feelings, and offered temporary reprieve, as well as being a handy cover for my occasionally bizarre behaviour, but of course it is a depressant itself and only served to add to the spiral. It also has the side effect of making you act like an arse to the people you love the most sometimes. If that's you, just know that I am sorry now and I was back then too. It wasn't jsut drink though, I detested myself, or rather, I detested being ill and being permanently stressed and I tried so many ways to numb the feelings. There were so many ways I tried to be different so that I was no longer ashamed of being different, so that 'different' became my norm. What do you do when you cannot share the whirlwind inside? I actually feel tense at this moment thinking about it. How the breakdown of 2009 was the culmnation of (literally) decades of denial, hiding, transferral and stress.
Of course now the truth is out, my family and friends know I have been unwell, and I know the signs to look out for. However, still, in the back of my mind I know how hard it is to share the feelings, the rawness of OCD and Depression and I feel guilty at the thought of burdening anyone else with it. It's lonely, and the weird thing is, loneliness is the thing I am most scared of now. I don't want to be alone. So I have to find a way of sharing and it not causing consternation, or we are headed back to square one and I've been there before. It's not somewhere I'd recommend to anyone.
I've been watching Every Number One Of The Eighties on MTV classic, and it made me wistful for that decade, as if transporting myself there would be the solution to all of life's problems - a decade when my memory would have it that I had no responsibilities (or responsibility) and everything was relaxed and fun. Of course, being who I am, and having the reflective nature I do, I couldn't let it lie there, and now find myself disecting the past and reflecting that it wasn't all I crack it up to be.
I look at things through the prism of what I shall charitably call 'my mental issues'. In truth, they are not some recent phenomenon (indeed I don't think I ever thought they were) - but of course, back there in the past they had no name. I was just Dave, not understanding why my mind worked the way it did.
I've spent a great deal of my life trying to hide parts of myself away. Always terrified of being questioned or probed about why I am doing something or what I feel the need to say. As a teenager it is not east to explain why you have to walk the same way to a location, and it was torture trying to undertake one of my little rituals without being seen and mocked. Looking back I cannot begin to really recall how much stress I was under, but there was always that numb sensation at the back of the mind that the floodgates will not hold out forever, at some point the world will burst into my bubble and I would be lost in it, unable to cope amidst the noise and the chaos when all I ever wanted then was peace and order. That's the thing with OCD, everything needs to be in order, just so. I used to physically recoil at, for example, a car backfiring. I was so wound into stress at coping that I was a ticking timebomb. It amazes me to this day that I held out so long before everything disintegrated.
As a young adult in the late eighties and through the nineties, again I suppose life was not as rosy as daydreaming about it suggests. Perhaps this was when I was first truly aware that everything was wrong. I've never been good at sharing pain, especially so to people I feel closest to. How do you tell someone you love that everything is wrong? How can you face up to them when you are blue and explain that it is not them, it really is not them, but that you cannot be anything but blue? Then of course I was still hiding rituals away to get me through. I must have appeared so distant at times as I tried to cope with it all in secret.
I tried different ways around the problems back then. Drink was one way, something I relied on very heavily until I was about 30. Drink suppressed the immediate feelings, and offered temporary reprieve, as well as being a handy cover for my occasionally bizarre behaviour, but of course it is a depressant itself and only served to add to the spiral. It also has the side effect of making you act like an arse to the people you love the most sometimes. If that's you, just know that I am sorry now and I was back then too. It wasn't jsut drink though, I detested myself, or rather, I detested being ill and being permanently stressed and I tried so many ways to numb the feelings. There were so many ways I tried to be different so that I was no longer ashamed of being different, so that 'different' became my norm. What do you do when you cannot share the whirlwind inside? I actually feel tense at this moment thinking about it. How the breakdown of 2009 was the culmnation of (literally) decades of denial, hiding, transferral and stress.
Of course now the truth is out, my family and friends know I have been unwell, and I know the signs to look out for. However, still, in the back of my mind I know how hard it is to share the feelings, the rawness of OCD and Depression and I feel guilty at the thought of burdening anyone else with it. It's lonely, and the weird thing is, loneliness is the thing I am most scared of now. I don't want to be alone. So I have to find a way of sharing and it not causing consternation, or we are headed back to square one and I've been there before. It's not somewhere I'd recommend to anyone.
Thursday 6 January 2011
Under the veil
He glanced at the clock on the mantle, it was shortly after midday but he had no clear idea on which day, not since the fear had taken him. In his mind he positioned all the players in his life, where they might be, what they would be doing at such a time on any given day. Familiar faces brought some temporary repreive as did the thought of their everyday activity; so warm and usual, so comforting and normal. As briefly as he was comforted, however, he became painfully aware he was, in truth, home alone.
There was a strange stillness in the room, and he fancied he heard a muffled sound from the corner. A giggle? No, the sound was harsher. A cackle. Unmistakable, they were laughing at him again. Always the same, they mock him, they hide in the shadows and laugh at his pain. He had been terrified of them coming today. In truth, he had found it harder to suppress the sounds these past few days, or perhaps it was weeks? He couldn't recall. He used to be able to reason with them, to get some peace until she returned.
At the thought of her, the cackling stopped. She was his angel, the girl he had fallen for years before. She loved him despite the weakness of his mind, maybe because of it. The whirlwind abated when she drew near, her voice was soothing and her touch gentle. How could he tell her he felt so much weaker? How could he burden her further? No, she had a life to lead too, it wouldn't be fair to tell her about the fear. The cackling was back, this time there were more voices laughing, but the laughter was different, there was all of a sudden a heaviness to the air and a feeling of genuine menace. The air began to chance hue. He closed his eyes and promised himself this could not be, it was all a trick, their trick. The air could not change hue.
He slowly opened his eyes, but already everything was different. The air was tight around him, like a gauze wrapping. Every breath was a struggle. He was still in the room, but it had changed somehow. He could make out furniture, tables, the walls but it was through a haze. The edges of things had become soft, and the centre sharp and painful. 'It's all wrong' he whispered, and caught through the fog shapes moving. Children perhaps? No, they were cackling, they were here too, inside the fog, behind the veil, laughing and pointing.
He couldn't hope to survive in a world like this, he could trust nothing and hear no-one. Laughter and haze were all he could reason. The cackling swirled about his head like a furious drumming and shapes moved in the mists about him. He dropped to his knees. 'I can't see her face, I can't hear her voice', he cried out. 'He can't see her face, he can't hear her voice!' came a chorus in reply.
He curled into a ball and wept for what felt like hours. Slowly he realised the room was back as it was before. At least, it seemed so to him. He staggered to the chair and glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was shortly after midday, but he was not entirely sure which day. He was terrified.
There was a strange stillness in the room, and he fancied he heard a muffled sound from the corner. A giggle? No, the sound was harsher. A cackle. Unmistakable, they were laughing at him again. Always the same, they mock him, they hide in the shadows and laugh at his pain. He had been terrified of them coming today. In truth, he had found it harder to suppress the sounds these past few days, or perhaps it was weeks? He couldn't recall. He used to be able to reason with them, to get some peace until she returned.
At the thought of her, the cackling stopped. She was his angel, the girl he had fallen for years before. She loved him despite the weakness of his mind, maybe because of it. The whirlwind abated when she drew near, her voice was soothing and her touch gentle. How could he tell her he felt so much weaker? How could he burden her further? No, she had a life to lead too, it wouldn't be fair to tell her about the fear. The cackling was back, this time there were more voices laughing, but the laughter was different, there was all of a sudden a heaviness to the air and a feeling of genuine menace. The air began to chance hue. He closed his eyes and promised himself this could not be, it was all a trick, their trick. The air could not change hue.
He slowly opened his eyes, but already everything was different. The air was tight around him, like a gauze wrapping. Every breath was a struggle. He was still in the room, but it had changed somehow. He could make out furniture, tables, the walls but it was through a haze. The edges of things had become soft, and the centre sharp and painful. 'It's all wrong' he whispered, and caught through the fog shapes moving. Children perhaps? No, they were cackling, they were here too, inside the fog, behind the veil, laughing and pointing.
He couldn't hope to survive in a world like this, he could trust nothing and hear no-one. Laughter and haze were all he could reason. The cackling swirled about his head like a furious drumming and shapes moved in the mists about him. He dropped to his knees. 'I can't see her face, I can't hear her voice', he cried out. 'He can't see her face, he can't hear her voice!' came a chorus in reply.
He curled into a ball and wept for what felt like hours. Slowly he realised the room was back as it was before. At least, it seemed so to him. He staggered to the chair and glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was shortly after midday, but he was not entirely sure which day. He was terrified.
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