City sickness

I’m much calmer now, thanks for asking.

I offer you this reas­sur­ance because, earlier tonight, I wasn’t espe­cially calm. I exper­i­enced that delight­fully hideous com­bin­a­tion of a naus­eous head­ache and a sud­den over­whelm­ing dis­like of Lon­don, which usu­ally res­ults in a private release of anger or occa­sion­ally (very occa­sion­ally) a panic attack. Phew.

(Please note that the above links aren’t just there for reas­ons of van­ity, simply to advert­ise what I’ve writ­ten in the past. They are the clearest demon­stra­tion of how pain­fully aware I am that I return to the same sub­jects and obses­sions again and again on this site — or as the sainted Nick Cave once put it: “Them­at­ic­ally, my muse is still chained to the same bowl of vomit”. Sadly, this state of affairs is unlikely to change in the near future. After all, this pile of haphaz­ard code is about me, remember?)

By now, of course, I am able to detect the signs. I could feel the stress, the nervous­ness and the sickly feel­ings build­ing inside me as I sat at my desk, clos­ing down my com­puter for the day. The sens­ible thing to do would have been to stay in that quiet, almost empty office, and allowed my moods their free­dom to swing between those same old viol­ent extremes in rel­at­ive isol­a­tion. Just me and a couple of clean­ers. But, as ever, doing the sens­ible thing was not at the top of my men­tal agenda at that par­tic­u­lar moment. So I took myself out into the cold Lon­don night …

Fast for­ward. Head pound­ing, nerves cartwheel­ing, stress close to throwing-up level and thoughts a com­plete mess of tendril wires, I step into the tube car­riage. Sit­ting oppos­ite four people — all entirely inof­fens­ive and inno­cent — it only takes mere seconds for irra­tional irrit­a­tion to set in.

That man wear­ing his orange scarf — orange, I ask you! — in an entirely affected way. The old lady sit­ting dir­ectly across the aisle from me, read­ing an Ann Wid­de­combe novel with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. The old man next to her — her hus­band, appar­ently — who’s found one dull pink page of the Fin­an­cial Times and is turn­ing it over, read­ing it, turn­ing it over again, fold­ing it, and mut­ter­ing under his breath. And all the while an expres­sion on his face like he’s chew­ing a wasp, but enjoy­ing the taste. Finally, at the end of this line of unre­mark­able tube trav­el­lers, a smooth City type doing the self-important Mobile Phone Boo­gie — take mobile from pocket, exam­ine it, flip it open, dial num­ber, put receiver to ear and listen care­fully, say noth­ing, exam­ine screen, put phone to ear again, look con­fused, still say noth­ing, make phone beep, flick through text mes­sages, flip phone shut and return to pocket. Three minutes later, do exactly the same thing all over again. Per­son with phone is prob­ably think­ing, “Gosh, I’m import­ant. I can’t under­stand why I haven’t received a call or a text mes­sage. There must be some­thing wrong with my phone. I shall tap a few but­tons to see if I can dia­gnose the prob­lem. Oh, I was wrong, it’s work­ing fine.” Mean­while, I’m think­ing what crime I would be charged with if I shoved the phone for­cibly down his throat.

It’s usu­ally at about this point in the pain­ful unrav­el­ling of my men­tal state that I have to restrain myself from stand­ing up in the middle of the car­riage and shout­ing — in the style of John Cleese at the end of his tether in Fawlty Towers, if that helps you to pic­ture it in your mind — “Stop it. Just stop it. Please. Stop. It. Now. I’ve had enough. Please. Just stop. Stop.”

But I don’t shout. I just stare instead. I glower. I nar­row my eyes in such a way that even if I’m not ima­gin­ing tear­ing them limb from limb, if you caught my gaze at that moment you would at least think that’s what I was imagining.

Unfor­tu­nately, nobody does inter­cept my stare, or if they do it’s so unim­press­ive that it abso­lutely fails to com­mu­nic­ate my darkest and most hideous thoughts. Typical.

My head feels like a can­non­ball as I step into my flat. There are times, I’ll admit, when I hate com­ing home to noth­ing except four walls and the ticking-over of the cent­ral heat­ing sys­tem; I want someone there, even if it’s just to share the mundane details of the day that’s been and gone. But there are other times when this place is my little bolt-hole from the City Sick­ness, the crazed world out there under the unhealthy glow of orange street­lights. That’s when there is no sound quite so reas­sur­ing as the slam of the front door.

Instinct­ively, even pre­dict­ably, I can’t help but open the kit­chen cup­board to reach for one of those plates that I like smash­ing into smithereens when Things Get Too Much. How­ever, this time I man­age to stop myself — not just because I real­ise with hor­ror that my sup­ply of cheap smash­able plates is becom­ing rap­idly depleted, but also because sense, reason and emo­tional equi­lib­rium are slowly return­ing. And smash­ing plates is just going a little too far, isn’t it?

Take three factors. Lon­don. Deep­est, darkest mid­winter. Christ­mas. None of these are good for me. Com­bined, it’s like the pro­ver­bial blue touch-paper. Need a break. Need some time. Need away from this damned city. Need a clear head.

I’m much calmer now, though. Promise.