Uncharacteristic review

Yes, I know, I know. Shoddy. Bad work­man­ship. Pull your fin­ger out. Get on with it. Call this a fre­quently updated journal-style web­log type thing, do you? Claim to enjoy writ­ing? Must try harder.

Fri­day: Day off. Slept. Slept a bit more. This des­pite once again choos­ing a day’s leave from work that help­fully coin­cided with the next door neigh­bour decid­ing to smash seven shades of some­thing or other out of his walls with what soun­ded like an indus­trial jack­ham­mer. Bas­tard. I did, how­ever, enjoy — well, maybe enjoy isn’t the right word — the return of the strange recur­ring night­mare about a circle of chil­dren with card­board masks and small knives. Don’t worry, it’s not as trau­matic as it seems; I’m used to it by now.

Sat­urday: In no way should the fol­low­ing para­graph be mis­in­ter­preted as a mes­sage in sup­port of the sci­ence fic­tion genre (because I am still of the unwaver­ing belief that sci-fi is so much impen­et­rable rub­bish, and I would look ter­rible in an anorak), but the Dalek epis­ode of the new series of Doc­tor Who was dar­ing, shock­ing, superb, won­der­ful and many other super­lat­ives that I’m far too level-headed to heap upon it. The whole story brought a lump to my throat, if you must know. “Oh God,” I remem­ber think­ing to myself, “Right now, there’s a nation of impres­sion­able chil­dren watch­ing a liv­ing being (albeit one enclosed inside a large pepper-pot) calmly com­mit­ting sui­cide on prime­time Sat­urday even­ing tele­vi­sion. And they don’t even know what a Dalek is!” I almost got over­whelmed by the emo­tion of it all. Almost.

Sunday: I’d decided earlier in the week that I wanted to spend my long week­end alone. Being left alone. Com­pletely alone. I just needed a break from the human race, I guess. I had for­got­ten, how­ever, that a visit from a friend had been arranged long before this latest Greta Garbo-inspired mood swing. If I’m hon­est, I sup­pose I was begrudging hav­ing to be soci­able and open up my home — my bolthole from the world — to a guest. Yet sit­ting in my living-room on Sunday even­ing in the com­pany of that same friend, watch­ing trashy tele­vi­sion — Chan­nel 4 doing another in their seem­ingly unend­ing count­downs of old TV clips — drink­ing far too much wine and chuck­ing sar­castic com­ments around, I sud­denly felt very glad that they were there to stop me from crawl­ing into a corner of my mind, wrap­ping myself up in the entrails and stay­ing there until Tues­day morn­ing. Yes, you heard it here first: com­pany is good, occa­sion­ally. I must remem­ber that.

Monday: I don’t know quite what happened to the last few hours of Monday even­ing. I seem to recall that I sat at my open bed­room win­dow, feel­ing the sun­light and the breeze on my face, listen­ing to old Mag­netic Fields albums (that’s pre–69 Love Songs, in case you’re mak­ing detailed notes), whilst watch­ing the black and white cat that’s been rather obsess­ing me of late. Increas­ingly, I want to be that cat — it seems so relaxed, so untroubled, lying stretched out on the roof of the garden shed, occa­sion­ally rais­ing its head to sur­vey its garden empire.

I don’t just want to be any cat. Oh no, I’m far more dis­cern­ing. I want to be that par­tic­u­lar black and white cat, in all its lazy, unruffled, unhur­ried splendour.

That was my long week­end. I had to tell you about it, in all its unevent­ful detail, simply because those annoy­ing people cornered me today. Oh, you remem­ber, I’m sure I’ve men­tioned them before — those caring and con­cerned souls who obvi­ously think I don’t have a life that’s excit­ing and soci­able and simply import­ant enough, so they insist on telling me about their mad­den­ing and fren­etic whirl of a week­end in excru­ci­at­ing detail, whilst laugh­ing at their own memor­ies of the events. I’m sure they think that what they’re doing is a char­it­able act, to help me see how my life could be if only I fol­lowed their example. Yes, good for you, you know a lot of people and you go to glam­or­ous and excit­ing places. Big deal. Now kindly fuck off, would you?

(I can write the above without fear, since I know they don’t read this site. They’re far too busy being twink­ling social but­ter­flies. One of this pair pre­vi­ously told me in no uncer­tain terms that the idea of me keep­ing a record of my thoughts on the web was “quaint”, whilst the other once sat me down, glared into my eyes and told me that I spent far too much time wrapped up in my own thoughts, too much time in my own head. Sadly, I didn’t have an answer at that moment; I just stared at them, open-mouthed and faintly dumb­struck at their sheer nerve. I still don’t have an answer, although I do hope to con­jure up a pithy riposte one of these days. I think I’ll stop writ­ing in par­en­theses now.)

Where was I? No idea.

Vague stream of con­scious­ness ram­blings seem to be the limit of what I can man­age to post here at present. I need my muse back. I think he/she is hid­ing under the sofa gnaw­ing his/her way through the car­pet. I don’t know why, since I put a nice bowl of milk and some soggy bread on the kit­chen floor for him/her the other even­ing. Maybe he/she will stop once his/her teeth hits the floor­boards. Oh well. Until I can encour­age the muse out to face the rigours of every­day life once more, you’ll have to make do with this.

There are few things more frus­trat­ing than want­ing to write — that thing I love doing, my primary means of com­mu­nic­at­ing — but feel­ing abso­lutely noth­ing come into your head when your fin­gers are placed over the key­board. Unin­spired doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Incid­ent­ally, to pre­serve the integ­rity of this entry, I’m adam­ant that I’m not going to post it live and then return to it again and again for obsess­ive tweak­ing, edit­ing and re-editing, as I usu­ally do. To avoid this typ­ical beha­viour, I’m going to have to go to sleep instead. Goodnight.