Saturday 30 January 2010

This morning I awaken at 8AM, my ideal hour.

I emerge in a funny frame of mind this morning.  My body physically aches after last night (especially my arms) and I don’t feel overly rejuvenated or invigorated by it at all.  A haze of laze remains as I find myself struggling to muster up any energy towards anything today.

Eventually however I pull myself together to action the routine of heading to Asda on the Saturday newspaper run.  Once at the store I have no idea what I am supposed to be purchasing other than the newspapers.  In the end I wind up buying just drinks and cleaning products shying away from purchasing food for fear that it is unhealthy and bad for me.  Somehow though it all comes to over £25 of groceries.

Like a modern fucking fool I find myself suckered into buying the Daily Star as the headline reads “Punch-up At Celeb Big Bro Final” with a photo of Vinnie Jones squaring up for a photo makes me think something of interest actually occurred.  There is no actual story though.

Back at the flat I briefly toy with starting writing but eventually head back to bed to listen to Danny Baker on the radio, which by the end equates to my having wasted my Saturday morning and one quarter of my weekend.  Afterwards I flip to Radio 2 where Jonathan Ross should be but instead he is ill so the Doctor Who duo of David Tennant and Catherine Tate get to interview Ricky Gervais.  Damn this guy comes with such weight to me these days, obviously reminding me of my American Friend in the process which all in all serves to compound my misery.  This feels self imposed but it isn’t.

I’m in a spot today, I can’t write.  As feeble as it sounds for whatever reasons both my arms agonisingly ache from last night.  I wrack my brain trying to recall a moment that may have caused this but nothing obvious sticks out.  Certainly I was using my arms but not to the extent that it might cause them to get fucked up.

Away from this frustration I finally finish off reading The Death Of Bunny Munro today.  It ends with a whimper.  It was OK but not breathtaking.  By no means did I ever veer towards feeling offended by it or any of the images conjured up within, certainly I genuinely believe I have written more offensive copy in the past, the type of shit that will have got me sacked back in 2004.  This book has been such a slog to get through, which is never a good sign.  Maybe Nick Cave should have been nicer to me back in September; perhaps I would have given it more benefit of the doubt.

Today I need to head into town to post some books and bank my salary cheque.  With this necessity comes some urgency to proceedings but this all gets hindered as I discover Fletch Lives is on ITV.  I love Chevy Chase and I love Fletch but I have never been able to make it through the entirety of the sequel even though I have it on DVD.  As a result everything gets put on pause as I indulge once more in my old 80s video shop days.  And all in all it turns out to be a worthwhile experience as the movie delivers even though unfortunately I am unable to stick around to watch it until the end.

I wind up heading (racing) towards town before the bank closes.  It really is a nuisance to have to be paid by cheque this month and were this a year or so ago it would mean big problems for my direct debits (mortgage etc) getting through.  These days however I’m buoyant.

There is always an element of fun attached to banking a cheque at the bank.  If you dare go to their desk they begin tutting and bellyaching as they point chimp like to the ATM machine, which is where the modern world apparently pays its cheques in.  Fortunately to entice stupid people to do this they have turned the experience of depositing a cheque into the machine akin to a cross between a fruit machine and game show and when I finally put my paycheque through once it has been accepting the lights change on the machine to represent/reflect some kind of accomplishment and victory on my part.  I am now officially richer, the changing lights of the bank machine just told me so.

From here I head to the post office where I post a copy of my book to my friend Alice in Sacramento, Alice from California 2003.  Just before Christmas she got in touch expressing some kind of interest in the book.  Apparently Tom had told her it was funny which is great because he has never mentioned it to me in any capacity so I have always suspected he thought it was no good.  Perhaps though she is wondering whether she gets mentioned in the book because back in the day she did get mentioned once in the original blog.  Of course however she has not mentioned this to me, why disrupt a happy/positive flow of communication and reconnection.  Sadly I suspect (don’t think) it will last, we’ve left it too late.

To post the book to America costs almost as much as it did to print up the fucker.  I swear it didn’t cost this much when I posted copies over there before.  Has something suddenly happened with regards to posting overseas?

Now out of pocket I wander around town for a while inevitably ending up in Waterstones.  As I look through the entertainment books and scan a Tony Hancock book for any further revelations Ric Flair Guy from the commute suddenly appears standing next to me.  Is he acknowledging me, trying to say “hello”?  I just smile and walk away quickly.

I begin to head home and as I do so I check my email on my iPhone and there is another from eHarmony.  What is with this lot?  Why do they now keep bothering me, harassing me?  Are they exacting some kind of revenge on me now for scoring so utterly badly on their strange profiling quiz?  Quite frankly eHarmony now appear to be stalking me, which is I suspect something they do not want associated with themselves as they pair up strangers in the hope that neither of them turn out to be psychos and murder one of their clients prompting some kind of lawsuit from the victims family.  This is not on.

Unsurprisingly I wind up back at the olds where I proceed to waste another Saturday.  Fortunately news soon filters through that Millwall have won 1-0 at Brighton with Neil Harris scoring the winner.  That is our third win in a row now.

On TV is Leicester v Newcastle, which I half watch as it crawls its way to a dull 0-0 draw.

From here I watch Harry Hill before heading home just after 8PM realising once more just how unhealthy it is for me to be at my parents on a Saturday night yet again.  This is not before however I come across the Louis Theroux wrestling episode, which I have to watch.  This is a classic episode.

Back home I watch The Virtual Revolution where I learn that 90% of blogs now lay dormant.  This is a statistic I can well believe, especially as this one included now sits six months out of date.

Elsewhere today I discover that I have been mentioned on the 100 Days To Make Me A Better Person website for a fourth time.  Yowsa, somebody up there must like me.

Encouraged and inspired by this I set about writing, doing so well into the night up to around 11PM while various things play out on TV in the background.  Now feeling exhausted I head to bed where I watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Galaxy movie falling asleep about halfway through it (its not very good).

Around 2AM I make the schoolboy error of reawakening and finding myself unable to fall back to sleep.  Buoyed on by last night’s Tony Hancock being gay revelation I set about watching the excellent Hancock And Joan docudrama.  Frustratingly this does not send me to sleep and with the day heading towards 4AM on a Sunday morning I begin listening to the first part of The Catcher In The Rye audiobook.  That puts me to sleep.