Saturday 6 March 2010
This morning I wake up
at 7.45AM, which is far too early considering how late/early I got in and that
it is a Saturday. There is an ever so
tiny headache attached to the back of my head and even worse a really nasty
knot now at the top of my back. Did I
sleep on top of something last
night? I look around and find an
orange juice bottle/carton in my bed but I don’t think that was it.
I’m flipping a coin
today as to whether go get my haircut.
I guess I should really make the effort to at least try and look my
best. These things aren’t easy though
as movement at this hour really is not recommended, without doubt I will
yearning sleep later on and if I am to be dragged back up to London and Camden again
this evening for more electronica all signs point to exhaustion.
With a heave I get out
of bed and remember the huge pile of packages sat by my front door the postman
delivered yesterday. This is the largest haul yet, eight brown
envelopes of CDs and DVDs, this is just plain wrong. I worry that my obsession has overtaken me now that retail
therapy really is all that I have in order to keep me happy. Half excited and half with shame I scoop
them up. There is also my ticket to Dinosaur Jr and Built To Spill on 18 May which is a
timely remember of how I fucked up yesterday and bought a ticket to see Andy Zaltzman on that
date also. There’s another thing added
to my list of things to do.
As I sit down and take
stock of the envelopes it occurs to me how opening them resembles some kind of
grey/brown Christmas
moment for me. Perhaps this is the key
to the purchases, it is my desire to regain those youthful moments of joy where
I would open my gifts with glee and no guilt.
Thankfully from a
financial perspective most of the items only cost around the £2 mark with five
DVDs all culled from the Play.com clearance sale (including three baseball
history DVDs, when the fuck will ever find time to watch these?). Elsewhere the two CDs are also ones that
were budget priced, a Lenny Bruce
CD and a Schoolly D CD neither of which
anyone else in the world probably wants to listen to right now (and I half
suspect neither do I).
With the morning
arriving at 8.30AM I decide heading to get my haircut is the right way and I
pull myself together and get dressed with movements and gestures towards
hopping in the car.
Before driving down to
Clacton/Holland I
have to first put petrol in my car.
Really is nobody else pissed off about having to pay 111.9p for a litre
of the shitty Asda
petrol? I cannot believe the shit we
take in this country and the way in which we lie down for it. I swear petrol wasn’t anywhere near this
price when it all kicked off in 2000 and for a brief moment due to the strikes
the lack of fuel at the pumps made things very briefly feel like the beginnings
of Mad Max were happening
now.
From here though I
head down to Clacton and Holland On Sea with a sense of frolic and joy at being
able to tear open my car for a change.
The drive to the coast is always a speedy one only held up by idiots on
the roads keeping to the speed limits.
Yet again today when I
arrive at Colin’s I step through the door to a bare shop, almost stepping right
into the chair for a cut. As
conversation begins to flow (not via me) it turns out that Denzil
has recently been in the shop. In
connection with this I have two great Only Fools And Horses
anecdotes but for some reason I just don’t tell/say them despite the huge
gaping opportunity to drop them in. Am
I really going to be this shy and antisocial for the rest of my life now?
The cut turns out to
be a quick one, professional and swift.
I wind up getting into conversation about commuting and catching the
trains daily at which point Colin serves up a story about jumping out of the
train on the wrong side and falling down onto the tracks. Quite frankly it sounds like a miracle that
he wasn’t killed.
Afterwards I toy with
the idea of checking out Clacton
Common to see what state it is in but to be honest I have better things to
do and I’m really not in the mood, I am already feeling down enough without
revisiting an area of such failure.
From here I tear back
up to Colchester
where I stop by Asda on the way home and do the shopping thing relatively
successfully this week. As ever by the
time it gets to the checkout task I perform it coyly, disguising my purchases
as if under the spotlight and scrutiny of some creepy Channel Four health show where they make
you walk around naked in front of the camera before inspecting your poo. What has happened to society and television?
It is past 11AM by the
time I get home and already I feel like I have done enough to
constitute/justify my day. With this
being the time I endeavour to begin writing
acknowledging that almost half the day has already gone.
Today I appear to have
some kind of strange backache. Just
what was I up to last night?
Early into the
afternoon I head back to bed where I watch the Joy Division documentary which
delivers on all levels and proves several times more satisfying than the Control movie ever
did (that was a huge disappointment painfully dumping so much dirge and grey
onto the listener that it made it impossible to feel convinced by).
After the DVD finishes
as I potter with my new player I discover that it plays avi files, which
promptly sees me dusting off old CDRs containing little files from the early
days of internet porn. It is almost
funny looking at old ten to thirty second clips of smut in the worst pixel
quality imaginable. Those must have
been confusing times.
Once bored of these
rubbish discs I head back to my writing perch facing this computer. From here news filters through that Millwall
are choking at Walsall
when the table really suggests that we should be strolling through this
fixture. In the end after trailing 2-0
after 27 minutes eventually Alan
Dunne scores an equalizer three minutes into injury time. Playing to the death, that is what is going
to get Millwall promoted.
From here the second FA Cup game of the weekend hits ITV and its Fulham v Spurs. Blah blah blah. I barely peak at it.
I write into the
evening but unfortunately don’t really accomplish much.
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