Thursday 3 September 2009

Dream: I am out on the tiles with the old manager of my team from Baker Street. She is shitfaced and going for it. I do not recognise anyone on the crawl other than the J from our sub-team J-Squad. She is playing up, letting go in that horrible drunk manner that suggests amateur drinking (in other words non-teenage binge drinking). At the end of proceedings we head back to what should really be our office but instead our group appears to be staying at some kind of manor which is now serving as home to the employees of the company. When we get there she makes much noise which inevitably results in the boss (Hogan) coming out and giving her a lambasting, much to our amusement. What the hell was I doing with this group anyway in the first place? She is the last person on this planet I want to associate with.

Thankfully today is a day off. Originally I had booked it off with view to driving my parents to Stansted at 5AM this morning but luckily their neighbour stepped in and in the end I just decided to take the day off anyway. As I keep repeating I really need some time off, I feel I am losing perspective and as life begins to run away from me, not least during the Tuesday to Thursday three day blur that occurs every week. I need to stop and smell the roses before it is too late. I am 33 now and my circumstances do not feel as if they have differed for almost ten years.

Despite this desire I do not manage to accomplish a lie in as when I check my watch the time is 7.20AM and it feels like I have barely been asleep.

Eventually emerging unfortunately I do not appear to do much with my day.

After planning and endeavouring to dedicate myself to a lot of writing today in the end I wind up spending the morning watching four episodes of Entourage. It is genuinely feel good TV.

As lunchtime hits but inspiration is nowhere to be seen I decide I have to watch one of the dozens (maybe hundred plus) DVDs in shrinkwrap I have knocking around the flat.

The movie I choose is Running With Scissors and this proves to be something of a mistake and the fucking thing drones on without really going anywhere as the director really labours over the story of a spoilt fuck you sense was happy to have such a screwed up childhood. Early on things looks good as Alec Baldwin plays pretty much his Jack Donaghy character but then he is gone all too soon as Brian Cox takes over on the dysfunctional front as the movie begins to resemble a bad attempt at a Harold And Maude toned Royal Tenenbaums rip off. Unfortunately it really is impossible to take to any of the characters, to find them believable and as a result put up with and suffer their lethargy. They just all need a fucking slap.

In the afternoon I finally get into writing and its OK, slightly laboured and not really overly progressive. I left it far too late in the day to get started/going on this.

My day is somewhat hampered when I get an email from Mark blowing me out on the roller derby on Saturday. Annoyingly it had been him who was really pushing the idea and building up hopes. Then like a man without a diary he clocks that he has got the weekends wrong and suddenly it is back on again. I can’t deal with such inconsistency.

Late in the day I head over the olds at Balkerne Heights in the hope of finding some kind of inspiration in different settings. With the parents still in Seville this makes for a calm and quiet setting all to my own.

From here I head into town just as the colleges are kicking out meaning that the place is swamped with fucking kids. Christ I must be twice the age of some of these little fuckers now and yet they have twice the confidence I did (and do) it appears. Wrong.

In Colchester I do my duty of banking a cheque, moving money from one bank account to the other in anticipation of having to renew my Travelcard in a couple of weeks time. From there I buy this week’s Private Eye before snapping up Ghost World on DVD to keep at my parents house at all times. Its been a while since I last watched this movie and a viewing is now long overdue. Finally I head into Starbucks to buy a venti Caramel Macchiato with view to it working wonders on my day. The Starbucks in Colchester is always a risky proposition. It tastes different to the Starbucks in London. Fact!

When I return to their place I put Danny Baker’s BBC London radio show on in the background and try to begin work.

At this point Mark changes his mind again and is now in on the roller derby on Saturday. Confused now. He comments that he needs to buy a calendar. It is at this point that I remember it was ten years ago today that we met for the first time at the Matador Records anniversary weekend where Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, Unwound, Solex and Khan all played at the ULU. That was a truly amazing night.

Today I manage to get a troublesome blog entry done and out of the way while I also set up the JGRAM NOTES and JGRAM LONDON blogs. All in all it ends up being a pretty productive and satisfying day on a small scale. I sigh a relief.

As the evening enters I begin watching the Douglas Coupland documentary Souvenir Of Canada still cursing how I have missed his readings this week. The documentary is great, unsurprisingly reminiscent of his Close Personal Friend documentary that now sadly appears lost to the Generation X ages. As a person he cuts a solemn shadow, he just seems so lonely and unhappy. He does give off the impression of a person being anywhere remotely close to a relationship or finding love, these are subjects rarely (almost never) addressed on a personal level in his work.

Obviously at 6PM The Simpsons gets in the way of doing anything productive and I find myself watching a couple of episodes of it before tearing into some Guitar Hero action on the Wii. With my parents displaying visible contempt for the game these days this is a rare treat.

Eventually I head home where the TV is good but my stamina is not.