Friday 13 November 2009

Omens are bad for today.  How long since now was it I last made the Jason Voorhees joke?

Today my movements are sluggish and by the time I am stepping out the heavens have opened and rain is plundering down.

I feel bloated this morning and as a result I do not feel comfortable in attempting to try on my coat, even when it is so needed.  Even my recently reliable American Apparel hoodie feels snug today.

At least I manage to catch the 6.59AM despite leaving slightly late.  Walking along the platform I see Disney Face but I do not feel comfortable enough to acknowledge her even though her gestures appear open.

Later at Witham a man with tattoos all over his face boards and sits near us.  He looks terrifying.  Does he realise just how much he has ruined his life?  He ain’t even Maori so why did he do it?

When I eventually troll into work everything is open but no one appears to be home.  This is both nerve-wracking and foolhardy.  Who left the place wide fucking open?  Now that is worth a shout down to somebody, not a brief blip in the running of the phones.

I still feel low today and I don’t know what to do in order to pull myself up and out of this feeling.

As I check my email there is a blank message from the consultant with some Excel schedules attached.  What the fuck am I supposed to do with those?  A little message with them would be nice.  I react purposely belligerent.

With “Disappointed” by Public Image Limited playing out in my head I immediately set about buying it on Ebay.  Just keeping it real.

Not for the first day this week my productivity is low.  For some reason I am feeling permanently distracted at the moment, unable to fully focus and function, to concentrate on a thing.

Gradually the wheels slowly begin turning but then the consultant phones me requesting that I post some adjustments.  Had he bothered to include a message and request I make the changes in his email I would have already catered this.

Friday the 13^th kicks in as the ring folder for the old March 2008 account falls and snaps my main flashdrive while it sits in the USB port.  For a moment I live in fear that everything has been lost but thankfully the stick is still functioning but taking no chances I copy the contents onto my work PC as a backup, which in itself is a risk alone.  My fucking life.

Eventually I post the adjustments onto the old DOS version of our Sage accounts package but I do them incorrectly, basically I have forgotten how to use the DOS version of the program.  At this point I completely slump, almost Blair Witch.

Thankfully lunch soon comes around and with it a break from the hassle that appears to be grinding me down today.  Today I have Parmesan chicken in breadcrumbs with linguini.  And then the boss gives us (me) his bowl of fries.  Armageddon.

By the afternoon the countdown to the weekend is royally on.  The sad reality to admit is that I mostly spend the end part of the day trawling Facebook.  Firstly I review the lives of my old school friends who are now all so fucking airbrushed and adult in the most lo-fi way.  Too many of them are fast turning (or have already turned) into their parents.

Next however I make the truly enormous mistake of trawling by/through Mindy’s profile and blog.  With Friday the 13^th fully taking hold everything I see connected with this serves to depress me so I decide to make the assertive move and gesture of deleting her from my friends list.  The final straw was the blog entry that remarks at how good looking The Teeth is.  Its just such utter bullshit and in a moment of reckless clarity I have rarely witnessed such fake/false denial and bias.

Ironically just as I am doing this at the almost exact same time I get tickets from the BBC for David Sedaris’ upcoming radio show (bearing in mind that she is a big fan of him).  Now tell me that after a gesture like there is no God!  Wow, how am I to read into this gesture?  Do the arrival of the tickets mark another wasted opportunity in my existence and represent a lesson that I should learn/take from being so childish and petty?  Or are they an explicit gift/reward from such a higher being for finally getting over and moving on?  Its all win in my world.

Later I finally get a response from one of my replies to a Gumtree personals advert.  The response directs me to the Adult Friend Finder website.  This perversely turns out to be a more soothing kind of rejection as opposed to all those ladies in adverts that haven’t even bothered to reply to me.  The writer was too good to be true anyway.

Thankfully my working day is put out of its misery just before 5PM and after a drink I head to Euston at around 6PM.  I appear to have developed a backache towards my right shoulder blade at the moment.  This is so typically Friday the 13^th.

Once out at Euston I head towards the Bloomsbury Theatre where I pick up my ticket for LOUIS CK this evening.  From here I head towards the Waterstones just around the corner with the Costa in the basement.  This place is quickly turning into my refuge for gigs at the Bloomsbury.  The Christmas coffees are now on so I have a Cinnamon latte.

I take a seat in the corner with view to flicking through the free newspaper and people watching.  Within five minutes of my arrival the three people that were sat around this area of the shop have got up and left.  I guess that is the effect my aura has on people.

Eventually I head back to the Bloomsbury Theatre and take up my seat for LOUIS CK.  I didn’t realise I would be sat on the end of a row which, while being a good position in the event of fire, is not the best seat in the house, not least due to the numerous people stepping on my toes as they have to go through me to get to and from their seat.  Somebody fucked up here.

Tonight LOUIS CK seems to take a while to warm up and likewise it takes me a while to warm to him even though I am fan.  However when he uses terms such as the “Shit Dick Of Christ” that’s the kind of stuff I’ve been looking for.  Also when he makes observations such as “the secret of having the body you want is just to want a shitty body” really puts things into perspective.

LOUIS CK has an amazing talent for observational humour and nailing the ridiculousness of the world around us.  He speaks like a man struggling to get through while dizzied by this modern age which is something everyone can associate with (well, those still using their brains).

He moves onto the subject being a single parent and with an admirable lack of sentimentality he seems to hit the nail on the head, displaying his parental urges but also how they do not get the better of him and have not turned him into a ridiculous person.  Even though he is American there is something tangibly working class (blue collar) in an intelligent way.

As the set evolves it rises to great heights and soon I am losing all the doubting thoughts that had plagued my night initially.  The set launches into overdrive as he leads into his life as a divorced 42 year old and nails the subject of being a single person at that state of life.  He nails the clubbing experience with such clued ferocity that I am chuffed to have it confirmed to me just why I hate the mere existence/suggestion of those places, let alone stepping in one.  LOUIS CK manages to describe perfectly just how I feel now at 33.  It all feels misanthropic without being vicious as the hyper observed humour actually serves to enlighten and reassure all in tow.  When the set ends I find myself thirsting for more, here is a person with answers, he’ll tell us what to do.

With the show now over I swiftly get up and look around behind me.  Partway through the set I began to think that I could recognise the laugh of my American Friend.  Alas it was just me being paranoid.  I need to get my head straight.

Outside I swiftly get out of Bloomsbury and head direct to Euston Square station where I find myself met by the news that there are major hold ups on the line due to a person under a train.  I think I probably know how that person feels as we begin to endure a 12 minute wait/delay.

Eventually the train gets moving and when we reach Farringdon I see a couple on the opposite platform making out.  I swear that I just saw them catch a Westbound train at Euston Square.  Everyone looks the same to me these days.

As I look in the mirror at my reflection it startles me.  The glimpse is like that moment in Quantum Leap when Sam Beckett would see whose body he was in this week.  My reflection does not resemble my being, I do recognise the red-faced potbellied person in the window, it just does not reconcile with my being.

I end up on the 9.18PM train to Walton.  This is a train that stops at all the houses and thus will take forever to get me home tonight.  Just before the thing departs I swear the young lady that sits across from me is Purple Haired Girl of Butt Road from over five years ago.  It may be her all grown up, this just might warrant as a genuine Ghost World moment.  That said I have never seen a person take so long to eat a sandwich ever before.

I take the journey home on the chin.  This is now.  This is me.  This is forever.