Wednesday 30 December 2009

I cannot believe just how cold it is this morning when I step out of the flat on my way to the train station and onto work via the most spurious of redirections.  As I leave my apartment this morning it feels as if the rest of the world is still asleep in bed, still on holiday and maintaining the festive spirit.

I am not ready for this yet, I am still in sleep mode.  I want to be still partaking with Christmas and in my mind and attitude I still am.

In the end I board the 6.48AM train which proves to be an unsurprisingly sparse affair full of miserable expressions and broken people with broken wills.  And it is all males, probably single men with nothing better to do than to work.

The journey is utterly tainted and when eventually the train grinds to a halt at Ilford an hour later it is as if the train and driver can’t be bothered with it all either.  Not long afterwards the train dies again at Forest Gate and finally this feels like confirmation that god hates me.

Finally the train gets to Stratford at 8AM at which point us losers have to get off and board the poison Jubilee Line tube and Liverpool Street is closed this week and I have to take the Nike swish route up to St Johns Wood.

The Jubilee Line is always an illuminating experience.  To my right I notice a red-faced lady who I cannot identify as being either Asian or Eastern European.  For some reason I find her attractive, I suspect it is due to her apparent awkwardness caused by her redness.  With her big nose she looks a tough customer.

At West Ham when the tube stops an Asian guy gets on and stands almost on top of me.  He stinks as bad as the team named after his tube stop.

Eventually my Jubilee Line crap experience ends up with me sitting opposite a girl that looks like a member of Shonen Knife.

Walking into the restaurant today is a very downbeat and solemn moment.  When I get in my boss and the operations manager are already in but it doesn’t look like anyone else is coming along today.

Originally I had my day planned out but in the face of what appears to be such an unnecessary attendance into work today I have no real interest in doing anything when there seems to be no real demand for it.  In the end instead of actually doing any work I just decide to tidy my desk with view to starting the new year next week with a fresh desk and clean environment.

Soon my boss is flapping as suddenly some adjustments to the accounts seem necessary.  Personally I find them extracurricular but in order to placate him I post them all the same, scratching the surface on the imperfections of the figures.  With this tough the wage changes required on the October accounts suddenly mean that real work is on.

Today I have XFM on the radio and it brings the hits as it counts down its Top 1000 songs.  This provides many thrills with the absolute highlight being “All I Need” by Air.

I wasn’t going to bother ordering lunch today originally but with the boss being held up in leaving he insists that we have something to eat.  As ever I go for the salmon, new potatoes and hollandaise sauce option which at least contains less guilt than the majority of the dishes on the menu.  When the food turns up we both sit eating stunted in conversation.  Seems we can go only so far.

Eventually he heads off and after he leaves things begin to calm down.  They also begin to turn dark on me.  In the afternoon while sat on my own in the office I experience my heaviest dose of depression in a long time.  A sense of hopelessness rains down as I fail to see beyond this.  In my mind I play over errors I have made over the past year and with the new year.  With nobody else around to straighten me out and snap out of it resentment builds as the pointless sense of appearance here at work today beds in.  I feel low and as I list everything I have to do and everything I want to do suddenly it all begins to feel overwhelming and unmanageable with my own efforts seeming futile.  These I guess are my apparent abandonment issues kicking in.

Thankfully I finally head home at around 3PM feeling tired and perversely drained.  Nobody beats me up quite like myself and my own mind.

In the end after another ride along almost the length of the Jubilee Line I snag a 4.10PM train at Stratford.  It seems to be semi full of daytrippers and idiots, people that get in the way because they act as if they have never seen a train before.  When I eventually find a seat, sat underneath the table is a dog.  As soon as I am sat down the owner warns me that there is a dog beneath, which by now I have seen with my own eyes.  I make some stupid comment like “he’s not on this side is he?”  Twat.  From here the journey proceeds to smell like Bonio and dog breath.  These are the breaks.  Ultimately though I like the dog, it is just the Time Out reading owner that I think is a cunt.

Despite this I remain relatively happy, very relieved to be heading home and returning to my Christmas holiday.  The mood splutters slightly as I experience a mental hiccup when the train nears Colchester and I spot Nine Finger Keeper sat opposite in a seat across the aisle.  It is actually he that acknowledges me when I look up/over for the first time so I wave back and say “hello” in the most feeble of reactions.  This is truly the worst timing.  Just as I am questioning my own sanity and real social standing in the grand scheme of things with regards to my public Facebook culling of so many old school acquaintances I suddenly begin to feel paranoid and wonder if he knows about it and thinks I am so weird as a result.  What am I playing at?

When I finally get back to Colchester I head direct to the refuge of my parents where I discover them eating a roast dinner, a meal for which my invitation was lost in the post it would appear.  Just joking.

As I hang around their place Mark texts to suggest some drinks and with my sudden concern about social standing I jump at the opportunity to inject some life into these proceedings.

Currently his phone is playing up so in addition to sending a response in the affirmative I take the risk of walking in on their dinner (also) and just bowl up at their door.  Indeed my arrival is ill timed as they are having dinner too but also I was right in thinking that my response would not have arrived.  So while they all have their dinner I find myself sat in the front room with a bottle of beer watching Dumb And Dumberer on TV, perhaps one of the worst films ever to have been made.

Eventually we head to the Hospital Arms where the place is swinging.  We end up shooting the shit and with only two Bitburgers under my belt the drinking knocks my head off.  It’s a fun evening, we put a lot of things straight and with the new year looming I feel on form.

By the time I get home I already have a headache and am staggering around.  As I take a piss and look down I fear/feel it is about to be complimented by my puking up into the bowl.

In the end despite my headache and inevitable hangover signposted for the morning I fail to make preparations (take a pill, drink some water) as instead I pass out on top of my bed fully clothed.