Friday 5 February 2010

I’m sorry to say I awaken feeling low this morning.  I don’t wish or intend to be on some kind of permanent whinge trip but it is just how I feel at the moment, how I don’t feel happy with the world or these circumstances.

All in all this is a good day to have/be off work.  I am pretty positive my boss hasn’t remembered I’m not in today so I spend the early part of proceedings half expecting a phonecall.

When I awaken today the sun is already up.  This is a rare treat for me, I can’t help but feel a large part of the current downbeat attached to proceedings is the distinct lack of daylight around at the moment.

Once up and running I look around at my place and consider what to do with today.  Ultimately it comes down to writing or flat renovation.  One option sounds exhausting and the other tedious.  Both are a combination of the other.  In the end I plump for attempting to write with a dab of flat tidying.

Where to begin?

Fuming I decide first to check outside and see if that lazy cunt girl next-door has decided to clean up after herself yet while on the way out this morning.  No, she hasn’t bothered.  For a person supposedly so active, being a personal trainer, she really is a slob.  With this I decide to quickly email our property management agents and complain about her bike causing an obstruction in our communal area.  This is a petty gesture I know but if these fucking cunts at the agency are going to charge me excessively I am going to become an annoyance to them and get my money’s worth while also acknowledging who is niggling me next-door.  I hate how people make me get.  Honestly, just like Bukowski I don’t hate people but I just seem to feel better when I am not around them.

Eventually I quickly tear into writing before any momentum escapes me.  You always write better in the mornings than in the evenings.  I do worry about my hubris though.

Obviously daytime TV provides something of a distraction for me.  What the fuck is According To Jim about?  This is representative of absolutely nowhere on this fucking planet?  No wonder David Cross took (takes) such exception to James Belushi.  After this I really do not stand a chance in the war against daytime TV distraction as Channel Four belts out Parminder Nagra’s final episode of ER.  My god she is a beauty, a true sight to behold on days such as this.  Others days, less so.

Despite all this going on I do manage to get a decent amount of writing done.  Originally I was taking this spare day in order to get my accountancy CPD (continued professional development) documents up to pace but that isn’t really on the cards at all today.

As lunchtime hits inspired by the Ian Dury movie last night I take a break and watch the Stiff Records documentary from BBC4 a couple of years ago.  It sits on my dormant 80GB DVD recorder that really proved something of a misleading piece of technology, especially considering I could never get any of the DVDs I burned on it to work on any other machine.

Happily the documentary holds up as I zone into nostalgia for my old job at SPZ and doing the accounts for what remains of Stiff Records.  It is funny watching the relationship between Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson crumble as it echoes the differences my Gringo Records cohort and I had back in the day (scarily eight years ago now in 2002), albeit on the smallest scale.

After the documentary, despite the negative comments about Devo, I still feel enthused by this music and with this I find myself watching the Ian Dury “On My Life” documentary I recorded that same night.  I actually find this a much more interesting and entertaining recount of his life than the movie from last night.  The latter years Ian Dury was truly an enlightening man, philosophical and well grounded, appreciative for his opportunities in life rather than misfortune he sadly encountered.  And this was a person that knew from experience having managed to do so much in the process.

At 3PM I take a break from all this and listen to the Danny Baker show on BBC London which I double up as an opportunity to have a kip.  His daytime London show is so relaxing, a true throwback to a golden age of British entertainment while being tinged with subtle subversion.  This truly is one of the better ways to waste two hours of your life; I wish I was able to listen to the show everyday.

By the time the show ends at 5PM it is still light outside, this year is finally kicking off.  It’s all up from here.

Emerging from this I feel relatively refreshed but then I remember part of the reason for taking today off was to set up my new DVD player.  In the end it seems like it takes seconds for me to do this but in the process of knocking the TV aerial on top now lines roll across the screen of half the channels, those being the channels that I am still able to receive (bye bye BBC1).  Mine is a constant war with technology.

Heading into the evening I write and watch Jon Stewart.  For a Friday night this is truly life in the fast lane.

At 9PM I hit true pay dirt on TV as Film4 shows The Godfather.  With this I sink a fizzy caffeine drink and sail out the evening half watching the classic and half writing which combined proves to be my most productive and positive evening in a very long time.

Didn’t even have to use my AK, I have to say today was a good day.