Saturday 27 March 2010

Saturday 27 March 2010

Things feel right today, feel good and this probably explains why it is that I awaken at 6.30AM when I do not necessarily have to be up at this time.  In fact it is probably detrimental to do so.

With time on my side I decide to finish off watching The Damned United, which I fell asleep during last night.  It zips past faster than I recall it did when I watched it in the cinema.  This time I find Michael Sheen’s performance less like Mike Yarwood.  It’s a good film but as I’ve said before it doesn’t hold a candle to the original book by David Peace.

The early part of the morning is slow moving.  As I went to Asda yesterday I do not feel the necessity to hit the store today.  Thank God.  Still there are Saturday newspapers to buy so around 8.30AM I pull myself together and walk down to the paper shop on Layer Road.  It feels like years now since I used to regularly do this walk every Saturday morning, a different kind of routine but one that was perhaps better for me.

Leaving my apartment my neighbour has struck again and once more there is a black bin bag dumped on the landing making our exit hall stink.  Why were these people dumped into my lap?  As ever I open a couple of windows in a futile gesture of letting air in while wondering if when I return the latch will be pulled down on the door.

Walking past the old football stadium it now cuts something of a truly depressing silhouette.  It has sat dormant for about two years now; I can’t even remember the last time a game was played there.  I miss the atmosphere; I miss living so close to such a relevant part of my hometown.  Now it is just going to ruin.  By now there should have been a new set of apartments put up in its place making the area more desirable and sending all our surrounding property values up making it a good time to move out and away.  Nothing ever goes to plan.

Once returned with newspapers in hand I flip on the radio to listen to this week’s Danny Baker show on Radio Five.  In some degree I am still reeling from his reading of my blog book description on his radio show yesterday.  It was a surreal moment and I can’t help but feel he lost interest in it mid flow.  Suddenly all my efforts are feeling distinctly amateurish and without point.  My writing indeed feels too wordy and bloated but perhaps this is what some people like.  Maybe this is the worst in hyperbolic.

In order to relieve the moment from yesterday I set about looking for a programme online that rips BBC radio streams.  I send out a call via Facebook, which garners a few responses before I eventually discover an application that just allows you to download the streams for it.  This will surely end in tears.

The remainder of my morning flies by.  After the Baker radio show I flip over to Jonathan Ross and while they hang in the background I attempt to write but nothing is coming today, everything feels stunted.  I try to energise things by dropping brain vitamins, drinking juice, eating fruit, slurping fizzy caffeine drinks and then even desperately having a cup of tea (more caffeine) but nothing is coming today.  I have reached a block.  And it is worrying me.

Today I was toying with the idea of going to Millwall but soon the drizzling rain puts me off that idea, killing the urge in addition to the reality that if I go along I will probably curse them and make them lose.

Instead from here predictably I attempt to write as ever (this is all I appear to do when I am home these days) and before I know it the day is already well into the afternoon.

In the afternoon I check my bank statement and to my pleasant surprise there are thousands of pounds in my bank account, a few more than I was expecting there to be.  There are no errors with this just a new sense of discovery coming from what are apparently the good times.  So I have more money than I need in my possession and nothing to do with it, no life to put it towards.  This is pathetic.  How did I get to this point and place?  Would ladies find me more attractive if they saw my bank balance?  What a joke.

Eventually I begin to hit some kind of wall so instead of labouring over words I watch I Love You Man.  It is a funny movie and all and I really fancy Rashida Jones but nothing seems to happen in the movie.  Instead of having an arc all it appears to be is a series of comedic scenes linked by a most flimsy of plots with ultimately a very unsatisfactory conclusion.

Around 4PM I head to the olds and into town.  As ever Colchester on a Saturday afternoon resembles the usual band and collection of lost souls all badly dressed like people from a certain George A. Romero movie.

As I walk around town I check the Millwall score and they are already winning 3-0 at Stockport come halftime.  Had I actually gone along with my cooler effect this would not have happened?

From here I head to HMV where happily I find How To Lose Friends And Alienate People for £3 which is a movie I genuinely really like despite being the source of an American Friend memory with it being the only movie we went to see together.

When I return to my parents’ place I discover that Millwall have beaten Stockport 5-0.  We are going up.

With this we have pancakes for dinner, which is an amazingly indulgent dinner.  Its wrong but tastes right.

In the end up I wind up watching You’ve Been Framed with my parents on a Saturday night.  I need to make some serious changes.  Afterwards though while channel hopping I come across 30 Rock, which I proceed to foist upon them to zero reaction and no laughs.

Eventually I drive home winding through the crazy car park that is now Balkerne Heights.  What happens when these cars get scraped?

When I get home I put on Walk the Line that only serves to remind me of the crazy date with Jay from Korea.  That was a strange experience.

Soon I fall asleep.