In Decision.

Decisions are the toughest part of life.

Not only does the approaching need for a decision drag in one hand a Christmas stocking brimming with glorious potential, but in the other a fettered old sack oozing putrefied dreams.

Should I go on holiday?

Should I leave my wife?

Should I hold up traffic by stopping and asking directions or just take this next left? It's probably left...

Should I call that client today?

Shall I pass the ball or shoot for goal?

Should I hand this wallet in or spend the money?

Should I vote for George Bush or just kill myself now?

Should I drown my housemates cat in the river or just club it to death with a hard back copy of Blitz Cat and then claim that the book 'fell' off the shelf?

(Are you technically a casualty of World War 2 if paraphernalia that only exists because of it kills you?)

There are endless decisions of every level of importance and every one of them right down to the subconscious and accidental shape our lives and consequently the existential reality of those around us in some sort of decision making Fantastic Mr. Fox Trot.

The Butterfly effect ones choices are immeasurable and unquantifiable, but conjecture is nonetheless interesting.

Last Friday night I stopped out after work for a drink in the White Horse pub Soho. From the window I could see the back of a theatre that the erstwhile Dylan Moran is performing in. He was standing out the back of theatre swilling a glass of wine and manically waving a cigarette as per his comedic persona. Either Dylan Moran has become his own character or Black Books is really more of a documentary.

That was at about 6pm and there was something seductive and vital about the way Moran carelessly swilled his health away whilst being entirely successful (appearing on the surface to do so without any effort and almost to hold success in contempt). Instantly I felt the need to regress to an infantile state of booze swilling, foot loose, foot uncertain, good time lovin' student Dom.

Luckily I had a party invitation ready and willing.

By 3am I was without my coat, my beloved mid nineties adidas tracksuit top, my mobile phone headphones and my mind...oh and my house key. Not noticing the lack of house key until I arrived at my front door the torrent of thoughts...'my housemates not in...should I go back to look for the key....I can't afford that taxi....can I smash a window?....what if I try to and the brick rebounds of the window and hits me in the face?...What would Bruce Willis do?....

Knowing that I had to be up in 5 hours anyway to get myself to Surrey to lose a game of horribly amateurish football to men better suited to sitting down in a curry house than running around, I just couldn't sanction the taxi spend to travel across London to stay within the protective walls of a friends sanctuary.

There is something about whistling wind and a border line Ice storm that makes a man covering his Torso in naught but a baby blue Childs 70's T-shirt feel vulnerable. Alone and vulnerable...in Hackney. The excuse to launch Rockets into the air and burn one's own hand off with fire sticks is definitely not lost on the children of Hackney and the 6th of November was not a good place to be drunk, cold and with no where to go. It felt similar to Stalingrad 1944 and had there been a fellow human around that I was capable of overpowering I would surely have panicked and eaten him.

As it was, I was a very lucky fellow. I use lucky in the broadest sense of the term, as there was a sleeping back out on our washing line that I had neglected to bring back into the house to see how long it would take for it to be stolen. It was of course damp and cold sort of like a corpse just pulled out of the Thames being pressed against your face. This was to be my plank of wood at sea, my puddle in the desert, my slippers in a snow storm.

Tucked away on the hard cold concrete floor with this wet bag pulled up over my head I was just well protected enough to doze off until morn and awake having absorbed the bag moisture into my now wrinkly skin. I looked like a man who had gone into a cocoon and emerged 60 years older, an age accelerating hibernation serving little to no use or purpose lest I need to enter a pruniest face competition or to go undercover in a care home.

Was this all Dylan Moran’s fault? It was his decision to emerge out the back of the theatre and be all physically charismatic and carefree...but who made the decision to send him out that way in the first place?....and who made the decision to build the theatre in the first place? I have much work to do if I am to identify the culprit and have my vengeance.

Perhaps though there are even worse consequences. Perhaps an inquisitive firework wielding child due to embark upon DofE the following week saw me clamber youthful and enthused into the embryonic sleeping rag and happened to be passing later that morning when I twitched and writhed until the sack spat me out, birthed like a sodden foal, reborn, an octogenarian. Fearing the consequences of entering a sleeping bag he refused to attend the DofE award opting instead to spend the time studying at school under the supervision of a teacher. The teacher was a lonely middle aged spinster with confidence problems and after a couple of days of proximity they find themselves in an impassioned embrace, the confused hormones of youth crashing into the menopause, a symphonic eruption. Inevitably, the ensuing media storm drives them both to move to Eastleigh for a fresh start, where the boredom results in their mutual premature deaths just 6 months later.

My fault? Or Dylan Moran’s?