Data Entrance...

Throwing off the shackles of the working world, placing my tie into one of my housemates bra's and setting it alight, tossing back my hair and stumbling drunkenly about the country attempting to save vicious ex cons from themselves with a piece of chicken and a can of lager....




This was my vision of unemployment. It was a beautiful vision filled with carefree abandon, picnics and a visit from God, kindly offering to return my wasted years to me. There would be a 'Welcome' sign above my home as I returned from my final day in the office, there would be trumpets and small dancing Irish children dressed as leprauchans. Radiohead would be there, Blur would be there, Jimi Hendrix would be there...alive and well.



I would be embraced by a secret community of jovial non office workers, healthy of skin, permanently 20, besides themselves with excitement to see me.... the world of opportunity and inspiration would unferl before me like a Red Carpet that lapped at the beach of triumph like a clear Caribbean sea.



So here I am, sitting in the office of my parents Garden Centre lending an unpaid helping had at some data entry and chuckling at a man whose surname is 'Smelley'.



In my quest for funds that do not involve interviews and irons, I have arranged to meet with my landlord on Monday. (There's more to this and it doesn't involve bums so bear with me).



He will then take me to a wholesaler that he knows, who sells bikes. At this point I shall attempt to negotiate ownership of some of these bikes spending 100% of my remaining funds. The idea being that I can sell these champions of the road, tamers of traffic the jam, sell them through gumtree for profit in a very short space of time....



- I have a booked holiday for August 11th

- I'm about to spend to my last pennies on bikes that may or may not sell

- I am doing data entry for free to fill time during my freedom

- Claiming housing benefit is nigh on impossible due to having a lacadasical lebanese landord (fantastic alliteration, with ominous consequences)

- After posting various adverts around cyber space claiming that I am the worlds greatest copywriter, the Dali of copy, I have a spurious business link with an SEO agency who 'may have some work coming up for me'

- I'm currently scoffing at people who have given email address's to my parent business with titles like: lizandphil@hotmail.com...i mean, why centralise your email? To save on cyber space? Does it generate arguments, like 'have you been checking my emails again?' 'They're not yours they're mine, you've been doing the spying not me'...etc



The portents are all there....how do you see this ending? Answers on a Postcode to:



Alex Lewis

Some street corner or other in London

Nr a bin.

A Match Report...

Every man born with that innate comprehension that a ball should be round....not oval and that it should be about the size of a mans head and possible to kick without breaking a bone...not the size of a fist and likely to be smashed at your head with a linseed oil soaked plank of wood....

Every one of these men, lives every day of his life filled with terror that the summer lull in football broadcasting or the break from activity of his beloved 5 aside team may, just may, never end. That he might wake up one morning bereft of football shakes him to the core and results in wild behaviour; Wild erratic behaviour that renders the female gender proclaiming confusion even bafflement (not a word until now) at how their bearded, beer bellied opposite numbers behave.

This is the little known secret of behavioural nuances such as men huddled round warm flat pints of lager in dingy, damp stinking public houses, muttering about and cackling at absurd idiosyncrasies rather than returning home to their loved ones lucid and awake at the pre-agreed time.....

This, this and of course that fact that we just spent 8 hours at work aware that our partners have spent the whole day updating their profiles to read:

'SATC2 tonight Sooo excited'
comment:
'Oh wow we're seeing it tonight too, where you goin'?'

'Let's all dress up like the SJP and go for cocktails first woooooo'.


It takes 9 pints and 3 hours of reminding yourself that it doesn't have to be that way to wipe out the realisation that your beautiful intelligent partner is in fact a mentally ill 6 year old with a Barbie house instead of a brain....that or 9 pints and 3 hours to build up the momentum to go home and exact horrific domestic abuse, but that is a personal thing and you go the way that you feel is right.

So then........it is with fervour & perpetuity that the re-start of the Corinthians 5 aside season is awaited.....

Towning
Lewis
Finnegan
Nevill
Murray
Cenamor

Lined up to face the un-to-now force unknown of CITI bank.

Initial observations did not strike fear into the Corinthian Lion Hearts as the opposition took to the field adorned in a variety of cheap beach wear. The outfield players looked more like a lost group of British tourists in 80's Tenerife, looking for the beach but somehow ensnared in a game of 5 aside football, a game that they had previously never heard of.

It became clear that the CITI outfit really meant business though, when the goal keeper adorned a pair of Gardening Gloves, an audacious break from goal keeping tradition.

Recent times have seen defeats and static play from the Corinthians, but possibly inspired by the return of club all time top scorer Andrew Towning the play was fluid and the movement inspired.

It was at least 2-0 to the blues before CITI had chance to settle and to so much as touch the ball.

Move of the game began with Jim Murray, spying an opening down the middle of the pitch he launched a through ball to Towning, but the ball was at about stomach height. Towning launched himself into the air, recalling the skills he had developed at county level hurdles and turning 180 degrees scissor kicked the ball against the cross bar. There was almost applause.....despite the fact that there was no crowd....

The goals included

A hatrick for Murray, capped off with a 10 yard shin strike, the ball foxing the gardening glove clad keeper, by slowly bouncing directly past his leg...

2 for Finnegan including a rocket strike of a penalty and just barely muted Stuart Pearce vs Spain celebration...

An unending flow of succinct strikes from the men charged with the goal tally, Towning and Cenamor.

None for Lewis. More concerned with peppering the goal mouth with long range wonder strikes, Lewis once again proved that his Lampard thunderbolt needs considerable training ground work.

Nevill in goal, charged up by the terrifying potential of the game finishing late and his better half illustrating vocal disgruntlement, adorned in professional looking goal keeping strip, he gave Gomez a real challenge between the sticks.

It was a Rob Green vs Mexico esque performance and many fans are excited by the prospect of a competent number 2. Gomez though has been rumoured to have undermined the challenge by sending Italian Mafia clad 'kiss o grams' to the Nevill abode...a lightly shrouded death threat if ever there was one.

All in all a triumph and exactly the start that the season needed....Now on to the tough games.

Cause and Elect...

In 2001 the UK general election returned a comprehensive re-election victory for Tony Blair's New Labour party.

On that fateful night, we inadvertently plunged ourselves deep into an incredibly contentious war, signed up to a wild frenzy of securitisation and personal credit availablility that eventually lead us to the current crippling disaster....I’ll stop there....

Old news is no news, so to speak. The Conservative alternative (great song lyric if ever we needed a pro Tory Gazza rap), was frankly pathetic that year any way. If anyone recalls a Tory policy worth writing home about they are better men than I. As far as I recall the only point of note was the Tory smear campaign, of which, they are KINGS.

"Four years of Labour and he still hasn't delivered."

Coupled with a big picture of Tony Blair, pregnant....presumably pregnant with highly animated, WING-ED DE-MONS, dressed as Jack Nicholson's Joker.

On that fateful night I stayed up until the last seat was returned drinking with a friend whom I was and I fear still am a National deficit apart from in political knowledge.

That night I crowed and hawed about how disastrous it would be to return a Labour Government, ( a point I feel vindicated on, but not for any of the ill-educated gobshite I was spouting in those days). The friend in question was incensed by my attitude and comments.

'Silly, Labour voting idiot, blind to their ever declining socialism', I thought in my vacuum of a head.

Not only am I about 90% sure that he actually voted Plaid Cymru that year rendering the venom with which I berated the Blairites an irrelevant base of argument, but I myself did not vote. Truth be told, I didn't even know how.

A 21 year old who:

- Had no doctor due to being too lazy to turn up to register for one
- Had no dentist due to a lazy reliance on the idea that the underfunded NHS wouldn't have space for him...(that same 21yr old is now 29 with no dentist...though I do have teeth still)
- Didn't know how to vote
- Hadn't read a manifesto
- Hadn't thought to look at one
- Had wild and aggressive views all based on conjecture and instinct

That is not a pretty picture. In fact it conjures images of a dirty, pustular, toothless old bigot living in a bin and blaming everyone but himself.

It wasn't that far from the truth.

This year, my 30th year, I did vote, I do have a doctor and I did absorb every piece of electoral intrigue that I could bend my mind around....still no dentist and now having replaced living in a bin, with a bedroom consisting of a dirty old mattress on the floor...and a St George's flag for a curtain.

(The mind bending incidentally was necessary to swerve every tabloid headline, every throw away comment by a politician to deflect from their own lack of answers and assault their opposing number and to duck every hyperbolas brazen lie.)

Having learned so very much, having triumphantly absorbed sufficient information to not feel the need to fly into an anti-Labour rage filled tornado for next to no reason, I promptly went out and voted Tory anyway....because I believe that Labour are bad for us.

That, is well executed democratic right.

Educate oneself, discuss the issues as best you can with those around you...vote for reasons beyond simple self interest.


The election left a sour taste in my mouth though. Sour and bitter, in one horrible badly contrived gobstopper of a mouthful.

Not because of the landslide of confusion, indecision and lack of direction illustrated by the British populations voting habits.

Not because the Tories were comprehensively chosen by England but rejected by our provinces....resulting in no one's choice being accurately represented in parliament....

But because I became aware that my bottom feeding electoral misdemeanors of yesteryear are teetering on worthy of an MBE knighthood in comparison to some of the stupidity that is out there.......wielding the power to vote like gun with the safety off...

Some points of note:

TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION WITH A 25yr OLD GIRL AT WORK:

Girl - Who are you voting for?

Me- Not decided yet, have you made your mind up?

Girl - I did that online who should you vote for thing...apparently I’m a Tory

Me- So you're voting Tory?


Girl - I just want to vote for low taxes

Me - It's probably not the economic environment for that...which taxes?


Girl - Just taxes. I'm just tired of seeing these people walking around stealing benefits.

Me- You can see people de-frauding job seekers allowance schemes? With your eyes?


Girl - Whatever, I just want low taxes and these illegal immigrants are stealing my money.

Me - So what do you think that we should do with them?

Girl - Just stop them

Me- So which party's immigration policy do you agree with?

Girl - don't know what they are.

Me - You seem to be emotive about it, should you look into it as a vote decider?

Girl - I just want lower taxes.

......................

She has a degree, yet she once spent all night in a warehouse waiting to compete in AMERICAN pop Idol, despite not being an American citizen and was surprised and angered when she was turned away like....an illegal immigrant.



We should call 999:

'Hello, emergency services'

'HELP'

'Which service please'

'POLICE'

'What seems to be the problem?'

'She has a vote. What is worse she looks like she might use it.'

'Hold on sir, there's a car on the way, stay in the house and lock all the doors...'


......................

Would it be so much to ask that the polling card came with a questionnaire? Simply asking you to recount some of the key manifesto promises of the main 3 parties? Achieve less than 50% and your vote isn't counted?

.........................

Tension mounted outside polling booths as it became apparent that the country had become so used to pitifully low voting turn outs that it was drowning in the averagely decent turn out that 2010 had to offer.

A sympathy must be offered to many who fell foul of this situation, but to the woman who managed in Sheffield to twice negotiate her way onto camera bleating words of disgust at this abhorrent injustice.....we must offer only a blank gormless stare and possibly some dribble.

She was enraged. She had stood fastidiously in the rain and the cold waiting to cast her democratic sneeze all over Britain and had been denied, denied desipite the hard fight for democractic equality embarked upon by Emily Pankhurst whom suffered so. DAMN YOU SHEFFIELD!

Of course, she did let slip that she'd passed the queue at 18:30 and seen how long it was, so had some dinner (probably cabbage, she looked like she enjoys cabbage). Returned at 20:30 to see that it was still quite long, so waited until 21:30 to joint the queue only to be OBVIOUSLY disappointed.

As I understand queues, if you don't join the queue, you tend never to get to the front.... to check in at the airport one should attend an hour in advance of check in closing, lest you not be allowed on the flight.

In Birmingham however one constituency was being heralded as the heroes of democracy.

Realising the perilous situation the returning officer quickly ushered the populous into the polling booth so that they could not be influenced by the exit poll in the outside world and all could vote, even if it was beyond 10pm.

Apparently no one in Birmingham has a mobile phone. That must explain why no one in Birmingham ever rings me. That and because the only Brummie I know, lives with me.


But it isn't just the pig shit brained British public that is so harrowingly concerning...

...and I’m speaking to NICK CLEGG here. Nick Clegg, who had largely been so impressive in his baptism into the general public eye.....

Don't embark upon your final push for votes, a grueling trek up and down the country, bleating promises and clear easily digestible motivational sound bite, wearing a tie that is in the KEY PRIMARY COLOUR OF AN OPPOSING PARTY.

The public are stupid enough, the tabloids unscrupulous enough, don't arm them further.

It isn't that important really...is it?

Or is the naivety of it tantamount to thinking that Monica Lewinski was ever going to keep schtum once her mouth was no longer full? Or that Hitler wasn't fibbing? Or that Gordon Brown could keep Labour afloat....


Naivety (also nativity actually) is an affliction that we all suffer from on some level, most of us will always look back with 20:20 vision on our terrible choices, ignorant reactions and cringe at our own vehemence in the face of the more knowledgeable....among other such equal denominations of stupidity that we have engaged in. There is thankfully always going to be a glut of those who drown out the noise of our own shameful past with their own ear deafening bollocks, billowing out of their beaming, self satisfied pie holes, screamed into our faces with a giant mega phone loud enough to make us all run for the nearest rabbit warren....

Now that it is all over though and the votes are quite literally in and counted; It does rather look as if the idiots are taking over and that a nation of Nathan Barley's who's only discernable purpose in life seems to be to make us feel better about our own err's, quite simply, are not worth the catharsis.

Booze o'clock?

January,

The traditional month of abstinence.

New beginnings: Star Trek 'Genesis', David Bowie 'Changes', 'Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning', Star Wars, 'A new hope'.

4 weeks that begin every year for every person over the age of 25 and under the age of 60 with a sacred promise to oneself. It's a valuable moment in all our lives, setting us up with renewed optimism for the year ahead, 'I can do it' ringing in our by now independent from the parental bosom; ear drums.

I won't get home from work, stare at my aging face in the mirror for 20 minutes, disdainfully remove my awful excuse for office clothes and then drink 2 bottles of £2.99 wine; I won't mitigate the misery of wasting away my short time on earth in an office by going out to student populated venues and pretending that I’m a work hard, party hard kind of a guy; I absolutely won't stay up until 4am watching, Spaced or The Office or any other (brilliant) comedy series back to back just because, 'it's a bit like me'; AND BY GOOD GOLLY GOSH, I WILL get a better job, better exercise routine and finish this year in a better financial position that Alan Sugar but with more credibility than Armando Iannucci. ALL WILL LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIIIIIIRRRRR...

The main sacrifice that all us infidels attempt to resolve is the alcohol.

I recently found a very interesting, though preaching, article about giving up the demon drink, booze, brew, cup, draft, glass, gulp, libation, liquid, liquor, potable, potation, potion, refreshment, shot, sip, slug, spirits, drop, swallow, swig, taste, thirst quencher.........etc

http://www.spiritualriver.com/stop-drinking/

My favourite part is as follows....



For example, a miserable drunk will usually brush the question off entirely, waving his hand and saying “whatever. Take me right now if you want!” That is the miserable desperation of addiction talking. Now if we manage to sober this person up and get them involved with a creative new life in recovery, their answer will likely change quite a bit (I know mine did!). Life becomes precious in recovery.


Surely a conclusion SO conclusive as to open the eyes of even those in Dante's Purgatory who as punishment for envy had their eyes sewn shut with wire.

Despite, feeling that the points made in this article are essentially as 'spot on' and sharp as a Jimmy Carr put down, there is one point that I would like to draw into question........

'Life becomes precious in recovery'

I maintain (and I don't expect support, though do feel free to join me, no man is an island etc), that this is an argument for further fermented grape induced shenanigans......

Mortality is a mouldy old so and so, no one really likes him or his dusty breath.

I should say that there is no good excuse for ushering the old sod into the lounge to hold court, I want him tucked away under the stairwell, out of mind out of site, and if a barrel of rum helps me do this, then the socially acceptable oblivion can stay at my house, sleep with my wife and wear my trousers whenever it wishes.

...Besides, I’m slightly suspicious that if we listen to the booze o'clock nay Sayers then we might just all turn into Richard Simmons......

Christmata.

Not everyone approaches the sexual act the same way.

Whilst that is playing on your mind, i'll switch tack over to the topic at hand, so fluidily that you, the reader, will probably not even notice....Many different factors affect a persons approach to the Christmas festive season; there are generational nuances, class variations, chronology of childhood/adulthood, religious inclination....mental health condition....(the same thing?)

This year was not the Christmas that I expected. Traditionally or at least in recent years, I have spent the build up to Christmas combining working hard to earn an engorged December pay with having a good deal of holiday remaining allowing me to make the holiday period predominantly out of office. Mix this with work Christmas parties, friends parties, seasonal decorations and general good cheer and you have a heady mix that makes that 4/5 day return to the family embrace a warm and upbeat engagement, feeling insufficient in it's fleeting nature.

2009 however and from the off a few pieces were not quite in place. It was like a football missing a talented left winger or a talismatic captain, they can adjust and utilise momentum to flounder through a few matches but ultimately they will fail. Tottenham without Modric, United with Ronaldo, Chelsea without Drogba, Hull without Bullard....

An extended metaphor for those dulled into a coma by the football reference:

Buzzcocks without Bill Bailey, Quinticenssial Englishness as a media presence without Stephen Fry, Mr T without the A-team (see world of warcraft adverts currently on TV), Knight Rider without Hasslehof....

And to reverse the metaphor for indulgence:

Father Ted with chisled good looks, Indiana Jones with CGI'd monkey's...in fact...George Lucas with access to modern technology.....etc.

Back to the point,

I hate my job, it's about as financially productive and as valuable a use of my short life as it would be to post your Gold to those Gold buying companies currently on TV or dressing the concept of time up as a five pound note and swallowing it, then burning your faecal matter a day or two later, having spent the interim time period whilst it worked it's way through your bowels attempting to insert your own elbows into your anus.

I spent my carefully saved holiday days attending interviews for equally as unsatisfying jobs, didn't have the money to enjoy the process of purchasing gifts for others, exploring Christmas or buying luxuries like fucking travel cards.

It weighed on my mind and whilst i made Christmas happen, I didn't feel it.

There was the family event, the big day, a gathering of an extended network of blood line, all under 5ft 9 inches, they gathered stumpy and present laden, ready to save the 'day'.

'You're what, 29 and i'm giving you a stocking filled with presents?' barked my father at 10am Christmas day, after literally dragging me out of bed by my disgruntled foot. One swift reprimand for my pitiful career and several forceful suggestions that i'm a 'bit different' and my illusions of the family embrace healing my wounds like a crying child gripping it's mothers arm, were shattered.

In 1718 BlackBeard made his last stand, staving off inevitable defeat with 25 pirates and a ten gun ship named the Adventurer until he was killed in a gruelling hand to hand battle with his opposing captain.

In December 2009, I made a last stand, staving off an inevitable pitt of despair with an illmanned sense of Christmas cheer and a pen knife with pliers attachment that i recieved as one of an entourage of inexplicable gifts.

However, BlackBeard had his head swung beneath the bows of his enemies ship as a warning and as a sign that the most fearsome scurge of the seven seas had finally been defeated. Christmas 2009 would have no such victory over me, scurge all who like the point to be presented quickly and without going around the houses for the sake of pure indulgence.

Here we are in January 2010 and I am sat at my desk wearing a colourful jumper and a cheery grin, albeit eyes so puffy that they look like Charlie Brooker just got angrier, but i'm chipper.

The long and the short of it is that (like BlackBeard), I had a fucking good time. I enjoyed the incredulous sense of disbelief when I was handed an Ed Byrne DVD, I enjoyed being told that know one in the family understands me and that i couldn't have a lift at 7pm in the evening to go 8 miles, because, 'we are not a taxi service'.

I enjoyed it because it was unique to my breathren clan, absurd and exemplorary of a technically functional British family with absolutely no idea how to communicate and learn from each other.....except, they are and they do, they just haven't a clue how to express it so frustrate each other to the point of utter disbelief which marvelously, no longer comes to a head by way of explosive row....

in fact....

this year....

...It lead instead, to me attending a 'body pump' class that was fronted by a stunningly beautiful blonde woman who was seemingly considerably stronger than I, with my father. A unique way to vent your Christmas frustrations and find a bonding point that welded a generation together in the ridiculous, found sanity amongst the body pumping insane, welded the family middle class in the face of 'them lot with accents' and caused me a serious long term knee injury.

A week well spent.

Sweep it under the carpet.

Recently I have been plagued with feelings that I have let my life wind down a bit:

My job is a depressing waste of time counterweighted only by the fact that it requires about as much effort as lifting an empty box once every 20 minutes over a working day....interspersed with the occasional urgent lunge toward my telephone where I call my own answering machine and leave myself a message.

My social life is pottering along nicely but is only a hairsbreadth from becoming a close knit circuit of dinner parties and book reading meetings. That isn't due to a lack of opportunity to explore the surrounding world or even a lack of invitations to attend varied hedonistic occasion, it is more down to an internal sense of age.

So many weights begin to build upon social adventure as time passes...it hurts more in the morning that it used to....I’m more tired after work than I used to be....I’m reticent to skip sports lest I suddenly put on 40 stone and sound like I’m drowning in my own fat when I speak....I feel like I should be saving money not spending it and am aware that I might end up like a neglected old war veteran rationing the heating and attempting receding inside my own emotionally scarred memory bank to escape the cold....I feel like I used to be more fun, but I’m aware that I dislike that person as well on account of them being a super twat bag....I miss 3 day drinking binges with wild drug intake in a crack flat with only gnawed pieces of mouldy bread and 40 cans of lager for sustenance....but it would kill me and I’d have cunts for friends.....

and so on....

These things bother me sometimes despite the avenues of social exploration that I do adopt always resulting in a fine time and an anecdote or two, perhaps it is just the volume of opportunity that London offers making exploration seem a little less adventurous?

Regardless; I live in Stoke Newington, Hackney and recent event has evidenced quite nicely that my concerns are unnecessary and ill founded as I live in an area so absurd as to quite literally bring the sort of carefree nonsensical idiocy to my very front door.

From the street you must approach our basement flat abode by journeying down a set of steps into a large patio area suitable for BBQ's and the like. Under these steps is a cupboard guarded by a metal door and a bolt. In this cupboard is a dirty, damp stinking collection of our friend’s spare clothes and old bed linen. Quite recently the weather has become aggressively foul and this seems to have scattered and disturbed the local homeless community like ants facing an assault of boiling water. One of these street scavengers too shelter in our yard, a point that I was alerted to one morning as I strode naked into my room, glanced out of the window that was directly ahead of me and noticed a ragged looking fellow sat on a plastic chair and doffing his cap at me like an English gent on a Sunday who's garden I was passing.

Interestingly, when faced with a potentially violent, complete unknown loitering in your yard covered in mud and rain, the revealing of one's own birthday suit seems inconsequential.

Feeling a deep sense of empathy for his situation, I called in to working citing a tramp in my yard and stayed in bed allowing him shelter. The ambitious little fellow was not happy with his lot though and promptly smashed the lock of the cupboard off, bent the bolt and put up home in the musky under stair cubby hole, a veritable stig of the dump.

Being a natural coward, I stayed in bed until he left and told myself that I was being a Good Samaritan. Over the following week he returned on occasion to his newly found home to roost until my flat mate (a small girl from Birmingham) took up the man of the house mantra and shoed him away like a stray cat, though given her mindset I’m sure that had he in fact been a stray cat, or dressed as a cat, he would now be living in the flat and defecating in the cat litter box as freely as his cat suit would permit.

The ordeal over I gradually regained the confidence to walk through the yard as oppose to the all new head down dash attack that I had adopted. That is until but a few days later another one of club street roamer came strolling through our threshold gate and began plodding down the steps full of aplomb and as smiley and happy as lord.

He wanted to know if his chum 'was in'....was in? 'Was in' in so much as the cupboard was now his permanent abode? I wonder if he's informed the Post office of this new address and left a forwarding address at on top of the cardboard box that he used to live in.

Barely having recovered from the surprise at the audacity of our parasitic friend I was enjoying one of my favourite day's in the house with tea, biscuits, computer games, Father Ted DVD's and children’s TV(I’m hooked on the new adventures of Iron Man), when two burly looking men began sweeping up outside my front door. Disconcerting at the best of times but our front door has a glass transparent front and leads directly from the yard into the lounge.

So whilst naught but a couple of inches of glass separated me from these angry looking do-gooders, I pondered, 'how often can I ignore events like these before I begin awaking to a homeless sleeping next to me in bed and a behemoth of a man vacuuming my room?'

Before the full impact of that thought had reverberated through me one of them knocked on the door.

This was it, he obviously wanted to sweep up the kitchen wearing a dress, and I was doomed.

Apparently they were builders, and apparently they were sweeping up the mess that they had made but a few days earlier and apparently his broom had snapped so could he borrow mine?

In a flash I had provided my sweeping device, innocent as they motivations of these men, they made me uncomfortable and I wanted them gone. Some time later (there was a great deal of mess and my broom is of limited usefulness resembling more of old toothbrush than a method of 'sweeping' away rubble) a knock at the door, and the call of 'I’ll just leave it put here mate', though he didn't look that bright so probably miss-spelled his own sentence, 'out hear'....

Once I was sure that the coast was clear I poked my suspicious little head around the door fearing having to sign for delivery of a package that the tramp had ordered or something, perhaps a new welcome mat. The broom was leaning on the wall. Or rather, A broom was leaning on the wall. The Builder had swapped it for a white one of similar quality taking my blue one with him.

BUT WHY?

The brooms were of similar inefficient quality, this wasn't the alleged broken broom and presumably he had to go and get it, else never would have needed mine in the first place.....

Perhaps he fears the colour white? Or is so unhappy in his marriage that any variety of any kind is vital to the perpetuation of his bliss? 

I wish him well with his new broom and certainly haven't suffered for the replacement, but I am now acutely aware that I do not need to leave my own living room to endure anecdote provoking lunacy and that anyone who says that one is wasting one's life by just sitting in front of the TV is completely wrong, if anything to go out, to leave all of that to go on un-seen would be a crime.

After all, if a tramp moves in to a cupboard and no-one knew he's done it, would he have really moved in at all?

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?