Look, here’s another post!

I’ve got a week off of work, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Since Monday I’ve come down with what seems to be the flu minus the feeling mightily shit part, probably brought on by all the plaster dust hovering in the house during the redecorating and my girly wee lungs. I’m sitting here with a voice that’s dangerously close to being lost while going through different sounds from Christopher Walken to Bane and finally settling on a vague drag queen timbre. Another ten hours of near constant talking and I’d have probably been a mute for a few days and not got any sick pay from it either.

Anyhoo, now I’m trying to convince myself to do something remotely constructive. It only took me about 25 minutes to force myself to sit down and write these small words so things are looking up. Keeping myself amused is difficult, and has become considerably more so since my green stocks ran dry. I’d gotten into the habit of having a joint on most nights after getting home from work, lying monged on my bed reading or listening to music then drifting off into a nice easy sleep. It was simple, and it passed the time brilliantly. Now I’m constantly aware of each minute passing by and keeping myself amused until I eventually grow tired enough to fall asleep. Life’s longer, but not really much better.

Managed to finally get a catch up with Marsha a couple of days ago as well, between me working and her being in and out of hospital (before finally just getting her gall bladder torn out and fixing a large part of the problem) I’d not seen her or wee Babby since last year. Ended up going for a road trip into Edinburgh and experienced the delights of the one and only Krispy Kreme in Scotland. Part of me wanted to burn the place down solely due to it being a fucking drive-through doughnut shop and the ridiculously long queues to get served. Another part of me however must admit that the doughnuts are delicious, and the building should be revered for the unique abomination it is. You can tell I really want more but know I shouldn’t.

Other than that I’ve got my coffin into a halfway usable state, now only a stream of wires trailing along the floor, I’ve actually cleaned! Now I’m spending this lovely Sunday evening plucking up the courage to make the five minute car journey into the shops and see about getting myself some new specs that don’t have rust on them. Knowing my luck that’ll come right into style soon as I chuck them. Fuck it.

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Back once again!

A rather belated hello to 2013, I know I’ve not been around in a while. I start a post, get distracted, leave it for days or weeks at a time then wipe the slate clean and repeat. That’s been going on since my last post. Read through the last few post I’d made dating back nearly a year, I’m treading over the same ground each time, and probably would be again today, so I’ve decided to keep the catchup as short possible…

Things wot is the same:

Still in the same job, finding an easy groove where I mostly get peace and half-consciously think about getting myself sacked so I’d need to find a new one. Same car. Same room in the same house. Same glasses. Same weight. Same mattress. Same shit haircut. Same relationship status: single, happily, but needs more shagging. Probably the same jeans. Same boots. Same cycle of getting high for a while then being sober for a while. Same procrastination and tomorrow attitude day after day. Same kind of bleak mindset.

Things wot is diff’rint:

Marsha had a baby! A beautiful little girl who popped into the planet back in October and who has had enough pictures of her appearing on Facebook every day that you could easily make one of those time-lapse videos you find plastered all over YouTube. Um… That’s the biggie I guess. Another one of my friends had a baby too, sadly not nearly as cute but as it’s a big strapping laddie you don’t want him looking like a wee poof eh? Both my little brothers have been in for operations, one due to a fractured eye socket because he picked a fight with a sink, the other for a hernia that he didn’t tell anyone about until two days before he was scheduled to get it done. And that’s about it, it’s been a miserably static few months where I haven’t done anything remotely constructive and have in many ways gotten worse in most respects. Go me!

I think that’ll be enough for now, just dipping my toe in the water and getting used to hitting the publish button and setting this shite out onto the internet again. I’m going to make a more concerted effort to not only post more here but actually do more worth posting about, not that you haven’t all heard that before. Expect moans about the public, you all love them!

Night night, sweet dreams!

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An update.

I’m still alive, I’ve just been busy doing boring shit and finding excuses not to sit down and type up a blog post despite spending all day and night in front of a PC. Things have been going alright, spent a month off the phones getting training up on customer services and faults for both the TV and phone side of things, so work was mildly more interesting than it was before. Biggest benefit of it though was getting to actually have a bit of fun and be on the same shifts as the people I’m working with. Suppose if you wanted to get a wee bit poofy you could say that we bonded. Work itself is also a bit easier, most of the time we’re dealing with more recent customers who haven’t yet grown to hate the service or rack up any long running problems, they do generally seem to be a nicer bunch than before. The (now downright obvious to me) call diversions to specific parts of the call floor no longer apply, so I can sit down at the start of my shift and not silently cry to myself in the knowledge that half my calls are going to be from Birmingham or Bradford, or if they are they’ve at least got a decent phone line.

The start of training also precipitated a Facebook adding frenzy where everyone decided they now wanted to be aware of each other’s existence at all hours of the day. My manager appears to have been the one who kickstarted it, and I was initially hesitant to accept due to wanting to keep work and life separate. Then two things happened: I realised that I was in a go-nowhere job that wasn’t exactly shirt and tie just yet, and also we all got drunk on a night out at the end of training and I found myself with a hand down my manager’s bra, breaking down a little bit of that former formality. Like I said, the team bonded.

Other than that, not much has happened on my side of things: quietly saving up money, getting to the gym when I can, reminding myself not to eat constant shite when I’m not, and generally wishing I was a bit more disciplined in everything I do. Still living with my parents, driving the same car, and wearing the same pair of jeans. With other people? Marsha is thankfully still pregnant and beginning to show more each day, and she’s moved into a new house with her now fiance. Hans and the couple of other girls I went to college with have finished their access courses and are now going onto uni proper, and 28F has been off the map since january, but word on the grapevine is that she’s also out of the nest and into a flat with her long-haired pain in the arse boyfriend. The girl I had that slight dalliance with is still working in the same place, both of us successfully ignoring each other like pros.

And that’s about that, everyone’s growing up and moving on, but I’m not going to get all Bridget Jones about it just yet, I’ll give that another… year? Fuck knows. But for now it’s my day off, it’s getting dark, and I’m tired of sitting in front of a PC. Now that I’ve broken my renewed blogging virginity I’ll try (once again) to update a bit more often.

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Pregnancies and trips.

Things have happened! I might as well start with the biggest and most recent: Marsha is pregnant. I’d been having a smoke yesterday with Hans, and had returned home to enjoy lying on my bed half stoned and listen to music for the rest of the night when I got a short and to the point text from her telling me she had a bun in the oven. To be honest I thought it was a joke at first, but no, it was official. A few minutes later it was Facebook official, so I knew for sure that some fornication had indeed occurred. Given that I had no idea what to do in that situation and my mind was still rather frazzled, I decided that meeting up to give her a “muthafuckin’ hug” sounded just about appropriate. So I zoomed down the road, stopping briefly to pick up some non-alcoholic wine and water to cure me of my severe cottonmouth, then went to her flat. I gave her a hug, happy that she was happy, shook her boyfriend’s hand (who is now working in the same place as me, only in customer service rather than tech) and tried to gauge the likelihood of him running a mile.

We went a drive and everything was nice, I was on a level where I could enjoy everyone being happy and kept my mouth shut about any other shit, namely the practicalities of the whole thing, but I knew she’d think of all that herself. Besides, what kind of dick would I be if I said that on the day she told everyone? Not my job to be the party pooper. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for her and I’m sure she’d make a great mum, and her boyfriend is one of the soundest guys I know, but fuck me it could’ve probably happened at a better time. They’ve been going out less than a year, not living together, she’s working every hour possible just to afford the flat she’s in just now, and he makes less than me, and I make fuck all. Mostly though I’m worried about two things: that he may decide Marsha isn’t the girl he wants to spend the rest of his days with, leaving her to bring up a kid as a single mum, or that things don’t even get far enough for that. Last year she miscarried, and was months along before it happened and before she told anyone. Now she’s only a month into the whole thing, and she’s announcing it to everyone. If it happens again it’ll break her heart. This seems to be “the” baby rather than “a” baby. I hate being such a fucking pessimist, but I won’t be able to breathe a sigh of relief until the kid’s twelve and I can be sure everything went alright.

Also last night I heard that another girl from college was pregnant as well, this one is being kept on the down low though. I’m paranoid because these sorts of things come in threes. I’m now trying to figure out how fate is categorising who to pick. Is it girls I know? Only girls I went to college with? Girls with names within a certain range in the alphabet? Girls I’ve had sex dreams about in that semi-conscious way before I wake up properly in the morning then felt a wee bit guilty about? I’m mainly thinking this because I haven’t been a very safety conscious dude in the past few weeks, and I’m nowhere near as keen on a wee bairn as others are.

In other lady-related news, 28F made a brief return to things, adding me on Facebook and inviting me to her 21st party. Decided to decline both, the clouds parting before me, filling me with the revelation that birthday parties were suddenly, and without doubt, infantile gobshite I’d do well to avoid. Left it as a “maybe”, knowing I couldn’t give a valid excuse as to why I wouldn’t be available on a specific weekend months in advance. The real reason is that we had absolutely nothing in common beyond being in the same room together for a few hours each week, that she pissed me off more as time went on, then topped the whole thing off with a flurry of cuntishness towards the end that made even little old me want to have nothing to do with her. And that’s about that.

Work is going well, I’m near the top of the class with little effort and a far more laid back attitude than the other members of the dream team. Our manager is a nice woman. 30, two (or three?) kids, really fat and with the kind of biting humour your only get in mothers of boys and women who didn’t get the hotties in school. Easiest calls are the angry ones, I love people getting indignant and wanting free shit, knowing there isn’t an actual problem I need to think about solving and I just need to let them moan for a little bit before transferring them to the department who can actually help them. Normally cancellations. Now here’s the bit I need to tip-toe around, in the off-chance there’s a guilty white person reading that’ll do their damnedest to track me down and put an end to my horrid right-wing ways: the worst calls are from Asians. But Asia is a massive place, so we’ll narrow it down to Middle-Easterners. Now, it’s not the people themselves, or their accents, but their fucking phones. When I see that the call is coming from Birmingham or Bradford I cry a little. I can’t decide if they’re all a bit insular down there and the same shitty handsets sell like hotcakes to anyone who has someone called Mohammed in their family tree, or if it’s the actual infrastructure in the cities themselves. In either case, they sound like they’re phoning from the bottom of the ocean, while their submarine is made from rustley tinfoil. I can’t figure out what the fuck they’re saying. The thing is though, if the call is from a Dr Farouk who probably lives in a nice little suburb, the line is fine, it could be as if he’s standing right next to me. Jamal though? He’s fucked. He’s not getting his internet on that day, but after twenty minutes on the phone I’ll be booking a technician to go out and see him, because I’m not spending an hour trying to guide him through checking if his browser settings are correct. Or I might just send him replacement equipment for free, cos I’m lovely like that.

I’ll finish on a solemn note. Kids, don’t do drugs. And if you do do drugs, don’t do too much, especially not in the one sitting. I’d bought an eighth a week or so back from a (yet another, as yet unmentioned in this post) girl I went to college with. I had a joint at hers when I went to buy it, and it was strong stuff, much more than I was expecting. Over the next few days I’d sneaked a little puff mixed with tobacco here and there and everything was lovely. But I did a silly thing the night before last. Because I was off today and yesterday, and because I couldn’t drive (some fucker kicked off my wing mirror) I decided that I’d roll a couple joints of this stuff pure. Course, I’d forgotten it burns a lot quicker without tobacco in it, so I had one really really quick. That didn’t do much for me, so I had the other one at the same speed, all to myself, all within the time it’d taken me to walk five minutes home. When I got in the house it started hitting me and I knew I couldn’t hide the fact I was completely baked, so I went into my room, shut the door, checked I had something to drink, and vowed to stay there.

I was in a condition. My vision went to shit, and would only keep up with my heartbeat, so when I turned my head, my sight took a while to catch up. I was coming out in a cold sweat, but my face felt as if it was being burned by my hand when I touched it, and all my stubble felt like needles going into my skin. I couldn’t settle properly, my mind totally unable to concentrate on anything without an almost physical feeling of my mind being dragged away to think about something else, which would normally induce a flash of paranoia. I started to think that the hole at the back of my throat that allowed me to breathe through my nose was opened permanently, making it hard to drink. I worried about lying down, but worried about sitting up. I needed to cool myself down, but it felt as though it was only hot air being blown out of my window with nothing cool being blown in. When I lay on my side and closed my eyes I’d see things that I can’t decide were hallucinations or dreams forcing me to wake up.

But you know what? It was actually quite good, and I woke up the next afternoon feeling refreshed and ready to face the day…

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Fines, trips, and a stranger’s love of animal erotica.

Had my first properly awkward call today. A guy had phoned up complaining that his web mail was looking funny and he didn’t like how it appeared now, so my first thought was that his browser had fucked up and it would take two seconds to fix the problem. Having done that, he said the problem was still there. Not knowing what the fuck he was on about I logged remotely into his computer and told him to show me what tragic thing was ruining his day so much. He went into his inbox, where all they had done was change the layout and now not as many emails were shown before you had to scroll down. But what emails they were! I thought at first the guy had taken me into his junk email folder with the amount of mails about Viagra and the like, but then I noticed that peppered throughout them all seemed to be bestiality newsletters and the “nude news.” The worst thing might have been the fact that even after showing this off he still managed to hold such an air of righteous indignation that he wasn’t able to see enough of his porn updates at once, threatening to leave the ISP if they didn’t turn it back just for him. Besides, do people still actually get shit like that sent to them? YouPorn dude, look it up.

Aside from that work hasn’t been particularly eventful. I’ve learned more and more each day, some things that I was told in training but forgot because I had no practical use to remember it, other things are little quirks that everyone just has to pick up as time goes on. My biggest mistake so far has been accidentally crediting an account double what I was supposed to, and only remembering it later on. Didn’t mention it to anyone as it wasn’t exactly in triple figures, and it’ll give me a rough idea of how tightly they are keeping an eye on things if nothing else. If it does come up I’ll shrug it off as the noob making a mistake. I’ve only given two credits so far, so it won’t mean much work for them to see the other one if they do decide to check. Plenty of people have asked for them obviously, but I’ve managed to fob them off and get them to call back in a few weeks. Saves me the hassle of calculating what they’re due and it means they get what they’re owed all at the one time. Everyone’s a winner!

They love their stats in that place as well. They like keeping a track of how much of your break you use, how long you spend on a call, how much “personal time” you decide to take, how long it takes you to type up your notes in between calls… You name it, they’ve got a timer and a percentage rating to measure it. And believe it or not, I’m doing not half badly it seems. There are daily stats and weekly stats which are published showing how everyone is performing against one another. From what I could see I had taken the most calls out of anyone that week, and my handling time is what people on thier third month up on the call floor are meant to be getting. It’s amazing what copy and paste and not wanting to talk to the same person for ages can do. I don’t know what my repeat call level will be yet, but it should be interesting. Now, I’m truly shamed to admit it, but when I saw the stats my first instinct was to take even more calls and do my notes even faster, to get make those stats even better and beat everyone else. Then I remembered that I’m being paid fuck all with no chance of a real reward no matter how hard I try, and it’s not worth busting my balls day in, day out to improve a number on a screen for a company that will sack you in a heartbeat if it’d save them a bit of money. Mildly efficient mediocrity is the aim of the game.

Of course, I’ll have to make sure I do stay in a job for the meantime, as I’ve got a fine to pay off after the police stopped my car. I’d been on a little road trip with Marsha and her boyfriend (don’t ask, it was meant to be a squad of us going but then everyone’s work got in the way, but it wasn’t too awkward I guess) during the day. We’d just dossed around the coast for a while, realised it was January and that we were fucking freezing before coming back home again. I’d only just dropped them off when I was driving back the few miles to my house when a police car in front of me signalled for me to pull over. I thought I may have gotten off with a warning as it was just the rear brake light that was out, but it seems one of the front headlights had went and died as well. Add to the fact that my MOT was overdue by about a month and that was me in the shitter. So I ended up in the back of the police car getting all my details taken, rather enjoying sitting in a car with leather seats and a heater that worked properly. Maximum fine is £1000, was told I can expect one at around £2oo, and a well-known lawyer has just gotten off with the same offence and a £60 fine. Here’s hoping that I’m made to pay what the richest in society get, rather than the plebs. In the next few months I’m going to get a letter in from the magistrates telling me what a naughty boy I’ve been. Cunts. To make matters worse my car predictably failed it’s MOT today, the garage phoning me up and saying it would take £300 to get it in shape. Two tires are fucked, those lights were out, and new brakes are needed along with a handful of other shit. Now I’m starting to think about saving up for a new car, along with all the other shit that I was wanting to do. I’d given myself a two year deadline to make sure I don’t get trapped in that job. It’s £26,000 I’ll earn over that time, and everything seems to be eating into that. God damn. Still, if I save around about three grand, and my uncle is willing to help me spy out another car at cost price from his garage then I could get myself a better one than I had before. Golfs keep their value well too, so that’s a plus when selling it on.

The only reason I waited at all to get the MOT is because I wanted to make sure I could afford to get the car in a fit enough shape to drive for a fairly long distance reliably. Plus I was still on the dole and had no many to get it done. Since I got my first wage in I’d really been wanting to go a proper road trip, right up to John O’Groats.

As far north as you can go before you run out of Scotland.

There’s nothing up there I guess, and at this time of year it’s liable to be ice cold and rainy. In a way that makes it even better I think. Right now my entire plan revolves around getting there. I’d stock up on some essential supplies, a sleeping bag or whatever and just drive up there. Don’t know what I’d do when I arrived, I’d probably sleep in the car, but at least I’d have went somewhere new. Plus the route suggested by google maps (I’ve don’t have a GPS) takes me by the like of Loch Ness and the sort of places that people come from all over the world to visit but those who live here never bother going to see. And the road doesn’t seem particularly complicated either. It’s basically the same named road for a couple of hundred miles until you hit the Highlands proper, by which point you don’t have a great deal of choice in where you can go, as it’s single lane roads for the next few hundred miles after that. The money that’s now going to go on a fine would’ve paid for the entire trip quite comfortably. I’ve learned my lesson though, never drive behind the polis, and if you do, fuck off in the opposite direction at the first possible opportunity.

I had mentioned to Marsha about my little planned excursion, she said it was an awesome idea and that we should all go up one weekend, when in all honesty I didn’t intend it to be taken as a group invitation. I feel quite bad for it but right there and then I realised that it was something I really wanted to do myself without any company. Much as I love her, I know that her and her boyfriend would be the only ones who would go through with it, for everyone else it’d be work, college, or lack of interest that’d stop them from going. And aye there’s the fact that with the two of them I’d be the spare prick, and a larger group would be a much more tolerable prospect. For now though, for the first trip up at least, I want to keep it as a solitary thing.

Now for the traditional end of post message about my mishaps with the fairer sex: First up is that girl that I said it was over with, at the weekend there I kind of slipped and fell naked into her bed for a few hours before I found my way back out. She was a bit calmer sober, but we still had a good time. She told me again that I was the only guy to ever make her come, which is flattering, but after she mentioned before that she never comes from sex I’m not taking it particularly seriously. Am I being overly cynical by thinking a large part of it was just to boost my ego to keep me around? Remember that girl I fooled around with a few months ago, and then her boyfriend started working right next to me? Now she’s in training for the exact same job, so she’ll be hovering around as well. This world is just too fucking small!

I’m going to update more frequently, these monster posts are a pain. A little and often from now on!

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Moving, starting, still shagging.

Been a busy couple of days, and I really shouldn’t be taking the time to do this before anything else. I’m in one of those moods where I’m convinced that time will slow to a halt as long as I don’t do the short list of not particularly hard things I need to do to be ready for my first day at work tomorrow. Like fill in the last details of my previous employment, get some clean clothes and iron them, and maybe clean my boots to wear. And my bank details, because without them I’ll not get any money. I’m feeling slightly paranoid, wondering whether I actually misheard the entire conversation and that I don’t have a job t all, or if I definitely heard the time to be there at correctly. Can’t say I’m all that nervous though, with a month of training I’m sure they’re going to be taking their time, so the first day won’t be all that hard. Plus it’s minimum wage, monkey stuff right? Helped Marsha move flat as well, she’s moving out of the shoebox she was in before and onto a much bigger, fancier place with her pal for what I think was less rent than she was paying at the first place. When I’ve saved up a decent amount to move out I’m getting her to help me find somewhere, bitch can sniff out a good deal from a mile away. All that’s a fair amount of time in the future though.

As for the girl with the tattoos that I said I was done with, what I really should have mentioned was that I was completely done with her apart from shagging. Honestly, I meant to add that little bit in before, but it totally slipped my mind, which explains why I accidentally ended up in her bedroom trying to have one of those really quiet rides like back when you were sixteen and didn’t want anyone’s mother to hear. I realise by now that I am playing with fire a bit, and in a few more weeks there’s every chance she’s going to ask where we’re going, which would mean an awkward conversation and things being over. I think that’s enough about her for a while, I can’t really be arsed going into it all. Still, in Scotland we have a saying: Your hole’s your hole.

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Closer to work, escape plans forming, and surprise tampons.

The second interview went not too badly, though it did serve to highlight that even though I use a computer every day for gaming and all the usual stuff I don’t actually know a great deal about the ins and outs of them. Not off the top of my head and in technical language anyway. I was asked ten questions, largely about the likes of diagnosing connection problems with the internet and peripherals like mice and printers etc. It was fairly informal, just sat in a room and rattled through it quickly then back out the door again. The position was apparently “tier 3” technical support, whatever the fuck that means, as opposed to the original one being one lower. No mention of earning more money from it though, and the lazy part of me that doesn’t want to work a job in IT for the rest of my life is yelling to do the least work needed if they’re both minimum wage. I didn’t want to bring it up in the interview for obvious reasons, right now I’ll take what I can get. The interviewer told me again that I’d already got into the job (or training, which better be paid or I’ll cry) I originally applied for, and this was just to see if I’d be suited to another part of the company. They said they’d call me back today but I haven’t gotten one, with any luck it’ll be tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind a bit more of an assurance before I go telling everyone in the off-chance that they change their mind or there’s been a mix-up. And mostly because I don’t want to have to deal with any of those annoying cunts at the work programme.

Fingers crossed though, I’ve scrimped enough that I’m keeping a steady £150 or so in my account so if for any reason my dole gets stopped I can survive for a couple of weeks. Other than that I wouldn’t mind getting a few presents for everyone in the house, the car’s exhaust is slowly but surely dying again, and I’d like to update my wardrobe to decent stuff that I don’t need to pretend is shabby chic. Or that I’m such a hardcore ironic hipster that I’m making a statement out of old trackies and battered trainers. Maybe I’m going to stumble my way right into a £22,000 a year job, a professional call centre monkey! I’ve began to have notions of saving every penny for two years then quitting and fucking off somewhere, anywhere. The pan hasn’t progressed further than that rough outline. Getting out of this house is the first priority now though. Save up, find a guy that needs a roommate, and get out of here. Made the mistake of mentioning to my mum that I’d probably gotten a job rather than just leaving the house on monday morning and coming back eight hours later. For some reason this makes it open day for abuse. Everything from using the wrong lights to see with to the dog not having any tinned meat to eat, can’t do anything right. And instead of me getting a job, the complaint is that I should’ve gotten one sooner. Soon it’ll be not handing over enough money, that my work isn’t that hard, when am I going to move out… I might get a well done to start with, but I pay for it over the next few days, as always.

Spent today hanging out with Hans, this may be our last Thursday meet-up unfortunately. I’m starting to dislike this employment malarkey already. Told her that if I did get the job I’d ask around and see if they needed anyone fluent in German. It’s a big company with a lot of contracts, a German native studying English at uni level would walk into a niche job like that. When I left and got in my car to drive home I found a nice present waiting for me on the passenger seat: a tampon. The joys of having women for friends eh? I looked at it like an ape would an iPad, or a soldier in a war film would stare at the grenade that’s landed in front of him right before it goes off. I’m ashamed to admit that my first thought upon seeing it was “That’s an oddly shaped mint.” I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it. Should I give it back? Are they valuable? Personalised? Do I keep it in the glovebox in the unlikely event someone asks me if I have a spare one? What does the inside of it look like? Should I take it home, fill up the sink with water, drop it in and giggle as it expands? In the end I chose to chuck it out of the window, bouncing it off the windscreen of a passing Transit van. Some mysteries are best left unknown.

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Future phone interviews, my Bleary Godmother, and dreams of Bill Murray.

My grumpiness has paid off, I’ve got a phone interview for a call centre tomorrow. I applied not long after I made my last post and got a call on my mobile early this morning asking if I could come in for an “information session,” which seemed like a quick way of seeing who was really wanting the job without having to bother with one-on-one interviews. It was good to see my competition was a motley crew of nutters and stoney faced miserable cunts. Full-time work and a permanent position as well, not bad all things considered. I was told it was a largely inbound job so can’t see there being any great chance of earning extra money with a commission. Still, it’s four times as much as I’m making just now so I’m not turning my nose up at it. The office I was in absolutely stank of hash for some reason.

Once I got back in the house I sat down, looked out the window at the blue skies and sunshine and thought about how nice it would be if I had a little joint to go with it. Fate must be feeling generous today because right on cue my phone started ringing and it was my Bleary Godmother who I haven’t heard from in ages. We took business together so knew all about the ups and down, pitfalls and ramifications of the town running dry of decent grass. Supply and demand, TQM, various other buzzwords that I’ve already forgotten the definition of. Now I’ve got something to do tonight, had something to do in the morning, but am struggling to make myself productive in the empty bit in between. I’ll have to get out and find a way to use my new favourite word: fuck-shite. Eg “That feckin’ bastard is a useless fuck-shite.” Try and tell me you don’t love it.

My sleep schedule has been all messed up over the past couple of days. Instead of sleeping all through the night I’ve been getting maybe four or five hours, getting up, then later on taking another few hours. Can’t think of much reason for it, just been fragmented, keeping me going but not really wide awake and refreshed. Had some completely mental dreams as a result. I’d describe them, but it’s too convoluted in the way dreams can be for everyone bar the dreamer, and I’m trying to maintain that I’m a sane, normal, employable fella, so the one with Bill Murray and spectral basketball player will have to wait. I’m going to use them as the basis of the horror film I’ll make one day.

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Osama’s sound, snottery beaks, and poofy scholars.

I’m in a pisser of a mood. I’m choked up with the cunt-faced cold and the snotters are blinding me. In a few hours I’ll have worn off the first couple of layers of skin on my beak and it’ll be this time next week before I stop looking like Rudolph. In short: I’m not a happy chappy.

Bonfire Night was last night, which is one of my favourite nights of the year, if for no other reason that colourful explosives are going off left right and center and there’s usually a decent party atmosphere going on. There’s a reason for all of this happening of course, but I seem to have misunderstood the finer details of the day when I was growing up. See, a couple of hundred years ago there was a man named Guy Fawkes, he had a blocked nose and the snotters were blinding him too. But in those days they didn’t have any Vicks, and you didn’t know if you had a mild cold or a terminal disease. So he went to his doctor and got given a prescription, but before he could get to the chemist he was arrested for breach of the peace. He’d wiped his nose on his sleeve and flicked a bogie into the middle of the street, then told the PCSO to fuck off when they tried giving him a fixed penalty notice. This mightily vexed young Mr Fawkes, as all the polis were Rangers fans, and they slapped him all night long until each and every one of them sported their very own Red Hand of Ulster. Being the trendsetter he was, this bodacious young Catholic decided that the IPCC weren’t going to be of much use, and that his complaints would be far better addressed directly to the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. And he nearly got away with it, if only someone hadn’t sent an anonymous letter spilling the beans about the plan for avenging Fawkes’ well skelped arse. He was caught literally sitting on the evidence, and hanged not long after for taking the piss out of a fuckton of health and safety laws.

All that is fact, backed up by irrefutable proof. Problem is, I got the wrong end of the stick as to just what it was we were all celebrating. It seems that people are setting off fireworks over the fact that he was caught before he blew up parliament. But ever since I was a child I always thought we were remembering about how a man almost blew up the parliament. For me Fawkes was the hero, not the villain, and burning effigies of him was just a ritual rather than the people, y’know, throwing a terrorist on a bonfire. The historical and political side of things were never that big of a deal, it’s not treated along the same lines of Remembrance Day, it’s just something that happened nearly half a millennium ago and it’s tradition. Maybe being from Scotland had something to do with it. In school I can only remember being given just the facts, never the teacher’s opinion on anything. With the lovely sectarianism we have here (no racism, everyone turns grey in a fortnight mind) it may have something to do with a Catholic trying to blow up a Protestant government. The IRA were still setting off the odd bomb at this point, so they might have tread on eggshells around it. Or it might’ve been an already deep-seated mistrust of authority figures that I had when my age was still in single figures. I mean, surely the government must have done something wrong if a man’s going to all that effort to blow them up? Those gunpowder barrels are heavy after all. In the end though it’s about bright lights and bigger explosions.

Not that I seen any of them, that’s what I meant to moan about in the first place. I’ve got the cold, and it was absolutely freezing last night. The parents were away to a family party for just the old ones, Goggles was off out trying to get drunk enough to enjoy himself but no so much that it was blatantly obvious, and Thickness played games and watched TV as usual. I spent most of the night in a warm bath reading, wishing that my leaky beak would vanish so I could try to salvage an extremely casual date/meet I had arranged with a lady friend who was there with her pals. I don’t know if I’ll mention any more of that kind of thing, I’ve mostly kept quiet as “so I got a bit of nookie” isn’t that interesting. Tonight though it was a girl who seemed quite promising in regards to going out with her rather than a drunken fumble. Another day another chance.

I had another meeting at the work programme, which turned out to be as soul destroying as I expected it to be. They had taken my CV from me a couple of weeks ago, said they’d make it better and handed me out a few copies of it on Friday. It was filled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. This is meant to be the shit that they fire off to everywhere with an opening as well. Useless cunts. I’m getting more and more exasperated at having to attend this shit. “Do I really want a job?” Why are you even fucking asking me that? Aye! Ya shower of fucking spastics. The new advisor had the cheek to make me wait for twenty minutes then whinge because I arrived bang on time instead of early, which then kept me late for getting across town to actually sign on. I’m getting at least an interview by next friday, I’ve had enough of this shit, I’m going to annoy, harass, impress, threaten, cajole, intimidate, blackmail, or steal a fucking job by this time next week.

NaNoWriMo is going as shit as expected, I’ve got a lot of planning done, but I’ve still to make a start. Part of me doesn’t want to rush it, another just doesn’t want to even begin. I will though. Quantity over quality, any monkey can drag a piece of shit out to 50,000 words. If I make it incomprehensible enough and tell everyone I’ve got a drug habit I might even be able to go full circle and proclaim it as proper art. There’s also the small fact that I let slip to Hans that I was doing it, she with the English teacher boyfriend, he the English teacher boyfriend with Doctors of Words and Saying Stuff Dead Good for friends. Her reading it means he might read it, and it might end up as a literary Goatse for a bunch of scholars. Altogether now, after three: “But they’re just posh cunts, who gie’s a flyin’ fuck whit they ‘hink anyway!” I’m sounding more self-conscious than I feel, but then it is something that you’ve crafted and put effort into creating being grilled. I’m running low on don’t-give-a-fuck, I’ve been up for more than a day again. Yet I’m not that tired, and I’ve gotten myself into the groove of sitting and typing. I might just go and make a start at this thing. Only six days down after all.

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Or it gets the hose again…

Today I discovered my secret life as an accidental creepy stalker. Usually I’d be bothered by this but when I got thinking about it I’m almost certain I’m not the retarded one. Was with Hans in her flat when she told me she’d done something bad, after I got her to switch off the broken English for two minutes I learned that a mutual friend of ours that she goes to uni with was talking about her split with her long-term boyfriend and how she’s self-conscious yadda yadda. To cheer her up Hans told her how I thought she was really cute and (one of, chill oot hen) the nicest girl at college. Were I fourteen this might have been embarrassing, but now I’m 22 and some girl I never see knowing I think she’s nice looking isn’t that big of a deal to me. The fact she’s got two kids and a love for spending money she hasn’t got means she isn’t far up the list of girlfriend material to begin with. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was cool and don’t worry about it.

“But then you posted that thing on Facebook.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. I’d forgotten all about that, even if it was only a week ago I’d posted it. This girl (milf, to use the polite term) had posted a status about wanting to go to Venice and I had replied with “Road trip!” and that was that. Then one of her friends, who I’ve never met before, said I wasn’t the romantic type and wouldn’t like it, so she’ll go instead. Taking this all as a joke I posted an OTT, overly long, and cheesily romantic thing, throwing in some Googled Italian as the cherry on top. And that was that. Her friend liked the comment and I thought nothing more of it until today. The girl read it, thought I was being serious and worked herself up into a panic about me being head over heels for her. I think it was the “For my love!” in the most romantic of the romance languages at the end of it that did it. Now I was a bit paranoid, so I went back and read what I’d posted, breathing a big sigh of relief as I did. I talked about private jets, hand crafted gondolas made and driven by me, singing her love songs in Italian, and pouring a load of the River Clyde into the waterways of Venice in case she got homesick. Anyone who can’t see I was kidding is too retarded to be worth bothering about. Restraining orders and unrequited love no longer on my mind I settled for mild offence that someone would think I’d be daft enough to post something like that on the internet rather than stand outside of her house holding a stereo above my head and just shout it at her like a real man.

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