Wednesday, June 14, 2006

A Trinity of Trouble

It looks like I have been neglecting this little corner of cyberspace. It's a little bit dusty around here. Of course, the internet has infinite corners making it really spikey and such and such. So I don't think it's been missed. That much.

Factors have converged in the last few weeks to pole-axe my willingness to write to the world, or even leave the house. Just like a Sammy Kuffour tackle across both my Achilles tendons. Yowser. He came at me from behind.

I stayed in for four days (not quite my scary record) and managed in an almost miraculous fashion to miss all the piercing death-ray sunshine, but yesterday I did make it to the bank to pay the London rent (I still live there don't I? Seems so far away ... like Namibia). Even the mere hint of summer sun burned me so. I had wondered if I was becoming a hermit or a vampire, but my allergic reaction to direct sunlight confirmed that I should avoid eating garlic and doing my ablutions in holy water basins for the rest of my life. I think it also screwjacked my brain chemicals somewhat.

(NB. That is the first ever time I have used the word pole-axe. I should hold a celebration party to mark the event.)

Obviously, since shelter was vital, I was forced into the local branch of Blockbuster and was coerced even further by the adverse conditions (Sudden switch from "The air! The seaside air!" to air-conditioned metal whiffage) and the dead, dead eyes of the teen cashiers staring straight through me into the sale-price popcorn, to buy one DVD, then two, oh then five for £25. Ach. There should be warnings on the news about such ordeals. They do it for droughts after all.

However, I was able to assert some control in my flailing desperation But I was this close *an earthworm breadth is signalled with thumb and index finger* to buying Kidulthood and The Libertine.

So you see I've turned into a complete weirdo. Stricken by cabin fever, crazed by the bleak indoors. Hey, let's call it kabin feva from now on. Then again, maybe not. It's a thin line between converting the written English language into the efficient economic machine that George Bernard Shaw envisaged and writing insane gibberish like a textese-spewing teenage twot.

Oh, where was I? Staring into shimmering monitor abyss, wondering about about the passage of time fast-slow, never quite right, thinking about things ... like lunch and the identity of the devious but cunning raspberry and plum thief.

Yes, there's that and then there's getting back to the factors that form a pivot in the crux of the matter concerning my indolence: the tripartite of tumults that have cowed me into the social equivalent of the foetal position.

Got a Lemonheads song in my brain
First, I'm still recovering from my op. Granted, I know this actually takes many months, but I feel I cannot stray too far from home and constant dressing-changes and half-hour salty baths spent reading On Beauty for too long without fear that I won't heal quite as quickly up in the Smoke.

Do you get better in London? Or do people just get away whether via a second home in Aquitaine or small town somnulence or cosmopolitan weekend break, take time to recover and then finally feel ready to take on the polluted, poxy metropolis (that I really do love deep down) before the fumes, black-nose and generally dissolute vibes pull them back into the sick bed. If you do want some bad vibes, however, feel free to mingle among the methadone addicts who have to pop into the Kings Cross Boots branch every day for their gulp of green life support. I get a 20-second preview whenever I get my daily leftist rag, and that is enough to fill me with the sort of introspective wonderment that soon escalates into joining isolated Buddhist monasteries in the Scottish Highlands.

The hospital aftermath is running smoothly though. Flesh is being knitted together and more icky stuff I won't mention for fear of making you expectorate in a undoubtedly sympathetic fashion (forgive me for being a bit manic, a mite tangential, and overloaded with the stylistically lazy interjections; I'm looking at you, bit of my brain that comes forth with the "Oh" and the "Yes", but this is a process of therapeutic catharsis).

The problem is keeping it together and it seems to be best done back in the heart of family life (it helps that mum is a nurse) Even when I popped off to Newport for one whole day and the two nights in London, things went slighlty awry and squiffy. Thus, I stay slightly rooted in my room and pay fealty to the care-jammed healing schedule since even walking for half an hour can have uncomfortable consequences. I have to make this work and comparative inaction seems to be a pre-requisite.

Study Overtime
Secondly, the World comedown is more like a come-up

The unquenchable thirst for reading and writing down stuff of a general knowledge inclination remains. I am still in the revision-cocoon. Inside it is warm and nobody disturbs me. It's quite nice.

Therefore, more page-packing for the files. Much more. This is because the WQC has encouraged me to learn even more and consolidate even more, and organise it all into a regime that makes my endorphins regularly go pop pop in the brain, creating a happy cranial environment that is conducive enough for the coursing sense of well being that makes me want to test myself all the time on everything under the trivia rainbow (it's beautiful I tell thee) again and again. The cycle goes on and on. There's nothing like the sensation of a knackered brain. Like weary delight.

This strange, insatiable urge will wear off in the next few weeks or maybe one month or two; it always does as the compartmentalisation kicks in and the quiz and non-quiz lives start to realign and settle back into normality (this is a good thing, it really is, I like going out). The prolonged convalescence, however, is stretching and expanding it to unforeseen levels.

When the little niggles and regrets about SHKs etc kick in, as they often do, it usually goes a little like this in the thought department: "Aaargh, I could have done so much better. Recall must be shot to pieces. Might as well eat my brain; it's no good for anything else. The difference between me and John Mills in Ryan's Daughter is that he is an actor and (I'll just stop myself before I make any off-colour jokes). I know what I'll do. I'm gonna read me a whole bunch of stuff. Such an admittedly futile act in the bluesy post-tourney period will reassure me that the disappointment will soon be usurped by a dose of good old Scarlett O'Hara optimism. My dreams may have been burned to blackest ashes around me, but there's nothing like the gas of hope to make me feel full when I'm actually really bloated with false expectations yet again."

Then two hours pass: "Sod this, I'm going to the pub for three months. I might even buy some new shoes. Yes, I can always buy more stuff. Now that will make me feel full. For about twenty minutes."

I do not deal with disappointment very well in the ultra-short term. The chin crumbles and the stomach churns and thoughts of varying malice grip me insidiously for a few hours. But the next day, I'll get up and think nearly nothing of it. The agony subsides and disappears with sleep. Life goes on, I think. I'll get over it, and I do because it does you no good to dwell on five-year-plans of revenge. Adopting one certainly worked for the Count of Monte Cristo, but were I incarcerated in Chateau d'If I would have beaten my sensitive parts of my anatomy red and scarlet against the stony walls in a sort of beserker rage til nightfall. I would tire myself into sleep. A new day dawns. Ooh, don't things look better in the morning. Slight satisfaction would gradually grow until I became accustomed to the calorifically perfect daily pot of watery nothingness and the fact that I have a room all my own with seaview and the high ceiling I've always craved, and on a lifetime lease no less. A mini-hurrah would be in order.

With myself time always and eventually douses the emotions that feel too hot to touch in the moment, let alone handle. It induces perspective. Give me a few days and the heart will return to its resting beat; the blazing fires that once stoked it now nothing more than glowing and faintly amusing embers.

But not this time. Not at all disappointed. Contentment and satisfaction reign. Optimism is piled on top of optimism. Sure there are niggles and open goal misses, but this has been helped by my not receiving my answer paper back immediately. If it was returned into my hands I would rake over it for hours and perform an ugly post-mortem, steadily annoying myself in increasing amounts until, well, my head would explode Scanner-style.

Perhaps, it is the tantalising proof of progress that I'm falling for. Once you know it is paying off, why stop there? Why not grab some more? Go nuts. And for the last few days I have.

And yet, the funny thing is by writing these words I have brought myself back into reality. Progress is an illusion. I remember what John Gray wrote in Straw Dogs. It was something like: we're no better than insects headed for a self-inflicted apocalypse. At least that it was I read into it. My family moan about the pessimist in me; the source of a Sahara dry sense of humour that encourages my siblings to punch me repeatedly on the arm when they realise I am making sarcastic and ironic fun of their foibles, and when they catch the bone, I know I will have certainly deserved it.

But I know my little jeremiads, sugared with some non-PC humour of course, are a sign of peace with the world. If you accept that the worst can happen you can be prepared for it and not collapse into a wailing heap when things don't go your way. At least this is what this miserable git me is saying. It appears I am going to end up as an even more twisted version of the senior member of Steptoe & Son, but with more CDs and other (by then ... far into the world of tomorrow, where I will make a living by collecting discarded robot wives and porno-holograph simulators) archaic pop culture detritus piled around me.

So let's just say I need to get some perspective by, perhaps, getting out more. I'm going to regress into a sort of Chauncey Gardner state of catatonia if I'm not careful.

And I would go out tonight but..
Finally, the World Cup is on. The World Cup. The greatest sports event in the world and quite possibly ever. Even better than the naked ancient Olympics. I've watched the vast majority of each match so far (except the one that started at 2pm this afternoon, dagnabbit). Yes, even Togo versus South Korea, which was a lot better to watch than overrated overpaid Ingerland melt in the heat. If I miss any, I feel deficient, bereft. In the same way you accidentally don't eat all day and feel the bubbling, yawning gaps in your stomach start to tell. Transfer that to the head and you may get some approximation of my fear of deprivation.

It has consumed me. And now the memories of when the last time the WC was on and my feelings of going cold turkey after the barrage of group matches come flooding back. I fear that day, and I know it is coming in a few weeks. Let the days go slowly and sluggishly.

Now if it was scheduled in, say, Australia, it would meld perfectly with my work timetable: day= writing, nighthawk time=football. Only it being a few hundred miles easterways, and the time difference is negligible, meaning I get up and watch football, get a snack, watch the next match, get dinner and have a bath, then watch the next match. Then it hits 10pm and what can you do apart from wait for the live feed of Big Brother and gaze in doolally wonderment through the nightvision cameras at a bunch of idiotic numpties snoozing until the Hoobs come on.

(PS A friend of mine lived in a squat with Pete in Brighton. Before he disappeared into the moronic inferno, Pete that anyone with some dirt or even some slightly grimy material should head to a tabloid and exploit it for every possible penny. That's the attitude. Go Pete Go.)

Back to the Refresher puppets: I make a vow at this very moment, before you all as Moloch and Baal are my pagan witnesses, that I will hunt down and gruesomely torture with sharp pointy things, whoever thought up this puppet show: their annoying voices, the moribund plots, the thieving of elements from Sesame Street, Beverley Hillbillies, Mork and Mindy, Rainbow, the reference points go on and on. What's this Hoobapedia they're compiling? It must be even worse than The Da Vinci Code (though it is far from likely, isn't it?). There's Wikipedia for finding out things, cloth-eared, cloth-bodied ninnies.

Therefore I much prefer the Boo-Bahs. Why? There's the psychedelic drug thing in the sky they do (or did if it is still being broadcast) every episode - the highlight - and there is no talking and no plots nicked from The Chuckle Brothers but turned on AN ALIEN TIP. It is like the visual equivalent of the more relaxed sections of Aphex Twin's discography, like Fingerbib. In contrast, the Hoobs are like Black Lace fronted by Timmy Mallett playing Aqua covers. They must surely die.

Now you're saying that the time after 10pm could be spent more constructively instead of giving the Channel 4 twilight schedule a right good seeing over and plotting to murderlise TV twizzlers who only want to keep the kids, who are our future, happy like mental patients who have just been lobotomised; but I would say I'm about as practical as a spanner in a surgery theatre. Once the darkness falls, you know who come out at night. Method actors. Do not fret, do not squeal and certainly don't put in a call. And I assure you that I will reply to texts within a minimum of four days. It's not agoraphobia: it's sheer bone idle laziness.

So it is the World Cup and nothing but the World Cup, and that and the recuperation and reference books converge and go SPLATOWSKIWOORRR leaving me in a collapsed wailing heap (I lied earlier, sometimes weeping heaping is called for) that prevents me from doing anything except stare at a TV, or aim my eyes at some book pages, or, if I'm feeling up to it (and hell, I'm not even sure I can make it to the toilet sometimes without the Sedan chair conveying me there - my Filipino slave staff is slowly coming together thank heavens) I might then move a pen up and down a page like someone who appears to be writing something fit to be read by all of literate humanity, although once you look closer you will be horrified to find a Pollock-esque miasma of violently crude scribblings with vague nouns popping out about the first ever 2000 Guineas winner and what a group of harpists is called. At least Jack Torrance could write one sentient, neatly typed sentence.

Sometimes it just feels great to yield your life and all your time up willingly to a benevolent beast that eats your existence with wondrous ease for a sustained period of time. World Cup month is one such example. Euro2008 will probably be another and so on at a two-year interval. The Olympics are cack by the way.

Remember vast chunks of the population are doing the same; rejecting normal routines for the footy, letting go and falling into the cosy abyss and forgetting about concepts like cooking fresh food (the Domino's number is locked and loaded). 'Tis "a consummation devoutly to be wished", as Mel Gibson once said.

Tomorrow (Though You'll Read This Today)
Been working on a project actually. If I know you in a quiz capacity you might be intrigued, interested then tantalised with what I propose.

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