StrangeReality

It’s make or break for me with my job. I despise the whole concept of working for a living. I have spent a greater proportion of my adult life unemployed than employed. I have walked out of so many jobs without looking back and with no regrets. Twelve years ago I spent 3 weeks performing data entry duties for a mortgage company in town. From 9 to 5 (#what a way to make a living#), every day, I methodically worked my way through piles of cheques. I had to enter each cheque’s details onto a computer. Name, address, account number, amount, date paid, bank sorting code, et cetera. 3 weeks passed. The words ‘soul’ and ‘destroying’ would be appropriate. I got up to go work on the following Monday. I will never forget the scene: Me sitting on the edge of my bed, pulling on my socks, and suddenly realising in an instant that I was not going to work today, and that I was not going to work at that mortgage company ever again. I finished dressing and caught the bus just the same, though. To give myself the option, in case I changed my mind. But I did not change my mind. If you have ever suddenly walked out of anything you hated, be it a job or whatever, then you will know the kind of liberation that I experienced. The sudden perception that you are totally free and you do not have to do anything that you don’t want to. I remember a lot about that day. It was a sunny but cool day in June 1992. I walked around town for a bit, enjoying my freedom. I had breakfast at the cheap café that used to be opposite the bus station but which they pulled down just one year ago to make room for some luxury flats. I went home around midday and told Mum I’d walked out, and I had to endure her dismay. I went up to my room and lay on my bed reading ‘Ada’ by Vladimir Nabokov, one of the finest novels by the world’s greatest prose writer. It was easy for me to leave that job, twelve years ago. I was 22. I had nothing to lose, really The future looked immense and there was still time for me to do almost anything with my life. I could go off to university, or visit Peru, or become a monk. As things turned out, I wound up twelve years later, in the here and now, holding down a pretty good job with a big company. I have just had 4 weeks off sick due to alcohol-induced anxiety episodes. I do not expect to just go into work on Monday morning and for there to be no consequences.

Tuesday 12 October

Another stab at keeping a daily journal. Let’s see how it goes. I have the house to myself for a few  weeks as they have all gone on holiday, to Spain.  This - having the place to myself - for me is a holiday in itself.  I must accomplish great things with this freedom.  Today I will drink no alcohol. Today I will drink no alcohol.

Wednesday 13 October

I drank no alcohol yesterday. I had a large spicy meal around midnight and it sent me crazy for 10 minutes. I am prone to baseless anxiety, in case that fact has yet to be established.  I opened the front door and looked outside.  It was misty and cool. I was convinced, as ever, that I was about to die. I didn’t die.

This evening I have got alcohol and I am going to drink it. I am telling myself that it is so I can get to sleep tonight at a decent time. (I got up at 3 p.m. today.)

Thursday 14/10

Today I got Pro Evolution Soccer 4. It's a game on PlayStation2.  Instead of living a life, fulfilling my so-called potential and so on, I mess around with games on my PC and my PlaStation2.  The whole day has been dedicated to Pro Evolution Soccer 4; so it’s only fair that I should acknowledge the fact here. First things first: I cannot make up my mind whether PES4 is the worst or best iteration of the series. The innovations are numerous - a press-sensitive passing system, tweaked ball physics, a degraded sense of player control, a referee on the pitch… PES purists across the land, nay, across the Western world, are rolling their eyes tonight.

Got up at 1 p.m., half-dozing, listening to a radio debate about gambling in the UK. There was a man who called in who said he was addicted to playing poker on the Internet. He said he played nearly every night but he never lost more than £10 per night. When it came to the point where he had lost £10, he always quit for the evening, he said. Thank God I don’t know how to play poker.

After a mug of tea and a slice of toast I got ready and went into town. The bus held few or no fears for me and I climbed aboard without a tremor. The journey was anxiety-free. Just the odd shadows of it lurking out there at the fringes. I made a journal entry on my Pocket PC. (I have a Pocket PC, now.  It's flash.)  Among other things I tapped: ‘I just hope PES4 is in the shops now.’

Dismounting the bus in town (‘Cheers,’ I said to the driver) I made straight for GAME, barely 20 metres away. The PES4 poster in the window said coming soon but plastered over one corner was a sticker saying available now. I could hardly believe it, but then I reached the entrance and saw the display rack of PES4 boxes just inside. With my short-sightedness I could not tell whether they were real boxes or not - I mean, whether it was a promotional display only or not. I drew nearer, bent down, peered… £37:99 Best Price Guarantee! They were the real deal all right. I picked one up and went to the counter. The Asian sales assistant was using the shop telephone. “Well we got the stock in today," he was saying into the phone. "It’s not supposed to be out until tomorrow but we’re selling it from today.”  Evidently he was notifying somebody who had pre-ordered the game that it was available for collection today. The sales assistant put down the phone and twitched his eyebrows at me. I held up the box as if I hadn’t heard a word he was saying on the phone. “I thought this wasn’t out until tomorrow?” I said innocently. “Well we got the stock in today,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be out until tomorrow but we’re selling it from today.”

I rooted around in my wallet looking for my GAME loyalty card. I handed over two £20 notes and the loyalty card. In my excitement I cannot remember now if I collected any change from him. After a minute I left GAME with PES4 tucked in my inside pocket. Anxiety? What anxiety?

I walked down toward HMV. I had a vague plan to acquire some stereo headphones, to plug into my PC or TV and wear when I’m playing loud games late at night. (As I had left the house on my way into town, I saw my neighbour, Dave, out the front. I greeted him cheerfully enough and expected that to be the end of it. As it usually is with one’s neighbours, eh? But Dave said, “Are you on your own in there?” Dismissing any possibility that there was an existential dimension to the question, I replied, “They’re on holiday until Saturday.” Dave frowned and said, “Are you playing loud music late at night?” Which was ironic, given that Dave was the one-time king of late-night loud-music-playing. I mugged, “No…” “Do you hear it?” said Dave. “I’m an early-to-bed, early-to-rise man these days.” “Are you working?” he asked. “I’m off this week,” I said, “off sick.” Dave smiled and I smiled and I hurried away, thinking: Maybe I should get some headphones…)

Before reaching HMV I wandered into the Bargain Bookshop and walked a figure-8 amongst the displays. There was a hardback copy of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time for £1:99. It was the last book I had read in a single day - in one night, actually - and I paid £6:99 or something like that for the paperback copy from Waterstones. I felt a vestige of annoyance - no, of CHAGRIN - at seeing the hardback there for £2.

I lit a cigarette when I got outside and strolled past HMV before I remembered that I needed to go inside HMV… I tossed my cigarette and did an about-turn, tutting aloud. For once I was genuinely performing a manoeuvre that I usually execute when I am out walking - not going anywhere, just walking for the exercise and the fresh air - and I want to head back home, but I do not want anyone who might observe me turning around to think that I am just out walking. I went back to HMV and there outside was a noticeboard bearing a handwritten sheet saying ‘Pro Evolution Soccer 4 Out Today only £35:99 inside!’ Hmm. So much for GAME’s lowest price guarantee.

I went inside and walked around to look at the PES4 boxes, happy of course that I had my own copy on me. I went and chose a pair of earpiece earphones - the kind that are like a regular pair of earphones, but with attachments to loop them over your ears. Cost me £9:99. I caught a taxi home that cost me £7:00. So the total cost of my PES4 excursion was £54:98. It’s a good job that I do not have a normal life with a family to support and bills to pay. A really good job.

So I have been playing PES4 for a total of about 5 hours. What do I think? I don’t know yet. Every year it’s strange, getting used to all the tweaks that the makers have put in place, but this year it’s somehow different, I feel. This year it will take longer to form a proper judgement.

On the whole, I would prefer to withhold that judgement until further notice.

Friday 15 October

Drinking again. Work on Monday. I will survive.

Saturday 16/10

It’s all over, then. Not just my 3 weeks of blissful freedom, but the dream that I have nurtured for 15 years. I have given up the idea (which was only ever an idea) that I am, or that I could be, a writer.  A shame, but there you go. The end of delusion must be celebrated as a positive thing.

[The week at work passed uneventfully.]

Monday 25 October

Felt awful at work all morning.  Prompted by a near-panic attack in the taxi on the way. I felt nauseous and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.  I went to reception at lunchtime and called my manager down. Showed her my shaking hands and talked about how I was feeling. “I think I’m going insane,” I said. “You’re not,” she said. If only she knew what goes on in what passes for my mind. The unreality is slowly killing me I think. I experience shuddering episodes, where I see the world inside-out, as a projection projected from nowhere with everything, including myself, included within it. Madness madness madness. Where is this all headed?

I came home and lay on the bed for a while.  If I do go mad, I thought, I won't stick around to see how it all turns out.  And this thought comforted me.

Wrote something during my darkest moments:

“Mr Wedderburn, you say? When was it I wrote to him. A month ago. Five, six weeks max. Now here is another letter complaining no one’s been in touch with him. Aw shame. What I would like to do to Mr Wedderburn is break into his house when he and his family are asleep. And not just butcher the lot of them - that would be too quick, as well as very hackneyed. I would rather hold them all hostage for several days and make them torture each other for my pleasure while a bound and gagged Mr Wedderburn watched. He himself I would save for the last. A machete would be involved. At the end of the days or weeks of my terrible reign I would walk out of the front door, nonchalantly whistling. But all of this is for the fanciful future perhaps.”

“Steadily the office is filling up. The latecomers stroll in to occupy their desks. I look up, say “Hi.” That’s my familiar greeting these days.”

23:30 -

The horror is not solely that I am nothing but that in time I will become even less.

Do you remember what it was like before, more than ten years ago now, before you started drinking like this? And yet that is where you have to get back to.

Tuesday 26/10

15:00

Mum taken to hospital in an ambulance this morning. The nightmare quickens. She’s not back yet so they may keep her in. Let us see what the next hours bring.

Mooching around the shops, picking up my breakfast, and picking up my booze for tonight, it struck me that I really had no idea what setting out on this road would lead me to. If I had known where it would take me, would I have embarked? Of course not.

16:44

About to call up my manager and lie through my teeth. This will be the fourth week I have had off sick due to anxiety - a shameful thing for a grown man to admit to.  If I lose my job, which is unlikely but not impossible, well then it's all up for me.  My problems are all alcohol-related but I won’t be confessing to that anytime soon. Mum still at the hospital. They must be keeping her in.

Wednesday 27 October

02:05 a.m. - So it's technically Thursday 28 October, for those on or near the Greenwich meridian anyway, but never mind.  Hello to you.  [You there Shocknchagrin? PM me one of your email addresses? Go on...]  Thank you for reading this far. I've been away.  No real reason for me being away, apart from the fact that I genuinely believe I am losing my fucking mind.  What you have read, above, is a very slightly edited portion of the journal that I kept (or tried to keep) over the past weeks.  There's more to come - a full account of Monday just gone, when I went crazy at work and trembled in front of about 10 different people who all looked at me in that special way - you know what I mean: 'I hope he stops doing that in front of me or goes away and does it in front of somebody else soon...'  So I am going mad, or have gone mad and only just realised it.  This opens up a whole new world of experience.  Tune in next time, folks.