StrangeReality

For a couple of weeks I have been teaching myself (X)HTML and CSS, for reasons suitably strange, and I spent most of Saturday trying to position a blue quote-box exactly where I want it – slightly offset from some text but cheekily jutting in just enough to possibly qualify as being stylish – and then tweaking things so that the effect was replicated across all three major browsers, which took up 90% of the total time I spent on it. That time was approximately ten hours. Why can't the browser-makers just simply get their joint act together? The remaining 10% of the time was occupied largely by swapping between various shades of blue until I found the one that not only looked right but felt right. In the end I settled for powdered blue, the sky blue seeming too wishy-washy, and the various types of navy blue too stern. When it was all over it was 4 a.m., and I realised that I had done nothing else all day.

This made me feel guilty, although of what I have no idea. Wasting time? Time spent learning something is never wasted. Perhaps I was concerned that my other goals – my main goals – had been carelessly neglected. In any case, the principles of my philosophy absolve the individual of any responsibility for his actions and excuse him from having any kind of duty to himself or to the world. It's one of the reasons why I like my philosophy so much. But I couldn't shrug off an awful, crawling feeling of unease about having spent all day fussing over colons and brackets and child elements and RGB values and the like.

I picked up a book from my shelf, almost at random. A book would sort me out. A few pages, possibly even a few chapters, and I would be able to look myself in the figurative eye again. The book I picked up was The Diaries of Franz Kafka, a paperback that I acquired a decade ago and have never fully read. I have read chunks of it at various times, enjoying such entries as:

June 19, slept, woke, slept, woke, miserable life.

But it has never detained me for very long; I have never felt compelled to read it cover-to-cover, like a novel. I have certain problems with Kafka's writing that I won't fully go into here. Only Metamorphosis and some of his short stories leave me feeling fully satisfied. His big 3 novels - The Trial, The Castle, America – strike me as being overrated.

The Diaries sit between the two poles of my personal taste. I can enjoy their strangeness, the relish with which Kafka can take an incidental occurrence such as noticing the peculiar fold of a fellow commuter's coat-sleeve as they both stand at the exit of a Prague tram, waiting to alight - he can write ten pages about the fold of a sleeve, packing in all the horror and glory of existence, and then transcending the state. But as great as all of that stuff is, I find myself curiously bored of reading about it after a short while - which does not bode well, really, seeing as how I write much the same kind thing a lot of the time.

The story of how I acquired the book, The Diaries Of Franz Kafka, is an interesting one all by itself. Although I would not describe this story as Kafkaesque (what an overused, and misused, word that is), it is a story that might not be out of place in the Diaries.

It was the mid-1990s. I was in town, looking for books. I was a fevered book-hunter in those days, always in and out of the High St chains, always popping into the Bargain Bookshop chains that were just appearing, and on familiar nodding terms with all of the second-hand bookdealers in their little shops that never had any other customers inside them.

One day I went into Waterstones, which had a section upstairs in the corner where they frequently sold off damaged or remaindered stock. I approached the shelves and saw The Diaries Of Franz Kafka sitting on the top shelf, facing out – Kafka's wan visage gazing into space – and I actually stopped dead. I was still a few yards away from the shelves. There were the usual three-or-so bystanders gathered at the shelves, looking for bargains. I stopped walking and just stood there, looking. I had been after that book for months. I had not been able to find it anywhere. And now here it was, offered up to me by a friendly cosmos, with a bargain sticker on the front as well. £5.00! I was about to acquire one of the greatest books in the world for £5.00.

I stepped forward – and one of the bystanders picked up the book. It was a young bloke in a denim jacket; he looked as if he was a student. He was suddenly just there, in front of me. He picked up Kafka's Diaries and started riffling the pages, reading the blurb on the back, staring at the cover (and those eyes) for several long seconds, and worst of all, getting out his wallet to count his money.

I stood beside the young bloke in the denim jacket and picked up another book at random. I opened it as I watched him in my peripheral vision. He was going to take Kafka's Diaries away from literally right under my nose.

A tense minute or two passed. I did a good job of playing the role of casual browser, standing there next to the denim-jacketed student. After flicking through the random book to my fill, I replaced it on the shelf and picked up another, all the while not failing to be microscopically aware of the young bloke's every movement. There was hope for me – there was hope that he would not walk away with the book. He was alternately staring at the pricing sticker on the front cover – just £5, it really was – and contemplating his wallet. He even delved into his jeans pocket and brought out a load of coins, which he further examined there in his palm. This raised my spirits considerably. If he was going to these lengths to make up his mind about whether he could afford this rare copy of Kafka's Diaries, then I judged the chances to be good that he would put the book back on the shelf and simply walk away. Leaving me to take the prize.

Another thirty seconds. It seemed that he had decided to buy the book, and forgo whatever else it was he had planned for the cash. £5 is not an inconsiderable sum to a student – as the young bloke presumably was – at any time. In the mid-1990s, it was even more so.

He replaced the coins and wallet back in his pocket. My hopes soared. Then he did something unusual. With the Diaries still in his left hand, with his right hand he reached forward and pulled several other books from one of the shelves. He put the Diaries into the space he had created, then he put the other books back in front of it, concealing the Diaries from view. He adjusted the covering books' positions, ensuring that they were fully hiding the volume. When he was satisfied that the book was hidden well enough for him to come back and get it at a later time – maybe later today, maybe tomorrow – he turned, and walked away.

I was still holding a book about cartography or something, feigning deep interest in it and disinterest in my surroundings. When he had gone away, around a corner, I moved fast. There was no telling when he would return. I moved the screening books out of the way and picked up my copy of The Diaries of Franz Kafka. I replaced the other books more or less as they had been, so it would buy me some time, precious seconds, should the other fellow return quicker than would be convenient. (Even if he did come back and catch me, what could he do? Nothing. But I wanted to cover my behind anyway.) I took the book to the counter and handed over a £5 note. The assistant placed the book along with my receipt in a nice black Waterstones bag with gold lettering, and I turned, heading for the stairs.

The young bloke in the denim jacket was coming back up the stairs, with a purposeful expression on his face. I knew instantly that he had got as far as the street and then decided to come back for the book. I looked into his eyes as I passed him at the top of the staircase. He looked briefly into mine, then was past. I went down the stairs and out of the bookstore, imagining the scene now playing out behind me, imagining him pulling out the books and finding nothing behind them, and slowly understanding what had happened; or possibly not understanding, and pulling out every book on all of the shelves, and mistakenly interpreting the whole thing as being Kafkaesque.

Contrary to the bulk of my entries on this 'web log', this entry really does reference an overt strangeness about reality that everybody can identify with. Not just borderline sociopaths. My Sunday dinner is cooking in the oven, so I'll try to be quick.

Perhaps everybody has experienced 'lost object phenomenon' – you drop or misplace an object of some description, and you never find it again. Or you do find it, and can't ever work out how it got there, and how you didn't find it when you were looking for it.

Keys and coins and other miscellaneous small items are common candidates for the phenomenon. You're fiddling with the item(s), whatever they are, in your hand, and one of them falls to the floor, and takes a flukey bounce, and although you search and search, looking in every nook, every cranny, even moving the furniture around when you start to get really annoyed about it, you never find the item again. Or you find it weeks or months later, somehow occupying a little ledge on the inside of a cabinet (say), where it would have had to have bounced through solid wood to get to... I am improvising this example. I am sure that the reader will know what I mean.

I have an old mobile phone that I use exclusively as an alarm clock. My new mobile phone is also used primarily as an alarm clock, but that's by the by. My old phone is one that I bought at the tail-end of 2003; it is appropriately brick-like and features-lacking. No camera, no internet, no Java games. How did we ever live in 2003?

Last Saturday night before going to bed I set the alarm on the old phone as usual and left it in its usual spot on the far end of the computer table in my room. Having it in that position forces me to get out of bed to turn the alarm off, the theory being that once out of bed I will stay out of bed. Most often I simply get back into bed and go back to sleep, but it's the thought that counts.

Last Sunday I recall being woken up by my other alarms. I have three other alarms: my current mobile phone, and two regular travel-style alarm clocks. I stagger their alarm times, spaced around ten minutes apart. I'm terrible at getting up. Last Sunday I got up with the last alarm and found my way downstairs and had breakfast and so forth.

I should point out here that I have had the house to myself for ten days. The others who live in the house went on holiday; they come back the day after tomorrow. Nobody else has been in this house.

Sunday night, I went to look for my old phone, wanting to set the alarm for Monday – and it wasn't on the computer table. I looked on the floor around it. I looked on every other surface in the room – on top of the TV, on the bookshelves, on the small table at the side of the bed where I place my glasses of quintuple vodkas, everywhere that was likely.

The old phone wasn't anywhere likely. I expanded the search to include the floor. Obviously, I thought, when the alarm went off I had got up whilst more than half-asleep, deactivated it, and then sloppily put it down, only for it to bounce somewhere unlikely. I would find it among all the furniture somewhere. I'd look tomorrow, I thought, and finished setting the other alarms and went to bed.

I spent an hour on Monday moving all the furniture in my room. I looked everywhere that the phone could conceivably be. No phone. I briefly checked the rest of the house, thinking that I might have unwittingly carried it out of the room in a sleepy trance.

I spent Tuesday searching the entire house. Then I went back and searched my room, even more thoroughly. I checked the pockets of every garment of clothing that I own. I checked in and around every stick of furniture, every inch of floorspace.

Wednesday I sort of gave up, deciding that it was too strange to think about. I clearly recall setting the phone alarm on Saturday and putting it down in its usual spot. However I do not recall turning off the alarm on Sunday. The house was secure from all other people: nobody could have got in and removed the phone. What kind of burglar would break into a house (without leaving any sign of having done so), ignore the TVs and VCRs and the DVD player in the downstairs rooms, ignore my laptop which was set up on the living room table, sneak into the room where the house's sole occupant (me) was sleeping, and take an outmoded old mobile phone, and nothing else?

The phone was in off-mode, so I can't simply call it with my other phone, and follow the ringing sound. I've already tried doing so anyway, knowing that it was switched off. I got the recorded message from the phone company saying the phone was switched off.

It is absolutely certain that the phone has not been taken by a person. It's been just me, myself, and I in the house all this time. And I am as certain as I can be that it is not in the house. I plan to search again in all of the places where I have looked several times already.

My dinner is ready. I cannot stop thinking about the whereabouts of the phone. It isn't the phone itself that's occupying me; it's the weirdness of its disappearance.

I'm in the middle of a long-coveted week off work, the sun is shining (although there's a chill wind a-blowing), and I said hello to my new neighbours for the first time today.

They moved in about a month ago, a middle-aged couple with no children and a small yapping dog. I'd managed to avoid them until now. I dislike meeting people on principle, and have gone to extraordinary lengths over the past 4 weeks to avoid the new neighbours.

For example, if I was about to leave the house, my hand on the front door handle, and I heard them moving around outside, I would go back inside, and wait for them to go away - then and only then would I emerge (cautiously, peering left to right to make sure I wasn't ambushed). This scenario, in varying variations, has occurred approximately a dozen times. Less common have been the times when I've been coming the other way - from outside my house toward my house. Whenever I've been walking along the pavement heading toward my house, and noticed the new neighbours milling around outside their front door, doing whatever it is that these accursed people do (the man of the house loves to tinker with his car, I've noted with concern), I've done an abrupt about-turn - or volte face, if I want to get all Latin on your ass for a moment, and why wouldn't I. I've scurried back the way I came and spent uncomfortable minutes lurking by the bus stops until the coast was clear and I could return home in peace.

It's nothing to do with the new neighbours. I'm sure that they're a very nice, pleasant couple. I'm just as unkeen to go through the ghastly hail-fellow-well-met routine with anybody at all, whoever they are. I have crossed roads and hid behind bushes to avoid bumping into brothers, cousins, friends, and charity collectors. I never want to meet people in the street or talk to them under any circumstances, whoever they are. I'm an indiscriminate quasi-sociopath.

Today I was caught out - I was sloppy. I was careless. I was returning from the library, carrying a stack of books in a supermarket carrier bag. I'm learning HTML at a very satisfying pace, and decided to go all-in and get every book on Javascript, CSS, and advanced thingumajigs that were on the library's shelves; they had plenty. I was preoccupied with the bag, which also contained a bottle of Jim Beam, a giant bottle of caffeine-free Diet Coke, and two cans of chilli con carne.

I'm a poor bag-packer - everything was packed wrongly. One or more of the books' plastic library-coverings had pierced the bag low down, near its figurative waterline, and the rent was growing. I was worried the whole bag would fall apart and I'd be left sprawled on my hands and knees in the thoroughfare, simultaneously trying to gather up and conceal from public view my bottles of Jim Beam and Diet Coke, the tins of chilli, and the bulky copies of Javascript In 24 Hours Or Bust and XHTML For Stupid Fuckers and the like.

So I was looking down at the bag in my hand, instead of keeping a watchful eye out for bandits in the vicinity. I was at the door of my house when I heard him. "Hello? Hello there. Hello." I looked sideways, knowing that I was caught, that I was screwed. There was the neighbour, the man of the house - medium height, medium build, sandy-haired, bespectacled: the classic serial killer look - and behind him his awful wife, a grinning woman in a red dress.

I slipped into full-on normal-guy mode without skipping a beat. I smiled casually and raised my eyebrows, seeking to convey two things: that I was normal and sociable (hence the casual smile); and that I was aware that we hadn't met yet, and was thus acknowledging the surprise, almost ad hoc nature of this encounter (hence the raised eyebrows). It was a complicated thing that I was trying to convey. So many shades of meaning, so much multi-layered wryness and mock-bemusement. I don't know how successful I was. All that I said was: "Oh. Hello. How's it going?"

The man said, "Okay," looking askance at the house he and the missus had just moved into. (I've heard nothing but hammering, sawing, and drilling sounds through the walls for a month.) The wife, mercifully, did nothing but smile continuously.

"See you, then," I said. I had expertly (if I may say so myself; and I think that I may) taken my housekey from my pocket, inserted it into the lock, turned it, and opened the door, all in one fluid motion occupying no more than three seconds of realtime. I was inside and locking the door behind me before he'd had a chance to respond.

Yes, I was careless, getting caught like that out in the open. But for the collapsing supermarket carrier bag, I would have had my wits about me, and seen from afar that the neighbours were outside their door and in prime position to intercept me. I would then have been able to take evasive action, i.e. walk quickly in the opposite direction, wait for the coast to clear, and sneak back.

It's a system I have been perfecting my whole adult life. It's not perfect. But then, what system is?

For dinner at the work restaurant I had chicken burger with chips. The restaurant was quite busy. The sun streaming in through the windows added sparkle to the scene.

I picked up a tray and joined the queue. The two people in front of me were having the bolognese; I didn't like its look. The girl who served me was new. Her hands shook as she picked up the plate, slid the burger onto it, and then added a portion of chips. The chicken burger is on the restaurant menu at least once a week. It is always served with a generous amount of crunchy salad and lashings of mayonnaise, which are added to the burger on the spot. I looked over the new girl's shoulder: there on a table behind her were the plastic buckets that contained the constituent elements of the delicious crunchy salad; there was the large squeezy bottle of mayonnaise.

The girl handed me the plate across the counter.

"Er.... the salad?" I said.

"Sorry?" She had a small little face covered with freckles.

"The salad and mayonnaise?"

"Oh," she said. "You have to get that at the checkout."

She nodded past me to the checkout area. I knew she was wrong. I knew 100% that she was ridiculously wrong, that she was making a new employee's mistake, which it would be entirely appropriate for me to correct.

But I didn't correct her. I couldn't do it. I thought she might think I was criticising her. I thought she might think I was a twat, and find a way to spit in my food in the future. People who work in kitchens have to be treated with the maximum possible circumspection.

I took the coward's way out. I am a coward. I said nothing, and took my chicken burger 'dry'. I paid at the checkout and found a table.

And then I was stared at by a baby.

The work restaurant is open to the pulic, and a young family was sitting at the table next to mine. The baby was about a year old. Boy or girl, I couldnt tell. The baby was being bottle-fed by one of the parents, and held in exactly the right position in the parent's arms for its beady little eyes to stare directly at me over the crest of the bottle. I chewed my way through the dry chicken burger and the overcooked chips, and became paranoid about the baby. Every time I glanced over, the baby's eyes were on me. I would look away, let a minute pass, two minutes. I bet if I look over now, that baby is still looking at me. And I would look over, and the baby would still be looking at me.

This went on for twenty minutes. I finished my dinner in something like a state of total moral collapse. My will had been undermined by the new girl behind the counter not serving me a chicken burger in the appropriate manner, and by a one-year-old baby staring me out. I quickly mopped up the last of the chips, swallowed down the last hunk of the dry burger, and left the restaurant.