Day 244: Leaky

Back home. Christmas all done for another year. I’ve unpacked my presents, sorted my room, now sat shivering with full-on lurgy, viscous liquid leaking from my nose. Head is swimming, brain bubbling somewhere around a thousand degrees. Tried doing a cryptic crossword but I’ve got no brain power - Mrs Simpson’s spread (5) was easy, as was Truce for review of Erica’s fee (9), but what’s Only heads can negotiate a lock on this? (5)? Or B, C or D, for example, in harmony (9)? I can sense the answers out there, floating muddily in the quagmire of my consciousness, but I can’t wade out far enough to find them.

I’m going to get in bed and read that Welcome to Night Vale novel Mike bought me; somehow the ghost stories of sentient houses, faces in the desert, doors to other dimensions, and predatory street sweepers seem appropriate for my current state of mind. I’m pretty much in Night Vale already, I only need the gentlest of nudges.

Oh, and it’s CONSONANT, right? “B, C and D, for example”. And “in harmony”. Consonant.

Work tomorrow morning. Don’t even.

……

Music. Missed this the last few days, being on my phone and all (“all” = “writing at 1am in bed just wanting to get it done and get to sleep”). Today: Burning, by The Whitest Boy Alive, one of the bands Jamie introduced me to. Jangly, upbeat guitars, tinged with a low octane insouciance. Like Los Campesinos!, played on a slowing tape deck at the bottom of the ocean.

Day 243: Chirpy Cheep

Sitting up in bed tapping onto my phone screen, soft lamplight caressing the covers, stretching up the walls. First night I've almost plain forgotten to write the blog. Liz went to bed early, exhausted, and Jamie and I ate a cheese board and listened to bossa nova post-punk covers and shoegaze indie from Berlin, while Mum, who's got no game, talked about songs from her teenage years, American Pie and Spirit in the Sky and Chirpy Chirpy Cheep.

Mum looking for song names on her phone to jog her memory, accidentally playing samples, at full volume, The Eagles, Creedance, drowning out the underground singer songwriters Jamie is introducing me to. Oh bugger it, Mum yells. Blasted thing. Oh Where's the button gone? The whole screen has disappeared now! Bloody useless thing.

God I love her so much. But she's seriously got no game whatsoever.

Eventually we run out of cheese, Mum runs out of seventies radio hits with which to interrupt our playlist, and Jamie and I walk her back to her hotel down deserted Westminster streets. We come back and mean to go to bed, but then sit up for another hour talking about music production, and writing, and then videogames from our teenage years, Prince of Persia and Counter Strike and Grand Theft Auto 3, our voices rising, our eyes sparkling with the thrill of remembering.

Jamie and I have also got no game whatsoever.

I'm back up to Sheffield in the morning. I'm full of flu, I've got no clothes washed, my room is a tip, I've got a million things to sort out, and I'm back in work first thing Friday, but I wouldn't have traded these days for anything. Family means the most. Even if none of us have got any game.

It's all family. And cheese. The cheese was good, too.

Day 242: Parakeets

Liz and J just gone to bed, exhausted from hosting. Mum is back in her hotel. I'm sat up under the Christmas tree, last of my green tea cooling in the mug, heater element clicking down to silence. Arya and Rey are having manic minutes chasing scrunched balls of wrapping paper about the room, before they slink round the door and into bed with their snoring humans.

It's been a good Christmas Day. I'm coming down with a cold, it's making my head swim, my joints ache, my throat burn. But I've pumped myself with vitamins - Jamie insisted I eat a peeled lemon with him, he swears by it - and I'm powering through the best I can.

We went walking through St James's Park once we were all showered, held out crushed nuts to the parakeets, felt thrills as they swept down and clamped feet around fingers, ate off our hands. We came home past the £20-million apartments, all deserted, and opened simple presents of books and mugs and new pants. I got an old charity shop collection of haiku by Basho, a new maroon shirt to replace last year's shirt, some aftershave, the weight of the parakeets on my arm, a peeled lemon, a mother and sister and brother-in-law (soon-to-be), two kittens chasing wild circuits around the room.

Jamie's parents and sister came by for the evening meal, with Liz sweating and stressing about coordinating the food, the conversation, the night. She needn't have worried; it all was beautiful. We ate and chatted about the episodes of Holby City and Doctor Who Jamie's father had directed, posed for a group photo perfectly ruined by leaping cats.

J's family left, and we sat fatigued on the sofas. I read the Welcome to Night Vale novel my friend Mike got me, ate mince pies, played with the cats.

Falling asleep now. Got tomorrow here to do nothing, gorgeous, sprawling nothing, at most a cryptic crossword with J while Liz and Mum go wedding dress viewing, and then back up north on Thursday, and back to work. Before that, though, decorations glinting in candlelight, homemade food, mugs of tea, kittens, sofas, sleep.

Lots and lots of sleep. Merry Christmas x

Day 240: This is the end

Chopper blades spinning. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. Jim Morrison wailing. Music fades. Rotor blades resolve into overhead fan. Table top. Brandy bottle, tumbler. Pack of smokes. Menu holder.

Our grizzled hero lies in a booth in a deserted pub, his legs dangling from the bench, wild eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"Booth 18. Shit. I'm only in Booth 18."

Picks up glass of fruit juice, raises to lips with shaking hand.

"When I was home from my first Christmas it was worse. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there all I could think of was getting back on the bar. I'm here all morning now, waiting for a mission ... Getting softer. Every minute I stay in this booth, I get weaker ... And every minute Charlie, and Kev, and Ian, all the Dad-Lads, they roam the streets, getting stronger."

The Doors start up again, then abruptly shut off. Too early for that 60s Spotify playlist.

"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it over like breakfast."

Two starched-collar team-leaders saunter over, swinging key fobs.

"Rob, we have orders to take you-"

"-What are the charges?"

"...There are... no charges. You have orders to report to the Manager, as soon as you're free. Come on, Supervisor, let's get you cleaned up."

They lift our man under the armpits, hoist him to his feet, brush pain au chocolat crumbs from his beard...

IN THE MANAGER'S OFFICE:

The Manager is sat with his assistant. Plates of food scattered about. They look up as our supervisor enters.

"Hiyaaa. Well, we're eating. We've got, let's see ... sweet potato fries, and usually they're not bad. Perhaps we'll pass both ways to save time. Supervisor, I don't know how you feel about this pumpkin ravioli, but if you eat some, you'll never have to prove your courage in any other way."

Supervisor takes a spoonful, tears it apart, chews slowly.

Manager passes Supervisor a piece of paper.

"This is today's rota. I'm going home. I was here at 2am last night, and I was back at 7am this morning. My methods have become ... unsound. You guys can take it from here."

Manager goes home. Supervisor stands on bar with Assistant. Their troops arrive, just kids, barely old enough to shave. Together they enter the heart of darkness of the Sunday two days before Christmas with no functioning ice machine, no change in the safe, hordes of amassing attackers arrayed in glowing comedy Christmas jumpers, Santa hats, Barbour jackets. One group wrapped in silver paper, throwing tampons about the pub. It's a whole thing. Another unclipping the rope being used to cordon off an area and attempting to clip it through their noses. Gas goes. A beer line snaps. Bar is like the last operating base upriver in Vietnam. Bodies everywhere. "Who's in charge here?" "Shit, man, ain't you?"

Then it's done. They've made it through. Then customer comes to the bar. "Just thought you should know, someone's been sick out of the gents' toilet, and across the landing, and all down the stairs."

"The horror. The horror."

......

Music: BAM BAM BA BA BAAAM BAAM, BAM BA BA BAA BAAM....!

Day 239: Working in a bar over Christmas

Working in a bar over Christmas is like being drafted to fight in a war. The only difference is that in a bar no one actually gets shot. Well, you hope no one gets shot. In all other regards, though, it is the same.

You march into battle day after day, on a prolonged campaign that cannot possibly keep taking from you, yet does, for the longest weeks of your life, with dwindling supplies and declining ranks and wave after wave of enemy piling in at you in inexhaustible numbers, and you stand and you hack away, you hold the line, you pray to whatever gods you find in those lonely moments that the onslaught will cease.

It lets up in the early hours. You gather your wounded, redig your trenches, stock up on supplies. You make hasty repairs. You crawl into some hole and spoon food from a can and sleep for two, maybe five, hours … and then you return for another day, the enemy hordes descending at first light, rattling your barricades … and before you know it you’re overwhelmed in combat once again.

There is the same adrenaline rush, flinging your arms in fluid motions, moving your body elegantly in time with your fellow comrades, lost in the flow of the moment as rarely happens - is not required to happen - back in the mundane tranquillity of civilian life.

There is the same battle against bodily pain, fatigue, despair - the battle against time itself - that grinds and gnaws at your brain second after second after second. Please let it be over. Please let it be over. I cannot do this. I cannot go on. No, I can. There is no choice. I’ve got this. We’ve got this. We will beat it. We will win. No, I was wrong, I can’t, no more. On and on, as the seconds become minutes become hours.

There is the kinship that develops under extreme stress. The reliance on your fellow soldiers. The ones who you know will be standing where you need them to stand, moving where you need them to move, the ones who you know, when you are back to back with them, fighting the last ditch defense, will not fall if you do not fall. And living through such times in the crucible of horror forges a bond deeper than personal friendship, or preference. People whom you might not know in peacetime, with whom you might not be friends, yet whom you trust with your life. Regardless of background, age, or class, you stand together, and you fight together, and you are kin. You were there, on those days, and they were there, and the people back home will never understand.

There is the journey to other bars, other battlefields, on excursions to swap equipment, scrounge supplies, trade resources. Hail, brothers, sisters, how goes the war on this front? And perhaps it goes badly, and you see in their eyes, and there is nothing to do but nod, ask their stories, listen while they tell of exploits that will be written in the annals. Or maybe their war goes well, they’ve barely been hit, the brunt was taken elsewhere down the line. Yet still they prepare, they gather, they wait. Who knows where the next attack will fall? And there’s always tomorrow. And the day after that.

There is the leadership under pressure, the hierarchy, everyone given a job to do. Some you know will do their jobs well, others, less so. There are the privates who blame the commanders, the commanders who blame the privates, the NCO supervisors skirting both worlds.

And there is, among the suffering, the terror, the misery, another side to it. The quiet sharing of a smoke or a cup of tea. The evenings when an anticipated attack fails to materialise, and the troops end up sat around on upturned crates, chatting, looking at photos from the outside world, savouring the calm like never before. 

And even in the hell of the melee, in the darkness, with bodies and liquids flying through the air, the clamour, the din rising all around, every direction you look another companion bogged down in close-quarter fighting, a million personal struggles against the forces of darkness and despair - even at such times there are the strange snatches of serenity that arise during combat. Existence utterly in the present moment. The physicality of objects. Coming to and looking at faces pressing on all sides, at the commotion, the panic, and seeing it all to be empty, your body weighing nothing, your ego stripped away, simply existing, noticing wood, metal, glass, skin - the way a light shines overhead - the simple and ineffable beauty of the world.

Life pulses. It breathes. You are part of the flow of the universe. Inside the loudest noise there is silence. Within the busiest action is calm. All goes liquid. All smooth. You are here and you do what must be done. And you do it and you do it. All of you together. And the night passes.

And finally there is only one more day to go.

...... 

Music: Have You Passed Through This Night? by Explosions in the Sky. Exquisite post-rock with that beautiful quote from The Thin Red Line, perhaps my favourite war film, and my favourite Terence Malick film, encasing the director's dreamy, languid spirituality within just the right amount of mainstream film structure. Mm, yes, and it's a good song.

Red hoods blue souls green fingers

Hello. It's the end of January, and therefore time for my first post of 2018. Remember when 2018 was the kind of distant futuristic year in which you'd set a dystopian sci-fi thriller about sentient robots learning what it means to be human through the process of being shot at by Harrison Ford? And now 2018 is here and it's just normal and shit, like every other year. And soon it will have receded into the mists of time like, God, like 2006 or something. Imagine it being 2006! What were we even doing back then? Shuffling around in torn fragments of cloth grunting incomprehensibly at one another while foraging for barely edible detritus and worshipping primitive blank totems?

And that was just trips to Blockbuster Video.

OK. That's the pay-off line. We're done with that bit now. On to the next bit.

Christmas. I didn't have a great Christmas. I was working all of it save Christmas Day, which I spent mostly napping in preparation for going back to work first thing on Boxing Day. Christmas tends to be tough anyway though, if you get all depressed like I do. Something to do with the weight of expectation, the pressure to Be Thankful and Feel Merry, the air itself vibrating with the hidden message that you very much should be Enjoying This. The parades of flush-faced shoppers shuffling around sozzled on mulled wine cooing at the gaudy decorations. The incessant fatiguing drive of the big companies to leverage feelings of wonder and wistful nostalgia and saccharine hopefulness in order to trick us into buying consumer goods that we do not need and that will not make us happy. The banshee wail of that veritable harbinger of end times that is the Coca Cola Truck, a red-hooded Beelzebub at the wheel, cackling and jerking himself off as parades of gormless twonks suckle on the truck's mammarian drink dispensers until fizzy brown effluvium gushes over their lips and down their chins and pools on the floor. Something is coming, but I don't know if it is the holidays.

Indeed. But I suppose if people want to celebrate warmth and light and life springing from the depths of winter by purchasing sugary carbonated beverages, then that's up to them. At least they're happy. I felt cold and isolated and low, and being exhausted from work on top of that I found I didn't have the energy to separate myself from my negative thoughts, to write affirmations and lists of simple pleasures, to do the exercises I have to do in order to keep myself upright.

Maintaining mental health, as I'm sure I've said before, is like pulling up weeds. You have to go down to those flower beds day after day and wrench out those weeds, work on that soil, because the instant you stop the weeds begin to sprout again. Except, because with mental health the brain that you're using to fight depression is the same brain that is itself compromised by depression, it's like weeding with a trowel and gloves and... shears? (I know nothing about gardening) that must be stored overnight within the flower beds that you are working on.

Miss a day weeding and the next day the weeds will have grown over your tools and hidden them, and suddenly it is so much harder to pull up any weeds at all. And before you know it a month has gone by and you're lying in a tangled thicket of brambles with moss covering your arms and ivy creeping around your legs and you've got no plans beyond eating the day's third bowl of Shreddies and watching Everything Wrong With videos on Youtube until you pass out. So to speak.

But this is just the nature of the beast. There is no point in cursing it. Once you realise what has happened there is nothing to do but roll up your sleeves and go rooting around for your shears, and when you find them start hacking away, clearing the brush, keeping going until you hit soil, gorgeous loamy soil, and you thrust your hands into the loam, you get loam all over you...

...I'm going to be honest, I don't know what loam is. I really know nothing about gardening. But you get my point.

To switch metaphors, healing is not linear. It is a twisting, rocky path, punctuated by plenty of tumbles. And each tumble is an opportunity to learn something. Provided you keep getting up, the getting up becomes easier, simpler, more of a routine.

So here I am, wobbling back onto the path, hacking away at those shrubs, bruised, dishevelled, with dirt under my fingernails and thorns pricking my skin. And I'm happy. Here's to a verdant 2018.

...And now I think about it, Blade Runner might actually have been set in 2019, which gives us a full eleven months before the dystopia sets in. Let's make the most of it.