Day 70: It's coming

Skeechy-neechums!

That's my new introduction, as I'm sure you'll recall. I do that at the beginning of every post now. It's my thing.

So, hey. How you doing? Oh yeah? For real? That's good to hear.

Me? I'm sweaty. I'm just a big ol' bag of sweat. And I've got heat exhaustion. Or just normal exhaustion. Whichever. Work wasn't so fun. Work was sweaty and bad.

But it's OK. It's all OK. Because... well, I'm not sure if you've heard. I'm not sure if anyone's told you, but--

--it's coming home!

It's coming.

Football's coming home.

And after we've all been so concerned, as well. We haven't been able to sleep, we haven't been able to eat, we've been sick with worry. We've put out bulletins. We've released adverts on the back of milk cartons. We arranged a press conference with old father football and mother football, the mother stoic and strong, though the bags under her eyes told a different story. The father, voice cracking with emotion, through rasping sobs, imploring, beseeching his son, football, to please, oh please, just come on home.

Well football has listened. Football has heard.

And it's coming home.

Football's coming home.

We're jubilant. We gather on the streets. We fill our squares. There are flags. There are streamers. Have you heard? You've heard. We've all heard. But can it be true? It can. It's happening.

Football's coming home.

But wait. What's this?

Plot twist. Football was home all along. Football never left. The calls were coming from inside the house!!!

We scream, run for the door. But football has us. A gloved hand presses over our mouth. Rippling muscles tighten their grip. We struggle, but football is so strong. We are powerless. Football's breath is hot on our neck. Its frame towers above us.

We kick out, catch football's toe. Football roars, momentarily loosens its hold, and we fight with all we have, and suddenly we are free.

We fly through the house. We fly down the stairs. Football is behind us. Football is right on us. Our breath is coming in ragged spurts. Our heart is bursting from our chest. We pump. We run. We fling items from shelves behind us as we go, trying to slow football's inexorable pursuit. Down goes the chest-of-drawers. Down goes the pan stand. Down goes the collection of River Cottage cookery books a well-meaning relation has been buying for us every Christmas.

A crash, a howl. Something has connected. Football is down.

No time to look. We skid on the linoleum of the kitchen. We're at the door. We fumble for the key. Please. Please God. Oh please God.

The key won't go in the lock. We hear a noise. The key is at the lock. There is the noise. We drop the key. We grasp madly for the key. Our hands aren't working. Our hands slip.

There is no noise. All is silent.

We are wailing. We are sobbing.

Our fingers close round the key.

The key goes in the lock. We wrench open the door.

... And there is football.

Football stands before us.

We step backwards. We slip on a copy of River Cottage Gluten Free, its spine unbent, and we go down. There is a rush of wind, the acrid stench of sulphur. We are screaming, but we hear nothing.

Football advances. Its tongue lolls from its suckling mouth. Its eyes roll back in its narrow head. From some shrouded orifice extends a fleshly proboscis, pale and many-jointed and dripping with some form of glutinous jelly.

The proboscis clamps over our nose and mouth. We feel warmth. We feel a gorged, dizzy sensation. We cannot see. We cannot hear. All is football. All is blackness.

- - -

When we come to we are wearing a white shirt with a red cross on the breast. Our head is shaved. We have patriotic, faded tattoos on our leathery forearms. We hold a can of proper English lager, like the Canadian Carling or the Australian Fosters or the Danish Carlsberg or the Spanish San Miguel or the American Coors Light or the Dutch Amstel or the Belgian Stella Artois, in our bear-like hand.

We climb to our feet. We scratch our behind. What were we doing on the kitchen floor? Must have passed out after that legendary sesh last night. Fletchy was acting a right bell-end. Good kebab though. Top bants. Great night.

We plod through to the living room, switch our 52-inch television to Sky Sports Main Event, and, utterly at peace, we watch the game.

Football never leaves. Football is always home. We love football. We are football. We always were.

How could it be any different?

Day 69: Hammers

Well-hell-hello!

Is that a cool introduction? I think it's pretty neat. I'm going to say that at the beginning of every post from now on. It's going to be my thing.

Yeah, so, hey. I went to a coffee shop today and I tried doing some writing prompts, but nothing was coming out. My brain was all goopy and sluggish. But that's OK. That's all good in the pud. (I'm going to start saying that as well. Man, I'm like a Youtube content provider right now.)

Remember what I wrote about saying yes to reality and not being so hard on myself? About self-hatred being a Chinese finger trap? I mean it was the day before yesterday, I hope you remember. If not then you need to get your memory checked out! Do some brain training, my friend.

Well anyway, I'm going to do that. Uhh, be kind to myself. Not the brain training. It's you who needs the brain training. I bet you've even forgotten what we're talking about. It's worse than we thought! And where are your trousers? Wait, you don't even wear trousers. Your legs were amputated after that crash last year. It was a really traumatic experience. I can't believe you don't remember!

Boy, you can tell I'm tired, can't you? I waffle when I'm tired.

So, then, I'll waffle. But what I won't do is hate myself. That's important. I'm letting the fact I wasn't creative today be OK. I'm sitting down here on my tush and I'm doing a blog post anyway. And I'm feeling proud of that.

It's been a cycle of mine for so long to have a day or two of productivity, and then the first day it doesn't flow I throw my hands in the air and curse the heaves and yell that, see, I knew I wasn't cut out for this, I knew I couldn't sustain any creative endeavour.

And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because then the anger and frustration chases the creativity away further, which of course makes me more angry and frustrated, which makes it even harder to do anything the next day, and I get myself in such a tizz I have to walk away from it all and go and get drunk for a month.

It's like finding a beautiful deer has wandered into my clearing for me to photograph. But as soon as I start trying to get it to pose I spook it and it runs. Then I shout at it to come back, which makes it run even further.

And then I go and get drunk.

But not anymore. 69 days, by the way. That's huge. Shout-out to the number 69. Every thirteen-year-old school kid's favourite number. I reckon it's time you stopped tittering about it though. You're a grown-up. You don't have any legs. Be serious for once in your life!

But yes. I have managed to blog every day for this challenge. But the thing with the creativity has remained the same. I've stumbled into doing a Lovecraftian horror parody or a dumb film script or some writing prompts, stuff I've really enjoyed, stuff I desperately want to be doing -- but as soon as I realise what I'm doing I get self-conscious, that old negative voice starts going, "Ooh, look at him, trying to write, thinking he can write. Doing a little film script, are you? A little short story, huh?" And suddenly nothing will come. And I have to just write placeholder posts (like this), until my shadow-self eventually gets bored and wanders off, and creativity sprouts again.

It's like fighting Dark Link in the Water Temple in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Halfway through the dungeon you come across an evil mirror version of yourself that attacks when you attack, blocks when you block, gets angry at Navi's constant hint intrusions when you get angry at Navi's constant hint intrusions (little Ocarina of Time joke for you there. I know Ocarina is your favourite ever game. Though I bet you'd forgotten.).

The trick, with Dark Link, is to un-equip your sword and whack him over the head with a big hammer. Which, now I think about it, seems a somewhat confused message...

Maybe the point is that you can't defeat your own shadow with a frontal assault. Maybe you win through doing something unexpected, you win through yielding.

Maybe you don't force that deer of creativity back to your woods. You just create a lovely glade and plant the flowers and hope that the deer wanders back of its own accord.

And then you whack it over the head with a big hammer.

I don't know, I feel like hammers should be in there somewhere, otherwise I'm kinda reaching with that analogy.

But anyway, I'm going to go get a good night's sleep, give that timid deer the space and time and love it needs, and see what tomorrow brings. I just hope I'm not still in the Water Temple. That place really sucks.

I've been ya boy, Robbie P., and this is me signing off. If you've enjoyed what you've read, please remember to like, comment and subscribe, and I'll see you next time, Internets. Kablamo!

That's how I sign off now. I'm going to do it every post. You'll see.

Day 68: Fringe

Writing prompt about showing a character who is angry.

The fringe was sticking to Darcy's face. It was obviously sticking to her face. She had not asked for the fringe to be sticking to her face. She strode down the street, blood pumping, cursing the hairdresser.

Forty pounds. For this. Forty pounds. It was the last of her wage this week. Chris would be paying for her tea for the next two days. And wine. She needed a glass of wine tonight. Probably a bottle.

She'd almost not paid. First she'd told the new guy who'd done this to her that it wasn't what she'd wanted. He'd taken more off the sides to balance it out. That just made it shorter than she was comfortable with, and the fringe was just as bad. She'd looked at it and felt like maybe it would be all right, at first, and so she'd handed over the money and left. But now, after checking on the selfie camera on her phone, after taking a bunch of photos, she could see it was a complete disaster.

How could they let someone so inexperienced loose on paying customers' hair? It was atrocious. It was unbelievable. Didn't they practice on dummies? Wasn't this place supposed to be well-regarded? How did they think this was acceptable? How did they think they could get away with it?

Darcy stomped on.

And she had the presentation on Tuesday. The presentation. How was she supposed to deliver that confidently to the whole senior team, to Brian Rivera, to Stacy, while knowing she looked like this? While knowing she looked like a goddamned rat in makeup!

The presentation could mean everything. It was what she'd been working towards the whole time she'd been with the company. It was the culmination of so many months of effort and grind and prostration.

And now it was being ruined by some spotty runt who surely wasn't old enough to be working in a hair salon. How could he have done this to her? Darcy thought about his stupid face, that awkward smirk when she'd said she wasn't happy. Like she was supposed to feel sorry for him! How pathetic. Own your mistakes. Don't try to smirk your way out of them.

Darcy carried on walking. Maybe it wasn't all that bad. She stopped at a bus stop and clicked onto the camera app on the phone that was still clutched in her hand.

She was a mess. A bedraggled, freakish, disastrous mess.

She'd have to shave it off. There was no other option. She'd have to say she was a cancer patient.

Maybe she could get some sympathy from the team if she told them she was having chemo. Maybe they'd give her a pass.

God. That twerp. How dare he do this to her!

She was walking again. She turned a corner off the main road, kicked at a bunch of scraggy weeds sprouting under the wall to someone's garden. Who'd leave the space in front of their home in such disrepair, anyway. It was terrible.

There was a huddle of kids on the corner of the street. Darcy glowered at them, daring them in her head to stare at her. Just watch what I'll say if they shout anything about my hair, she thought. Just watch.

They said nothing. They watched her pass in silence.

Darcy continued down the road. She was clenching and unclenching her fists. She just... It was just... She couldn't even... Eeeurgh!

Evening was drawing in. It was getting dark. There were fewer people on the streets now, and her heels echoed on the paving stones as she walked.

She would go home, unload on Chris, drink all the wine, perhaps some gin and tonics, run a bath, and sort everything out in the morning. Surely someone could fix the harm that that idiot trainee had caused.

"'Scuse me. You got the time?"

It was another child. Her life was filled with children tonight.

"Sorry. No. I'm in rather a rush."

Darcy resumed her stride.

"How about you just give me your phone then?"

The boy flashing the knife was not another, but one of the same kids who had watched her pass before, and, though it was probably of little consolation to Darcy, he really hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary about her haircut at all.

Day 67: Traps

I'm in the bathroom brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror and thinking about how disappointing I am, when it strikes me that it would be possible to not think like this.

What an insight. What a radical thought.

"You know how you always feel awful about yourself?" I think. "Why not try not doing that?"

It obviously wouldn't be easy. I have decades of experience feeling awful about myself. It's second nature.

"And well it should be," the negative voice in my head chimes in. "You are, after all, awful."

Hmm. Hard to argue with that logic. It's so... axiomatic.

But what if I perhaps pretended I wasn't awful? Just for one day. If I pretended that I'm proud of myself, pretended that it doesn't matter that I have no idea what to write for today's blog post, that when I try to do more of those writing prompts there's a wall there, that I'm completely lost and confused and afraid and miserable and...

... OK. That is exactly what I need to not do. Dammit.

So, yeah. If instead of that stuff I just pretend it's all fine. What if I try acting like everything is as it should be? Like it's all right that...

... No. Don't go down into spirals about why it's not all right. Stay here.

And I can hear you yelling, negative voice, I can hear that you want to remind me that all that terrible stuff does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't, OK? Simmer down. But just for today how about we pretend it doesn't, just as a sort of game, just as an experiment, to see how it makes us feel?

"Can you do that?" I ask my inner voice. "Can you be open enough to give that a fair go?"

"No problemo," the inner voice says, cool as a cucumber, swirling a brandy in its non-corporeal hand.

Then I go to put my socks on and the only pairs are hanging on the line and on the way downstairs I instantly forget what I'd just decided and I spend the next two hours feeling awful about myself.

- - -

I remember the plan while walking around Weston Park, and I feel awful about myself for forgetting to not feel awful about myself. Then I see the irony in this, and feel awful about myself for how stupid I am for not immediately seeing the irony in this, which is itself ironic, which...

... I mentally slap myself across the face. STOP IT. Just stop it. Just accept whatever this present moment brings. Decide to feel good about yourself. It's a simple choice. Make it.

I breathe out a long way, and look at the park around me. The sun is shining through the leaves, casting dappled shadows on the ground. The fountain is splashing loudly. The splashing is very matter-of-fact. There is a calmness to it. It is nice. Everything is beautiful.

I walk on a way, then forget what I'm thinking about and start feeling awful about myself again.

- - -

Later, in the trendy coffee shop I've begun frequenting, I see my usual table is taken.

Then I think how weird it is to have a usual table after three visits to a place, that it betrays some unique and fundamental failing on my part, a debilitating need to retreat to safety, an inability to try new experiences, and that everyone can see this in me, that it will be obvious to the staff of the coffee shop. It's good that I have to sit at a different table.

But because I'm caught up in these thoughts, and in how paranoid, not to mention narcissistic, the thoughts are, how much of a mess I am inside my head, I get to a seat and then realise I haven't picked up the wooden block that serves as the table number to which the waitress will bring my coffee.

I go back to get it. But I find I'm hemmed in between the breakfast bar and a customer's seat. There's not enough room. I start to turn around, then turn back. There might be enough room. I look. No. There's not enough room. I could ask the customer to budge in a little, but let's be honest, I'm not doing that. So I turn around again, walk back round the long way, now convinced that I look both weak for not asserting my right to pass the customer, and also utterly insane for walking to the middle of the floor, pivoting wildly on the spot, then looping back to the till.

It would be nice to make a joke about this to the waitress, to make myself look silly for the staff's amusement, to show I don't take myself seriously -- I feel that's what a normal human being would do -- but I'm on that cusp of blushing where everything is heightened and prickling, and the sweat is already running down my forehead from the heat, so I just take the wooden block proffered by the bored waitress and mumble my thanks and clomp back to my seat.

And then I remember I'm not supposed to be feeling awful about myself.

And I feel doubly awful for how awful I've been feeling about myself.

And triply awful for feeling doubly awful about myself.

And quadruply awful...

Ung. Remember the park. It's a simple letting go. A decision. It's... like a Chinese finger trap. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. You just have to relax. You have to accept.

OK. That's all you have to say. OK.

So I'm a fuck up, am I? OK.

I'm the worst person to have ever existed, not just on this planet but on all planets, and in universes not yet even created? OK.

Everyone in this coffee shop thinks I'm a loser? OK.

And then you go from there. Probably everyone in this coffee shop hasn't even noticed me, probably they're far too caught up in their own lives to worry about mine -- but if they have noticed me, and they do think I'm a loser, then OK. The truth is the truth. It cannot be argued with. This moment is already all it will ever be. You can only accept it. The next moment, you can try to change that one, sure -- but that action has to come out of the stillness and acceptance of this present moment, or it will be doomed to failure.

Reality is what it is. I am who I am.

- - -

So I sit there and think about that for a while. I work like that on every negative thought that arises -- and boy do they arise! And I sit in the afternoon sun drinking my coffee and writing, and it is good.

And, yes, eventually I forget, and I start feeling awful about myself again.

But I remembered a few times today. That's more than I remembered yesterday. Maybe I'll remember even more tomorrow.

A Chinese finger trap is the same every time. You can learn to beat it.

Day 66: Nerves

Christ. I dunno if I can type after the stress of that game. After 66 days of sobriety the cocktail of emotions brought about by England's world cup penalty shoot-out against Colombia has left me a shaky, dribbly mess. And I don't even like football.

But I did as a child, and I had too many nights on the sofa next to my dad, my hands balled under me, tears streaming down my face, after the heartbreak of yet another penalty loss. I was five when we went out to West Germany in Italia 90, and I think that defeat hurt me on some fundamental level that I never recovered from, and informed my outlook while watching the national team pretty much ever since.

But tonight put that to rest. Oh did it put it to rest! Those young lads, and Gareth Southgate, have so much to be proud of right now. Whatever else happens, they can come home with their heads held higher than any England squad for a long time.

I'm so not into patriotism or tribalism or even outpourings of emotion in general; I tend to be a taciturn, reserved man -- but after that result even I have to let out just one, singular cry of COME ON ENGLAND!!!

Right. Enough of that. I've had a better day today. Thankfully I wasn't at work, and I could sleep late after staying up all last night after my shift trying to write something despite feeling utterly black. So I stayed in bed all this morning, and didn't sweat it, and tried to treat myself as kindly as possible. I don't want that blackness spreading. I can't let it, after how far I've come.

So I got up eventually, made coffee, ate breakfast, sat in the sun finishing the book I've been reading. I put washing on, then walked towards town with my camera and my headphones, listening to an episode of Stuff You Should Know, which is rapidly becoming an indispensable podcast in my life.

I found a pleasant coffee shop and sat in the tall, well-lit room drinking coffee and free-writing for a number of hours, then I walked to a park and meandered along the paths, the city noises muffled by the trees, the sunlight filtering through the green leaves, everything golden and serene and unworried.

Then I walked back up the hill and hung out my washing, read a little of my new book, and put the England match on. And then sat biting my nails for two and a half hours.

And now here we are. I'm going to go make a late tea, then try to get an early night. Easy does it. Tomorrow is another day.

Day 65: Splodges

A bad day. Alarm set for 09:00 but I snooze every 10 minutes until 10:00, then turn the alarm off and sleep until 11:30. Wake up half through a sleep cycle, groggy and dull, can barely move, can barely think. Fran, next to me: "Maybe you needed the extra sleep." But I don't want to be like this. I needed to go to bed early and get up early and go out and get exercise. That's what I needed. Not to lounge around wasting the few precious hours I have before work. She doesn't understand. I snap at her.

I get under the shower and think about work, think about worries, mind darting everywhere but the present. I look at my body in the mirror. My skin is bad. I put on acne cream, moisturiser, do my teeth. Everything is effort with no reward. Will I ever not be scarred?

I come out of the bathroom to find Fran sobbing, bit fat splodges plopping onto my leg as I sit with my arm around her. She's tired of her chronic fatigue, tired of hurting, tired of always being tired. I'm no help. I have nothing to say. No energy for myself, let alone to give her. "It'll work out." I say. I don't know if it will.

She gets a taxi home and I walk into town, write in a coffee shop, but I can't get the words going. Nothing comes out. Just frustration, emptiness, rage. An hour passes. I have to go to work but I can't. I can't go to work. I can't. I can't.

I go to work. It's the same as every day. Eight hours of serving, cleaning, scrubbing, waiting. Smiling at customers. Not telling anyone to go fuck themselves.

I get a taxi home, make empty small talk with the driver after we drop Chloe at her house. I try to see the driver as a human being. He makes small talk back, trying to see me as a human being. I don't know if either of us is successful.

At home I go upstairs and lean on the windowsill and look out at the city, the distant lights shimmering through the haze. I see the searchlight of a city centre nightclub, blaring its million empty nothings into space.

Maybe we need to scrunch our world up and throw it in the bin and start again. Maybe we need to give it up as a bad job.

Or would it come out the same every time we tried it? Do you need this precise balance of suffering and joy to get any reality at all? One mote more or less and life would not flourish. Maybe this is the very best it is possible to get.

Frustrating, petty, broken. And the best we'll ever get. Maybe this has to be enough.

Day 64: Like frogs in the rain

Yet another hot one. The heat was a wall, it had a physicality, it pressed up against you and lay across you and forced you downwards. I sat in a chair out on the patio with my back against the kitchen door, completely still, and I raised my arm to turn the page of my book and already I was sweating.

But it was good. Good to have a day off, good to read, good to just do nothing. I came in when the temperature became too oppressive and I wrote a little and played the new Zelda and waited for Fran.

I love the new Zelda, Breath of the Wild. The subtitle is apposite. The game engenders adventure and exploration better than almost anything else I've played. I love creeping through forests seeing what there is to see, and then a rainstorm sets in and raindrops plop down through the leaves and everything is wet and sounds are muffled and the frogs come out and you can catch the frogs. I love riding my horse through open fields with the wind rustling the grass and a few delicate notes from the main theme are introduced into the score and you want more but there isn't more and you ride and ride and the land passes beneath you. I love climbing up as high as I can get and looking out at the vast landscape splayed below, seeing sleepy towns nestled in the distance, rivers, mysterious rock formations, and thinking that it all is out there, all alive, and you are above it for a moment, removed, looking in -- and then you leap and pull your paraglider and you soar downwards wanting to find the moment when you enter that world you were just above but you cannot, it is one long moment and it is always now and you are gliding and then you are touching ground and you are back inside the great roving thing of life and you are off running to your next fabulous adventure.

So that was my afternoon before Fran arrived. When she turned up, having shaken off her hangover, we went to the shop and bought ingredients for Mexican wraps and then came home and napped together and made the food and ate the food, and then came upstairs with bowls of Vienetta and good strong Yorkshire tea and watched the 100 on Amazon Video and lounged in bed. The survivors of the 100 had to defend their new home from the Grounders by bombing a bridge and Fran kept rising onto her knees and putting her hands between her legs and clutching pillows because she was too anxious about whether Raven would die and what would happen between Clarke and Finn and who would make it through.

The series is trash. It's young-adult, post-Hunger Games silliness, dumb and formulaic, but it's also great. Sometimes you just want to switch off and sip Yorkshire tea and lie in bed with your girlfriend watching silly television, you know?

So that's what I'm going back to do. Good night.