[Why am I] Always on a Plane or a Fast Train

Maybe this is going to turn monthly...

I've barely walked in the door of my London flat after another week of work in Glasgow - this time I was sent up there alone to do what was ostensibly an impossible task. Luckily I flashed the hazard lights early in the week, the outcome of which being that the company re-employed a former colleague (the only person with enough knowledge to do the work) for a couple of days to help me, and ultimately the project manager of this sinking ship, out. My colleague - a thoroughly likeable chap - told me he's charging £xxxx (i.e. a four-figure sum) per day for his expertise. What's more, I don't really blame him, but then I've never been one to condemn supposedly wrongful monetary acts upon the corporation: in times of desperation, I'd far sooner steal from a big-name supermarket than from the local grocery store. But then that doesn't exactly make me special now, does it?

Hey, how's it going? How was Christmas? Yeah? Did you go home? Glad to be back?

Yeah so Christmas was much better than I thought it was going to be. Had CM over for Christmas lunch with my family, which was probably the best Chrismas Day I've ever had, and generally spent a lot of decent time with my friends and family: an effort in itself, but an effort worth making. November and December were quite difficult months, and I now feel I've come out of them OK, largely because I got away from the non-stop working environment and had the chance to exhale. Now I am working better, and I'm on my way to becoming the person I think I can be once again.

The Blog

I have also been considering exactly what I am doing writing a blog. That doesn't mean to say that I shall soon stop writing, but rather, that I am ever-conscious of what I am writing and where this is (or is not) going. So far, I think this has been more of a casual diary than I expected it to be - I had originally intended to post more of my opinions or explore the opinions of others, to amateurishly continue where my Philosophy degree left off. This has not really happened! Again, I am not unhappy with the results - I just wish I had more time even for thinking on that level, let alone writing...

Another consideration: on my very first post, I implied a no holds barred approach to blogging, that I would fearlessly write whatever I wanted, irrespective of the consequences. I have since realised that there are certain things about which I don't feel comfortable writing here. This basically covers two areas: family, and deepest darkest me. My family deserve the respect and consideration such that I should not be advertising their intimate details in a public arena, especially as there are people who read this blog who also know my family. As for me, well, I know what I am, but there's a limit to how much I can spell that out here.

Swimming with Sharks

I have just received a phone call telling me that they are going to offer me a 25% pay increase and extend my contract until the end of February (I'm just waiting for the e-mail to confirm). I honestly can not believe it - do they not notice the fact that I don't wear a suit or tie anymore and I only shave once a week? What about when I sit around looking at the internet for hours (/ days?), or when I get a manicure from the girl on the next desk to me? The fact that I've been in second gear and making silly mistakes for the last month or so? They're quite literally closing their eyes and throwing money at me...

Of course, I'll accept - I couldn't honestly turn all that money down, but I'm now wondering at what point I sold my soul to the devil. Another holiday postponement then I guess...

New Old Me

Pick a colour, pick a number, pick a resolution (in no particular order)...

- Stop binge-drinking
- Eliminate the possibility of future cocaine use
- Get a girlfriend (!)
- Start exercising again
- Get my guitar and amps down to London
- Write some songs
- Join a band
- Build my parents a PC
- Stop trying to please everybody
- Take up a martial art
- Give more money to charity
- Volunteer
- Take a holiday
- Take up Salsa dancing
- Stop picking my nose in public
- Read more
- Assess/ regard women as potential friends rather than potential sexual conquests
- Eat less meat

... Running Around With You

There's a girl in our Glasgow office I quite like: having been in Glasgow quite a lot over the last 6 months, I've built up a bit of a crush. I started flirting with her last week and was waiting for an opportunity to ask her to go for a drink. Yesterday, our paths crossed in the corridor and we started chatting: a perfect opportunity. So I asked.

"If you want me to come out with you and the rest of the project team, then that's cool, but I've got a boyfriend."

Shit. Panic.

"Yeah of course, yeah, 'cause I think we're all going out tomorrow night. No, in fact Thursday... No... Saturday. We're all going out Saturday night and I was wondering if you wanted to come along. Yeah, going out with the guys. You and whoever else..." Accompanied by a very French shrug of the shoulders.

As crap as it sounds, I was actually trembling as I worked myself up to the original question. That's only the second time in four years I've asked a girl to go for a drink, and I honestly hate it. Why? I think there are several reasons:

- The fear of failure/ rejection
- The feeling that I'm better than that
- The dreaded small talk should she accept

All pretty standard stuff so I won't waste any time explaining...

A Long December (well, it will be...)

Almost a month since I have written anything, and despite my last posting, I haven't turned into a drug-obsessed junkie sucking white-collar cock for my next hit... The coke incident hasn't been repeated, though I woudn't say I'm completely in the clear yet: I'm in a situation where it will almost certainly be offered to me the next time I'm out, and depending on my mental state I wouldn't rule out me accepting it. I don't want myself to, but I can't say for definite that I won't. If I think back to the other (two) occasions in my life when I've done coke, there has definitely been a common element: mix severe fatigue, drunkenness, heightened insecurity, add a few demons and persistent problems and there you go...

I've just found out in one of my (currently tri-weekly) draining, consolatory phone conversations with my mum that my dad is being put on [deleted name of medication] and will probably never work again, and my auntie has a brain tumour. It's a good job tonight's big night out has been cancelled due to work commitments (I'm still at the office - will this be another a.m. finish? Answers on a postcard - though I'd better give you my work address or else I'll never receive it). Fuck, a brain tumour. That's bad. I'm hardly bawling my eyes out at the prospect of me losing her - she's too far-removed from my life for that - but the feeling of empathy for my uncle (who, like my dad, has serious health problems) and their children who massively depend on her is gnawing away at me... As for the news about my dad, well, I guess it's been on the cards for a while now. I just hope my mum can cope - I'm already planning an extended trip back home over the Christmas period just to spend a bit of time with them. This is long overdue I guess - partly because of my work schedule, and partly because I honestly dread going home and have to psych myself up for each visit. Lately I just haven't had the physical or emotional energy to play the perfect son.

Anyway, I'm trying not to let any of these things affect me ("Really? Sweeping it under the carpet? Or are you just using all this as an excuse to do coke once in a while?").

A work colleague was just openly discussing his own family issues, and his rather deterministic conclusion was that there was no point worrying about those things over which you have no influence. Unfortunately though, I'm not a robot...

OK, OK, "Get a grip." I know, I know...

The Great Decay

Bristol... Glasgow... Oblivion... I think I took a wrong turn.

The dilemma: how to disappoint those closest to you. I fucked up.

Arrived in Bristol on Friday, did an afternoon's work and headed into town with my colleagues. None of us really knew the city so we ducked into the first place we could find. We had some bar snacks for dinner and started to hit the drink hard.

I don't quite know what happened next. Perhaps I don't want to know, but the reason this is such a big deal for me is that, to a greater or lesser extent, I have always been against the use of recreational drugs (even weed, even alcohol - the former I gave up a few years ago when I realised it wasn't doing me any good, the latter I would still like to give up). There seems to be a distinction in most people's moral code between those things in which they believe and upon which they act, and those in which they apparently believe but upon which they don't act: I always want to be edging closer to putting my beliefs into practice. This weekend, I think I edged away... In the mocking words of one of my colleagues, I "broke one of my own rules." Again.

Cocaine. My finger is twitching nervously on the self-destruct button while I'm getting ever-better at keeping up the act.

Your mind is racing ahead. One way or the other, I've already been judged. So be it.

"And what happened to all that appreciation you boasted, you self-righteous piece of shit?"

Ruse

The road trip continues. Newcastle: cold, grey, uninspiring. No wonder Billy Elliot wanted to get out of here... Fuck, even I'd take up ballet.

A while ago at work, somebody asked me what I was thinking about. This was at a time when I was in a particularly ironic mode of thought, and disenchanted by my perception that nobody at the office quite got me, I answered "Oh, just, basically whether a teleological theory of ethics is necessarily incompatible with the tenets of the world's major monotheistic religions." Childish, pretentious, contrived... But funny. At least for me.

At face value, this is in fact an absurd question, which only serves to make me even more despicable. It's as if I'm saying "I'm just wondering whether two plus one necessarily makes three." But in a foreign language. I really can be an absolute arsehole from time to time.

I thought of this absurd question again this morning as I watched a BBC interview with Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice. Obviously, the two were asked about Iraq, and they replied with the kind of sound bytes and carefully-phrased policy quotations we have all come to expect.

They talked about Bush and the common desire to give people the gifts of freedom and democracy... So many questions ran through my mind, very few of them original. When the Iraq War broke out I was decidedly neutral, hesitating to climb aboard any of the vociferous bandwagons and placing a great deal of hope in the Bramerican leaders having some benign reason to start a war, a reason none of the public would find out until X years later when the information (I wanted to use the word intelligence but my fingers actively refused) was de-classified. How naive I seem to have been.

My (alcohol-ridden, slightly confused) thought pattern this morning ended with the conclusion that Dubya is the sum of the inconsistency I was allegedly pondering that day in the office... It went something like this:

Is Bush really a religious man? If so, how can he justify the inevitable violence and death toll of the war and its seemingly never-ending hangover? Is this therefore a case of "you can't make an omlette without cracking a few eggs"? This ends-justify-the-means explanation - should he choose to offer it (perhaps he already has?) - would make Bush a teleologist. But what type of teleologist would he be? Surely not any kind of conventional utilitarian - can he really suggest that this war is, globally speaking, utility-enhancing, without pissing a pint of oil down the inside of his trousers? Can you enforce democracy? Who decides that a nation should convert from one political system (albeit a brutal dictatorship) to another? Who decides those of the world's powers which can have nuclear capability and those which can't? What the fuck is the U.N. there for?

As I have said - these thoughts are by no means original: I and many others have been posing these questions for months, if not years. But the answers to all of these questions still leave an awful taste in my mouth and I think I have lost all faith in our lacklustre interpretation of democracy. It seems that no matter which political system we try to introduce, human greed and self-interest infect and eventually monopolise it. What was it that Milan Kundera wrote about the fathers of Communism tearing their eyes out if they saw how it was implemented?

Never mind... [sic]

Can't really blog too much at the moment - I'm chained to the desk in our Manchester office. This is the big work slog which has threatened for months: apparently, I'll be working 7/7 until Christmas from now on - a different city every week. The work isn't exactly mentally taxing though and I'm with good people, all expenses paid. I can't complain.

Somebody just blasted Nirvana out from our primitive hi-fi in the office. For the first time in years, I didn't cringe. It's OK to listen to Nirvana again - I've been liberated!

The Recluse

So much to say so much to say so much to say

I'm not sure how popular Dave Matthews is in Britain...

I have spent most of the last couple of weeks in our regional offices up and down the country. Yet another contract extension, despite one of our office heads complaining to my boss about me turning up to work drunk and on the verge of a massive hangover. My reaction: go and see the boss immediately on my arrival back to London, confess and assure him that this type of unprofessional behaviour would not be repeated. It seems to have done the trick.

I had better be careful though - I have a habit of turning the bridge into a tightrope. Then again, I've never really been that comfortable with the easy ride. Tempted to make a pun here but it's far too obvious.

I think that, in a way, I came of age last night. It was a work piss up - in fact my boss' leaving party. I'll miss him. There's always been a perceptible air of discomfort between us, but he's a pretty admirable guy in many respects and he's shown a considerable amount of faith in me. He still doesn't know what to make of me though: I am reliably informed that he thinks I'm gay (by gay, I'm not sure whether his implication is merely derogatory, factual or both). It doesn't really bother me - I'm comfortable enough with my sexuality to play up to this, and in any case I'm quite a demonstrative person by nature. I put this down to my ethnic/ cultural upbringing and my good fortune to have been born at a time when homosexuality was more acceptable - neither of which I have in common with him... Maybe he doesn't care and he's just bowing to what he perceives as his macho obligation to follow the flock. Then again, maybe I don't care what he thinks about my sexuality...

Anyway, nos moutons... It was sufficiently late for us all to be quite slaughtered on the boss' bar tab, and, feeling a little like Mark Renton in Trainspotting, lack of woman set in... Standing around, I noticed a very cute little girl heading my way. She was smiling at me - this doesn't exactly happen every time I go out (although perhaps slightly more often than I notice - I would say that I'm pretty bad at reading female signals/ body language). We hadn't yet had chance to introduce ourselves to each other, and she was dragged onto the dance floor by one of her friends...

Five minutes or so later, she headed back my way, still smiling, made sustained eye contact and was clearly intending to engage me in conversation when she was collared by a colleague of mine who (I presume) hadn't seen any of this. Long story short, she chatted to him for quite a while, they danced, they kissed, he took her number...

My coming of age was this: despite my intoxicated state, I managed to suppress/ ignore my childish, pride-ridden, jealous instincts and get on with the evening without even so much as a grumble to anyone. On reflection, this doesn't necessarily sound like a very impressive achievement, but the point is that I surprised myself because I acted contrary to my self-expectations.

My colleague told me today that he has no intention of calling her.

On a personal level, bitter inevitably follows sweet and I have recently been disturbed by the following thought: why is there not an orderly queue at my door? Bullshit and modesty aside, I'm 25, at worst above-average-looking (or so I'm told - thanks mum), intelligent, well-paid blah blah blah, and not only have I been single for most of my adult life (give or take a couple of years - I don't understand serial monogamy anyway), but this hasn't really been my choice, no matter how much my friends assure me I have "too high standards". What's going wrong here? Where's my queue? I honestly haven't been looking - so that's a cliché which simply doesn't apply to me...

The frustration and bewilderment of returning to my bed alone every fucking night and having nobody there with me... There's so much I want to do and to share, but so few candidates for what I risk believing - if only temporarily - is not as desirable or worthy a position as I would like to think... I'm turning the comments off on this one for fear of the inevitable sympathy postings - that would really piss me off.

And you even spoke to me, and said :
"If you're so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight?
And if you're so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight?
I know ...'Cause tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight
With your triumphs and your charms
While they're in each other's arms..."

The Smiths - I Know it's Over

Plus ça Change...

Contrary to many of my countrymen (those with whom I could never identify in any case), I have quite a soft spot for France, and I have lived there for a total of around two years. I am currently reading Merde Actually by Stephen Clarke (the seemingly inferior sequel to A Year in the Merde by the same author). Yes, fiction(ish), I know - not really my thing.

The following passage caught my eye - I was actually living there during the summer in question (2003), and I remember this appearing on the news. I didn't quite make the Marie Antoinette connection at the time:

The first Wednesday in August would be [an ideal time to invade France]. By then, Paris's ruling classes would have left the city. This includes government ministers, who are ensconed in their holiday homes and have all forgotten what politics is. One summer recently, France had a killer heatwave that had old people dropping like flies - especially those who'd been left alone in Paris by families going away - and the few Parisian doctors and nurses who hadn't gone on holiday were begging the Minister of Health to declare an emergency. His reply was basically, well there's a nice breeze here at the seaside, what are you moaning about?

Over two hundred years after the French Revolution, 'Let them eat cake' lives on. Let them buy Evian facial sprays.

Merde Actually - Stephen Clarke