Monday 11 October 2010

Gluttony

Cars. Had one of these things:


Called it Audrey. Drove it all over Scotland, through England, up and down Wales scores of times. Didn't put so much oil in it mind you, and one day it had enough of my neglect. Part of the engine exploded on the east bound M4 forcing me to cripple into the nearest service station, wait two hours for the AA and eventually be told by a tutting mechanic that it was "probably fatal". After another long wait for a truck to carry me back to my origin I was 'truely fucked for a car'. Need a car for my work, see? Can't get at the patients otherwise and they sure as shit don't want to come to me. Got a new one. A bigger one. One that took the weekly five hour drive to North Wales, and my beloved (FUCK YOU NHS!), in it's stride. Enter the dragon:



Two pints to address:

1) Make that three.

2) This is probably not the acme of motoring, I know. But having only ever regularly driven a Mini and a Ford Ka, this felt like being in charge of a T-90. Which sort of led to the next bit.

3) From Swansea-ish to Bangor-ish on my first run took me five hours. This is a journey of about 150 miles. Ish. Five hours gives me an average speed of thirty miles per hour, on national speed limit roads. As I was no longer a mere motorist, rather the commander of a sophisticated weapoms platform, this was clearly unacceptable. If I could get to Chester in three hours fourty, why not Bangor? Which sort of led to the next bit.

Finished the work at six, hit the road and caned it. Fucking hammered it. We're talking speed limit here, but if you know these roads, well, it was a bit silly. Accidents tend to happen during the initial and final ten per cent of the journey. I have told myself this on every bus trip, flight, drive and even walk to the shops that I have been on. Except this one time. Rain was battering the road, Abba was blaring from my car stereo, I was even punching the air out of my window.

One night lying in bed when I was about six I realised that I was going die. I was worrying about school and what would happen when I was no longer a child. I worried about college and then university and then my inevitable death. In the space of about ten minutes. I freaked out, I was hysterical. My dad came to see what was the matter and I told him what was on my mind. Needless to say, he was a bit freaked out too, probably at the thought of paying for higher education. This happens to everyone, I know. You wake up in the night and worry. You think about how the sum of human experience will eventually amount to nothing, that it's all indefatigably pointless. But yet, that new dead rising game looks like a laugh, and anyway, my buddy Mark is back in the U.K. next month, and we'll cut about the place talking shite, and that'll be laugh. Right? Right. Still you worry though.

The first thing I knew was that the back end had gone wrong. Very wrong. It went right, too right. I corrected, of course, but by then I was truely fucked. I remember being bathed in orange light, it must have been the solitary street light, as time slowed down and I was reduced to two thoughts, all sense of control now totally lost. "Fuck" and "I'm going to die". Initially there was panic, but as soon as I realised that I had no control and was sure that I would die I felt extremely calm. The car was flipped and destroyed. I broke out in a mild rash a day later which I took to the hospital and insisted was shingles, having suffered it as a child. It obviously wasn't and the nurse that I saw was very kind, seeing immediately that I was being a bit mental.

Existential fear completely disappeared though. Could not give a fuck that I'd die. It was fantastic, unbelievable, liberating. But the fucker wore off, didn't it? I think I had about eighteen months before that pointless worry insidiously bored it's way back into my consciousness. I'm getting one of these next:

Lust

I recently found out that an ex colleague had opened up a cosmetic medicine clinic depressingly close to my home town. I felt that the only lucid way to respond would be to submit a query via the company's Facebook profile in the style of H.P. Lovecraft. I was promptly 'unfriended'...

Dear Doctor,

I shall be succinct. Your time I am sure, as mine, is precious. I am in need of a large amount of cash money within the next four days following a series of indiscretions. I shall be frank from the offset; I require three hundred and fifty guineas without delay. Whilst I am ultimately to blame for my current predicament, I feel some explanation is in order, lest my frequenting of your establishment bring you, and your fellow renowned medical practitioners, into disrepute. I shall begin. On or around the 15th July 2010 I gained, through no fault or omission on my part, sole possession of certain documents. Initially I dismissed these sheaves as the inconsequential ramblings of a mind turned sour, be it through madness or some other folly of the soul. Their content defied belief and spoke of either a profound insanity on the part of the writer or, if given credence, a shocking judgement of which we must all partake. Said documents, upon closer examination, and thorough academic scrutiny undertaken by Prof. H. R. James of Abergavenny University, Department of Archaic Artefacts, revealed certain profane and ancient rituals never before studied by the minds of civilised men. I cannot emphasise the sense of palpable terror that this revelation sent throughout the Department of Archaic Artefacts. Shaken and exhausted from the day’s events, I retired to bed at around eleven. The Magnolia paintwork, chipped Formica and dripping tap of my NHS accommodation only added to my sense of foreboding. Dreamlessly, I slept. No sooner had I emerged from a restless sleep following the events I have reluctantly delineated above than I strolled into the Abergavenny University library to see a scrum of professors and students crowded about my collection of demonic scripts. Imperceptibly a man came towards me. I say ‘a man’, yet he was without form. A shape within my mind, yes, but this man somehow managed to evade my usual senses, in that he was without being at all! Yet I took him into my company, not perceiving that he was unusual in any way. He spoke to me then, of what I cannot tell, for the memory, nay, the doing of it, was as transient as the forms of a dream. I regret I do not know how much time passed betwixt mine meeting with said beast and its interference with the others gathered within the library. Let it be said, however, that none stood lest myself, the beast and the Dean of Abergavenny. I approached the Dean, now supine on the polished wooden floor. He spoke. "Hng'uathua ngrlg'ngh t'krghu fteghn'uiangh-ikh'raghn." I stared incredulously at him. He paused, reached into his pocket for an ornate fountain pen and then wrote in death black ink across his torn, white shirt sleeve: “I’m choking you fool!”. Alas, he did indeed choke. It turned to me then, cast its eyes upon me. Unspeakable! Torrid hallucinations wracked me, my soul bare. The beast had me, its unfathomable eyes probing my very being. It bored into my very essence. It left me with a message.

“Maybe your lips?”

Yours,

Doctor.

Limbo


Utterly despondent. Woke at 4:30am and couldn't sleep. Low mood throughout the day, lifting slightly towards the evening. A black, heavy sensation which seems to drag, inexplicably, on my parital lobes. Anhedonic. Just hit up the radio to be hit full on by Jools Holland. Sycophantic smirking midget. Didn't help, didn't help at all. I've honestly felt better in the throes of gastroenteritis. The gastroenteritis that I caught from letting a tramp's dog lick my face. O.K., the gastroenteritis I caught from a tramp's dog letting me lick it's face. Whatever. And I'll feel fine in the morning. I'll be idiotically chipper. Someone's coming to the house to look at the boiler in the morning and I'll probably offer to make him tea (which he'll refuse), ask him how my boiler works (which I don't give shit about, as long as he keeps coming to fix it) and tell him about my cats (which he won't give a shit about). Fuck it, I know what was worse. I once drank a bottle of Lizard Wine with a freind. I tried to eat the lizard, only managed a foot, then threw it at a couple of students. It tasted like death. It made my brain feel like it was made of lead. The lead that the Russians dumped on Chernobyl from helicopters to soak up the radiation and heat. That was worse.