Let us never be that way again.

I am writing this at 07:30 hours on a Thursday morning from work. It is grey outside.

Trying to get to sleep last night resulted in my mapping in great detail what my ceiling looks like. Like a certain other act that will not be mentioned here I spent an hour preparing, getting keyed up for getting into bed and after all that, all that work, nothing happened. I spent six hours being increasingly frustrated with myself, angrily checking my clock, daring it to be later than I wanted it to be, and I managed to get to sleep about three hours ago.

I do not enjoy the company of my brain anymore. We have stopped talking and are avoiding one another in the house, it childishly huffing its way out of the kitchen when I walk in there etc. Grow up. It knows it’s in the wrong here but just won’t admit it, and it’s pathetic to watch. I’m going to suggest we start seeing other people.

A little while I got it into my head to watch all those films that people keep talking about, so I resolved to spend an evening drinking and have my world rocked and I finally got around to watching Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, which is the best film I have seen in a very long time; I gasped, I laughed and I had something in my eye in the- yes, that bit. After this, having fortified myself with classy cider that comes in glass bottles I watched the Expendables.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or imagined someone on the motorway in the fast lane, sailing happily by you with a smug grin on his face, watching him shift down, only for him to accidentally shift into second instead of fourth and watching the vehicle spin away from the road with an expensive tinkling sound, his limp body flying into the grass verge, head striking rocks and twigs, surely dead?

My brain. That was my brain.

The change in tempo was polar; things exploded. A gun fired bullets that exploded, that hit something else, which then exploded, and then got punched in the face. And then someone had a knife thrown at them, and then he fell back onto something and then exploded.

There was a word I saw, I think it was Kris Straub who said it: it was an extravaganzmurder.

I’m looking forward to seeing the sequel.

Anyway, my shift starts in ten minutes and I need eighteen hundred cups of coffee to quell the shakes, and to prevent me from sitting on the nose of a plane, covering the dock in petrol after strafing it with cannon fire, firing a pistol back at the petrol covered pier and blowing it to smithereens. That was the best bit.

Don't Tread On Me

I had only been awake for forty five minutes before it happened. Allow me to explain.

My early shifts start at 08:00 most days, and so when I wake up, I need to get to my place of work and use the showers there to make myself not smell like a long-dead yak. I have usually been pretty good at the whole waking up thing, getting into the changing rooms and having a long luxuriant shower for about forty five minutes, until I resemble a pink strip of wet jerky. Yes, it is more horrible than you can imagine.

I was running late today, and so got into work about half an hour later than usual.
And then it happened.

Imagine the scene: silence, apart from the sound of running water and a poor, reedy English version of 'Diamonds and Guns' coming from the cubicle. No change there, and though I was wary due to the time, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as the last of the suds spiralled away. Shutting off the water and stepping out of the stall, I reached to shut the cubicle door behind me-
The click of the door handle leading to the changing rooms. The opener must have felt the same way as me; the creeeeeeeak of the door slow was and hesitant; the same way a young deer approaches a quiet clearing with an inexplicable pile of nourishing leaves in the middle.

Though I am not ashamed of my grotesque, corpulent body; having long stopped caring about my 'lats' and my 'delts', I am just not that interested in putting it on show for a total stranger. Well, if it was five years ago, sure: I was young and I needed the money, but now? Not on my watch, bub.
This left myself and my mystery opponent at a stalemate, the door was half open and my shame on display, an agonising and compromising reach away from the towel rack.

I was not brought up through school to be comfortable stripping naked in front of my friends; so this scenario was unfamiliar. I had to pull it together: the guy on the other side of the door was rapidly approaching the limit in which you can hesitate in situations like this and within seconds his hand would be forced. The door opened outward.

Time slowed to a crawl; it was so bright, everything in stark detail. The tiny mountain ranges that spread out icy and mysterious across the polystyrene ceiling tiles, and the slick grey metal of the lockers, reflections of my face distorted on its surface, wavering as if through a sheen of tears.

I dug deep. Why should I feel put out? He's the invader here, how dare he! No more: a stand has to be taken, not just for me, but for naked men everywhere, in every public shower block in the universe. They cry out for a saviour, a martyr to this age-old conflict.

They were not found wanting this day.

I stood my ground, shaking with furious defiance. He entered, a curt nod at a point about a foot to the left of my head as he scuttled, head down to the coat hooks. Through one gesture the see-saw of shame fell his way, and he was caught unawares suffering a double dose of mute embarrassment. Inside I let forth a bestial roar that shook the very heavens and outside my actions pumped with victory as I pulled on my boxers, eyes shining with a primal glow.

For this day, I had won.

Blog posts are hard!

I have just typed out and then deleted four different sentences, and as a result have put four times more effort into doing nothing than if I had just kept them.

Damn it, I did it again. I am tired, and have a scratchy throat that isn't enough to even mildly inconvenience an average human being, but I am not an average human being. The constant low flame sat behind my tonsils is all I can think about at the moment and I am waiting for it to pass, which with any luck should be within the next four hundred and twenty eight years; and whilst that's on everything in my field of vision is just a garish and over-bright monster stabbing my bloodshot eyes.
But I have gotten better and sorting myself out when I'm ill. I am not a hero who declines pain relief, as my belief is that anything that stops you from feeling bloody awful is better than the slightly confused looks you receive when you say "No thanks, I don't believe in making it easy for myself."
That's what the future and, you know, medicine is for.

If I lived in the dark ages, maybe I would decline pain relief, but only because pain relief was achieved by simply cutting you open and burning you as a witch; but nowadays? I can walk into a shop and buy pain relief for 45 pence (that's around eighteen American dollars) and the biggest thing I have to worry about is if I accidentally take a million of 'em one go and become so pain free I burst out of the other end of the pain spectrum and my body crumples in on itself like a can in vacuum.

That being said, the average throat lozenge is a tricky bugger, as I have found out today. Having bought myself eight hundred Strepsils (because all sore throats last a minimum of two years so they don't sell smaller boxes) I started popping those things 'as needed' as they used to be. Only taking a cursory glance at the box as the seventh-lozenge-in-fifteen-minutes slid down did I see the warning that I should only take one every three hours.
What the eff, Strepsils? You used to be cool. And now the walls are melting because of you, and I am probably going to die in a few minutes.

Thanks a lot.