Warning: Bit Serious

Everything seemed very odd when I woke up this morning. There is always some form of "sleep" in my eyes, but not so much that it's a medical problem. I thought I was back home, and that to me suggested that this is where I wanted to be at that moment in time and space. It wasn't so so early that I couldn't go anywhere or see anything, so I shoved on a stripey 30% off t-shirt that smells a bit and my chavvy trakkies Mumkins bought me and stepped out the door.

I'm going to re-direct this to something more substantial, because I don't want this to deteriorate into a diary of my life. I see loads of those, and they all look like the above.

In layman's terms, when it comes to smoking, I am what is commonly known as a "pussy." My parents would always say that you should never smoke because of all this damage it can do to you. The school always rammed it down our throats, which would either scare the shit out the little kids or simply make them want to do it more. I didn't need the toilet for three days after.

My brain was a bit fuzzy this morning. I don't think it was drink, but I was incredibly laggy from tiredness. It was like my brain had been wrapped in cling film and then frozen for a couple of days. Then it was given back to me to try and defrost before I could use it. This image, although in some ways is the most accurate description I could come up with, doesn't work - I probably wouldn't be alive, let alone turn the microwave on. I've always figured that creativity comes above science and facts, because even though something isn't true, it still makes sense more than something which is fact. Hellyeahdeepkthnxbye.

Londis' is my local corner shop. So in my stripey 30% off t-shirt that smelt a bit and chavvy trakkies Mumkins bought me, I stepped out the door. I didn't feel the cold. The llama in the field next to me looked colder than I was. I would have invited him in with me for a cup of warm tea and a digestive, but I resented the fact he had a coat and I didn't. Plus, we screwed up the shopping that week and only had normal digestives, not the chocolate ones. I know where the bell is on the door into Londis' and it doesn't make sense. The bell is on the outside of the shop, so when you leave, everybody knows, but when you enter, you were the world's coolest ninja. They even show the CCTV footage on the big screens. Half of them clearly don't work. If you are reading this and would like to take part in "a crime", I personally recommend the cereal aisle.

My feet carry me straight to the till where I request one packet of "those light browny ones on the right". You can tell I'm a regular. I nearly forget the lighter, but don't. One lighter too, please. I asked for a red one, because the green ones look like you're using toxic waste to light up. I prefer blood. I don't get ID'd in Londis' anymore because they know I'm old enough. From somebody who looks fifteen now and has always had ID trouble, this brightened my day. I left the shop, alerting everybody that I was doing so, and headed back.

The llama wasn't there anymore. It had gone cloudy and even the ponies near the Art's Institute were hiding in the bushes. I got back home right away because I was spooked, not even noticing that I'd had my house key in my hand for the entire trip. I walk over to my window and open it as wide as I can (which isn't that wide), and look at the cigarettes I'd just bought. Everything leading up to this point had told me "No, you cannot do this." It even said so on the packet. Sure I'd taken a few drags from others before, my parents would never think I hadn't taken a cheeky one with mates, but I'd never felt anything. The only way that I could really make the decision for myself would be to take one of those little deathsticks and smoke the whole lot of it. That way, I can truly say to myself "Ok that was quite good" or "Right now I feel a bit unwell." Then it's my decision.

My parents are right, as always. They are always right in some format and in that respect they have mine. But allowing others to make their own choices and mistakes is crucial, and I really, really did not understand the concept behind smoking other than it warms you up a bit. Maybe if I'd smoked the whole pack then I would become addicted, but from only smoking one I can't really see the value in getting addicted to something that isn't that great. My room didn't smell after which I was happy with. My housemates would have had every right to throttle me for smoking in the house. Luckily, my neck is intact, and I am still a pussy. But at least I chose to be.

That Was Such A Nice Garden?

I thought I'd take the opportunity with a combination of insomnia and insanity to write down whatever I'd feel like writing. It's supposed to sooth the soul and bring out our deepest and sometimes darkest character. I'm interested to see if my good side comes out.

In my garden I know I have a fence. This fence represents a boundary both physically and mentally. It's quite a nice fence and it's painted lots of different colours, as if Jason Donovan had been strung up on it several times. Or at least enough to cover the surface area of the fence which can be seen from inside the house.

Sometimes people break into my garden through this fence because I've failed to maintain it well enough. Sometimes I do let them in though for a nice chat and a bit of tea. I take note very well of what they want because it can make all the difference. It's all about first impressions these days. If they knock over my Bonzai's I'm not too impressed because it takes a lot of dedication and love to make them grow into lovely little trees. They're not like those lazy, big oafish oaks in the corner hogging all the sun, and grumbling because it's "windy today". It's windy most of the time- your job is to block the wind out.

People that break into my garden are really quite nice people underneath. Occasionally one will be a bit rude and I have to decide whether they should be allowed to stay in my house or not. If they are, I keep my eye on them by cutting eyeholes in my newspaper and staring through the Financial Times at them over breakfast. They seem alright after that and desperately willing never to try and push my hospitality further than it can go. It's a new experience for me. If I decide they shouldn't stay, I make sure they have a safe passage back home, because I am nice like that and don't want to see more than one person hurt today. It gets boring after a while.

So I open my conservatory window and climb out because as always, I will lose the key. I know where it is, but I know full well them burglars have more than likely stolen it to get in at their leisure at a later date. You must be careful of the patio chairs and dining table on the way out though. They've got a bit rusty from all the horrible English weather and the last thing you want to be catching is blood poisoning. I get up on the fence and sit there. It's a very thin fence, and it's not very comfortable. I need a pillow or a cushion to make my life that bit more humble. I can see them on the sofa through the back window, but I never have the time, dedication or effort to jump down either way and grab one. I'm hoping I don't fall down off the fence onto next door's Begonia. Everybody knows they look and smell nice, but not when they've been squashed. It wasn't even me that did that. I did run over a Christmas tree once though. It wasn't even fucking Christmas.

You could say those bastards that broke in did it, trampling all over that lovely Begonia. It was so good before, but I think it's developed thorns now, and that's not child-friendly at all. I'm contemplating taking the initiative and cutting down the plant in its entirety, but I know that it'll take time to decide even though everyone says it's perfectly fine to do so. I'm not going to pull it up unless I know it'll be OK there in that patch after. I did find weeds. Lots of em. So I've got rid of those, because everybody hates a leech.

Train of Thought

A lot of stuff goes down on a train. In my mind, I seem to start judging people based purely on what they look like and how they speak, plus whether or not they’re nice to me. This is a really dangerous thing to do, but when your best friend is a bottle of Harrogate Spa water you paid way too much for from the “buffet”, your options are somewhat limited.

So I glance across. One guy in a batman jumper? Most likely a rapist. Didn’t help that he wore a leather jacket and gloves that have definitely felt jugular veins before. He also had an eyebrow piercing. Well he must be a gay rapist then. My bum clenches inside. Two businessmen step on the train in their full Duchamp attire. They sit down with their Macbook Airs sipping wine from a plastic screw top bottle they just bought off the paraplegic guy with the trolley. They look like tools with all their margins, accounts and profit projections splayed out across the table. Most of the time, my judgments are usually wrong in some way, but this time round, I really wanted to lock them in a bank with nothing other than a wallet and a calculator. That should keep em quiet.

A person in bright red jeans and rainbow mittens sits down on my right. I genuinely can’t tell whether they’re a boy or a girl. He/she has the same shoes I had at fifteen though. That’s pretty embarrassing. It suggests that the clothes I grew up with in the future could go to a jumble sale, be seen by a lesbian teenager and bought. And I bet she’d have a smile on those chops of hers too. One girl behind me on my left keeps singing “Since you went away my heart breaks everyday” over and over again. I swear to God I’m going to punch her in the breast if she keeps going. She continues, but in a chipmunk voice, before revealing she’s just found a used tampon wrapped in tissue in her handbag. I’m not going anywhere near her.

So I start looking out the window into the dark woods rolling past me, picking out the top spots I could hide a body in. I found a particularly appealing ditch under a log bridge in Winchester that would fit the “Bat man-fiddler” in nicely. Perhaps even with enough room for a pair of unisex trainers to fit comfortably down next to him. I also see a Blair Witch-esque small, run down cottage that could be the new home of the businessmen. I really hope there’s a wine cellar underneath. A rustling right next to my ear. I turn round to one of those suit-suit things that stops them from getting wet and creased and all that. I forgive him though, purely because he looks like Louis Theroux, and I like Louis Theroux.

Santa disguised as a South-Western train conductor pops his head over the shoulder of the suit-suit and asks me for my ticket. I can instantly tell he’s assuming, as most toothless folk in red felt waistcoats do, that I’ve skived to get onto the train. They over-estimate my ability to teleport from one side of a metal barrier to the other. I’m actually pretty flattered he thinks I can do that. I could go on Panorama. For the giggles and knowing full well he can’t read for sh*t, I pass him an old ticket and my student rail card. He tells me in a hangman’s tone that I have to sign the back of my card straight away, otherwise my card isn’t valid which means my ticket isn’t valid which means I have to pay sixty pounds, which basically means I’m screwed. So does that mean if I do sign the card, my ticket to Leeds from last year becomes valid? I ask for his pen and didn’t give it back. I think he forgot. As he trundled away and I twiddled with my newly acquired writing implement, I admire his effort for sticking to the book. I do however think that as much as he’s the best employee South-Western trains has during the recession, he does need to get his ass laid.

"Just Put It Down There"...

My family received a lovely 40-inch plasma screen TV from Santa this year. Our chimney was a bit of a tight squeeze though, so Dad pulled some festive strings and got it delivered free with John Lewis. God bless middle class values. The reason for the new telly was because the other one went and broke last year. I won’t beat about the bush - I was a bit disappointed with the lack of drama it died with. There were no explosions, flames or Carbon Monoxide emissions one would expect from a telly on its way out. The people on Eastenders just went a bit green. So purely for that reason, we haven’t tried to fix it. We took it to the tip instead.

The tip is in the middle of an industrial estate in the heart of Southend, surrounded by small, failing businesses with rubbish logos. The only one that isn’t failing is Keymed, a dominating glass and metallic building that my old girlfriend’s Dad more or less owned. It makes medical equipment used in hospitals and other places, like dentists and that. She did work experience there once and broke a two million pound medical machine. They put her on CD packaging after that.
Also near the tip is a carpenters, a marble dealer, and directly opposite, a Jewish cemetery. This makes me feel uncomfortable. I always thought it a bit tactless that they decided to place a Jewish cemetery just across the road from the local dump. Them poor Jews. God forbid the day someone gets it all horribly, horribly wrong, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss Mrs. Freedman, but we just don’t know how Marc ended up in Glass and Plastics.”

The tip really isn’t the ideal place you want to find yourself in. Everything smells funny and the whole place looks and feels grubby. The crushers look like ATATs fresh from Star Wars and the “Recycling Advisors” walking round are about as likely to help as Bin Laden in a charity shop. Nonetheless they still took our shit telly. We both agreed there’s no way they’ll let that go without trying to fix it first, and to be honest they’re welcome to it. Even if they can’t get it working, I’m sure it’ll make a wonderful bathmat for somebody.

The TV we’ve got up and running now works perfectly fine and everybody’s happy. We can hear what they’re saying at the same time they say it now. We don’t have to pretend we’re watching a badly dubbed Japanese action film. The people on Eastenders are still green, though. I’m starting to think they’re just like that.

Houses, lots and lots of houses...

My downstairs toilet took a revamping a couple of months ago. It now is orange – bright, bright orange. The toilet seat, bog brush and even the bog roll is all a lovely shade of tangerine (we’ve used up all the fancy paper now, hello Charmin Ultra, you pale-coloured excuse for a bumwipe). In fact the only thing that isn’t orange in that 2x1 metre room is a small stain of puke put there by Tom Beale the night we all got hammered at my crib. How he managed to get a little bit above the door handle I’ll never know, but respect points for bouncing it that far off the toilet rim nonetheless.

The house I live in has actually taken a battering. It used to be semi-detached, but after our next-door neighbour’s husband died she sold it to us for some knock-off price. I think he died in the room that’s now my bedroom actually – what a lovely thought. I also went through a phase of unscrewing all of the plugs in the house when I was small. I thought that unless I did, I’d end up as a younger and slightly crispier Desmond Tutu. Now I look back on it, it’s kinda obvious that if anything was going to kill me, it would be the act of actually unscrewing a plug socket and ripping all the wires out. But when you’re little it’s a necessary risk, if not a bit fun.

As I write this, I’m lying in the guest bedroom on a double bed with my legs as far apart as I can get them. It sounds kinkier than it actually is; I just enjoy the room I don’t get at university. In those cells you don’t get the luxury of not being able to feel the bed planks underneath. I’m still waiting on a reply to my request for a new mattress. I might deliberately sabotage it so all the bed springs pop out and I get a lovely new one, but give it a couple of months and it’ll do that by itself. I won’t feel so bad about milking em for all they’ve got then. Our hoover is also a bit rubbish too. When the bag is full, the hoover simply stops working. Thing is, we have to apply online for a new one, which takes about five days to actually get results from. Sounds a bit like hygiene-fail if ever I saw one.

Richard Search, head of accommodation, if you ever read this, the views expressed are not my own but simply a series of spelling errors made by my elderly and senile secretary that I’m dictating this to. Your hoovers are of immaculate condition and the system you run is very hygiene-friendly and does not in any way piss me off. Whilst I’m here, I’m sorry but it was me that cracked your Batman coffee mug you left on your desk. If it makes you feel any better, I think I did do a good job selotaping the handle back on though. I think it adds character.

Jumping The Rug

I own a Jesus mug. I’m no Christian though, more agnostic if you’re going to be a bit arsey about it. It was bought for me for my 16th birthday by a mate. He tippexed out the “Jesus” from “Jesus, I trust you” and scribbled on “Guy” in pink crayon. It was a lovely idea, but not too well thought out. It came off in the dishwasher, leaving me basically with a cheap mug with holy J. Chrizzle on it. It’s still my favourite though. The only problem is that whenever I drink Ribena out of it, it drips down the side and looks like Jesus is crying blood. I don’t like that much. I also have to lick his face whenever I take a sip. I’m definitely going to hell for that. Soz babes.

When I was little, my parents made me go to Sunday school. Maybe it was because they thought if I turn out to be the next Hitler, Stalin or Katie Price, then at least my arse is covered. I had that old S.S. card. My earliest memory of Sunday school was inside a dusty side-hall with a group of Sunday school mates (no doubt all dressed in woolly jumpers and worn-out Velcro sandals). The stuff they made us do was crap. We were made to stand on one side of this sickly green rug, whilst René the 80-something-year-old S.S. General stood at the other. We were told we were on Earth on our side of the rug and on the other was Heaven. How do we travel across that dusty, stained, inherited-from-some-dead-dude mat from Earth to Heaven? Of course the answer was by praying daily, forgiving trespassers and loving Jesus. I was only eight - I said motorbike.

Christianity- in fact religion in general- is fading. This is a bit bad I think. It always guided people towards living well, which was never that awful. Yeah a few took it a bit far and that, like Hitler and his lot. But they kinda jumped on the Christian thing because it was a bit more popular than Nazism. More people knew about it, I suppose. So as we become a Godless society, standards are slipping more than Jesus trying to ice-skate in his sandals (turn the frozen lake to wine, then we can all have a bevvy whilst laughing too). I spotted today that parents are giving their children alcohol at home, “fuelling binge-drinking” at a later age. The question has got to be asked though: is this seemingly poor way of living because of the way we live nowadays, or was it there the whole time and Christianity did a good job blagging that we’re all Perfect Peters?

So alcohol campaign groups (known to many as trouble-makers, bored-and-retired or nuns) are saying that because of the “pocket money prices” of alcohol, kids can get hold of it no problem at all. Je disagree, what a bunch of deluded virgins. There is no chance in hell an 11-year-old can rock up to an offy and get alcohol just like that. No way at all. I tried it once, but it failed big time. Grow a beard, wear a large coat and leave a suspicious red button in your hand, go to an airport and you won't come close to how Fail the whole jabazzle was. I left with nothing more than a J20 and a pack of mini cheddars. While I'm here, if you can tell me where I can find these “pocket money prices”, I’m there. I’ve never found one. Ever. Perhaps if people are concerned about teenage drinking, they should buy them an old green rug for Christmas. Or Jesus mugs. Ribena, anybody?

Guy-In-A-Box

I won't lie. I proper belly-laughed when I heard some guys off my course got stuck in the lift of the Media School a couple of weeks ago. That stuff never happens to you. So when you fall to the same fate (in the same poxy lift ironically) on your own, the humour suddenly stops being so humorous. Especially when the very reason I'm in that lift is to go home for a shower and a poo.

A lot goes through your mind when you get caught in a metal box. Embarrassingly enough, my main worry was that I left my Facebook on in the newsroom, completely open to what has been coined as "Frape". This is the bastard child of "Facebook" and "Rape" - Frape. Anything can be typed into your Facebook status or to anybody else's in fact, that could land you in a lot of the brown stuff I was thinking about at the time. Usually there is no attempt to hide it nor make it seem like you. I won't disgust with the details, but next time I drop a meatball on a hairy carpet the three second rule doesn't apply. I'm not eating that.

As I ponder what I'll look like decorated over the walls of the lift when it crashes down to the ground, I start to worry about other things. Did I leave the oven on? Did I leave the iron on? Have I got asthma? No, it's fine Guy, you don't do ironing. Then the woman comes on loud-speaker just as I'm feeling better and kicks me in the teeth with this little gem: "Lift out of service. Please exit the lift". What a bitch. Any tips on how I do that, Houdini?

All this stuff that was sloshing round in my head happened in the space of about 40 seconds, but it felt like at least three minutes. The bitch then decided she'd had enough and took me back to the ground floor, crazy socks and tacky scarf not covered in Guy-mush like I thought. Underwear was though.