Ramblings from within The Matrix
and other reasons for needing to write.
and other reasons for needing to write.
Hello again. It’s 12.48am here in the dead of an English night and I’ll be out of your way by 2am. Self imposed curfew and if I’m done before then, all’s the better. We all need to find the time to masturbate once in a while and if it happens sooner than we imagined well, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when masturbating.
It’s now 12.52am and no I’m not going to time check our way through this dribble and yes I’m sat at a 20 year old dining table dressed in pyjama bottoms, a retro long sleeved green and white hooped Celtic football jersey from the European Cup Final of 1967 and a rather swanky pair of trainers I treated myself to recently. I needed cheering up. It partly worked. I’m also drinking tea, smoking the occasional cigarette and ruminating on a rum deal and a self imposed ban on alcohol. I’m not a drinker. I drink tea, strong, one sugar, and lots of it. But I do have a rum deal going on and this article essentially follows on from last night’s scream into the void entitled A Radiohead t-shirt. A Sword of Damocles. And an unwanted hat-trick. Sounds a hoot I know! It’s linked first in the three articles below but I don’t suggest you read it. You can if you wish but the ending is a bit grim. Sorry.
I just have a need to write as when I do, I’m in the happy place I only find when spending time with my beautiful son. More than occasionally, the two perfect worlds collide as I decamp from one old wooden table to another much smaller one as I perch myself lotus style beside and underneath (kind of) a small coffee table and pen my whirlwind of wisdom as I creep occasionally into the rarefied air of my son’s bubble. Fuck the world. Shutters down. Precious family time denied so many. Be it a weekend day such as today and no interference possible from the wickedest of all possible worlds? Perfect. So today was another of those special days with my son. We fed some ducks, we ventured to an old fashioned sweet shop managed by the most magnificent of human beings you could ever wish to call your friend. We had a naughty food takeaway. He slumped over me, legs over mine as I (please note — I and not we!) watched my favourite football team win before he chose a Bruce Springsteen classic for our brief journey to his home and the beautiful matriarchal backbone to his life. My lad has become somewhat of a lucky charm when I watch football with him but the lucky charm is my luck to have that lazy lump slumped over me as I make incoherent notes to a football match I’ll barely refer to later.
Who needs notes when watching the beautiful game with your beautiful son?
I just have a need to write. I’m planning on following the fortunes of the French national team at the Qatar World Cup (it’s a long story and contained within the second of the links below. As I say, I just have a need to write) and I’ll hold my nose at the horrid hypocrisy, both here and in the summertime of The Matrix in a land of make believe and far, far away from here. I’ll be penning some mighty words on the fate of les Bleus in lieu of my football team of choice Liverpool, who are now on a six week hiatus. Damn silly time to be playing a World Cup if you ask me but you didn’t, so we’ll just look awkwardly at our shoes and move on shall we?
I just have a need to write and no I won’t be rehashing that phrase again. I am a professional after all. It’s when I’m at my most happiest and whilst that isn’t exactly the wisest use of grammatical English it’s 1.23am, the kettle has boiled and a piping hot brew will get us through this maelstrom of maladies.
Today was great but it started horribly. As the magnificent Radiohead album closer to Amnesiac Life in a Glasshouse states so pertinently:
“Once again. I’m in trouble with my only friend”.
If only I’d responded to the simple question of “how are you?” with a heavily masked “I’m ok thanks” things would’ve been different, but I couldn’t even manage that. I would have sobbed like a child in front of my only friend and I couldn’t do that. Not again.
I have a self titled “hat-trick of shit” on the go and it’s as fun as it sounds. I can’t inflict this on a lady I beat handsomely at pool on a World Cup holiday in Zakynthos two decades ago or the sole reason, in every possible and conceivable way, that I moved to Ironbridge a decade ago to find my spiritual home. I can’t tell my story, my current horribly twisted one, yet again, to the lady I regularly defeated in our back garden games of Scrabble under a baking summer sun and our lad, merrily running through the water sprinkler, creating a haze against the Great Fire God of the Sky.
We all have stories and I’ve told mine many a time to many a different human being. I currently have three on the go, all containing differing amounts of ones and zeroes in a Matrix with walls that close in on you after too many late night cups of tea. I pointed out the three quarter Moon to my son on our brief journey home listening to Born to Run together. I was going to say a giant had taken a bite out of the moon but resisted, stating it looked reminiscent of a moon in a Star Wars galaxy. I remarked how far the moon and the earth had travelled since we saw the fullest of full moons exactly a week ago when we watched the firework display at our local cricket club. A rival set of fireworks from the official display sandwiched us, forward the magnificent display, to our rear, a smaller but lengthy display and all under a bonny bright full moon.
I returned listening to She’s The One by The Boss and I’m just thankful my beautiful lad hadn’t chosen Thunder Road earlier or else I’d still be crying now. Which I am, obviously.
I just have a need to write as I need the escape from that unwanted hat-trick and the thoughts that will come rat a tat tatting inside my mind the minute I stop. I have to tell my story, again, to the strangers and angels on my shoulders rather than family members or long ago friends who remember that strange, quirky, heart of misplaced gold unhappy misanthrope they knew two decades ago when he was beating the most beautiful lady in all the world at pool on a Greek island whilst running away from a restaurant after receiving a dreadful meal, and running away from a strange couple from Manchester who insisted on constantly joining us and constantly talking about their love for Manchester City. Yes my friends, there were Manchester City fans back in that long ago time of 2002 and no I don’t remember fondly being one of only four inside this tiny club with the loudest of speakers whereby we didn’t exactly converse with each other, rather, we just let our ears bleed until we passed out from the blood loss.
It’s 2.15am and I seem to have become decoupled from the track and don’t you just hate new fangled words such as “decouple”. I blame Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina but then again, I always have. I need fixing but then again, I always have. So I’m going to write my way through the pain of an unwanted hat-trick and try my best to avoid Mondays through Saturdays, all day, and every day I’m not with my beautiful son. I’ll tell my story again on Monday night to an angel and be a sobbing mess again on Tuesday. I have more papers in front of me than Rumpole of the Bailey and if that reference to a UK television show of the 1970s doesn’t float your particular boat, picture a skinny 14 year old pedalling a Jurassic period “Bakers Bicycle” around the rain swept streets of Portsmouth, precariously balancing the equivalent of the Empire State fucking building on the front of this affront to modern society. I was a tall 14 year old but by the time my paperboy days were over, well, I’d lost an inch or two and the really obvious joke here is to say you blame it on a famous actress’ vagina and your fondness for masturbation but don’t go for the obvious my friends. Take the high road, not the lower one.
You’re better than that.
And so am I. That last paragraph sucked a big one didn’t it? But it’s written now and I’m damned if I’m going to delete it. My editor can deal with this in the morning when he’s awoken from his drunken stupor. He’s currently asleep in the corner of the room, his snores broken by the repetition of a mumbled phrase “Harvey Elliott is a wunderkind who plays like a Spanish midfielder”. He’s right of course but he’s also drunk, so we’ll let him sleep it off. He can deal with the repercussions of this concocted cursive of contradictions in the morning.
It’s as this point I usually thank everyone for reading but let’s be real here for a change. No-one reads this balderdash and quite frankly I don’t blame them. I dreamed of being a cricketer when I cycled those dark streets with far too many newspapers balancing precariously on the front of that bicycle from the darkest pit of industrialised hell. I’ve now dreamed of being a writer for over a decade and after reading this rhubarb you’ll see why I haven’t achieved that dream.
I should end now with a rousing quote from Bruce Springsteen on whether dreams are in fact lies if they don’t come true or that I’m working on a dream. If my editor wasn’t drunk as a skunk in the corner of the room he’d no doubt advise me to go with this chest pumping finale, but I’m waiting on a sunny day as I deal with the funny papers of never giving a stranger my money because in the middle of these ridiculous negotiations, I break down.
A Radiohead t-shirt. A Sword of Damocles. And an unwanted hat-trick
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