30th August – Mad

I think I am mad. There’s no way to really tell anymore. Maybe it’s the combination of a hundred nights’ bad sleep and endless work. Maybe it’s just a phase, I'm sure we all go mad at some stage, feeling strange emotions, anger, despair, extreme joy, giddiness and all the rest of the wonderful and horrible things that make up us.

Trouble is its hard to have this feeling of belonging when it seems that, after weeks of being on the up and down rollercoaster I've melted to some all time low, without much reason or purpose. It started i think about an hour ago, and unlike last time I’ve had absolutely no coffee. There seems to be some acid trails burned on my cheeks from where salt water has just sought pastures new, I know its warm in here but I am shivering and talking to no one.

Everything in the world seems so bright and cheerful and great, covered in bad things which are still somehow good, as more saltwater, this warm and much fresher, leaves some inner home I have for it but cant see. Everything seems so much better elsewhere, where I am not, I feel that people stop talking near me about normal things because I am there. People put up with me, but no more. They go to parties, fall in love, go on holiday, and enjoy the social life. I don’t know if I can do any of that anymore. Everywhere feels good but me. I feel stuck in some dark poorly lit room, but nothing but a screen and a keyboard for company. Oh fuck. I can’t imagine anyone else being able to live this way, anyone else that did, they could never live… never love again.

Most people think it’s slightly cool to be mad, more people wish they could understand mad people. Being mad is like having all of your senses swapped, nothing makes much sense, nothing seems to work for you, and the absolute worst part is that no one can ever understand how you feel.

There is no reason for any of this. I know also that putting something like this weird stupid entry by a strange idiot man on the net, in a book or even on a screen could lead to serious consequences or concerns, and I don’t care, because I want someone to think that they have even the slightest understanding of how shit I feel now. They cannot. Everyone else’s world seems so much brighter, I am good at reading and have not seen anyone whose summer seems to have been as woefully sad as mine.

27th August – For my own good

I can’t wait to get back to Leicester. Not just for the parties, nights out, potential encounters or even university stuff. Another reason is this, free healthcare! Students, apparently don’t need to pay. Which is going to come in handy soon, but I'm not ready for confession time on these pages yet!

I will say this… I am ill, potentially very. I can think of 3 perhaps 4 major things which are wrong with me. One of them is after years of neglect now quite serious. Actually two, the second one has suffered probably ten or more years of neglect. The serious third cropped up within the past four or five months, I don’t even know what it is, but when it’s a problem, its very distressing.

I'm not however, a hypochondriac. I don’t go to the doctor everytime I get an itch. I go when there seems to be no other option. I would probably not be in the state I am now if I’d gone sooner. Lets hope I don’t end up with cancer (not one of my worries, but it does seem to run in the family), otherwise my diagnosis will probably be done post-mortem!

Moving away from such morbid subject matter… there’s another reason for having these problems addressed; to be healthy yes, but also to feel better about myself. Problem numbers one and two affect my confidence greatly. Problem number three just makes me paranoid and shit-scared, as they say.

And now, once again I'm up past midnight. The twilight typist strikes again. I suppose it’s a good time for reflection on ones day. I’d go to bed but problems one and two are flaring up again. Painfull and distressing. When they’ve gone though, its bedtime for me in a room filled with sleep music!

25th August

There’s a lot been going on behind the scenes recently, I can’t stop my brain from thinking and my dreams are getting totally epic. I'm looking forward to the impending return to university life, but given the things I've been questioning to myself, is it the best place to be?

I suppose I'm not making any secret about how alone I seem to be at the minute, its getting to me I can tell. This leaves me thinking about my friends, and wondering how infinitely better their lives must be, as it’s hard to get in touch with them. Some are on holiday in far off countries, having exciting days. Others seem to progress from party to party with nothing in between. Others I simply haven’t been able to get in touch with.

All I have is work, and home. A few college friends for sure, but they are hard to catch up with it seems. Unless… of course they are just in avoidance of me. It’s only a matter of weeks till I get back to university, and I need to shake off this male PMT or whatever it is. I go from happy to sad and despair within hours. I'm in no state for booze, university or love should it seem to exist, and I sincerely hope it does, or I may be very ill indeed.

22nd august – A broken wave but anywhere

Were I some inspirational master, I’d come up with all sorts of reasons why right now I feel more crap than I have in a long while. The truth is startlingly simple; life’s let me down once again. Yes this is emotional and epic, so read on if you feel like being depressed. You were warned.

Well that wave of happiness that appeared to me out of the blue a few days ago is gone. Reality came along. People say “don’t expect much from life if you don’t want to be disappointed”. This is useless, it’s like saying don’t shop for much unless you want to be hungry. I expect lots from life. Hell! It’s my life so why shouldn’t it be great? What good is it to know that someone else is happy when you are not? I'm a jealous bastard by default and I don’t care. I want to believe, I want to be in love, but I can’t do either and it’s just not fair.

Others of course blame bad luck and ill feeling on God. It’s nice to shift the blame on to the most unbelievable fiction that ever was. People need to realise there is no proven god; there is no excuse to live your life in a peaceful and civilised manner, people that use guns know this.

Some of the most fictional lies created by humans; God, Aliens and Love, have been designed to help us ignore the most basic of facts that every other organism on the planet knows instinctively. We drift through cold space on a rock, purposeless and alone, there is no point to life, no goals or game plan, and no rewards. Human religion provided us with violence of rival beliefs, resulting in so many pointless fucking wars. Aliens were created simply by lazy people, who think, as the definitive poster on Agent Fox Mulders wall pointed out “I want to believe”

Love creates violence too, anyone that’s ever been in it knows this, its not exclusively physical violence either. The self deluding belief promoted by marriage (another religious invention that’s doing very well) is that you are destined or even supposed to spend the rest of your life with someone. There is indeed a high price to pay for believing that some things, unproven in any sense, give life meaning and purpose.

I suppose my lack of good looks or mystical providence provides me with plenty of opportunity to write and believe these blatantly disgusting facts about humans. The truth is nothing is certain, so why spend evermore believing something pointless?

21st August

Another brick in the wall I guess. Today was an average day with nothing really spectacular happening, as my self written horoscope predicted there wouldn’t be. Instead of going on about big issues I'm gonna talk about a smaller one. See… theres this game I've been looking forward to getting for ages now, indeed well over a year, and it comes out on Friday. The game looks amazing, and the story seems quite good too. Heres a summary for you interest:

Bioshock

It’s the 60s. After your plane crashes in the Atlantic ocean, you swim and find a lighthouse nearby, with a submarine type vehicle inside it. You climb into the vehicle and are taken below the surface. It takes you to rapture.

Rapture is a city, a mile under the sea; built by the rich and powerful, a world where normal rules were deemed a hindrance and cast aside, as man sought to better himself. Artists were freed from the censor, science freed from morality. Life became better, new forms of art and expression dominated, and soon science was making unstoppable headway into genetic engineering. You could buy genetic upgrades to make yourself faster, smarter, and even more attractive.

And soon science could not be stopped.

As the people changed their bodies to their own desire, or even the latest fashions, they lost parts of their identity, parts of their mind. The glamorous art-deco corridors and buildings are full of debris, and deranged monsters. There are little girls walking around with their metal tank-like “daddies”, monsters of iron, with a fist on one hand, the other a 2 foot drill. The mastermind of the city is still controlling everything, and to top it all off, the water is coming back through the cracks of the falling city, to claim the space again.

In order to survive you must conquer these enemies, and you aren’t going to be able to do it without re-engineering yourself, without changing part of your soul.

It sounds exciting doesn’t it? Well it would be, but it doesn’t work on my computer very well at all. I downloaded the demo, and it is good, but it’s not really playable. I waited ages for it and now it wont work for me. That’s not a good feeling. What is, though, is that a lot of others are having problems too. Lots of problems, so hopefully the game-making people are going to make some changes for the better for me! They better or I wont buy the full thing. And I know they would be ashamed if Chris Drinkall didn’t like it!

20th August – Capricorn

Elliptical

Today you will start to realised how much of a financial tight spot you are in. You must (and will) take that refund of housing damage deposit, Cheque from DMU to be cashed. You will be disappointed to learn that this will lead to financial frugality, but not to worry, your planning skills in this area will come to good effect. You start to put large scale plans into place today, but suffer a minor setback.

Any worries, anxieties or bad feeling you have will subside today. Indeed on some occasions at work you may be feeling positively euphoric, quite strange for such a dull job, but not to be sniffed at.

Monday is the start of a new week for you and you may find yourself thinking far into the future for a change. Major changes are on the way, in terms of finance and location. Single? Don’t worry if you have been through a dry patch, major changes for the better, in your love life are to be expected soon.

For more information call my rape-rate phone line now on 08132, bugger off, bugger off.

18th August

I made it to Saturday. I am impressed as all week I've been feeling super low about a number of issues. Maybe its just my body fighting off the litres of caffeine I've pumped through it, maybe its my brain not my body, and no amount of Lucozade or sugary coffee or chocolate is going to do the trick! I guess, that at just around the half way point, I should produce some summary of (work, personal, professional, and love) life so far these holidays, but its probably depressing reading, be warned, reading on may put a crimp on your day!

My work life is going as well as the job can do, which isn’t bad, but after the forty hour week I've just had I'm craving a rest. Sadly, as of yet I've not saved up much money, which is very bad, and my own fault for spending it on numerous things I shouldn’t!

My personal life is kind of bleak at the minute, I get up, play a computer game or do some writing, or work on some music of mine, then I go to work, and then after work I do the same, till I get bored at around 1-3am and call it a night. At weekends (like now) I rest, do more stuff on the computer, and watch time pass by. Professionally speaking, my writing projects aren’t coming to fruition anywhere near as far as I would have liked. They are doing, but slowly. My website has been not working now for what seems like an age, and I can’t be bothered to get it back up and working. My love life’s just as shit and dead as its ever been, I figure there’s no point looking for a girl at home, because when I go back to uni she’ll be over 70 miles away for most of the time (and we already know that long distance relationships always go wrong eventually). At uni though it’s equally hard as the only people around you are you’re friends. Please form an orderly queue ladies.

Who ever said I was negative? I'll stop now before you laugh your socks off.

18th August (23.02pm) – Limited Catharsis

Today was a bad day, it’s been a bad week! I can’t point at any specific event, but I felt really sad about things this morning. So I spent all day doing nothing, except things that make me feel better. Using Virtual DJ to create a nice mix of tunes (except that one of the effects is broken), programming pointless garbage (it asks you what your name is, then shows it form from blocks in 3d), playing computer games and holding a firefox window open upon “myspace” and “facebook”.

It seems strange to think that the management of sound, working out mathematic equations and jumping from virtual world to virtual world, would actually improve your mood, but different people chill out to different things. I'm not through this damp patch of grey

I say chill out, but that’s not it, most of you that know me know that I'm probably one of the most chilled out guys there is (usually). I think I mean some form of limited catharsis (emotional cleansing). I couldn’t for the life of me tell you all about it, but its good to know there are worlds within worlds. Computer games for one, and the ones inside our heads for a second.

16th August

Nothing much to say. I'm working quite hard at the minute. It feels like eat, sleep and work. Theres hardly time for anything else. This is why I’m finding myself more agitated and easier to get angry. My plans are not working out. I would explain more, but I've just injected 2000 fresh words into this, and I don’t feel like writing any more. Energy, mental ability, it seems to be draining away from me. At least I'm only doing this 40 hour week this once. Jesus, imagine if I’d gone ahead and got that second job, I would verily much be screwed.

13th August – turbulent week.

Little over a week ago, it was me waking up in a strange but pleasant town of Thetford. Looking back, that seems like forever ago now. Theres been a week of information, work, and violence.

It’s 2.00am now. Rather late or early to even think about going to bed but hey, nice guys finish last. Outside is quite quiet, but there is a factory (or a warehouse) across the road and down a bit. Machinery there lies almost dormant, but a few fans and a buzzing noise can faintly be heard. Cars too can be heard driving by at a distance. The roads near here though, seem lifeless.

Outside, starts twinkle in the mostly clear sky, but every now and then pillows of dark orangey cloud obscure there light. Mars too is visable tonight, as a faint but definite red dot in the sky. It seems so tiny. My windows look down over most of the town, lines of amber lights converging and dissecting here and there. A park is across the street, with trees standing as black silhouettes against the sky. Not a soul stirs, but me. I'm not stirring though, my last cup of tea was hours ago, but I type!

It’s been a week of changes to. Changes beginning to happen, surprise changes, and changes that I should have expected, most notably in the world of friends. Names not mentioned, there are some in particular that, as close as I feel or felt, seem to be avoiding my presence. Also I realised just how close, and even far I am to others, though they seem to not know. It hurts, this stoic silence pins me down, turning my mind over thoughts and feelings as a farmer turnes over the earth. I am looking forward to Uni now, a chance to hang out more, jobless, and penny-free, laughing all the way until the bank.

Things are not well with the house I'm moving to. On my own part all the forms, cheques and materials are complete, but not so for one of our number, and until he does, none of us can enter that house. So now’s the time to get the boots on and the hammers down.

A car quietly drives past, a midnight taxi from A1. The first vehicle I've heard in over half an hour. I was staying up especially to try and see some meteors falling from space. I was made to act a fool again, for my fascination with space and its mysteries! The news said there was going to be a great shower of them, and no telescope was needed, as they would clearly be visable if the night was clear. The sky is mostly clear, but it seems they must have been hiding behind that massive tree. I swear I'll cut it down one day soon! Peace out.

5th August

5^th August

The party went well. There were some 14 year old kids there that managed to drink themselves sick. Ah, it reminds me of younger times of my own! To my utter surprise Joh_ and Jos_ made it to the show, which was a bit of a treat. I seemed to have forgotten what joh_ told me previously, that he’s had his head shaved; he looks like Vin-Diesel now.

Summer shines down on this quiet station in the middle of Thetford, a posh tree-ridden town with unusually long street names. The atmosphere is a quiet Sunday summer, cloudless and hot. I can hear the rustle of trees far away, and some distant cars and the chatter of some travellers waiting, I presume for the same train. I wonder how many are going as far as me today. It arrives at 3.15

There are a lot of forest areas around here, it looks like a lovely place to live if your bank balance is ten figures long. The two carriage train is almost full, I have to sit in a reserved seat (at some later stage of the journey). The ticket man is having a difficult conversation with a man further down the train. This train takes me all the way to Sheffield, or so I thought, but when I heard the man near me ask for a ticket to Stanstead airport I became quite worried. As the ticket man told him he would need to change trains at an upcoming station, I relaxed though.

The movie is playing in reverse, its speed varies. Still more trees pass as we return to Ely; A Pleasant town with many rivers, boats and Idyllic houses. The summer sky complements the town perfectly.

But now the journey was starting to get crammed. There were too many people for the two car train. In the end I gave up my seat to this woman and child and stood up, balancing on the luggage rack. I was not alone in standing. About 30 others joined the standing brigade at Nottingham. I stood near my luggage and did not want to move; It would be difficult to apprehend a bag robber on this crowded train!

At Nottingham, the train stopped for a while. This was to let it have some maintenance work done on it. I envisaged for a second, going up to the ticket man and asking if we would have another carriage. “More??!!! More??!!” he replies in a Dickens inspired sequence. After this maintenance, drivers change, or at least I assumed so as the returning driver had no idea of where the train was meant to stop, so he stopped at every station, not just the scheduled ones. My legs were aching, the child before me screaming uncontrollably. Why do parents bring unruly children they cannot control on public transport? By the time we arrived at Sheffield, it was 7pm

This was nothing compared to the ridiculous farce at the bus station. When I got to the stand I saw the next x78 bus would be in 25 minutes time. Not an unreasonable wait, I surmised. The bus arrived, but the driver closed the doors and started walking up the aisle talking on his mobile phone for ages. Eventually he stepped off the bus and informed us that the bus was broken, he was taking it back to the depot, and another would be along shortly. By “shortly” he meant we would have to wait 70 minutes for the next one.

That’s where I am now; In a bus station which is too warm, with some Chavs (track suited Youths), some eastern family (quite extended I'll tell you) whose children are loud in the quiet bus station and Romeo and Juliet! At least they would be if it was legal to do so in public. As it is they can only slobber over each other, suck on each others faces, and I'm sure his hand has gone up her modest skirt at least once! God, give me a break.

He’s not either. The foreigners family has come over and stood, or stopped, directly behind me. Their children’s screams are akin to animal noises. It was short lived though, the bus arrived 15 minutes later. The x78 service is supposed to run “up to every nine minutes”. Funnily enough, today feels 10 times worse than normal, which is 10 times worse than what the bus says anyway. So, the journeys over, but not the dream; the dream goes on forever.

4th August

4^th August

Out going Journey:

Time	Start	Destination	Arrive
11.41	Sheffield Stn.	Doncaster	21.11
12.21	Doncaster	Peterborough	13.07
13.37	Peterborough	Thetford	14.37

Return Journey:

Time	Start	Destination	Arrive
12.47	Thetford	Ely	13.17
13.27	Ely	Peterborough	14.06
14.19	Peterborough	Doncaster	15.09
15.33	Doncaster	Sheffield	16.03

Above is the original plan of action, but as per usual for, it’s not going to happen quite like that. It is, so you know, a list of train times on a journey which is going to put me even further out of pocket than I already am. I missed the very first train, but think I might be on time if we reach/leave Peterborough at the time shown above. I have the uncanny hunch that I am. We are 10 minutes out of Nottingham, rolling through a small town. Gliding I should say, the track is smooth and the engines aren’t revving. So the train and tracks themselves seem strangely quiet.

There is a gust of muffled thunderous wind, and a purple blur rips past the scene.

It would be pretentious and ignorant of me to pretend I'm the first writer ever to sit on a train and write. Far better wordsmiths than me have conveyed their thoughts and feelings to a page or screen. I can’t give a more impressive account of the journey process. It’s like a performance, or a movie. The landscape, trees, fields, villages and occasional cities sweep past. It’s an impassive scene on a stage with no surface story to read from its many brief parts. The viewer sees only what they want to see.

Suddenly all external light is cut off. We are in a tunnel. The performance enters a scene-change, the audience’s ears pop. As light re-emerges, we are coming into a small town, Grantham. The driver tells us we are approaching Grantham. Then he starts to tell us what services we could catch from the upcoming station. Between these he gives long pauses, as if thinking up what is coming next. It seems as if he’s musing on places to go, as the silences get longer and the services more like sporadically interjected names. 15 minutes out of Grantham, and another tunnel swallows us. Its black jaws press down around windows and ears. It’s only small but pleasantly uncomfortable.

I have a “Big one”. That’s a make of Lucozade drink in case you were wondering. I'm wondering how much liquid I can drink before the soft tilts and vibrations of the train send the bottle falling over. So far most of the liquid is gone, merely two mouthfuls remain, but my big one stands up straight and strong!

A gaggle has sat next to me, their full breed occupies about 7 seats. They are at odds about something, the stress of a holiday perhaps? There is a very young cygnet with them that occasionally talks crap. Next to me is a young girl that seems quite quiet. The king and queen and girl are talking about a mobile phone that seems to have gone missing on the last day of their holiday, apparently room service came in during breakfast and took it.

Another streak, this one blue, flies past. It’s wind filled thunder seems more violent, yet still muffled. Then shortly after it, as if in echo, a smaller streak thunders past, trying maybe, to keep up with the first. We approach Peterborough; the driver starts to ramble again. We must be heading towards a corner of the country now, as his rambling place names seem much more vague and limited than before.

The eye in the sky burns in blue water, so hot that most surface steam has been fried away. The eye sees most things, but not behind my pen, whose discourse lands in high contrast to its plain white bedding. I've been writing for much more than an hour now, it’s time to stop and take stock.

Don’t worry; there is of course a reason for all this. It’s Ash_’s (from university) barbeque today. I'm on my way to her house in Norfolk to go and have a wicked evening, meet some of her friends and family, and rediscover some of my flatmates from Bede Hall (Dom, Joh_ and Jos_). My wallet has been raped, but never mind it’ll be worth it! Then tomorrow go back to Sheffield. In train fares alone, I'm paying about 2 days wages just to get there and back again.

It’s also been exactly one year since I wrote the first words of this journey. Extraordinarily, both this entry, and the first have both been handwritten, by pen. I couldn’t have imagined being in the place I am now, last year. Although to be honest I would give anything (metaphorically) to go back and re-live that year. I'm not going to go into great histrionics about it, simply go back and re-read if you like, and rediscover again, the best year of my life.

02nd August

Well I'm so very bored of life here now, and depressed. I want to be back at uni. If anything will cheer me up its been back there. It’s not that being here is overly bad (its not), its that I'm ready to start my studies again, and want to see the Uni people again! I had something of an in-depth conversation with a friend today, about life and its end, love and its start and a demented fly. Well it’s good to have friends like that I guess. Especially when you’re stuck away from a place you long to be.

I created this house type flat (like the one I'll be in in a few months) earlier. I'm trying to think what its inhabitants will be like. One I know is a crazy old man, who eats beans on toast, talks very little sense, and is always waiting for Godot to pop through the front door. Ernie is a struggling musician in the same house, he is trying to create his first album and is not having too much luck. He likes to eat pizza and wants to soon quite his job at a potato warehouse.

I know that’s a random thing to come out with but there you go. I still need to come up with some more housemates for them though. It’s a pretty deserted place at the moment.

Exempt

I found myself becoming jealous and angry. My own inability to be articulate and other’s abilities to be seemingly so. Not being able to understand peoples subconscious body language. An inability to read between the lines at emotional level, and worst of all, I knew I couldn’t blame it all on alcohol.

It all comes down to that big L word of course; a word whose very ambiguous definitions confuse and crumble better men than me. I scare from writing it down, because I want to not be so. I know to be in L is a good thing, till it comes crumbling down in some much more base confusion. It seems my general character prevents me from forming such relationships that have the potential to go further than reasonably well. Yes I have been in bad L and bare the scars on my soul, but those are mine to bear. Yes I have ended potentially good L in search of something better, my own confusion.

I can’t show such body and vocal language as to make the one I now or in future seek, understand. This could be hell but for the fact that I can at least, show that the source of my discomfort comes from the feeling that somewhere, there is a “normal” state of being.