Day off

I am sitting in the corner of my bed, ipod headphones plugged in, playlist set to shuffle. My left arm rests awkwardly against the windowsill and my head hurts.

I've had the day off work, stress or something, I was ordered to take the day off after getting increasingly sloppy, working a couple of extra hours every day and a couple of weekends. No matter how much I do, my To Do list gets longer and longer and the daily duties I am allotted just pile up. I started shouting, swearing, raving and frothing at the mouth to my colleagues, its a side effect of my "Don't worry/do it myself" theory.

I'm not sure how much this day off has helped. I have the urge to go into the office on Saturday morning to catch up on what I've missed today.

The internet at home is buggered, and I'm in no fit state to fix it, so my plan for getting fifty or so pictures on the other site out of the way has failed miserably. I did however draw a couple of ill theatre pics last night, and got round to recording an incredibly half-hearted version of Town Bike's Trouble Fucken Rocks.

manc_ill_kid - Trouble Fucken Rocks (Town Bike cover) by manc_ill_kid

I dunno how, but acquired the ability to figure out chords by ear, rather than my usual method of trawling ultimate-guitar.com or inviting bands to play for me on video and then watching their fingers. Trouble Fucken Rocks seems to be C, G, Am, G, F, G for the chorus and for the verse its Am and F finishing with E.

For Mexican Kids At Home's Female Thief, when I recorded it it was A, C, D, E for the chorus and C and G for the scat verses.

So anyhoo, I'm sat on my bed typing, wishing time would pass quicker so I can go out to the Lost Music show in Chalk Farm, Pocketbooks are playing and uncle Pete and Sarandon. In the gaps between songs on my ipod, I think I can hear the noises of shagging. My head hurts.

It didn't have to turn out this way.

I wandered round Shoreditch, Bricklane and the Camden today, starving and thirsty, but unable to go in anywhere. Irrational anxieties I can spot a mile away, knowing about it doesn't stop it. Cafes looking too busy, or too dark, or too small, unsure whether they have free internet and will I be able to get online, will I be able to ask for the WPA key. I'd read that a bar called Prague has free wi-fi, and I'm sure I'd seen it, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where in the east end it was. Unless I was getting confused with Prague4 somewhere on Canal Street in Manchester in the mid-nineties, supposed to be meeting Zee, but winding up with Gay Dave and some of the cute girls from the school bus until Zee arrived later. I can still remember the taxi ride home.

Three hours later I'd wandered to The Oh Bar in Camden, unable to get a cappucino from the cute Cameron Diaz-ish barmaid, I got a guiness instead, tried to get the wi-fi working, but unable to ask for the WPA key, as predicted.

A phrase bumped into my head, when yo're talking to yourself or playing over arguements and conversations you've had before, and this phrase was in response to a girl suggestng I should see other people "Ah, so I ought to add to the list of folk who don't want to go out with me"

It sounded good and biting earlier, but isn't quite so satisfying hours later, still sat on my bed, glancing at the clock and wishing time passed quicker so I could go out.

It was the start of the millennium, 2000/2001 new year, I was besotted or in love with my flatmate. We spent too much time together, watching TV, going drinking, going out and everything, but at 3am every morning her boyfriend could come round, and he'd be gone by the morning. I couldhear them every night and it almost killed me. I could put on music to blot out the sounds, but then came to dread the few seconds of silence between tracks. The silence seemed much louder, my ears straining involuntarily.

Even now, years later, with leaps and bounds in technology, itune and mix/fade in the next track, but then every so often there's still a wee bar of silence, with other noises that I was trying to drown out.

Months back Robbie suggested I use some kind of white noise track, there was a website when could do it, a white noise website, also pink noise and brown noise, if you're into that sort of thing. But it didn't help, it just made my hearing more sensitive, I could hear everything.

Yeah, these crushing feelings of rejection and isolation, that are themes of my soul, there ain't no getting rid of them or hiding or surpressing them.

Can't even write it off as adolescence no more.

This day off was a bad bad idea.