Day 69: I Make A Discovery

Sensational news! Hangovers have nothing to do with alcohol. I've got a hangover this morning and I haven't had any booooze since Thursday night (2 waite waine spritzers please barman, and make it snappy).

Not even a sip of Taittinger last night. Not a sip. Death Ray Fags, granted, but no booze. And this morning, a quite astonishing headache (so bad I can't think of a decent simile*), and a longing for Coca-Cola and Hula-Hoops. Ergo: hangovers are made by the cigarettes, and not The Booze.

A groundbreaking scientific breakthrough, I'm sure you'll agree.


* I have left in this example of top quality cuntiness to prove that I am ill in the head.

Day 69: I Am Weak

I smoked fags. LOADS of them. Really strong ones, like you buy in bars in emergencies at 3 in the morning. But it was 9, in Dalston, and still I smoked. Loads and loads of fags. And I wasn't even drinking, because it was Brixton-to-Dalston and I'm unemployed and can't afford cabs and it takes hours and hours to get there on the tube and train and bus and that, so I drove. With half a burnt birthday cake and two tarts (not that kind) in the boot. Sensible, you know. Grown up. Like you do when you've decided to sort your life out because you find yourself going: "you twat" about lots of things you've been doing for years, and you're nearly 37 and should know better.

And then I stopped to buy some petrol and bought 10 fags in a packet, smoked two very fast, heard some music I've been avoiding by accident, and threw the packet and new lighter I also had to buy out of the window on Tulse Hill. I felt better after that. I reckon that's it now, and as I'm avoiding any situations that might make me want to smoke (e.g. work and gentleman callers), there really is no excuse.

That's that sorted then.

Day 68: I Am Nearly Producing, And May Be Going To Florida With A New World Cooker

I think the spirals are coming. I just coughed a bit and heard a distant rattling. Still want to smoke though, even cigarettes like this with red paint and batteries in.














No 'good luck, keep going!' comments if you please. I'd like stuff about what comes out of your lungs when you stop smoking, and how you can detect delicate aromas in a cup of Nescaff after three days. The more mucous the better, to be frank.

On a more positive note, and in order to pass time, I have decided to start entering competitions and getting free stuff out of magazines. I have Take A Break, That's Life! and Pick Me Up (which I picked up because it said "60p TRY ME!" on the front, and I was in Woolworths and confused).

But let me be clear: I'm not being like the spastics I was at university with (you know, the ones who wished they'd gone to Oxford). They reckoned that doing a degree meant they were clever. I remember them very clearly going to play Bingo in York and cocking on about how it couldn't be that hard to beat a load of 'old ladies'. To my eternal joy, they came home empty handed*, crying a bit. (Bingo is fucking difficult and I am rubbish at it. It requires a kind of intelligence that I don't have, at all: it's the same as the kind of intelligence you need to be able to read maps and remember things.)

Anyway, I'm not reckoning my chances much, but you never know. I can get £500 for "My Story" in Pick Me Up; as it happens they offer a very good structure for your submission that many modern novelists would do well to pay attention to:

It started like this ...
Then this major event happened ...
It ended like this ...

I could also win a holiday to Florida with Panda Soft Drinks, M&S vouchers, £1,000 for answering a question that goes "in which country did a woman find a bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen?", a New World electric cooker for putting the words "stoat", "gerbil" and "buffalo" in the right place and £20 for picking out a picture of myself from a page of reader photographs. It can't be that hard, can it. Can it?



* One of their number was a man who once asked me if I liked the novels of "Martin Amee". Who? Who? I said over and over, a hundred times. He talked at me as if I were differently abled and finally shouted: "You know, MARTIN AMEE - wrote The Rachel Papers". To my eternal discredit, I replied: "What, and Argent?". Who was the biggest cunt in that exchange?, I ask myself. Sadly, I think I know the answer.

Day 67: I Complain About Cereal

It's the end of the world. I am spending actual and real time a) looking for cereal; and b) writing letters of complaint to manufacturers when I can't find their cereal in the shops. (Further proof, if I needed it, that I really must find something to fill the time I so obviously have too much of.)

Anyway, here's an extract* from a letter I wasted twenty minutes of my life writing this afternoon. It went via some e-mail thing to Consumer Relations at Weetabix Food Co of Kettering, Northamptonshire. (I hope they write back. They may not. But they may.)

Hello

I have a question. Can you help? Here it is:

"Why are you spending all your lovely money on advertising if Oatibix aren't available in the shops?".

...

Usually, I only respond to ads for cleaning products. (Not Cillit Bang though. I don't like the shouting man.) But I watched your ad, and thought: my breakfast prayers are answered. Weetabix! A smashing cereal product that I cannot eat because it is made of wheat ... now made of OATS! Which I CAN eat! Which GENIUS thought of this product? I salute them!

Granted, I'm not doing much at the moment. "Resting" is what it's called if you're an actor. "Not working" is what it's called if you used to do marketing and advertising and stuff, like I used to. So I've got time to go looking for Oatibix.

And I think that's why I'm so sad. I've been to eight ENORMOUS supermarkets looking for them, and my corner shop, and another shop that I thought was a corner shop, but turned out to be a Post Office that smelt of wee and sold string. No Oatibix.

I've been dropping it in to conversation with friends who live in the North (of London), and Scotland, and in the country. "Have you, you know, seen those OATIBIX things? In the shops?". They ask me what they are, and I tell them, and they say "No, but they sound good. Can you get them in London?". "No", I say, and we all fall silent, and feel sad.

...

Will you send me some Oatibix? I don't believe they're real, you see, and that makes me sad because Weetabix would NEVER lie, like John Lewis, M&S, Marmite and Fairy Liquid would never lie.

Help me keep the faith.

With brand-loyal love,

NWM


Have you seen Oatibix anywhere? If you have, my friend the successful published author Dave (read his book, it's good), wants some.

* Yes. It really was that long. The bits I left out contained dark, bad things.

Day 67: I Have Bought Some Inhumane Rodent Traps

And still the squirrels come despite exorcism, local authority pest control and voodoo. They don't actually do much, as it goes, except kill the pretty red squirrels, qwack, spread the bubonic plague and get on my tits, so maybe I should let it go. Still, this morning was Typical:

Fig. 1: Seen out of front window whilst checking electronic mail. Sits still; is joined by Squirrel Friends; runs away qwacking like a duck.















Fig. 2: I move from the front window to the back window (a journey of seconds; this is a one bedroom flat in Brixton, not a 3-bed Barratt Home in Northampton), and see this little fucker nonchalantly scratching his ear.












Coming Soon: EPISODE ONE: I awake to find my flat carpeted with squirrels that have found their way in via the chimney pot. EPISODE TWO: I invite friends and family round for luncheon. Opening the oven to remove the hearty stew I have prepared from seasonal vegetables and cheap cuts of meat, I find a nesting Squirrel Family, including Mama, Papa and five Baby Squirrels. My luncheon is delayed; the RSPCA arrive; I am arrested on a charge of animal cruelty.