7. End of a New Beginning...

Tuesday 6th December 2005

So, I was ready for it. Yep. The fresh start. Clearing the decks. Turning the page. From this day forwards. No looking back. All the clichés.

And that was another thing. Drop the clichés. I'd just sent them all up in smoke. All the lumps and banalities and big, white, fluffy adjectives and stories with three beginnings, half a middle and no end. All gone. Out with the old, in with the new. No more clichés. Clichés? Kaput! Verboten! No way!

I'd drawn up the balance sheet of my life, seen where the deficits were, where the budget needed tightening, what I was good at and what I was crap at and how I might try to improve on both: make the good better and the crap good¦ or, at least, less crap. I was ready to try. Sherlock had lent me a book, Worry Yourself Well, which said it was fine to think of yourself as a failure, anyway. It lowered your expectations of success ' so if you failed, you'd actually lived up to your expectations. Which meant you'd succeeded. Something like that. So I couldn't go wrong, really. I was prepared for failure. Whichever way you looked at it, I could only succeed.

I made a good start. I cable-carred Sherlock my smoking stuff ' my lighter, ashtrays, baccy pouch, skins. 10 ¼ miles of fags was more than enough for one lifetime. The tin came back with a freshly-rolled smoke and a box with two matches (For Emergencies he'd written on the cover). I hadn't the heart to send it back. I tucked it in a drawer. I did 5 press-ups. I ate some breakfast. I drank a glass of water. I washed up the bits and cleared them away. I brushed my teeth. I tidied around. I didn't even think about having a wank.

I put on my best hoodie and boots and went out.

Shopping, I thought. Now¦ what could I get for 'the new start'.

I'd had a dream on Monday night ' it might have been a bit of psychic suggestion. I was in a kitchen. My kitchen, so it seemed ' though quite unlike any kitchen I'd even shared walls and a roof with. It was clean and tidy, with shiny surfaces and a massive fridge full of wholesome-looking food. You know¦ carrots and tomatoes and things. Stuff with colour and vitamins. Stuff that grows. Stuff that doesn't come in a packet or tin. And I was taking this stuff out of the fridge and chopping it up on a nice wooden chopping board on a nice marble worktop, then placing all the chopped bits into a bubbling saucepan and giving it a stir. And all the while I was doing this, I was chatting to another person there who was similarly engaged in colourful nutritious food preparation. She, it turned out, was my wife ' not that I've got one or ever come close. Or could ever hope to have one who was as beautiful as this particular vision of conditioned domesticity. I've no idea what we were talking about. All I was really interested in (apart from the thought of her stepping nakedly into my arms) was the fact that I felt¦ how can I say this?

Happy?

Hmm.

Content?

Maybe.

Good?

That's it. I felt good. Which was quite disconcerting, really. 'Cos I'd always thought when a chap like me starts to feel good in a dream like that, it's time to think about carpet slippers, extra blankets and getting to the Post Office half-hour before it opens. But, well¦ Forty was in sight. Maybe it was closer than I thought.

But the food, though¦ now. It had given me an appetite for something like that. So I headed for the greengrocer's in the High Street ' stopping off at Yoyo's 10 o'Clock shop on the way to pick up a can for later and check out the woman in question. And there was a surprise! I certainly wouldn't have put her down for Yoyo's sort. A bit on the short side for a start ' not much higher than the base of his rib-cage, anyway. Quite thin, too. Pale, but not unhealthily so. Smart hair. Tidy clothes. Nice smile. Attractive.

Normal, in other words.

I tried, mentally, to place her beside Yo ' but it wouldn't fadge. It was Beth and Daz all over again. A twiglet and jellyfish scenario ' though more of a squid this time. But then, who am I to make such judgements? If there's one thing you can't generalise about, it's attraction. I should know that by now. Old habits, and all that. I know¦ put it behind you, Al. Fresh start. No clichés.

Anyway, I did my bit to germinate the seed. I asked about the ad in the window and she described Yoyo to a T. I said I knew him, and what a fine fellow he was. She said she'd been a little over-awed by him. I said that was entirely understandable. She said he seemed very nice, in a dangerous-looking sort of way. I said he was ' but I mentioned his soft side, with his goldfish and his flowers and pastel-shade cushions. She seemed impressed and thoughtful. I then said ' I couldn't help it ' that he'd mentioned her¦ that he'd thought she was nice, too. She did a tomato, blushing up to the roots of her bobby blonde hair.

"Really?

I could tell by the way she said it. So I went for it. I asked her if she would mind if he rang her. She said not at all. I took her number. He needs to learn¦ if you're going to do these things, you do them in the correct way. Sexual equality or not, he was going to make the first call.

She was so flustered she almost forgot to charge me for my can.

Almost.

It's alright¦ I would have reminded her.

Fresh start.

Next stop, newsagents for a paper ' first for ages. I was losing track of the world. The Radio 2 news just doesn't give the detail.

Piles of everything ' EXCEPT The Independent and The Guardian.

"We don't keep 'em any more, grinned the old scrote behind the till, leaning his cardiganned arm against a swaying tower of Daily Mails. "Weren't selling enough of 'em to warrant the shelf space.

He then pushed his glasses back from the end of his beak and glared at the word emblazoned across the chest of my hoodie: CNUT.

"Is it really necessary to wear such a garment in public? he said.

I was ready with my stock history lesson on famous medieval kings and their apochryphal tide-stopping abilities ' but then a large-breasted woman came in and tucked a Daily Mail under the arm of her rather tight fluorescent pink FCUK sweater, and he extremely enthusiastically turned to deal with her. So my moment was lost.

When I got back ' carriers bulging with fresh coloured things, new ream of A4 tucked under my arm, no newspaper ' the postman had been. Mainly brown envelopes, all sizes. I dumped the stuff down on the worktop, boiled up my first coffee of the day, and sat down to take a look.

- Rent reminder¦ yeah, well¦

- Mail shot from an anonymous militant Irish loyalist organisation masquerading as a mobile phone company:

¦THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT¦ THE FUTURE'S ORANGE¦

- Christmas card from an Aunt Sheila and Uncle Raymond to the last person to occupy my flat. They obviously hadn't kept in touch too well, and I didn't have a clue where he'd gone (though Sherlock seemed to think he was doing a stretch somewhere for Class B PWITS ' and Sherlock would know those things). I hoped his Aunt Sheila and Uncle Raymond wouldn't mind if I kept it. I didn't normally get many Christmas cards. Besides, his name was Alan, too.

- Credit card account, including a note to say that my credit limit had now been increased to £4,500 ' or more than half my annual income. This was good. It meant I could now take out some money to pay the rent, then use my bank overdraft to make the minimum payment on the bill. I could then apply to the bank for a loan to pay off the rest of the bill and cancel out the overdraft, then use next month's rent money to make the first payment on the loan and make up the rent with another sub on the card, which I could pay off with the overdraft. I know there are easier ways, but it works for me. J K Rowling was once like this, and she had a kid in tow.

- And last of all¦ ah, yes¦ A big brown envelope with my name and address written on it in my own handwriting. I knew what that was. The last remaining piece of old writing: my latest stage play, Drinking and Wanking, back from that agent in London.

Well, what else could I expect?

I opened it up and took it out. Page edges stained, of course, with his poncy fucking buttery fingerprints. The whole thing reeking of his expensive parfum pour homme from some wanky Knightsbridge nellie-shop. So. What did he have to say for himself, then? Dear Mr Benefit¦ Thank you for letting me¦ blah-de-blah-de-blah¦ Some very good dialogue¦ Sharp characterisation¦ so-on-and-so-on-and-so-on¦

Come on, then¦ where's the punch-line. Ah¦

"However, I have to say that I found it to be a little too tame for contemporary mainstream taste¦

Tame.

Tame?

Tame?

WHAT?

But I used one of the characters as a mouthpiece to lay into contemporary western lifestyles, with our 'couldn't give a flying fart' attitude to the crap we're creating, and our knob-jerk short-term measures, and our Sunday afternoon boredom-reprieve hour when we drive down to B&Q in the big black fuck-off 4x4 and shuffle aimlessly around the screws and conti-board and electric hammers and end up coming home with a sodding plastic patio set to match the satellite dish and a flashing-light reindeer thing to stick on the roof to bring a beacon of seasonal joy to the poor epileptic sods over the road.

And old knob-rot Rodney-tossing-Chessington thought it was a little too tame?

Well, bollocks.

I hope he gets irritating, runny, infectious sores on his inner thighs and around the general anal area. I don't give a shit anyway, now. I'll still write the stuff, whatever. I don't do it for the money or the recognition (Hah! Some chance!) I do it because if I didn't do it I'd go fucking pineapples. I'm a failure at everything else. I can't even have a crap without putting my back out.

These bastards just don't understand.

You sweat your nuts off with this stuff¦ night and morning and afternoon and night, day after day, month after month, hitting those keys, spinning the ideas, conceiving the characters, carrying their weight around, birthing them, kissing life into them, feeding them, clothing them, sending them out into the world, finding them lives to live, giving them purpose, giving them futures, making it interesting, making it plausible, making it gel, making it funny and sad and true and good and as best as it can be and the best you can get it and the best thing you've ever done and the greatest thing ever¦ only for some over-paid Philistine git in an office to eat his ten quid smelly-deli sandwiches over it and dismiss it in words of one syllable?

RRRRrrrright! That was it! That was fucking it! I dumped the bloody thing on the carpet and went for my can. Down in the bottom of the carrier it was, bulging with promise between two grapefruits ' a super-strength phallus of Tennant's. I ripped the bag open and pulled it out ' apples and capsicums scattering like snooker balls, carrots tumbling like chopped off fingers, bean sprouts all over the bleeding place. Well, fuck it! I popped the tab and took half of it down without drawing breath.

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

That feeling.

Nothing else like it. Except¦

I took Sherlock's rollie (bless his bollocks) from the drawer and struck a match. The first lungful made me cough like a bastard. But then¦

Ahhhh¦ yesss¦

I sank to the carpet and sat on my play-script, feeling the tide receding again as the juice and the weed did their work.

Hmmmmm¦

You know what I mean.

So¦

So he didn't like it.

Well?

He was probably right, anyway.

It was crap.

Last year's fashion.

Wrong colour now.

Wrong cut.

Won't even shift from the marked-down rail.

Better if someone nicks it, really ' gets it out of the way.

Makes room for the new stock.

Right.

The new stock.

I finished the can, dropped the fag-end into it, listened to the gratifying sizzle. The script felt hard under my buttocks ' like I was sitting on a paving slab.

It might just as well have been, actually. Solid. Dense. Impenetrable. Grey. The kind of thing people walked all over. I lifted one buttock and let out a nice big wheezy fart. That was all it was worth to me now.

I looked in the matchbox. One match left. I knew what to do with that little beauty¦
A fresh start. Just you wait 'til they see what's coming next. I'll give 'em tame.

I got up as a bell tinkled outside the window. It was a cable-car message from Sherlock.

Need to drink beer tonight.
Want to join me?
S

Hmm¦ I think so.

Start as you mean to go on¦

Freshly.

Clichés?

Fuck 'em.

Tame?

Heh-heh-heh¦