G Diary

Diary. 06 June 2003. 1349.

Today has already been too much. A lot of days are like that. Except
the ones that aren't enough. A lot of days are like that too. Too much
or not enough. Never in between.

I woke up at 0530 as is usual and switched on my computer. I'm working
on another of the Darts stories. In this one Captain Vegas wins four
tickets to Las Vegas. In the original idea the darts team were supposed
to encounter a group of gay gangsters and a horde of aliens. The aliens
are involved in a plot to place mechanical eggs in Dolly Parton's
breasts. They want to take over the world. I don't know what the
gangsters are doing.

The whole darts thing started a few years ago in a time of madness. I
was working the night-shift at work, 9pm - 7am, I was attending college
during the day and my father was dying of cancer. On top of this I was
trying to write. Often when I was writing I was so exhausted. My brain
wouldn't function so I just wrote. Darts was what came out.

Now I find myself going back to it. Is this a symptom of my current
exhaustion? I don't know.

I find it hard to function as a caring boyfriend, a loving son, a
fully-employed National Rail employee and a person who is desperate to
write. Something has to give and on days like today I achieve nothing
while trying to juggle all.

You know I shouldn't be here now. I shouldn't be writing this diary. I
have just been to my mum's house and said I didn't have time for a cup
of tea. I said I had things to do. I have to exercise. I have to finish
my story. I have to eat. I have eaten only instant noodles and drank
only coffee for days. Tonight I have to go to Loughborough and meet my
boyfriend. I don't have to do any of these things but I feel that I
have to.

How do I create so much stress out of nothing?

Perhaps it's from my father.

My father used to sell drinks on the beach in the south of France. In
the Summer I would go and stay with him. We had a tent each, my
father's ripped from years of use, mine newer.

One year, in the hope of expansion, my father decided that he would
not only sell cold drinks from his cooler, he would also sell melon. So
every morning from then on he would be up at sunrise and off to the
market.

Those melon days were stressful ones.

"If I don't sell it all," my father said, "then I make a loss. The
cans I can keep for the next day. But the melon it goes off."

If he hadn't sold it all by about 2 then he would start to
panic.

"What am I going to do Drew?" he said. "I've got three bits of melon
left."

I didn't know what to say. I was never very good at that communication
thing. My dad said I was too hard on people. He said that I had to give
them a chance or I would be lonely all my life. He said a lot of things
my dad.

He was the same right up until he died.

Eventually I went to get him. He was in Greece then, riddled by cancer.
The Greek authorities said there was no reason for him to be in
hospital so we shared a room. I slept on the floor on a thin mat and
dad slept in the bed. We only had the one room. Dad said I must have
loved him because I was awake all night. That might have been it, but
it's hard to sleep on a stone floor.

He had weeks to live but he was still the same.

"Come here Drew," he said one day beckoning me into the tiny bathroom,
obviously quite agitated. "I want to show you how to use the toilet.
There's a system. Believe me I know. I lived by myself for
years."

"OK dad," I said and then I told him that I loved him and I gave him a
hug and I told him he was ill and then we both cried and it was the
only time we cried through the whole damn thing.

He never got to see that my book was published but he did know and he
read the first line. "Professional as hell," he said.

I knew that he was proud of me.

But what has that got to do with today?

I don't know. But as I said at the beginning some days are just too
much. You've got to remember that life is only once. I have to tell
myself constantly. I don't know why. I should have learnt that by
now.