Chris Sutcliff

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Nelson Mandela

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“What I like doing best is Nothing. It’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, “What are you going to do?” and you say “Oh, Nothing,” and then you go and do it. Doing Nothing means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear,

and not bothering.”

Winnie The Pooh

—

During this blog, there will be two opportunities for you to take your iron and ironing board out into the street and set fire to them. The first opportunity is now. Go. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Know that I am a lazy man. When I say ‘lazy’ I mean that I have an aversion to non-beneficial work, I have no requirement to be doing things to justify my existence. And I watch people. I watch BUSY people dutifully cram their every waking moment with a thousand menial tasks while I enjoy doing nothing in particular and I wonder which of us is right. From where I am sitting, it looks as though busy people are just poor souls that lack the imagination to stop being so bloody busy. (By the way, if this already sounds like you then answer me this, who the hell gave you ALL that shit to do? Take a break man, look out the window, notice the world hasn’t stopped turning just because you enjoyed life for a minute instead of toiling yourself into dust). A lot of the tasks that busy people do seem to be entirely devoid of purpose. Work for work’s sake. Chief among all pointless distractions is the time-eating absurdity that is ironing ones clothing.

The average person spends 55 minutes per week doing the ironing. That’s 47.6 hours per year. If you live as long as 65 and start ironing in your teens you’ll clock up around 100 days of ironing in your life. Your one life. Your only shot at existence on the only planet you’ll ever know.

Ever stop to think why you’re doing it? Because you want to appear smart? OK, that’s a reasonable answer; I’ll come back to that later. Luckily I am lazy and have plenty of time to ponder things like this so that you don’t have to. Here’s what I think:-

You could argue that ironing is one of the myriad human activities that mark a ‘civilised’ society, by which I mean it’s something we collectively perpetuate and so collectively support its value – This is important for several reasons.

1. It means you already know that if no one else was doing it then you wouldn’t bother to do it either.
2. ‘Civilised’ societies have the capacity to help the less fortunate but choose not to. Which means they are selfish. A difficult trait to find any merit in whatsoever. This makes me uneasy about being ‘civilised’ and hesitant about copying the actions of that society.
3. ‘Backward’ or ‘uncivilised’ societies tend to place value on things like Family, Friendship, Love and the Land – never appearances, for appearances are paper thin. If a person is a bit of a dick then it won’t take long for people to figure that out and no amount of ironed clothes will save them. You cannot polish a turd.

We seem to be in danger of deluding ourselves that looking ones best is the same as being ones best. It isn’t. This is an unhealthy symptom of narcissism that dampens the spirit of altruism and I despise it. Your need for an image is your ego’s need for a physicality – remember that next time you’re in Top-Shop.

Let’s look at the two biggest appropriators of a world in which clothes magically take on more significance when they are hot and flat, the first of which is the Military. The Military are especially important here because they use ironing as a tool to destroy any unwanted defiance in their recruits. It is administered as a punishment and a way of maintaining control, of quashing the spirit of the individual. Paradoxically it is then used to create a sense of smart-new-self, of acceptance into the pack, which is then richly rewarded instilling pride and feelings of achievement, serving the purpose of making a soldier accept punishment with pride as he can no longer distinguish between the two – all things which make me nauseous and should put ironing in a sinister light. My Father is ex-Navy and learnt to iron with them. When he does the ironing at home he includes socks and tea-towels. I’ll run that one by you again in case you read it quickly without taking it in – A man in his 60’s who is intelligent and witty and has had some very important jobs, irons socks and tea towels. No matter how creased, socks immediately become foot shaped when you wear them, then you hide them in a shoe. Also what has your world come to when you feel it necessary to impress people with the appearance of your tea towels? This point alone should show you that indoctrinated ironing is a lunacy that extends beyond obsessive compulsive disorder, and that at least half of your washing pile has no right to be ironed.

The second of the two principle perpetrators is the world of corporate business; and it is here where we again strike at the very root of why you iron clothes in the first place – the perception of appearances. For at least one thousand years, clothes ironed flat have been a way of improving ones appearance so as to separate ones self from the dishevelled masses of the not-so-ironed. It was developed by the Chinese, a race whose class hierarchy is so demented that people die to uphold it, and for whom making a cup of tea involves a three hour ceremony – making them the most efficient time wasters in the world. So, pressed clothes are a means to simulate class and status and the corporate world has embraced and expanded this idea to include professionalism. A pressed suit gives the “effect” of the “representation” of reliability and business acumen.

Is it me or does that become obviously bollocks when it’s written down like that?

I have met some of the most immaculately dressed tossers in the world and I learnt very quickly not to judge by appearances. Even kids know this. I am regularly astonished to see people actually get impressed by a well ironed shirt and therefore taken in by the bullshit that hides behind it.

Here is a meeting of two potential business partners:-

Suit One: “I see you have taken the time to iron your shirt.”

Suit Two: “I see you have done the same.”

Suit One: “When I discovered that you had bankrupted four companies and had stolen from all your previous business partners I was worried there may be some issues concerning trust, but then I saw your professional ironed shirt and I see now that I was wrong to let facts get in the way of my faculty for decision making, when all I needed was blind faith in a flat material.”

Suit Two: “Quite.”

Suit One: “Let’s touch cocks.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “Why Grandma, what a crease-free nightie you have on.”

Wolf: “All the better to deceive you with, my dear.”

Outside of the Military and the image crazed corporations are the ordinary folk in the street. Remember when you said you ironed so you could look smart? Well let’s question that a little bit further now. Are you really so bothered about what other people think of your appearance that you want to squander hours of your precious life pandering to their (totally unquantifiable) opinions? Do you actually walk down the street thinking everyone is admiring your flat clothes? Well, they aren’t. If anything they just think you’re the person who was in front of them in the queue at Greggs and they don’t give a shit whether you’ve ironed or not. If you stop viewing life as a hollow fashion parade then you’ll stop endlessly trying to appeal to judges who AREN’T THERE. You wear clothes so you don’t die of exposure. End. You cannot be marginalised by them. The only thing your clothes should say about you is that you’re at the mercy of weather conditions and when you are stuck for something to piss away your hard earned cash on you don’t mind paying for a fashion designer to scrawl something on your t-shirt. Unless you buy your t-shirts from large high street shops like Burtons – whose T-shirt rack was hand picked by a blind donkey and is so crammed with clashing designs they are basically saying to you “We haven’t got a fucking clue what’s cool anymore, just buy something and hope for the best”.

When I see people in their homes unthinkingly ironing a mountain of clothes (including undergarments that never even get seen) on summer days I weep for them. I weep for their children who see this behaviour, assume it to be the norm and ready themselves for the day they’ll inherit the same ball and chain. I weep for the iron manufacturers whose very existence unwittingly binds us into a voluntary enslavement and anxiety that we can never be as well presented as we should be. When people say to me “I spent nearly two hours ironing yesterday” I feel like saying “Wow, you sure know how to squeeze the most out of your weekend, I wasted two hours yesterday doing drugs and fucking hookers in the endless sunshine, what an idiot, if only I’d had the foresight to get on top of making my clothes hot and flat instead”.

If I was king of the world I’d ban ironing immediately, I’d eradicate it from the history books. We’d live in a place where all clothes were creased simply because they were made from creasy material and it meant nothing more than that. Business men would have to rely on strength of character in order to gauge someone’s strength of character. The Military would have to come up with different means of psychological bullying (no problem there) and rely on their integrity in order to portray the pretence of their integrity. People in the street would have to get to know you in order to judge you. My father would be free. Most important of all, I’d give you your 100 days back in order to spend time with your loved ones. Or just doing nothing with me.

Always be wary about devoting your time to things you haven’t fully thought through. Was I talking about more than just housework here? You bet your ass I was.

If you were one of the people who didn’t set fire to their iron at the start of this blog, this is the second opportunity to do it.

Unless you ENJOY ironing, in which case knock yourselves out you weirdos.

I suffer from a rare neurological disorder that prevents me from understanding how far distances are and how long it will take to walk them. It’s not a debilitating illness or even a proper disability, I can work and live quite normally with it, just don’t ever come on an afternoon stroll with me. Ever.

When I tell you it is probably just another 2 miles to the pub, it isn’t, it is 7 miles. When I tell you it will take us half an hour to get there, it won’t, it will take an hour and a half and when we get to the pub we won’t be friends anymore. It happens to me all the time. But I’m not lying you understand? It’s a neurological disorder. I believe it’s called “Getafuckingmapandawatch Disorder”; or I.D.I.O.T. as my mates refer to it.

Anyway, yesterday I succumbed to the effects of this malady in a most painful fashion. Yesterday was my birthday and I decided to tackle the Yorkshire Three Peaks walk all by myself. It is 23.5 miles long(ish) and takes in Pen-Y-Ghent (2,227 ft), Whernside (2,415 ft) and Ingleborough (2,372 ft). I thought it would be a memorable and challenging way to celebrate another year of life and something I could look back on fondly.

I was wrong on all counts.

Simply staring at the words “Twenty three and a half miles” gives you no indication at all as to how far that is. It is really, really, really far. It is unbelievably far multiplied by ten. Luckily, plenty of training will lessen the impact a walk of that magnitude will have on your body. Unluckily, I did absolutely no training whatsoever.

I didn’t even do any stretches.

Nobody has yet invented the words that correctly convey how stupid this is.

So, today I am typing this in a seated position because I cannot walk. It is hard to think about what to type because of the intense sunburn on my scalp, the stuffiness of the man-flu I have contracted and the endless shivering that marks a good honest bout of sunstroke. My lower back seems to have been replaced by a wet sponge and no longer supports anything above it. My hips are still burning, the muscles in my legs are so tight that going up and down stairs actually makes me wail and my feet are twisted broken replicas of their former selves. I seem to remember they used to have skin on them.

It was a fantastic day though…

I thought that when writing this I was going to wax lyrical about man and his landscape, or every step on the walk versus every step in life, or spending the anniversary of your birth doing something that proves you’re alive or something equally twee and uninteresting/obvious; and I probably have a bit but there was a much nicer way to sum things up which came in the form of an accidental discovery of a misspelled sign in a field on my trek.

It reminded me of the way everyone passes from one phase in life to the next, and the fact that when one is over and done with it should be correctly sealed shut so that you are free to move on from it, taking your experiences with you but letting go of your attachments.

Or something like that. You’ll work it out.

I finished the walk in 8 hours. If anybody wants to do it again with me I reckon we can do it in 3 hours. The pub’s just over the next hill…

The direction of the wind has changed

The lost look in your eyes remains

Hanging Frozen Twisted Tight

Uncertain in the streets tonight

Nothing ventured nothing gained

Crying puddles with the rain

Moving away and not returning

Forgetting all you should be learning

Sign your life upon the line

Drown the guilt in a glass of wine

You aren’t your job you aren’t your shoes

The innocence you had to lose

They don’t need to know your name

You’re just somewhere to lay the blame

The cruelest card you ever dealt

The blade on which you cut yourself

All your schemes and all your plans

The way she used to hold your hand

Bang your drum and stop your talking

Walk away and keep on walking

Can’t help the way we’re all the same

Can’t rub us out and start again.

I tell ya Kid I shoulda seen it comin, when that first scheming crack let me know I was housing a quitter I shoulda seen it comin. Course the seeing and the getting out the way are two different things, ask any old road-kill. Never figured myself an easy lush but still I wait for the hit like any good stool pigeon should and soon enough that tooth goes bad and works me over like the turncoat it is. Voices its resignation by poisoning my face and swelling me up like an engorged leech. An urgent memo, one might say. The upsettin thing is I raised that tooth like it was my own, now it bites the hand that feeds and I figure there’s more respectful ways to expire. Whole episode put me in mind of rats leaving a sinking ship, the ship being destroyed  not by wind and rain but by time, the storm of old age, the rot that don’t heal.

“Only da captain goes down wit da ship” laugh the rats, “we ain’t gonna croak on account of another mans mortality”. The kicker is I got no comeback to rat wisdom.

Now when it comes to the criminal assault of Dentistry I’m not a well connected man so I figure I’m gonna fall for the double bluff and get suckered up with some vicious backstreet practitioner, big mean fingers, never made it as a butcher and now empties sore heads for a fiver and a favour. Dead fish eyes and a smile so empty you know he tried his craft on his own incisors first. Probably enjoyed it. Maybe he took the “Do unto others….” gig too far, now he’s a junky for the extraction habit. Anyways I call the bureau and make my appointment and when the day comes I develop such a burning hatred for that weasel tooth I almost wish for the worst atrocity to bring it to its knees.

Wouldn’t you?

I’m despatched to a small community centre, invisible unless you’re invited, a pensioner’s yoga hall but with part time medical ambitions. There are forms to fill out first but I already dig the forms are only there to justify the filing cabinets so I only tick boxes that make me out to be a saint. I figure it’s the least I can do to lie to those that collect paper souls. The Doc calls me to the slaughter routine (white tiled abattoir to remove all sense of hope) and I see straight through the haze of disinfectant and that white coat and size him up immediately. He ain’t Johnny Local but he sure is professional, got hands that never dug a hole unless it was into gum and root. Cell walls littered with certificates and diplomas for placebo effect.

As neither of us are a fan of the small talk we get straight to it and he gives me a shot in the back of the mouth that makes my face fade into numbness, pure junk kick, stop you getting too uppity as you suffer the dental murder. Reckon he keeps the best stuff for personal. He clamps the tooth with some tool looks like it could take the nuts off the wheel of a bus and then he gets to wrenching from side to side. Cracking sound like an old branch. I can see it’s taking all his strength to twist me this way and that and I feel my head move like it wasn’t attached no more.

“Sweet Jesus this guy’s good” say the rats, “He pull off da whole head rather than deal wit da tooth, keeps down the expense”.

He’s quicker than a thief on a crowded subway and more voracious of intent. The tooth comes out in two halves in two minutes flat and I stare right in to its bastard soul as the doc makes to throw it in the trash. “Hold the front page Doc” I say through half a face, “Put the sonuvabitch in a baggy and I’ll take him home”. I got a real tasty vengeance planned soon as I get that Judas tooth back to the ranch.

I break out into the sunshine weighing about 6 grams less than I did on the way in, wondering if it will always take pure attrition to rob me of my youth. I figure no one ever really died of old age; they were just removed from general service one fragment at a time, all bought and paid for y’understand? I walk one block and already I got a crimson tide filling my mouth and I gotta spit. Now, Kid, when I tell ya that muck hit the sidewalk like I done slaughtered a pig there, well that’s only half the story. Make you wig to think of it. I thought I was gonna wig right there and then, ya dig? I only gotta walk another six blocks but suddenly my chances of survival are questionable. I’m emptyin quicker than an informant in the witness box. Don’t suppose swallowing blood puts it back in the right place neither. Anyway, I get the determination kick and make it home without emptying out altogether. I got the rounds to do and leastways dying today means a victorious tooth and I won’t give that sonuvabitch the satisfaction.

Recollect a run in with an old Chinese man runs this three gig outfit that makes him more greenbacks than a coke dealer on Wall Street in a recession. He got a Laundromat, a Restaurant and an Apothecary all in a row with doors knocked through all the walls so the same staff can service all three at once, no wasted time exiting one building to enter the next, no need to change aprons, maximises productivity, ya dig? The Chinaman is smart but he is also blind, been known to clean a suit in Demerol, prescribe Ajax for rheumatism and I hear it ain’t wise to eat the number 26 with noodles if you value your pancreas. But though he can’t see the end of his own bank account he sure got his philosophies down and when I went to see him (I’d eaten at the restaurant and therefore required the apothecary, I’m tellin ya Kid that Chinaman knew his business strategy) he lays me with this nugget: – “If I taunt you with Death every ten paces, you’ll show me what it is to live and walk a mile”. So now I got no comeback to Chinese wisdom neither, apart from it making less sense than rat wisdom.

I mailed the tooth to my ex-wife. It was the worst thing I could think to do to it.

The night is still as a mill pond and I suspect it harbours the same forlorn depths. I’m staring through the window at the firmly shut doors of all the sleeping neighbours I have never spoken to on the other side of my street, lit with the lurid orange-grey pallor of what passes for a street light. Doors locked and bolted in pure metaphor. There is a deathly weight to things and as it stales the air I am resigned to the fact that tonight I will not sleep. Details are lost and forms are ill defined on either side of the window pane, blurred into a background that is both miles and inches away at the same time. The street an under water version of its day time self. I try to feel the same way.

For a large portion of my twenties I was stricken by fanciful ideas about faking my own death. Not constantly, it happened in waves. I was unhappy with my job and probably at the end of some wilting toy-romance that I no longer had the energy to terminate and the cyclic misery was sapping my spirit. The point to the plot, of course, was not the dying but the living, starting anew elsewhere as somebody else and leaving my entire tedious life behind me. Tabula rasa.

I would park my car up; abandon it off some lonely desolate country road, a deliberate illustration so the bereaved could really grasp my state of mind. Door flung open as though my exit were hurried and careless, money and documents blowing in the wind, a lost suicide with no note. I’d have headed north. I fantasised about working on a farm in Scotland. Something about the supposed simplicity of the land. The lack of responsibility in the face of the elements. I don’t know why it was Scotland in particular; it wasn’t anywhere I’d actually been. Maybe it didn’t even matter. When I finally died for real I wanted it to be on a mountain in India with no one around. The “no one around” was especially important. The snag being that I would’ve been there. I never go away.

There is a void in people that cannot be filled and the futility of our attempts is comedic when viewed from the correct angle. Tragic when lived from the wrong angle. I seldom meet anyone who acknowledges this. Even less those who know they are running, never those that know what they’re running from.

I see now that there was a part of me in those days that did not want to be me at all. An odd thing to imagine I suppose, this mini version of you in your head that is constantly annoyed at everything you do and wants out but cannot leave. Who is that? What am I doing to drive us apart? If I only knew how to listen to him. You see I don’t want to die or to run anymore, I want to hear. But he communicates only in sensations and that is a language that I have forgotten how to speak. What I can say for sure, is those sensations that were once borne of adolescent frustration and fear now manifest as the quiet mature introspections of an insomniac. Age has forged a cosy familiarity between us through all these long dark hours, some sort of intimacy, albeit back to back. A tacit coercion at best. I use our time together to quell the motion in my mind, to stem the tide, to mutely measure our comings and goings against the stoicism of the stars. Waiting for a hint of understanding. Wanting to work it all out for myself. To stop running. To fill the void. To start again.

The night is still as a mill pond and I suspect it harbours the same forlorn depths.

Fairly competitive animal, the Human. It’s a trait that’s helped us gain an (albeit unwieldy) evolutionary superiority over pretty much everything on the planet. We are gold medal survivors. But what to do with that burning desire to be a champion, now that we are living side by side in our billions in a non-threatening technological utopia? No bears in Leicester Square. No sharks in the duck pond. Outside of organised sport, where is this need to be a winner manifesting itself? The answer is EVERYWHERE, and I’m not talking about the Times crossword. This is the first of what I hope to be many observations based on the weird and unspoken terms of engagement with which we seek to rise above the bumbling masses on a daily basis.

Some people have a real issue with their bodily functions. Odd really when you consider they are replicated by our entire species, not to mention most other animals. No need to be embarrassed. The benign workings of our organism should bring us together not separate us. More than bring us together. They should be a platform to recognise HEROES.

The Premise.

Ever found yourself in that most awkward of moments? You’re in a restaurant / shopping centre / airport / office / motorway service station and you badly need the toilet. Thankfully you get there to find a row of empty cubicles and you get comfortable and prepare to perform. Suddenly you hear the door open and the footsteps walk unfalteringly to the cubicle next to yours, the door is locked, garments are unravelled and the toilet seat creaks and then there is silence. Without warning and woefully unprepared you have just inadvertently found yourself in a ‘Poo-Off’.

Don’t panic. The uninitiated may be about to slide down the social scale here, but not you, not today. It is important to fully understand the rules of the game. The “Defender” is the person who first went for a poo, in this case it’s you. The “Challenger” is the person who boldly strode into the adjacent cubicle knowing full well you were already there. It is the Challenger that throws down the gauntlet – therefore it is the Challenger who must be made to pay! You will not be usurped from the throne.

Stage 1 – The Cowardly Decline.

The first few seconds, sometimes minutes, are always spent sizing up your opponent. As you can’t see each other this is usually done in polite silence until one of you either begins or leaves. As the Challenger has only just entered the arena, then it is the Defender who usually gives in and makes their withdrawal, often in mid job, appallingly sometimes without having ever started. They fake a wipe, flush what isn’t there and get up and leave, often acting out a hand-wash as well for added realism. In this scenario the Defender has lost the game and respect for themselves and any hope of ever winning another ‘Poo-Off’ as long as they live. Pathetic. The Challenger wins by default. But you are not afraid; you are ready for WAR, so this is not an option. In fact, this is GAME ON.

Stage 2 – Open Combat.

If there is no Cowardly Decline then battle must commence. That said, this is your last chance to be polite if you are not out for blood. A draw may yet be called if you are quiet, quick and dignified. The golden rule here is that you both accomplish the task side by side and one of you leaves before the other so that you never see your rival. But frankly that’s just weird and smacks of denial. You’re not gonna settle for a draw are you? No. Never. You’re a Titan. A merciless wielder of last night’s curry. It’s time for glory.

Stage 3 – Smack Down.

Here’s how to take the Challenger to Chinatown. If you’ve opted for Open Combat you’re gonna have to poo like you never have before. Unleash your arsenal. You need noise, violence, grunting, farting. You have to absolutely destroy anything they throw back at you. Scream. Thrash. Pound your fists against the dividing wall. You’re shitting a double-decker bus, sideways. Satan himself is weeping in Hell and begging you to stop. They have to rue the fucking day they thought they could force you out of YOUR cubicle just by muscling into your territory. The idiots! You need to hope they’re crying and wheezing and praying in there. If you hear them call their Mum to say they love them you know you have them on the ropes, but don’t quit yet. You need to create an atmosphere that would disable a gas mask and make a skunk explode. You must break them. Shatter them. Bury them.

Stage 4 – Extra Points (for the judges).

Why settle for merely winning when you can ensure the Challenger never opposes another quiet, innocent crapper ever again. Extra points are gleaned as follows:

1. Whilst you have been orchestrating your hurricane, at varying junctures after a particularly angry fart or a splash that sounds like you shat a kitchen table, openly ask the Challenger what they thought of it, or to provide you with a mark out of ten. Inviting criticism is a mark of your bravery and to let the Challenger know that they are being crushed.
2. Now you’ve got this far and superiority is within your grasp you cannot just sneak out of the toilet and leave – you are about to face your challenger, who now won’t be able to look you in the eye. Wipe and wait, you leave the cubicle the exact same time they do, not a second before or after.
3. Now you need the parting shot, the spit in the eye, and the slap on the cheek. Follow them to the sinks and wash right next to them. As you look up and face them in the mirror, look straight into their eyes and leave them with your winning one liner. May I suggest the following:-

• Until next time.
• You won’t fucking try that one again will you.
• I am Ahab.
• I’ve faced worthier Girl-Scouts.
• I ate my own Dog last night cos I knew you’d be coming.
• Simply make the “L” for “Loser” sign with your hands on your forehead.

You are a winner and a hero. Tell everyone. The podium of life is yours for the taking.

It’s normally around this time of year that ‘WE’ the fragile multitudes stare at the tattered, weeping remnants of our New Year’s resolutions and start feeling all shitty and normal again. Nothing is more personally deflating than the knowledge that owning a brand new shiny gym membership card is as close as you’re ever going to get to the actual gym. Now it’s costing you thirty five quid a month to feel fat and hate yourself. Well done. Smoking again as well? Great. How’s that guilt working out for you? Get the vodka out and we’ll just pretend it’s still last year then.

I say this normally happens because 2010 was a little different. Just as we were all poised to dive into our cesspits of despair and self-loathing Haiti went and had an earthquake, killing tens of thousands of people and creating a humanitarian disaster for thousands more. I often find it’s a bit difficult to grumble about lack of exercise when loads of people are dead. Locked to the News we watched aghast as their plight and misery proved so terrible and moving that it reverberated around the world and temporarily mobilised many powerful nations to actually work together and help people. Like we’re all part of one planet or something. I love it when they remember to do that.

Today, however, brought a snippet of joy and hope that I found so immediately heart warming I had to share it with anyone who gets lost on the internet and accidentally wanders onto my site.

A large search and rescue party, comprised of many of New York’s finest firemen, pull an eight year old boy and his ten year old sister out of their flattened home, SEVEN days after the quake. Alive and well after a week under tonnes of pulverised concrete, in the dark with no food and presumably only trickling rain water to drink. As they pull the boy out, he raises his hands in the air like he’s just won the Oscar for the ‘best reaction to being pulled out of the jaws of death’ category – to an enormous cheer from the crowd. What an absolute legend. He looks like he’s going “Ta-Daaaaaa!!! And for my next trick I’ll survive a volcanic eruption!”

I think in truth he spots his Mum in the rescue party and goes for a hug only to be pulled away to safety, but what a moment of outstanding elation in the midst of all that awful desperation. The indomitable human spirit wins through again.

So with that new perspective in mind throw away your gym card and make the only resolution you stick to the one about being alive and happy.

May it be so.

This is easily the most exciting thing to happen to me all year!

My bedroom light bulb died today (not the exciting bit). It was a misty bulb but I couldn’t find any of those in the shops so I bought clear bulbs instead (also not the exciting bit). When I got home I couldn’t work out how the toggle thing worked to keep the light shade on (Man Fail = minus 100 points) so I took the shade off altogether and left the clear bulb swinging naked from the ceiling (nearly the exciting bit). I just went to the window to draw the curtains for the night and I happened to look at the side of the building across the back street (drum-roll……). With the un-shaded, un-misted light bulb shining behind me like a thousand suns, the shadow of my head was projected twenty feet high onto the entire side of a house. Twenty feet high! Within seconds my left hand was a massive Antelope and my right hand was a giant Snake eating it. The endless possibilities. I could weep with happiness.

For thirty pence and a lack of toggle know-how I have just accidentally re-created the Caveman’s I-MAX. Only instead of re-enacting heroic sagas and tribal tales I am going to get fluffy toys and make their shadows fornicate to upset the neighbours.

Twenty foot tall teddy porn now available on the side of a house near you.

I’ll never be bored again.

You walk so slowly

Sans haste

And I walk so quickly

Before too long

I am at your back

Surely you can hear me

Chomping at your heels

Unable to get around you

Is it really so hard

To step to one side

And let me get passed

And away

What’s captured your attention so

To belligerently keep your eyes to the sky

And not on the floor

Where you would plainly see

How slowly you are walking

And how close my feet are behind yours

My frustrated foot-falls

Versus your absent shuffle

A match indeed

For a wounded snail

On valium

Thus, with growing irritation

I noisily hurry you along

With my tutting

And my heavy, stunted steps

Wondering all the while

How you came to be so slow

And I so fast

And how on earth

You got into my house

In the first place?

We begin with the set-up, the fix, the sting.

The cross-hairs fall on you and you won’t see it coming. It’ll happen in a crowd and it’ll be swift as the wind like it was for Kennedy, like Lennon, like MLK. Your enemy camouflaged in plain sight by your unseeing eyes. Bold as brass they’ll walk straight up to you in the high street. Right to your face. Big flashy smile oscillating into a joyfully intentional ‘Wow’ shape. “Haven’t seen you for ages” they’ll insinuate with the confident beaming swagger of a well fed dog. “Haven’t seen you ever” You’ll think. Who is this person? Not a clue. Yet they’ve so expertly inspired that thin uncertain smile you’ve adopted to mask the puzzlement your eyes betray. Their grin refuses to falter and it hits you then. This person genuinely knows who you are – Whereas you’ve completely erased THEM from your hand picked history. An embarrassingly transparent attempt to not appear rude suddenly the unsteady crutch of your brittle social automaton. Oh God. Worse still, they’re staying for a conversation. Maybe a few more seconds and it’ll…..no. No, it won’t. At a loss and preying for a re-boot of clarity, you’ll fail to mention your inability to recall name, face, anything. Mustn’t drop the charade. Mustn’t expose one’s fraudulent nature. Mustn’t look like an idiot. Just hang on to that vacuous expression of forced glee. Hide your weakness. Survive.

Finger on the trigger now.

Seizing the initiative they’ll bring up the match and they’ll know you’re a Red. They’ll ask about your Job. They’ll ask about your Dad. Things gets more awful every second. A visible discomfort has you in its clammy grasp. You’re nodding and laughing and exchanging knowing looks with a complete stranger and you go on and on and on like some sort of marionette. Like being polite and accommodating got somehow more important than honest integrity. The façade now the only solidity you have left. You don’t ask them about their team or their job or any people they know. You can’t. The conversation is so one sided you idly wonder when it will tip up and release you from this awkward misery. There is absolutely no way now you can admit to not knowing this person without looking like a self-centred twat that has nothing for old acquaintances but amnesia. Undone and uncovered you fake an appointment and you say your goodbyes. You’ll look them in the eye and wish them well and hope they hadn’t noticed that you never once addressed them by their name, all the while shaking their hand. They’re nobody. And you promise to call this nobody who you can never call and who seems not to have noticed your vacuity. You haven’t lied so much in so short a space of time since you were a child and it leaves a taste in your mouth like worn leather.

Which brings us to the kill.

You’re not ten feet away when your road to Damascus moment happens and you realise they were X. X who you were best mates with for all those years while working at Y. X who mended your bike. X whose sister you got with at the Christmas do. X who could squirt milk out of the corner of their eye. X who made you laugh most days. X who you’ve so easily forgotten. X who you no longer know. X who bares the brunt of deleted memory. Where did that go? All those good times crushed under the weight of your experience and you somehow never noticed. X disappears back into the crowd and back into a part of your life where you haven’t lived for a long, long time. Both of you victims of the same theft. One of many tiny deaths that took you softly as a mothers kiss. Your life like all lives tearing through memory and tearing through time like a bullet. The bullet you use to assassinate yourself. You won’t see it coming.