A Truth truer than fiction.

A spattering of conversation breaks out around the office. A soft breeze of inane wittering is gently circulated by the quietly humming of the air conditioning. Tim keeps his eyes fixed steadfastly to his monitor, the fear of having to feign interest keeps him from deviating from his task, to force a weak smile in the direction of some humourless anecdote would be more than he could bear. The monotonous rhythm of his morning's assignment becomes his mantra, a hypnotic refuge in his head. A Lear jet flies past his window, faster than the regular old prop planes that normally pass by. His fingers keep working, but his mind is drifting, back to his youth sitting by a stream between the scout hut and the railway station in the village where he grew up. The afternoon sun is bright and warm, possibly it is the summer holidays. He is alone, the stream is babbling, the birds are singing. He must be about 12 years old, although it is hard to tell. Tim remembers it well because at that moment all those years ago he was, for maybe the only time in his whole life, really content. In a moment of near rapture he had a realisation he was completely free of any responsibility, that the naivety of youth was one of the most precious and enlightening. It was as if, knowing that puberty lay over the crest of a hill, Tim stopped to take one last look back on the countryside of his childhood and despite some unhappy times, the sight had been more marvellous than he could possibly of imagined, the sheer simplicity of it was over whelming and with a foresight that must of been instinctive he knew this was a moment he must remember as it would never be repeated.

"You alright Tim?"

The direct attack on his senses forced Tim's mind forward to the present day.

"You seem a bit quiet this morning."

A reply seemed necessary, Tim wanted to say "Fuck off and leave me alone, it is Monday morning and I hate this fucking job, I hate all of you, you're a bunch of fucking cunts!"

"I'm fine thanks." was all that he could manage.

He looked at his screen, he had carried on working, but had no memory of what he had done. Had he made any mistakes? Like looking back at your footprints in the snow to assure yourself you have come from where you thought you came from Tim scanned the figures on the screen. Everything looked in order, he didn't really care anyway, if there were any problems they would be picked up later , before any harm was done. He took a gulp of strong coffee. The conversations around him continued.

"Ere Babs, you 'member that top I bought last year?"
"Yeah"
"Well, you know it was a bit tight? Look at it now it's all loose"

"Well cheap clothes will stretch like that." Tim thought.

"Ooh, you must've lost some weight, Jo."

"Lost some weight? That's a laugh." Tim mused, Joanna was a big girl who seemed to Tim to be constantly eating, favouring a full stomach over a full head. Tim tuned the vacuous conversation out of his mind and retreated back to the sanctity of his head and took another sip of coffee. Looking at his computer screen he realised that he had nearly finished the mundane job he was doing, his eyes flicked to the little clock in the bottom right of his monitor. He was working to fast, if he finished this he would have to take on some other pointless process. In an effort to prolong the inevitable, he switch to programs to the word processor and began typing, a short pointless story about nothing. With his mind absorbed he quickly lost track of time until a wave of paranoia swept over him. He hadn't been at it too long of that he was sure, was his boss aware he was not working? He stole a glance around the office, his boss did not look happy, but unless he had some sort of spying device on Tim's computer... maybe he did, surely that sort of technology was quite feasible... The wave of paranoia passed. Tim looked at what he had written and then looked out his window. Two trains the other side of the river were heading towards each other, Tim imagined them to be on the same piece of track, but they passed each other effortlessly, he looked back at his screen, the story wasn't going anywhere fast, so he decided to get back to work, the coffee was kicking in now. He decided to send the story off to his blog, he quickly changed the names to avoid any unpleasantness, although the likelihood of anyone reading it was virtually nil. Put it in an e-mail and sent it off...

A selection pack full of broken promises.

Life has a habit of short changing people. It offers up such wonderful delights as Love, Happiness, Hope and Fulfilment, but so often serves them with a side salad of Hate, Disappointment , Jealousy and Loathing.

An example that justly illustrates this happened at this afternoons tea break. Having made tea for the whole office I thought it was an opportune time to open the selection packet of biscuits. I have never been a fan of selections of biscuits. It seems to me to be a ploy by biscuit makers to off-load some of their crappier products by boxing them up with a few nice biccies. Even the nice chocolate biscuits though are never quite the same quality as you would fine in a normal packet. However, someone in the office had bought them so there was no other choice and at the end of the day a biscuit is still a biscuit.

These particular biscuits were made by Crawfords, not a brand that inspires confidence is it? They have a strange habit of swapping the fillings around so you get a Bourbon style chocolate biscuit with a white filling and funny little circular biscuits that usually come with white fillings, filled with chocolate! It is like some bizarre parallel universe! The problem, though, was not with the quality of the biscuits, but the quantity. On opening the packet one is presented with the usual (and above mentioned unusual) array of biscuits arranged nice in a flimsy plastic tray. I began to unload the biscuits into our office biscuit barrel (a disgusting thing bought in Holland by a relocating colleague). From the top it looked like an even distribution of biscuits but as I removed them from the packaging it became clear that all was not well. The plain boring biscuits where plentiful, easily fitting 6 or 7 to a section, so you can imagine my sur! prise when unloading the milk chocolate digestives to find that after only three biscuits I reached plastic, and in the plain chocolate digestive section there were only two!. The bottom of the tray had been raised up where the all nice biscuits went. This is rather deceitful and would have left me feeling a tad disappointed had it not been for the fact that, as it was I who was unloading the biscuits, it was I who got first choice. Naturally I nabbed the nice ones before anyone else could get a look in. Oh well...

Arafat of the land.

Sung to the tune of "Candle in the Wind" by Elton John.

Goodbye Yasser Arafat,
Though I never knew you at all,
I liked that scarf thing that you wore upon your head.

Well it seemed to me, you lived your life like a candle in a shed
And your people will be worse off because your dead!
It really seems to matter now, how to define,
Between the lands of Israel and the lands of Palestine.

The sort of Halloween that 'really' scares me!

There are certain people in this world it is a pleasure to converse with, whether it be friendly banter, witty repertoire or just a good ol' fashioned natter. I was hoping for something along these lines this Halloween.
You see an old friend had invited me to a party. She, being a rather rotund welsh Goth, (an unusual combination in these parts I admit) and living in a house full of like-minded individuals, I expected a decent Halloween party, with inspiring fancy dress and loads of Gothic charm. Or at least copious amounts of booze and loud music, but hopefully not too loud that I couldn't spend some time catching up with the gossip and having a good old chat. Well, there was indeed a raucous soiree to celebrate All Hallows Eve, unfortunately it took place on the Saturday and I had been invited on the Sunday.
I knew something was amiss when I turned up and no one (not even my friend) seemed to be expecting me. I don't think anyone was even in fancy dress, although it was hard to tell as there was a wide array of outrageous outfits, but I suspect this was just their normal apparel. Luckily I had gone quite minimal on my costume (for minimal read "half-arsed") so I didn't feel like too much of a tit. I asked if I had got the right day, pointing out that I had been asked to come today. Yes, they were having a party today as well, but as most people in the house were partied out, so tonight was to be a quiet affair. I was shown to a cushion on the floor, in a living room the size of a matchbox, filled with a good half-dozen or more morose Goths watching tacky Japanese game shows. What conversation there was, was less than inspiring. A young girl next to me with masses of teenage attitude (although she was in her early twenties) told me how she was manhandled by a lesbian the night before,

"...and she head 'er 'ead right by my arse. Almost between my legs!"

"Mmm, er, nice." I rep'lied'.

I managed to grab a few words with my friend, but the atmosphere wasn't really conducive to a good gossip (i.e. I was too sober. Luckily I bought my own booze as no one offered me any!)

You can imagine my relief when some one put on a film, especially as it was 'Shaun of the Dead' which I had yet to see. It proved to be a very funny film, which I greatly enjoyed and nicely took the edge off of what had so far been a dismal evening.
When it came to an end I decided enough was enough and made my excuses and left, promising to meet my friend again but in a pub so we can chat a bit more.

I was glad to be out of there, but it proved to be a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire...

I don't know what it is about me, I'd like to think I have an approachable manner or a friendly looking face, but I suspect I am just a magnet for crazy people (and children and old people and disabled people, which I don't mind so much).
So when, on strolling through town to the bus stop I heard behind me the ramblings of someone blatantly not in their right mind, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be cornered.

It was a man, in his late forties, grey hair, one tooth half-missing. He was babbling away incomprehensibly, only the occasional word was clear enough to be understood. This manic verbal diarrhoea was punctuated by loud bursts of hysterical laughter. By the time I reached the bus shelter I was his new best friend.
I tried in vain to decipher what he was saying. I managed to discern that he was local which came as somewhat of a surprise considering how completely unintelligible he was. He seemed quite friendly and he didn't smell or anything so I decided that his company was tolerable while I waited for the bus and it was quite amusing listening to him:

"Pshefuckin ex wife slchepadedso I go (punching action) an' they get me frehgtiy an WHACK... HAHAHAHAHA!"
"Hrafeneffeckininkretishalaf police shityahplapple and then they let me out... HAHAHAHAHA!"
"Frafrefshesh on a shoebox crofopledretnelerfh so they tried to shoot me... HAHAHAHAHA!"

From this I gathered his wife left him, went bonkers (or even more bonkers than he already was), got arrested, probably done for drunk and disorderly and then was released. Whether this happened years, months, days or hours ago was impossible to tell. At last a bus came along, not the one I would've liked, but it would do, and at least I would lose the nutter. Well bugger me, if he didn't get on the bus and sit down right next to me. In the confines of a bus the volume of his ranting seemed amplified. He informed me he was going to partake of an illegal substance,

"Fresganarolinnup a spliff... HAHAHAHAHA!"

Whereupon he proceeded to deftly transfer the contents and a Lambert & Butler into a king-sized Rizla and roll it up, without, unless he was a master of slight of hand, adding any intoxicating ingredients!

Eventually the bus got to my stop and I got off, followed, unsurprisingly by my new pal. For a moment I had visions of him following me home, so I took advantage of my clear head and sober state and dashed across the road leaving him to continue his ramblings in the direction of a young woman who was also making a hasty departure. By different routes my self and the girl's path converged a few hundred yards on and I figured here was a perfectly good time to make conversation with someone (hopefully) sane and also a bit pretty. I was pondering on what to say (usually I spend to long thinking about it and never getting round to saying anything), when, unusually in this day and age, the girl spoke first, commenting on my shiny PVC trousers (it was Halloween remember!) She had a delightful Irish accent, but wasn't quite as pretty as I had first thought. We both agreed that the crazy guy was more 'funny' than he was 'scary'. We parted to go our separate ways a little sooner than I would've liked, as, looking back on that evening, she was by far the best conversationalist I had met that night.

Best of all though was getting back home to the sanity of my wife and the comforts of my own home. Although I was a bit peeved to find that while I had been out experiencing the varygies of conversations she and our daughter had been at a neighbour's house who have a child the same age as ours, drinking wine and discussing pumpkin seed recipes. With the benefit of hindsight (Oh hindsight! Why do you always come to me when it is too late?) I know where I would rather have been.

Suddenly I feel kinda old...