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Welcome to this Researcher's Journal. If you'd like to comment on anything they have written here, just click the relevant 'Discuss this Entry' button. 22 January 2001
(Jan 22, 2001)
Oh, what a lovely tax return covered in Typex, scribbled out numbers and complex multiplication. If you subtract a negative number from a negative number what do you get? Never thought I'd have to ask myself that in a hurry, desperate to get the tax form in before I get charged £100 by a bunch of cartoon accountants masquarading as the tax men.
Ant then there are those endless sections with no relevance to me at all. Notation tax, blind dog allowance, allowances for people earning over £3million - are they mad? I earnt last year, if you ignore the money from Australia, just under £4,000. This, I was pretty sure, was under the tax-free allowance. So I knew I didn't owe tax. But did this mean I had to spend four hours, admittedly infront of a TV blaring out Jodie Foster's Contact, struggling with sums I hadn't done since Math's AO level. And I didn't have my calculator - that was at work being used to work out the speed and availability of over 130 ISPs. In the end, I had to resort to using my computer's calc, which, for some unknown reason, is appalingly hard to use and has the minimum number of functions required to be called a calculator. My ex-school calculator, currently in the office, has buttons that tell you the number of carbon atoms in 12g of the stuff, but the most complicated thing my PC's can do is work out a percentage. And this 'calculator' is backed a 300MHz Pentium III with 60 Mb of RAM and 124 Mb of ROM. You'd think it'd run rings round a small plastic bit of kit that runs of solar power and the has GMA Typexed all over it.
Well, now the return is done. Painful, yet necessary and why is it lovely? Well, old master cartoon bloke owes me, yes, owes me, the princely sum of £114.90. Almost enough to buy a round of drinks in some of the swankier bars I never go in to because a round of drinks would cost over 100 quid. But still, once I'd got my cheque, I could, if I chose, wander into El Atlantic bar, rub the odd shoulder or two of the local Q-list celebs and order several incredibly flash, revolting Baileys-based cocktails and then afford to tip the bloke in the toilets who's sole job is to make toilet-goers feel sorry for him 90p for a quick spray of Dissapointment by Yves San le bloke. Off course I won't do anything like that. My tax return will probably be sent back, covered in red crosses indicating that I owe them the £114.90 and they want it now. Or else I'll be sent to the Tax man's equivalent of the head's office for quick ruler across my knuckles and a £100 pound fine for being cheeky. And there I was thinking I'd grown out of that kind of thing.
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7 January 2001
(Jan 10, 2001)
The new year. Hurray. New resolutions, same resolutions, similar resolutions abound. A time for change, reflection and depression. I'm going to be enter age plus one here this year! Oh my God, what the hell should I have done/am I not doing/will do about it.
Beer isn't consumed, chocolate bars stay unwrapped and gym memberships are signed. But what's the point. I seem to go through this kind of thought process most weeks, analysing myself constantly which is far from healthy. Part of this is me writing now. I've always tried to write regularly and regularly failed, so now I'm going to publish my drivellings on my H2G2 Web space. And it's going to be each week, however crap each entry is.
And then there's the decision whether to get a mortgage or go to Canada. Not a small decision. And one that I change my mind on at least twice a day. What I should do is not think about it. Carry on looking for houses, carry on checking for jobs and then, in a couple of months, when I'm ready to leave my job, which I know I'm going to do, make a decision. I don't need to stress and work myself into a tiz thinking about such ground-breaking ideas. Perhaps I should tell Trace and see what she thinks about... no, probably not best to drag her into it. I don't know why, but I don't think she'd be much help. Perhaps I'm just scared that she'd tell me to stay in the UK.
So, let's stop sounding like a broken record and explain what I've been up to this week. Well, it hasn't been the best time at work. Tanya, my editor, lost her dad, uncle, brother and sister in a light aircraft crash in Hampshire just before Christmas. The plane, they're not sure why, hit a tire factory and everyone on board - I think there were six in total - died immediately. Obviously, she's taking some time off to sort both herself and all the paperwork left by something so immensely huge.
So when we all came back to work, saying happy New Year rang just a touch flat. Added to that that we don't have an editor, things are too good. Well, we've got an ex-editor to come in for a couple of days a week, which is a help, but hardly a fix.
Away from work, I got very drunk both Friday and Saturday, having said that I wouldn't. Typical. Friday was my mate Gez's girlfriend's birthday and as it was just across Islington from where I lived, it seemed perfect. There were also single women there, ripe for a bit of leering. However, the bar was far too noisy, the people strange so I spent most of the evening filling in the gaps drinking. Not much fun, and expensive - not my idea of a top Friday night.
Then last night, we had an evening at home with Vic and David. Lots of people I know, some I didn't, no single women I'd be vaguely interested in, and I had a lovely time. Started early, but I was on the Diet Cokes as there was still a bit of a hangover in the air. Will and I were gibbering rubbish, and the smug married couples were amazed by our lucid ability to take pointless sayings down roads previously never navigated.
Vic wouldn't stop telling everyone about her dream as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mel threw up down the stairs, I got stoned, and tequila shots were drunk. Also spent quite a lot of time chatting to a gorgeous married Chemistry teacher about life, the universe and protons. Then I walked home, having left my wallet at the party - something I only realised half way home when I wanted to get a taxi - from Highgate. Don't know how I did this as I didn't have a clue of the way. Panicked that I'd been pickpocketed, so, the next morning, cancelled my cards so that by the time Vic had rang me to tell me she had my wallet, my cards were just plastic.
Am now tired, but have almost done my tax form, did an hour's work on Flash and cycled to get my wallet and survey the red wine damage at Vic's house. Oh, it was nasty. Puke to the left of them, stains to the left, stuck in the middle with a David. Apparently one of the teachers at the party had a screaming match with David. She, rolling drunk and stoned, wanted to drive home. He, drunk as well, refused to give her her car keys. Insults and tears flowed. Voices were raised. I'd stumbled off home earlier than this, so missed the fun. Shame really.
What really impressed me about the party, was that I remember most of the evening, more than normal. Which is one of my new year's resolutions - to stop getting so drunk that I can't remember what I do, say or how I get home. I hate it when I do that, especially when I'm with people I don't know, such as the party with Gez, where most of my warblings to aforementioned single women are but a haze. I hesitate to think what I said. So that's it then. I raise my cautious glass to a more memorable 2001. Cheers.
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2 January 2001
(Jan 7, 2001)
I have a hole. It's empty. Deep in my body there is a buzz of feelings, contradicting each other. Once one is satisfied the other rears its ugly head. I get drunk. And when I do something stupid, or embarrassing, my brain wipes it. I don't remember. I shouldn't drink. But I lack the confidence when I'm sober.
In my mind, in my dreams everything works out, like a film or a TV series which end as the poor hero gets the statuesque heroine he's been waiting for all his life. In the real world, I fluff my lines, I drink too much - perhaps you can see a common theme - and make a fool out of myself that I don't remember. Then I hate myself. But if I don't drink, I won't have a social life. I have little enough as it is and for drinking in moderation, which I can easily do, I'm fine, there are the odd fuzzy sections, but I know what I do. I don't have to be told and ridiculed by other people who remember.
It's just once a month, approximately, I overstep the mark and hate myself for it. I never do anything too bad. Swear at bouncers or throw up is the norm, but it's not good. Memory is very important to me and loosing parts of my life feels just like that. And then there's the dad thing. Most of the reason my parents' marriage broke up was due to dad's drinking and his inability to remember being a drunken idiot to mother, my brother and me. I don't want to end up like that, but I don't want to spend my entire time watching every drink I have.
I've even considered emigrating so I can enter a whole different attitude to drink. Something I'm still thinking about, but that's more to do with the Tracey problem than anything else. As the Tracey problem is mostly of my own making, I really ought to do something about it.
And life in general. I need to start grabbing my existence by the scruff of the neck and do something, anything, that I want. I get so frozen by fear of failure that I don't do anything. Okay, I don't feel stupid, I only seem to do that when I'm drunk, but I don't do things that I want. I just do things other people want me to do. Why don't I throw my job in? Because it's fine sometimes and a full-time job is handy for mortgages. Also, half my editor's family has died recently, so handing in my resignation won't be fair. If I can last for a couple more months, then I can resign.
I also need a new place to live, a girlfriend -well a shag would be a start - and I need to more than just write self-pitying drivel at one in the morning followed by a things to do list. Which is what I'm doing now. Right, I'm off to assertively write a list of things I should do to improve my life. Right now. Okay.
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Aargh
(Dec 15, 2000)
Feel like shite. Will never drink again.
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Watch out
(Oct 16, 2000)
I have found out the hard way. Don't paste journal entries straight from Word, especially if you're fond of apostrophes like my good self. As you can see from my previous journal, my erudite and hilarious prose has been cut to smitherines by roving bits of code masquarading as punctuation. Stop it. Now.
On to the slightly more rivetting subject of water consumption. Why is it that as you get older you need to drink more water? Okay, I'm only 28, but I can't last a night without a pint of water by my bed, even if I manage to fall asleep sober.
And then there are those water dispensers in offices. As a wee lad, I vaguely remember the school water fountain, but only for a quick slurp after a mindless game of kicking other kids skins in a vain attempt to make contact with the deflated plastic thing pretending to be a ball. Now I drink at least five cups before midday. And that's on a good day, in winter and without a hangover.
A friend of mine said that she regularly drinks three litres of water a day. And she's only 5 ft 4'. What's going on? Are there water elves, draining us like aquatic vampires during the night? Possibly. I blame Paul Daniels or Anne Widdecombe. Whoever's nearest.
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). They're often sidetracked by the twins Procrastination (...) and Alcohol (
, burp) - hence why this page has had nothing but the written equivalent of weeds on it for the last couple of months.
