I’m currently enjoying the benefits of unemployment, yet there still don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. If I could have a super power, I would choose never to sleep again, nor to go to the toilet. They’re such time wasting activities. If I didn’t spend five to eight hours in a coma rifled with strange thoughts every night, and several hours a week sat reading magazines and excreting digested matter, I could be doing so much other stuff. Stuff and things are the two words that my A level English tutor told us never to use as there is always a more intelligent alternative, but that is exactly what I mean. I have numerous stuff and things to do.

If I could, right now, I would be listening to albums that I have never heard of, with a good book on a music stand, whilst playing the ukulele and watching an obscure foreign film, and running on a tread mill. Because that’s the only way to ever get anything done.

I have models of Velociraptors, and tortoises to build, I got them for Christmas two years ago, and I haven’t had time to even open the boxes. I need to mend things around the house that haven’t broken yet, and I need to cook meals for people who aren’t coming round, and I want to go to the library just because I have a card, and I want to teach the world to sing in perfect anarchy. The amount of old clothes in my wardrobe could fill a whole charity shop, but I don’t have time to go through them. I have several new CD’s that need to be filed into my alphabetised racks, I have thirty four books piled up high on my bedside table, I have unopened mail from January, I have weeping sores that are inconsolable, I have so much laundry to do that my room is starting to resemble the porch of Walthamstow Oxfam after several bin bags of clothes have been left out overnight and ravaged by the local tramp population.

This has actually been quite a good day. I woke up early, went for a run, had a shower, had some muesli and coffee, stocked up on muesli and coffee etc, read for a while in a café, bought an “antique” carriage clock from QVC, shaved my eyebrows off, drunk a bottle of Gaviscon, spewed, gave myself a tattoo, counted my lentils (approx 2877 green and 10911 red), and teased a quadruped until it bit me, then I went to see my GP about the Gaviscon and the dog bite. An absolute success as far as I’m concerned. But I still want to tidy my room, and mow the lawn, and organise my pay slips and bank statements, although it’s far too late for that now that there’s a good episode of Columbo on, maybe tomorrow.

HJ