Rock Lobster

Don’t you hate it when this happens? You’ve done everything there is to do, you’ve even taken some herbal sleeping tablets, everything is ready for the next day, you haven’t played computergames all evening, neither have you been watching too much television. Heck I even own a can of lavender spray. All that’s left to do is sleep, so you get to wake up the next day, nice and refreshed, like a normal person.

10.30pm. You’re all set. Pillows are arranged, gumshield in your mouth (quite disgusting, but at least it stops you from grinding your teeth into calcium flour over night), phone on charger, lights are off. Great. But why is it suddenly too cold in here? Let me find another jumper. Or maybe I shouldn’t. It’s August, after all. No, I think I will find a jumper. Maybe another duvet as well. Two jumpers and three duvets later, what is this now? Why is my foot itching? On second toughts, this pillow isn’t to comfortable, after all. Let me just quickly re-arrange all this. Right, that’s better. Oh, maybe I should go to the loo again. Nah, maybe I should not. Dammit, I will go.

11.30pm. Meanwhile back in my groggy brain, the B52s have launched into a splendid rendition of Rock Lobster. That song is about nine minutes long and they keep on repeating it. Don’t get me wrong, I like this song a lot. But not right now! Why doesn’t brain radio have an off switch? LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! Here comes the jellyfish! Aoooh-aah-ooh!

12.30pm. Wide awake now. Maybe another cigarette will help. Lights on. Find fags. Find lighter. Find ashtray. Whilst I’m at it, why not start reading the most boring book I own (The British Horse Society’s comprehensive guide to stable management) and have a little read. ROCK LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! I really am sick of that tune by now. IT WASN’T A ROCK! IT WAS ROCK LOBSTER! Stub out cigarette, put book away. Lights off again.

1.30am. Now it’s too warm. I am cooking under an array of duvets. This wasn’t a good idea. Let me take some of these off again. No, too many. Too cold now. Somebody do something! I have to get up again at 7. Supposedly, an adult needs at least eight hours sleep in order to function properly. What if I stop functioning at work? This isn’t good. I could come in for 10 I suppose. Alarm now changed to 8. Good. No need to panic now. … AND EVERYBODY HAD! MATCHING TOWELS! ROCK LOBSTER! I really need t sort out my dire financial situation. Maybe I could get another credit card. Only that they probably won’t let me have one. Hm. Why is it that I am earning more money than I ever had, but I’m still broke all the time? I really must do something about that. Right now would be good. PEOPLE ON THE PLAYA! HAVING FUUUUN!

2.30am. Ok, this isn’t funny any more. I now want to kill the B52s and their stupid LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! Maybe pony Angel is scared in her stable. There’s lightning in the sky now. I hope she’s ok. I wish I had a car. Then I could hop in my car and go and see if she’s okay. ROCK! LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! For goodness sake, why am I still awake? The 10 o’clock start tomorrow won’t really cut it any more either. I’ll be a walking wreck. Again. I wish I’d have a better reason to be a walking wreck. If I’d been out clubbing, at least I’d have something to talk about. HERE COME THE STARFISH!!

3.30am. The last resort. Swinny! Swinny is a little toy guinea pig I had since I was a kid. He looks a little worse for wear, but at least I have trained myself to not sleep whilst clutching a cuddly toy any more a few years ago. He still lives in the bedroom though. Is that so wrong? For God’s sake it’s now 4am, I am sniffing a toy guinea pig and am swearing under my breath and am quite angry with myself for being such a loser. Tomorrow will be better. ROCK LOBSTER! OOOOOOH! ROCK LOBSTER!

The Antisocial Socialite

Meeting groups of people I don’t know fills me with dread. Particularly, when the only thing group members and I have in common is that we happen to know the same person. It was easier before the smoking ban. At least you could sit in the pub chainsmoking when you didn’t know what else to do. I am famously bad at starting conversations and used to kick off with openers like ‘gee! Get rid off that beard!’ or ‘I don’t like your shoes!’. NOT popular. I have almost stopped doing this by now and frequently catch myself uttering the dreaded ‘so what do you do?’. Not great either, is it? Particularly when everyone else is already blind drunk and you instantaneously look like a total bore. I have no idea how many hands I have shaken in my life and how many times I said ‘nice to meet you’ when I proceeded to forget peoples’ names in seconds.

I can’t stand this ‘walking into a busy party where I only know one person’ feeling. I am incapable of chitchat and find it somewhat tricky to laugh along with perfect strangers about whose jokes I know nothing about. At parties, I actively seek out the few people I already know and follow them around religiously, because I simply cannot face striking up any sort of conversation with anyone else. I am probably terrified of coming across like a complete prat. On the other hand, not talking to anyone is likely to be even more prattish.

I used to be ok walking into a gig on my own. I even made acquaintances that way when I first moved to London and didn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I was ever particularly confident (for overly confident people are the most annoying of all), but I did okay. Somewhere along the lines, something must have backfires spectacularly. I tend to sit there, hiding behind a pintglass, trying to look enthralled at a conversation across the table I can’t even hear properly and pray to God I laugh in all the right places.

Either that, or outright hostility towards the unknown. Everyone is dubious until proven otherwise. Now, that is a very childish attitude to have indeed. It should be the other way round. Innocent until proven guilty.

I don’t even particularly care what people think of me. If I did, my life would have probably ground to an abrupt halt a long time ago, because I never really quite fitted in anywhere. I was always to weird, too honest, not dressed well enough and generally too nerdy. So why the heck can’t I be one of those intant socialites? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be one of those idiotic, hollow-brained ‘social butterflies’, because, quite frankly, I hate people like that. I really do. They epitomise everything I dislike about mankind: an obsession with first impressions, an obsession with looks, pub psychology applied to mannerism, a fake smile and a pathological urge to be everyone’s friend. I don’t want to be everyone’s friend! I honestly do not! I pick my battles and friends very carefully.

So why do I act like I’ve just been attacked with a stun gun when faced with a bunch of people I don’t know? I’m fine with that concept at work. I cannot do it in a social context. As a result I look like some sort of arrogant, aloof prick without meaning to. Great. Fantastic. And it’s getting worse by the minute. I can never think of anything remotely interesting to say and seem to have this pathological need to talk about a) my job or b) where I live. I don’t even like my job and it sure isn’t a job to be proud of. Its actually a pretty darn uncool occupation. I used to drone on about records and gigs to all and sundry. Now I fear this is likely to bore people to tears. And to be honest, it probably would. Nobody cares that I have signed Bis vinyl, that I used t write fanzines and promoted gigs. Nobody wants to know about my record label that folded many moons ago. I feel like a lost has-been sometimes. Thus, probably best not to share these things with anyone any more in the first place. Keep trap shut. Firmly shut.

When I had a few, I can get annoyingly argumentative. That isn’t good either. Nobody want to hear my hostile views about certain genres of music, dreadlocks, overly girlie girls and how society is intrinsically sexist.

Once I met people a few times, it tends to be okay. But these days everything moves so fast that nobody ever gets a second chance it seems.

I suppose I am basically screwed.

School reunion - part two

So the school reunion happened without me. Luckily, I seem to be unable to remove myself from the associated mailing list and received a link to page with 297 pictures of said reunion yesterday.

My god. How glad am I that I didn’t attend? Judging from the pictures, only about 15 people came along. Guess what, I hated 11 out of those 15. With a passion.

The girls haven’t changed at all. The majority of the boys are now either fighting pattern hairloss or weight issues. Or both.

There is also a significant number of wedding rings strategically shoved into a lot of the pictures. Hey, look at me! Fat! Bold! And married! Isn’t it great that even gits like me can find a woman?

Here they are, standing in the boys loos at the old school smoking fags. Just like the old days. And I was relieved to see that the roadpaint ‘Abi 98’ (eg school leavers 98) in the school yard is still there, albeit a bit faded.

One of them even sported his ‘Abi 98’ T-shirt. A hideous white contraption in X-large (thank you, Fruit of the Loom) with a ‘street’ logo on the front and a list of everyone in the class (there was 120 of us, it’s a long list, hence the X-large size) on the back. Adorable.

One of those garments was forced upon me at the time. I boycotted the whole thing. On the school leaving fete, I wore it inside out. This is after I had taken some scissors to the seams. I don’t remember much about this fete, other than being hammered and hurling verbal abuse at quite a lot of people, before slinking off early with my friends.

Much to my delight, some of the people really haven’t aged well. The ‘Mr and Mrs’ of the Class of 98 (yes, those blithering idiots even held a beauty contest) don’t look so good these days. She looks gaunt. His hairline is halfway up his head, but he still insists on wearing his locks in a ponytail. It wasn’t a good look then, it sure isn’t now. I think I prefer having average looks and maintaining them to peaking early and aging fast.

And they’re al pretending to have a blast. I am sure they didn’t. Some of these people hated each other’s guts at school, so why are they suddenly sharing drinks? Presumably a crazy haze of fake nostalgia. Nostalgia about stuff that never happened. About a time that was not that great. The big lie that ‘school days are the best days of your life’. Hell they are! In one trench you have powermad teachers taking out their frustrations on hapless youths. In the other trench you get a bunch of teenagers stabbing each other in the back. Doctors’ kids versus lawyers’ kids versus farmers’ kids. Imagine being a psychologists’ child in the midst of all this. It wasn’t easy.

Still, the whole thing reminded me of ten years ago. It seems like a very long time. I don’t know whether I have changed. So let me dig out the Yearbook of 98, where my flatmate wrote a little description of me.

There’s a picture of the whole class at the front. I have short hair that I’d dyed red. And I am growling at my flatmate. I’m standing between her and my friend Conny. Conny and I lost touch a while ago. I don’t think she coped very well with me leaving the country and started to behave rather strangely, before stopping all contact. Shame, really, I liked her a lot.

Anyways, my profile description. There isn’t a picture because I refused to have one taken. It says …

A day in the life of …

One night, Julia is tortured by a horrible nightmare. She is a geometric ball shape and has to draw a line through herself!
This is accurate. I have always hated maths and certainly despised geometry.

She wakes up and cheers herself up with a healthy portion of indiepop. This can be heard from her room from 7am onwards on a school day. By 7am she is ready to go (once various pink and glittery items have been attached and the hair has been flattened by brute force). This is after she complained yet again that her hair looks like a Playmobile figure.

Damn right it does. Still.

On arrival at school, she obtains a sticky sugary pastry and proceeds to draw on any available surface in biro and markerpen (trousers, books …). To be accurate, she isn’t drawing, she is writing wry, cynical comments on the world. Like when she called a complicated chemical drawing a worldwide tubemap and also mentioned that the whole contraption wasn’t getting us anywhere. She even invented a story to help people remember cell division in biology …

Yes. I remember it well. A ludicrous tale of someone going to the supermarket, making up telephone numbers and eventually turning into a donkey.

Back home, she immediately makes a beeline for the letterbox. Because only a day with mail is a good day. Because she needs at least a letter a day to be able to converse about the truly important things in life (music).

Her profound geographical knowledge (isn’t Hanover near Munich?) didn’t help the phone bill either. Because of this, it’s safer to write. Better check that letterbox again. And again. And Again.

I still do this. Only with emails, texts and social networking days. I get quite frustrated when nobody contacts me.

If there still isn’t a letter, she gets quite annoyed. To fend off total melancholy, she is writing a fanzine (Zosch!) – a one-woman publication in A5 she uses as a weapon in the forced conversion of us philistines.

Suddenly, the phone rings! She is petrified of fires in the home. Where do I put that fag? Simply put it out? No way, that wouldn’t e safe! She swiftly empties the cold contents of her coffeecup into the ashtray and launches into a desperate search for a pair of scissors. Once these are located, the burning fag end is swiftly hacked off and mixed in the with cold coffee, resulting in a fireproof substance. It is now safe to answer the phone in the other room.

Her hamster is currently living in the cupboard, to ensure it’s dark and quiet.
She often gos out in Munich, where she enjoys a good dance in these indie discotheques (requests for dancelessons are taken for: air guitar, indieshuffle, shoegazing, stirring style, hammer style and saw style. Beginners and more experienced participants welcome! Well worth it!).

Nope, I still can’t dance to save my life. I enjoy it though!

Once she got through another exhausting day, she can kick back and gaze at the array of rather younglooking popstars in the posters on her wall (who look like 11 but she swears they’re at least 25!). Asleep at last, she dreams about pink candyfloss, Helly Kitty and London … London … London

… So here I am. In London. So screw the lot of you stupid people from school. I may be perpetually broke. I may find life in the metropolis difficult at times, but … at least I followed my dream. At least I gave it a bloody good go.

Pick me up before you go go

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discover there is a whole weird new world out there. The people in it call themselves ‘pickup artists’. And yes, this is as bad as it sounds.

Successfully master meeting and attracting beautiful women.

The pickup artist, no matter how hideous they are, claims to be able to get any women he wants. Jolly good. And how exactly do they think this is going to happen? Oh sorry, I forgot. Women are but pretty creatures with peroxide for brains. You just need to find the on switch and the off switch and they’re all yours. They don’t think for themselves, have no taste and are just waiting for someone like you to pick them up. Sure thing, dude.

Now, I know people can be shy. And I know people can be clumsy. I also know some people find it very difficult to meet women and, like, talk to them. What I did not know is that it is now unacceptable to be a social retard. People like you or I shouldn’t even exist.

The pickup artist’s philosophy is based around the bizarre idea that all women are attracted to him. By default. Like these self-esteem tapes that tell you you’re beautiful, successful and everyone likes you.

What I can’t get my head round is why all women are supposedly attracted to these people. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did chatup lines become fashionable again? Does anyone actually still collect girls’ numbers as a hobby/to get laid/show off their address book to their mates? Quantity is chosen over quality. Women have become phone numbers. And phone numbers collectable.

Pickup guru Craig Hendleman (who, incidentally, is an Essex lad) even goes as far as claiming that when it comes to women being attracted to men looks aren’t important. Whilst at the same time droning on about blondes, nice asses and supermodels. He gets to pick and choose. Girls are apparently too thick to notice and physical features of any male, as long as said male is buying into the pickup philosophy.

Common sense tells me that beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder. Nobody needs to have a ‘type’ and I am certain most of what the media tell us is ‘beautiful’, the vast majority of people find pretty hideous. The pickup artist, however, is with the media on this one. Big tits! Cue ballscratching. Cue some male gorilla style bonding experiment. For peace and quiet’s sake/adding insult to injury, Hendleman actually goes as far as saying he was ‘with some very unattractive girls’. Yeah, and? You didn’t find them attractive, but there will be a number of people out there who find these ladies drop dead gorgeous.

Coming back to the shy types, the recluses, the geeks and the pathologically clumsy, pickup school is supposedly targeted at them. If I was a man, I would fall into all these categories. But I would also be quite happy with just the one girl. Not an array of shags and phone numbers. If someone happens to be on the introvert scale, revving them up and sending them out to streets and clubs armed with dodgy chatup lines won’t help them. They’ll be acting their socks off, but will no longer be who they are. There are so many different personalities and characters out there, why not find a girl with a personality to suit yours? Why pretend you are something you’re blatantly not? And how long can you keep up the pretence? What do you get out of the experiment? Oh yeah, phone numbers. And you might get laid by them. Well done you. But are you any closer to your quest of obtaining a girlfriend? The hell you are. Instead you treat women like pretty ornaments that had a lobotomy. Oh yes, that’ll get you real far in life. Everyone will take you ever so seriously.

And if someone walked up to me in the street telling me how amazing my legs were or if they could try my shoes on, rest assured my reaction will not be pretty.

Where do I stand?

Right. I’ve been working in what is effectively a complaints department for over three years now. I think I had enough. It’s not even supposed to be a complaints department. ENQUIRIES is the thin disguise used to make people feel a bit better about their workplace.

In reality, more than half the ‘contacts’ are from deranged, angry citizens. Fancy spending seven hours a day reading about how ‘disgusted’ people are, how ‘ludicrous’ the world is, just how much they hate their phone provider and how everything is a conspiracy by thee such-and-such ‘brigade’. The use of the word ‘brigade’ makes me particularly angry for some reason. What do they think this is? Who’s in all these brigades?

I particularly despise the old ‘I pay your wages you do as I say’ trick. Jesus, did you really think civil servants are exempt from taxes? Have you any idea how crap our pay actually is compared to the private sector? And do you know how many times I have heard this bullshit today alone? Ah no, you do not. Because you are one of those ‘retired white male caukasian’ people that make up the readership of the Daily Telegraph and you haven’t had a reality check for about a decade.

And why would you want to send an email ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS to get your POINT ACROSS? And why is any old shit suddenly a MATTER OF UTMOST URGENCY. And why do you keep addressing your letters to ‘the manager’, ‘the chief executive’ and the ‘head of complaints’ plus a whole host of invented titles, when you know damn well that any large organization has a whole host of people manning an Enquiries department dealing with this sort of thing? Like the blithering idiot who threatened to sue an admin person at Virgin Media for supposedly STEALING a letter that he addressed to Richard Branson HIMSELF and responding to it WITH A PACK OF LIES? How naïve are you? Do you really think the world is going to stop, just so you can get your godforsaken toaster repaired? By Richard Branson, preferably. My God.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be very helpful indeed. But only if you act in a civilized fashion and aren’t a raving lunatic droning on about taxes, the freemasons and whatnot.

Do what you like but remember, like Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer I HAVE THE GODDAMN MICROPHONE! And if I choose to shove your stupid complaint at the bottom of the pile., I bloody well will do.

Time to find a new job, methinks ….

Personal Services Required

Looks like Wifeswap spawned a whole new range of these household documentaries. Where we take a peek into Joe Blogg’s home and watch ‘people like us’, as opposed to the nutters on Big Brother. Or so I thought. Personal Services Required … just where do they find these people? Did they advertise in Nouveau Chav magazine? ‘Wanted: Essex couple with mansion. Must be New Money. Spraytans optional’.

I am absolutely gobsmacked. There really are people out there with nothing better to do than thinking about how twelve cushions should be arranged on the bed during the daytime. Now, bedmaking is a waste of time in the first place, but, surely, if, for some reason, you’re into this sort of thing, does it really require 20 minutes with a ten minute inspection following? I can’t even decide who I feel sorrier for, the poor sod applying for a live-in housekeeper position or those sad freaks who wish to employ a housekeeper. The first is well on her way to become some kind of modern day slave, the latter … well … they might as well take their hedgefund and jump off the nearest bridge. For there is nothing left of their lives. They have outsourced everything. Including the careful folding of toilet paper. Who would do such a thing?

Interestingly, they also offer a handsome salary to whoever is willing to move into their house and be at their every beck and call. It’s almost like buying a Grandmother, albeit a young, healthy one that isn’t your mother.

A friend of mine is a professional Nanny. She refuses to take on live-in positions. Because it’s only a job. As opposed to selling your entire body and soul the spraytanned lady of the manor. Mind you, not having to pay rent and bills sounds handy. But would you really want to be sharing a house with your boss, who may well inform you that there is a fly in his bedroom at 3am?

Having watched Personal Services Required twice now, I am absolutely horrified at some people’s need to wield power over servants. To even tell them what they should and should not be wearing. And to show them off to friends and family like novelty pets.

And I can’t make up my mind who was worst. The headhunting, orange couple who asked this guy to wear chauffeur’s livery to Tesco’s or the middle-aged, chavy but loaded single mother who spent the entire program drooling over the young, male Au Pair? The latter acted almost like she was a female sex tourist in her own home, for goodness sake! Mind you, the one who informed her budding new Au Pair that she was ‘going to mould her’ wasn’t that pleasant either. Mould her? Yeah, sorry, you are but a spotty nothing, but I am going to make you a star, my dear. You are but an empty shell and I will make sure that I brainwash you into total submission.

Where do people get these powertrips from? I suppose it is to do with money. Money can buy you pretty much everything. I am loaded, therefore I am. Now I will invest in some new friends, a big house, some kids. I will buy into being admired and liked. Because I am the one paying. What these people didn’t quite realise is that the one thing they don’t seem to be able to purchase is anyone’s respect. How do you respect someone with an unhealthy obsession with polished faux brass lighswitches?

No Miss, I have not been smoking in the girls toilet!

My contract says no smoking in the flat. I ignored this, of course. Next thing I know the agency announces that ‘our regular inspection is coming up’. Er, okay. Not that you mention this to me at all. Not in the contract either. Flat smells like a working men’s club before the smoking ban.

Panic. Must get rid of smell. But how? Stop smoking in there immediately. Okay, that didn’t work. I resorted to smoking in the bathroom. After the event I realised my bathroom has no windows. Oops. Next stop, Oust! If it works for badly dubbed Dutch housewifes, it’s good enough for me. I settle for the ‘Outdoor Fresh’ variety. Pfffft, there goes the can. To my surprise I woke up the next morning, delighted I had not manage to gas myself over night. Death by chemical pine – not great. The can says to not use on fabrics. Febreze! I need some Febreze! Two hours later I am spraying double. Febreze pointing on the carpet, Oust! Towards the ceiling. Bubbling away in the bath is half a tub of Vapour Rub I am cunningly steaming with boiling water. Nice one, Julia. If hell was on earth, it would smell of fake pines, menthol and fresh Febreze Cotton Scent goodness.

Then it hits me. What the hell am I doing? I feel like I am 15 again, standing in the girls loo at school, clutching an air freshener. Have you been smoking in there, Julia? No! So why is there smoke coming out from under the door? I have no idea. And why is there a fagbutt floating in the toilet? No idea. You can’t prove anything!

Or the time when I seriously thought half a packet of Strawberry Hubba Bubba would ensure my parents would not detect my fags and beer breath after a night out on the town. They knew, allright. But they took great pleasure in leaving me to squirm for a year, until they ‘officially’ caught me smoking. Only then did they tell me they were most aware of my filthy habit from day one, but they thought it’d be more educational to have me come down to earth with a bang all by myself. Thanks, guys.

So why on earth am I thinking the letting agency won’t notice the fact I’ve gone crazy on unusual smells? Why not just let off a stinkbomb and claim an upset stomach, no further questions asked? I am 29 years old now, I should not have to be doing this. I hold down a perfectly respectable job and I am technically speaking a grown-up. Admittedly, I live like a student, but … those tatty band posters have been with me for over a decade. I like them. And that signed Stereolab poster is irreplaceable. So are the He-Man toys. So there.