Get off my cloud

As John Lennon once sang, however I think that figure in my case is nearer 90 per cent, and also he was wrong as I have always taken everything he has ever sung as both meaningful and of course beautiful.

 

 

And so begins this long threatened update, which to be honest I wish I’d gotten out of the way long ago so I didn’t feel this need to recount so much of the sloppy shit that’s been thrown at my ever ageing face since my last half arsed rant that I couldn’t even finish (did I just fall asleep or unthinkably run out of energy to moan?)

 

 

I’ve already bemoaned this pressure I put upon myself when failing to update regularly so tearing my hair out about it again seems somewhat pointless and thus I’ll just start with the most recent soul destroying misery to befall me in my seemingly never ending quest to fall ever deeper down the pit of despair I’m so familiar with.

 

 

So I write from Scotland, Edinburgh to be precise, where I am currently on “holiday” but as a) I’ve not actually left Britain and b) I feel like total shit I’ve decided it’s not much of a holiday, just a week off work in which I now wish I’d just holed myself up in my flat and ignored the outside world for as long as possible. Kind of like when I had Swine Flu. Yes, suffering from the pandemic outbreak of disease that’s currently scaring the entire planet was, in fact, preferable to this week. And you may well ask why, as certainly I would in your position, and whatever that position is I’m almost entirely enviable of it, so low has my ebb sunk of late.

 

 

Ok so to painful kick in the sack number one. The aforementioned “holiday” I’m currently struggling through I had in fact, at one point, been looking forward to. The Edinburgh festival has much to see and do, is full to the brim with comedy, oddball performances and drunk people so there are certain appeals. This year the appeal was heightened significantly by my fairly last minute success in convincing a lady friend to join me (and yes I would have gone on my own otherwise, pathetic loser that I am). Frequent readers and my future self will probably by now have picked up the fact that inevitably when I mention girls it’s because I like them in a greater capacity than the “friend” I may describe them as. It seems I only ever befriend girls I’d also like to sleep with which could possibly be because I simply fancy anything in a skirt OR just pick my friends based on purely vain and shallow reasons of their looks and, somewhere after that, their personality. But the chances are that if you’re female, not entirely hideous and have at least half a mind of your own then that’s gonna be good enough for me. Not that I’m saying I want to sleep with every girl I’ve ever befriended, but for the most part I probably wouldn’t turn them down.

 

 

Anyway this lady in particular had been occupying my every thought for quite some time now and things were getting to the boiling point where I’d realised that we were firmly in friend territory due in all probability to my failing to ever make any attempt on her to make it obvious that my intentions weren’t entirely innocent. But by the same token I’m about as good at hiding my feelings as Hitler so I’m fairly sure that in the past six months or so that we’ve been close it was fairly obvious as to how I felt. In fact everyone knew. Not only because I couldn’t shut up about her but every time I met any of her friends they’d suss me instantly and make subtle suggestions that I had a MASSIVE crush on her, discussing it every time she’d disappear to the bar or the toilet as I tried my best to not make it any MORE obvious because I’m not an idiot, I know girls talk and they don’t keep secrets that boys tell them from their girl friends. And my main fear was that as much as I liked this girl I have so little faith in my own ability to win the heart of another, so futile have my attempts been to date, that I genuinely didn’t want to ruin the friendship the closer we got.

 

 

This then makes things even more awkward because at the back of my mind I always knew that as close as we could be for all the time she remained single, the moment she got herself a boyfriend I’d die on the inside and end up pushing her away, unable to process the pain it would clearly cause. So it’s almost as if I was setting myself up for the big fall. Other people don’t stay single forever, it’s just me, and with every passing day this fear got greater and greater BUT of course I still had some tiny feint hope that perhaps one day we’d cross that friend barrier to the other realm, even though as usual I’d managed to pick a properly beautiful girl, immensely popular and outgoing that in reality I’d never have any hope of winning over. People should learn to stick to their own but sadly as yet I’ve not met anyone quite as pathetic and desperate as me of the fairer sex.

 

 

By now the more clued up among you (assuming I still have any readership, which is by the by anyway as nobody else NEEDS to know this, I just need to let it all out) will have guessed where this is headed. So I was buzzing with delighted that beautiful lovely girl had agreed to come away with me, we were even sharing a room in a holiday let apartment which I figured bode well for me that this situation hadn’t put her off from the start. In fact my worry by this point was that we’d end up sharing the bed and I’d make some drunken inappropriate pass that would result in a terribly uncomfortable holiday remainder so I tried my very best to be decent and gentlemanly and on the first night we did share the bed and I did nothing but sleep, appropriately, on my side with no behaviour to have shamed myself. So far so good you’d think, aside from my continuing failure to let her know how I felt, although this was never going to end the way I wanted it to so I’m not even going to entertain the “why didn’t I just tell her?” avenue of thought.

 

 

So it was the following day when things went awry, by all accounts entirely due to my EPIC STUPIDITY which started in all too familiar fashion. If ever a conversation turns to a wedding or marriage (not to myself, just in general) I always have to pipe up about my disappointment at only ever having been to one wedding in the 28 bastard years of my crudney existence . I suppose this is a rather pathetic attempt to evoke the sympathy of others but feeling guilty about my sob story I quickly followed it up with possibly the WORST thing I could have said: “So why not invite me to your wedding, eh?” If I’d spent any time actually thinking about this I could have quipped that indeed I and her should have got married with a cheeky grin on my face which could then have been laughed off and with any luck the matter would have tailed off there and then. But of course this is not what happened and instead the beautiful bitch started openly discussing her various options of three potential suitors she was currently deciding between, none of whom of course were me. This instantly left me feeling shit, and it wasn’t even lunch time of the second day. My mood hereafter I am ashamed to admit rapidly went downhill, coincidentally as my drinking increased significantly. She later confessed that I was bringing her down with all my negativity (there’s no god, I’d never inflict children upon the world, I’ve always hated myself etc.) and it probably is pretty hard work dealing with me whilst in that headspace so it isn’t like I don’t sympathise, but I just couldn’t help it, despite the warnings.

 

 

Anyway in an attempt to cheer up and thus lighten the mood I decided we’d go clubbing and I’d chuck drugs down my neck, because of course drugs always make things better... We went to a club, I got wrecked off my tits tripping and gurning like some fucking schoolboy on amateur night and the evening culminated in her winning the affections of some smug French CUNT. As she drunkenly staggered out of the club with him I did my best to follow and suggest we go home, but she was having none of it and the guy did his macho wanker best to get me to run along and leave him to take her home and bed her. Obviously I was powerless. He took her home, they had sex, I was in a world of pain. Not entirely sure how to cope with this (and having plundered all my class A’s) I turned back to good old fashioned booze and started chatting up strangers on the street before I met a couple of Begbie types who were impressed by the amount of wine I had access to back at the flat. Me and my two new companions staggered the streets in the early hours swigging from bottles of wine and putting the world to rights, or something like that. In truth I barely understood what they were saying, so proper jock they were. The next few hours are beyond recollection but all I can remember is waking up at 9pm the following day, with a hangover of legend. Stumbling to the bathroom I stared at my solemn battle scarred face in the mirror trying to make sense of things but failed pretty succinctly.

 

 

When beautiful bitch got in contact it was horrible, like the last voice in the world I wanted to hear but I knew full well that I was still meant to be looking after her on her first time north of the border and at any rate I had the only set of keys to the apartment. So I just ignored her calls for as long as I could, threw some clothes on and stumbled in the direction of the nearest pub I could find to drink off my hangover with Bloody Marys, which in fairness do seem to sink down pretty well after monstrous drinking binges.

 

 

The pathetic man I am I did my best to avoid her as much as possible for the rest of the time we were here and she quickly discovered that she had some old schoolfriend living up in the city as well as poaching the only other friend I had in the city (wouldn’t you know it, the lesbian) who unfortunately took her side and decided I was the shit for taking it all so personally. I found this pretty harsh as well being as me and the lesbian have been through much and in finally getting over my obsession with her had become close friends and confidantes almost. Suffice to say she knew full well how much I liked this girl and I thought she might show me some sympathy instead of congratulating her on her conquest and deciding I was a wanker for not being able to deal with it like a man. I believe this is called double ouch.

 

 

Beautiful heartbreaker has now left back for England as her flight was the day before mine anyway, so I at least don’t have to deal with the awkwardness of seeing her and sharing the set of keys with her at mutually convenient times. Instead with my last day up here I shall probably drink ludicrously again and do my best to actually go and see some shows before flying home seeing as I’ve managed to miss half the stuff I wanted to see owing to poor time keeping and over boozing. Curiously enough I was handed a flyer yesterday for a show called Love and a Colt 45 which describes itself thus:

“Hello, my name’s Beth and I’ve got a story to tell...

When I was a teenager I used to drink Colt 45 Lager. It was the cause of all my stupid decision...

Have you ever woken up in a strange place with no recollection of the night before? Or even worse too much of a recollection of the night before? Suffering from beer-fear? Alchonoia? Seeing loved ones giving you that look?”

 

 

So already I was finding some common ground here, and it went on:

“Shortly after that I fell in love for the first time – it was the cause of most of the rest of my stupid decisions...”

 

And again I thought, hmm this is actually AIMED at me. It continued:

“The show is about all the things you shouldn’t do because of alcohol. It’s about all the things you shouldn’t do because of longing.”

 

 

Well I am sold, it just seems a little too much like fate has handed me this flyer and destiny requires that I go. Mind you it’s probably sold out...

 

 

I may yet report back with my findings. I figure there’re bound to be more answers in there than in the bible anyway.

 

 

And because this post is already the length of an essay I will have to save the crushing pain of last week’s news that my beloved car had been crushed by the DVLA in an act of merciless motor murder which I had to find out about through the police. They say bad things come in threes. Doesn’t look like I’m going to be relieved of my life just yet then.

 

 

Shit