Fishers Digest

An eery creepy silent taxi journey fermented in lashings of pure awkwardness. So sleep deprived that I start to see a fantastically detailed face on the back of my driver’s head. An optical illusion that became quite realistic. The newly fabricated face animation peering back at me making the whole thing bizarre.

I had paid to ride the chariot of psychological torment, as worried as if I was in a high speed gypsy chariot being chased by police. I keep only encoding half of what he mumbles, the audio scrabble being part of my sensory system failure. The matrix is starting to creep in.

I look baffled like I’m struggling to understand nuclear fusion at a silo, my responses requiring grave will power in order to be communicated. 

I bark ‘thanks’, here and there, in different accidental accents. A weird milkybar kid-style voice finishes me off. I sound how I feel; shy, dressed in a tiny outfit, uncomfortable. The words suddenly appear in my head: “The Milkybar kid is strong and tough, only the best is good enough!” What parody lyrics! His specky, borderline albino, skinny appearance doesn’t scream tough, and his sunburn-ready diary shade denotes… well not toughness. It indicates he would be better off in a mild ice-age. A good place for him would be sat next to the winter witch from Narnia trying to trade Milkybars for turkish delight, his snowy complexion making him merge with the snow covered ash trees. This dreamworld is pre the fungal epidemic, the genocide of the ash, a targeted virus, natures own biological war, and an assignation from mother nature herself. The Milkybar applying the zinc milk here and there, huffing on a Ventolin inhaler after short trips on his pony. 

That reminds me: Jayne Fowler kissed the real Milkybar kid at school, pre- cowboy fame. 

This pressure cooker on wheels seems to be taking a bumpy urban path littered with speed bumps. Each one is a game changer, wincing at the wave caused by a pot hole feels very odd.

Maybe sick? Sickly sounds about right. 

Climb into a bath like the chilled undead, coping with blurry vision, struggle with pockets… I feel like my arms are like those machines you get in Blackpool where you have the controlled nippers, the weak ones which can barely cling to a teddy bear. I locate coins. Identify them. Adding them to a complicated equation to reach a guesstimate total cost, baffled with webbed hands flapping around with illegal motor skills. 

Definitely some natural effects from an unnatural set of consumer commands, a freestyle, smash and grab, let yourself go, chemistry master class. I feel like a big passive bear, semi-used to human company! Not the brightest either as I’ve misplaced the honey, may have to resort to hot oat-y gruel. Tempt Goldilocks in, in hope of gold glossy locks in face cuddles! She must have used Aussie, for fine blonde hair as it radiated positive energy! Who wouldn't be content with rustling locks eternally?

A typical tale of the employee in need; haunted by a brutal, sadistic hangover, filled with regret, fuelled by harrowing flash backs of the bars, faces, streets and powders, and the glimpse of the half-eaten decaying kebab that you spotted spattered across the kitchen floor as you left for work this morning.

It all started very harmlessly of course.

An innocent dinner date with a friend, a much-needed mid-week treat, a cosy catch up, we were rewarding ourselves with a meal and a few drinks - no special occasion necessary. As it’s a ‘school night’ we’re both giving this 'social' the 'ok' on the pretence that it’s to be a civilised affair, the focus is on the food and the chitchat. During the course of the dining, the duo has tallied up 6 alcoholic drinks between them, each carefully monitoring the others’ alcohol consumption both silently conjuring up possibilities for what could come next.

The meal was beautiful; a finely-seared rose-pink medium/rare rib-eye steak served with fiery pink peppercorn sauce, triple cooked chips stacked in a fortress formation, and a side of still steaming al dente sugar-snap peas and asparagus. But let’s not dwell on the food, that part was just a flash in the pan!

Before the bill was settled, the first to give in to mounting temptations blurted out “shall we get a cheeky gram in then?” the other looks up, eyes darting across to make eye contact, half-smiles and quickly replies: “ohh, go on then”, applying the right tones and manner to disguise the fact that they too were considering when to make the same sinful suggestion. At least if it all goes downhill from here you can shift the mother-load of blame to the original suggest-er!! 

Let’s wind forward 6 boozy hours.

It’s 4:19am.

Another phone call was made and a much more expensive ‘rendezvous’ with 'dangerous Dave' has taken place, a larger order then the original post-dinner powdered appetiser. You’re bopping around your kitchen proudly wearing a black pirates’ hat which has been pimped-up artistically with three long and colourful peacock feathers. The feathers sway about with effortless beauty as you swoop into a stoop and glide along the full-length mirror which is now off the wall and laid out horizontal on the table top.

A note pressed to nostril with an exaggerated and elongated inhalation.

The music’s loud and everything’s comfortably messy. You’re on complaint text #2 from the neighbours upstairs who have painfully reminded you in their explicit use of capital letters that “it’s a TUESDAY night and its 4:30am - turn the music down”. The complaint and the realisation that you have to set off to work in 3 hours and you’re currently as high as a kite, in full fancy dress, with venue stamps decorating your forearm all sets in, you know you’re not going to get to sleep straight away if at all. You convince yourself that you’ve got one more power hour, the last stand! More like a wrap clean-up, powder closure. Let’s do it!

The music gets turned down such a small increment that its barely noticeable, you go in for another trademark peacock ‘sway swoop stoop’ to grab yourself another little boost, mainly in attempt to finish what you started.

It’s done, its bedtime. You clamber into bed and wriggle about squirming in your own druggy ointment. Maybe you did drift off for half an hour, maybe you didn’t, it felt like as soon as you even felt sleepy the fucking alarm was already barking at you, that menacing sound and all its connotations.

Your day has already been ruined before it’s even kicked off.

You arrive at the bathroom mirror to find you have metallic glitter all over your face which unlocks the first suggestion of a smile and yet another snippet of last night’s antics; two friends that dropped in for a few drinks and you engaged in some harmless face-painting before they realised where this ‘work night’ escapade was heading, and to avoid a similar fate – no; to avoid a similar DOOM they made their excuses and got out while they still could. (And woke up smugly feeling like geniuses). You count to 5 before you bravely open your front door and the morning light beams all over you like a sex offender.

Winding forward a little to the public transport; the turmoil of the busy underground was subdued by the small and very temporary reward of some fresh air between the tube and the office. For a second you almost felt ok, then the dread returns bigger and bolder brought on just by the sight of the office. Your feeling similar to that creepy little fucker, Frodo when he got close to Mordor and the ring was taken its toll.

It’s safe to say the fear is here…

This is where urban survival techniques come into play. First things first - a glass of fresh orange juice and some water, and some important advice: Never keep more than one type of drink on your desk at any one time; you can spot a hangover just on the array of liquids. If someone has 3 drinks on their desk they’re busted! I shoot off for this medicinal OJ, which comes at a price…

The awkward lift moment followed by an awkward bloody queue. At this level of sketchy frantic eye movements and the ever-frosted brow you really don’t need any prospectus conversations to arise!!! Bumping into a colleague? The over chatty Barista?! They are all part of the gauntlet of your demising expose’, Use the text book mentions, you’ve not been feeling right all week and its finally got you, or, you were up arguing with your girl friend! End anything like that with “I don’t want to talk about it”, close them down quickly - next time I'm fucking phoning ahead. 

On his return from the much needed early beverage escape (#01) this desperate employee gives himself the once over in the mirror to gauge the damage. He arrives at his desk and the struggling kicks in so he reaches out to that special someone who he thinks will feel their pain and engage them in a dramatic email exchange. They tit for tat, banter, exchange stories, compare nights; who went the furriest?! She admits that she got naked in front of her work colleagues and has now had to bump eyes with the witnesses; I’m not 100% of what I need to admit to yet… still all a bit raw, need some time to generate the official story.

I send an SOS email that reads a bit like: “help me if I don’t make it to lunch time I’m be found face down on my keyboard drowning in my dribble, I’ve just flown straight out of an unfinished meeting ‘crying’ I need the toilet before I plummeted into an efficient melt down.”

Icey sweat and blood shot eyes, the devil’s grinning. I fire another desperate email, I have to read it back minutes later to re-read what I ranted. She explains her day. I reply  “Fuck - reading about that gym experience has actually made me feel unwell, a bit.... poorly... Dumb bell squats, marine, ‘Nam vet, over-harsh PE teacher – “How dare you make me read that?!” After last night that sounds like a bunch of freeze-dried powdered bay leafs being stuffed down my oesophagus. Verbal Guantanamo.

To no surprise I’m back in my ‘semi’ happy place, the toilet for one of those frequent and very desperate visits, a solo team talk, the type where you don’t need the toilet but actually seeking the refuge and enjoying the safety of the cubical. I blow my nose vigorously to find that the mucus is actually bright blue. I gaze at it in a gormless disbelief before being suddenly hit with the memory of crushing up a blue pill between a debit card and an oyster card on a night bus and snorting half of it off the bottom oyster card. A brief follow up memory of a friend sniffing the very minor spillage of my knee…

I admit to myself in the mirror; “fuck the sentimental shit I’m mental and you’re gonna have to work with it or be institutionalised, a self diagnosed ultimatum’. During the drama and the clock watching, the sneaky YouTube windows in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen there is still a underlying fear of duty. There are incoming emails, its like a game of cyber Russian roulette, some of these emails are just notifications but the odd one requires you to act, and there is always a couple in a week that require you to actually work really hard. In this situation these can be imagined as the bullet. You do a good job proclaiming your busyness by revisiting work that already exists and making slight improvements you don’t really need to do, but it’s a good time killer and it keeps the wolfs at bay. Flicking back and forth through tabs and emails is a good way to keep the screen busy for any passers by…

It dragged out immensely and the window of the 4th floor looked like an exit for a while but the end eventually approaches, ‘fuck’, you sigh in relief, “I’m almost free to leave… Sentence over, a free man”, the voice positively narrates in head.

I can’t describe the feeling you feel when the clock on your screen clicks from 5.59 to 6.00pm.

CAN’T DESCRIBE THE EUPHORIA. 

The endings are not all this bountiful, sometimes you find yourself waking up with your face bonded with your own saliva adhesive to the plastic tube window at the end of the line you were meant to get off 35 minutes ago… but not this time. You made it, you travel back eating Malteasers and drinking water until in your dreamy state you walk into the warm embrace of a smiling girl friend, with a hot Shepherd’s pie, Worcester sauce / cheddar cheese crust and a cup of earl grey? Your ‘one night’ rehabilitation crash course has started.­

Food. Tiny bit of trashy TV or a half watched film and finally Bed time. 

I like the look of this... blonde beer brewed by satan in the Vats of Hell.

The hardest days of the regular employees calendar. The temporary freedom granted to you via the weekend is rained in, you are converted back into that worker drone, a bot programmed to tackle yet another working week.

Deviously and ironically London's Sunday eve/Monday day slot procures a rich party scene, offering a temptatious and very naughty polar opposite to work. Appealing only to the extreme hedonists who muster up an adequate 'fuck it' attitude and decide to stray...

For the masses, the majority who begrudgingly make it in at 9am with a brave face just for your boss, feeling like a castaway from the cast of '28 Days Later' (2002), walking home hungover, mortified in a zombie costume, they sound a little like this if they survived until 6:30pm;

"And the award for the longest shitest Monday of 2014 goes to this fucking cunt right here, congratulations, (**The crowd stands, claps and cheers as Monday swaggers onto the stage accompanied by two hotties, Friday and Saturday, linked one in each arm as he collects a big fuck off shiny gold Trophy**) !!"

Watch first... read later.

A favourite poem of mine by modern poet Tim Key.

This poem tackles the beneficiaries of the recent financial recession, where bankers reputations peaked in the media as being the most distinguishable cause of the biggest financial crash in the UK in decades. Huge performance based bonuses totalling 100s of millions of pounds were targeted and highlighted as being unrivalled by any other industry and the fact that tax payers were largely footing that bill was deemed ridiculously unfair and ironic.

"Dude, I've gobbled blank pills knocked out by rudeboys in gas masks.

I go to un-franchised fried chicken outlets.

I think I can handle a little bit of medical testing."

My favourite quote from Fresh Meat (2011)

Light peers in from the scalene-triangle shaped crack in the curtains, probably fashioned from a paranoid peek out into the real world. The rays shine through the smokey air illuminating the thousands of dust particles which put on a mid air concert, they dance around in the beams acrobatically! As the light shines on glowing across the hard wood table along the grain its refracted beautifully through several almost empty glass bottles creating an array of twinkling colours on the wall. These multi-coloured twinklets of light compliment the splatters and flicks of liquids which are spread sparsely up the walls. The floor is glossy due to the sticky film of mixed spilt drinks, a wafer thin layer of cocktail, concocted from multiple 'choice' boozes, the floor has a healthy polish like sheen.