Work Conversations

Jay is siiting in my chair with his feet on the desk, talking loudly into a phone. I sit at his desk and nod hello to Andy. He nods back and rolls his eyes, tilting his head in Jay's direction. Jay continues his loud conversation.

"Yeah, so when I'm down we'll go and get wasted, get loads of drugs and women and go gambling." He's joking. I know he's joking because he always does it. I know that the twenty minutes of conversation that preceeded my entrance into the office would have been very serious business talk, involving Jay fretting about some client or other. Andy rolls his eyes at me again.

"Just check your emails or whatever for now mate," he says. "No problem," I tell him, "I'll just wait for David Brent over there to finish up.

Jay finishes his conversation with a stream of increasingly unlikely fictional scenarios that he and his friend will get into, regaled loudly to make sure Andy and I can hear him.

"Tim was just telling me him and his girlfriend were in Egypt and his missus bit into a date and there was a maggot inside it. That's fucking disgusting. Have you ever bitten into food and found an animal inside?" Jay asks Andy.

"No," Andy replies, " But I have been eating an animal and found food inside." He glances over to me with a smirk.

"Really?" Jay replies.

"Yeah, I found this dog at the side of the road and started eating it and inside I found a load of pork chops. It was great." I struggle to hold in my laughter. Jay looks at Andy in horror. "Really?" he asks again, genuinely horrified. Andy rolls his eyes at me and shakes his head slowly.

I thought the economy was in trouble?

Sign in the windows of a local pub:

"Regular Customers Only"

Lodger Killing

Sitting on the sofa eating my dinner and vaguely watching the TV/reading the paper at the same time, the lodger comes in and sits down in the armchair. "Shall we watch this film?" he asks me, indicating one of the two DVDs on the table that came through the post for me. I shrug, I've no big plans. Why not.

When I finish eating I put the DVD in and take my plate to the kitchen. I go back in the living room and find the lodger peeling cloves of garlic, about eight so far. I sit down and ask him, "Are you ready?" indicating the DVD player. "Yes." he says. I press play, the opening credits roll, the lodger picks his garlic up and leaves the room. The film starts, the opening set-the-scene speech runs, the lodger is mixing something with an electric mixer in the kitchen (the garlic?), it drowns out the TV, I press pause. I wait. He stops mixing. I wait. Five minutes go past. He comes back in, sits down. I press play. He gets up to leave again. "Shall I pause it?" I ask. " No, it's ok," he says and goes back into the kitchen. I give up and press play. Another five minutes pass and he comes back in, sits back down. "What's happening?" he asks.

Time Flies

I got offered a job today. Writing shit. A full time, writing shit job. I'm not going to take it. I find that confusing in a way, if it's actually possible to confuse yourself, but I'm also quite sure about it.

On this very day last year I was here...


...camping just feet from the sea, spending my days with sand between my toes, the sun on my face and a sense of freedom that I'm scared I'll one day forget forever. If you had told me then that in a year's time I would have a full time job writing shit, I would probably have taken that. Sure, there's other things I'd prefer to get paid for, spending my days with sand between my toes and the sun on my face being not too far down the list, but that would do.

I know some things now that I didn't know then. I know that, as cheesy as it sounds, trying to follow your dreams is hard work. I know that my mind needs space. I know that believing in yourself is both the most important and the hardest thing to do and I know that giving up after just 6 months of trying isn't an option.

Because I know these things I also know that one person paying me to write their shit is a million miles from another person paying me to write my shit. Which is why I'm not taking it. Yet.