football first

“If it’s going well, do you think you might sack off the football match?”

A friend asked this before a date and I blanched.  No!  Of course not you idiot, I replied in my head.  The football match was the main reason for my being in London.

It was a fair question, I suppose.  Although I never entertained it as a realistic possibility – because I wanted to go to the game, I’d paid a substantial amount of money, was looking forward to the game and don’t go to matches much – it was indeed possible.  I could have sacked it off.  And who knows?

“Actually, you know what?  Hell, it’s cold, my back hurts.  Let’s just stay here in the warm.”

It would have enabled a longer time together, more conversation, a shared experience of something – a gallery or film – perhaps the added relaxant of an alcoholic drink or two, which could help boozy goggles; more stuff.  And who knows?  Probably not of course..

But no.  I went to the football, which was half-ruined as a result of the previous two hours.

You ideally want to arrive a while before the match, get into the zone for a game, find out the team news, absorb the atmosphere, grow nervously excited.

You don’t want to travel up painfully overanalysing a date, be irritated she’d done that defensive girl thing of shoving a cheek in your face at the end.  *Kiss Me Nowhere Except Here On My Cheek Then Fuck Off*.  You don’t want to be very cold and overchew a piece of gum as you walk to the stadium and only find your seat as the players exit the tunnel onto the pitch, and have half a mind on your mobile as the game kicks-off and barely be able to stop shivering and have serious back-pain each time you stand up to watch an attack over a few thousand heads.  You don’t want to feel disappointingly little as your team play remarkably well and race into a commanding 4-0 lead, strangling the life and drama out of a game.

Even far back in the distant midst of a serious relationship I instinctively put Tottenham first.  A Sunday afternoon in bed was curtailed by a text from a friend reminding me about a televised cup tie against Chelsea which I’d forgotten was kicking off in 15 minutes.  Virtually mid-coitus, I had unapologetically leapt from the bed, collected strewn items of clothing, got dressed and headed to the pub.

We lost 4-0.  Eidur Gudjohnsen scored a hat-trick.

I guess my long term relationship with football and Tottenham, while often rife with angst and heartbreak, has been longer, more constant and more reliable than any relationship with a woman.  Barring one or two horrible summer months, football is always there.  Football always makes me feel something, it always gives, even if it gives shit, even if gives Jason bloody Dozzell.

Trying to explain football to non-football fans I say it’s a story which you’re part of.  It could be a dull story or an exciting story, but it will be a story of some kind, and each match is an isolated narrative of its own and part of something broader and longer: a competition, a season, a career.  You invest in the characters of players, or your perception of their characters.

It helps if there’s some instinctive appreciation of the artistry of ball-play, team movement, the skill involved, the ballet of a beautiful diving header or a perfectly executed bicycle kick.  That makes a story memorable.

This is heightened when you’re playing the game, when you’re living the story, even if there are no spectators at all, even if you’re being embarrassed by the skill of an adolescent half your age or intimidated by the aggression of a maniac clearly more intent on doing harm than playing fotball; it’s enlivening if not always enjoyable.  It makes you feel.

Above anything sport can give out outlet for displaced emotions which you might like to express in other parts of your life, but can’t, because right here right now there’s nothing as important as winning.

I like to think I’d be capable of prioritising a woman above football, in the right circumstances, but it would demand a reciprocal certainty I’ve rarely experienced.  Maybe if she could pull off a slick Cruyff turn..

empty nests

One consequence of living an alternative loner lifestyle is the struggle to empathise with Normal People Issues.  The ‘being busy’ and need to broadcast ‘being busy’ is a frequent bugbear which I might have mentioned once or twice here.  The truth could quite possibly be that many people are substantially busier than me.  I have always been time-rich.  But the compulsion to broadcast the fact every which way, thereby justifying existence at every turn, is a separate issue.

Also brought home to me recently by my mother, in what developed to be a disconcerting series of ‘open conversations’, was the impact of children leaving home.  My Dad often emits a sense of apathy towards children generally, and certainly has seemed to, towards me.  He’ll usually help if asked to do something, if it doesn’t conflict with other plans, but he will need asking and will seldom volunteer support unbidden.  This is teamed with a sporadic, general fumbling awkwardness.  He also battles with depressive demons which can have a distressing impact upon my mother, as well as upon himself.  (I privately, perversely enjoy this fact.  Yay!  I don’t think I’m *quite* as much of a mental fuckup as him!)  He’ll whine and growl and hit things (never his wife) and verbally abuse himself in the most crazy untamed fashion.  It’s little short of a fit.  While this has been far from easy over the years, Mum has grown stronger in dealing with him and forcing him to seek help – medical or otherwise.

In telling me of his latest trauma, and responding to my gentle probing about his medication and whether he’s ever spoken freely about a dysfunctional relationship with his long dead father, that my Mum told me about how he’d responded when my brother and I left home.

On both occasions of returning from dropping us and leaving us at university for the first time, he apparently took longer than necessary to find his way home.  Of course the cynic could say this might be cover for any reason: but he told mum he needed time out, that he stopped the car in a layby and wept.

Wept for what?  She said she was loathe to use the word ‘jealousy’ – if you can be jealous of your kids, but she did.  Jealous of having the education and opportunities that he never had.  For seeing us grow up and leave the house.  I wasn’t sure if jealous was the right word.

My greatest experience of physical loss and grief is the impact of the first family dog dying, the gaping hole of one less figurative and literal heartbeat lumbering around the place.  Multiply that to the noise and impact of children.  I never really had before.  Particularly the effect of my louder, boisterous brother, was and is still, now when he enters or leaves the house with his entourage of family, profound.  Extracting that first, and then me, to leave just my parents and a dog.  It must throb for a while, take some getting used to.

Things like this that are difficult to appreciate, living alone.  Having nobody actually physically there for so long – whether housemates or even a pet – means although you’re lonely you don’t actually miss anyone or anything either.  You pine for the idea of something, which is quite different.

My mum’s telling me that about my Dad, the stolid, emotionally illiterate fool, unexpectedly moved me as I sat in my lounge chatting to her on the phone.  Briefly I found myself leaking.  Partly through disbelief.  Really?!  Dad gives a fuck?!  Fuck off..  But I didn’t let on.

I was doing nothing, as usual that Sunday.  And it was Mothers’ Day.  So I decided to buy a bunch of flowers and drive home.

Over a short visit, in part bonded over a shared experience – something she had done in the past which I was now doing, I spoke more openly with her about myself.  She never asks questions so I volunteered information and she appeared to listen and engage, which isn’t a common occurrence, as I’ve bemoaned here before.  It has happened before, (Nov 2010 post); it’s just rare.  I spoke a little of loneliness, general rejection, shit first dates, unrealistic ambitions, an aimless career – because if I had a career which occupied me and which I cared about, that would squeeze other things away.  While I knew my brother would have scorned such openness to our mother, the fragile character of his conception who would merely worry and be too childish to cope, and although it wasn’t a comfortable experience – I’m dreadful with eye contact when it comes to speaking about such things – it wasn’t one I regretted either.

“You’re in a bit of a pickle, aren’t you?” she pityingly deduced from her armchair that evening.

“Yes.  But I have been for years, Mum.  It’s not exactly new.  Just never seems to change or get easier.” I shrugged from the floor, semi-distracting myself from My Feelings by antagonising the dog.

keeping sane

Leaning on a gate in a currently unused field, which would probably home livestock a few months of the year, I felt the unseasonably warm sun on my face, stared out across the landscape of Welsh mountains and listened.  Birdsong, the occasional dog bark, mostly nothing at all.  I was inflated with a rare inner peace, which was sort of embarrassing at first, you “hippy” wanker, but sank in undeniably.  Fuck it, whatever..  God it was beautiful here.

I tend to idealise being part of a couple, over-romanticise what it could be like.  Plenty of people in relationships are in shit relationships.  These can be lonely too.  It might be pushing it to say they’re as lonely or more lonely than someone who is literally very alone for much of their existence.  Although maybe some of them are.  Young mums in a mess.  Senior females who have lived out whole lives feeling little, in an empty shell, mainly because they were asked and it seemed like the right thing to do back then.  Senior males who feel similarly hollow, the subject of a cultural puppeteer.

Perhaps it’s a different kind of loneliness, a loneliness which also comes with the frustration of being trapped, straitjacketed, imprisoned: something I should be grateful to have never suffered.

While I bemoan and angst and warble over my perennial singledom,
While I tire of dating and all the plastic artifice which comes with it,
While I get sick of the necessary enforced optimism before every first date,
While I grow frustrated at rejection from females I wasn’t sure about either,
While I become painfully bored of being alone, seemingly all the fucking time:
At least I have my freedom, independence.

Plus the inclination to go and do and see stuff, alone if necessary – which it is.  It’s easy to have freedom and not use it.  You can sit on your arse in your lounge and watch crap television and sink deeper.

To get in the car on a nice Sunday and just drive
To fumble my way up the steep side of a mountain after several U-turns,
To seek solace in mournful tunes which fill the shell of my car,
To absorb the beautiful diagonal slanting light, how it illuminates giant slabs of Springtime land:
To take a zigzaggy unplanned walk:
The ability to do this probably keeps me just about sane.

There are worse places to be.

If this sounds like a self-congratulatory back slap, it sort of is.  As well as a pragmatic mental defence against Hollywood tinted notions of love and romance.  (Although I know it can be good, great, incredible too, for some people – which is why I still hope, why I still put myself through the dating bullshit).  The shining landscape winked back its well-done appreciation at me and I accepted.

Slicing through the tranquil soundscape of nothing, the anomalous jarring engine dirge of a passenger plane, not too far overhead.

what you can hope to achieve

Stuff in this next post or two is backdated from, like, ages ago, so if any of it was remotely true it wouldn’t  even slightly chafe anymore.

The score was level at two all, one minute into stoppage time at the end of the match.  Manchester City’s hapless centre-back lost the ball in midfield and Gareth Bale was released to attack down the left wing.  Spurs had men over on them.  We could win it here.  As Bale collected the ball and ran, you edged forward on your armchair, alone in your flat.

Could we win it?!  It could change everything.  Turn us into real title contenders.  If we beat Manchester City there could be a great chance of winning the league.  This season Spurs looked so strong but it all felt so transient too; a team at their pinnacle, a good blend of experience and youth, a manager who might easily not be there next season if offered the England job, a sense of now or never about everything.

Bale galloped around the defender and whipped the ball across goal towards Jermain Defoe, who charged hungrily into the middle of the penalty area.

“FINISH!” you wailed at the television screen, sinking theatrically to your knees.  Defoe lunged towards the ball, only managing weak contact with the studs of his boot.  The ball drifted impotently wide of the goal.  Your hands covered your face.

In their next attack Manchester City won a penalty through a player who should have been sent from the pitch for kicking one of our men in the head, twice – for which he was retrospectively punished the following week.  He calmly slotted in the penalty kick.  Manchester City 3, Tottenham Hotspur 2.

Title aspirations all but over.

That afternoon in a crushed beery haze, you exchanged messages with her for the first time.  She looked stunning, well out of your league, as much of a fantasy as Tottenham winning the Premiership.  But the messages snowballed.

Over the course of the following week, correspondence turned to emails, a telephone call and text messages.  This was ridiculous.  She was exceptionally attractive, arrestingly smart, laugh-out-loud funny, beautifully written.  She ruled your thoughts.

She’d seen one image of your face but still continued chatting.  Why?  The attention on her words?  She MUST have had loads of better looking, more successful blokes vying for her attention.  Maybe there was a wealthy, unpleasant married businessman who gave her functional sex and nice shiny things and put her up in hotels but wasn’t all that interested in her.  Maybe she had loads of blokes she played off against each other.

Who knew?

- Stop thinking about her anyway.  Don’t do this again.  She’s just one female, remember.  Nothing to get all sappy over.. Just one female.

..who is, you know, actually a really fucking incredible female.

STOP IT, BRAIN!

[It always pales in hindsight, how besotted you become for a period: a few weeks, a few months.  You look back several months to a year or so down the line and ask: can I really have been that fussed? It feels sort of distant now, like I couldn’t have possibly been that headfucked.  Well know this, Future Self: said female properly dominated your brain for a good number of weeks.]

STOP THINKING ABOUT HER!  Think about football instead.

Yes.  Come on, don’t get ahead of yourself.  Rein it in.  Be cool and casual.  Even if you did meet she’d quickly notice that you’re ordinary looking, forgettable, that you have a gaping harrowing bald spot; you’d inevitably leak weird stuff about your perpetual lonerdom and dreary void of ambition; her interest would understandably dwindle.  Then you’d get all moody and depressive for allowing yourself to hope.  You know that’s what happens.  While there’s the mystique of not quite knowing, you’re little more than an idly amusing Tamagotchi.

Whatever you do, try not to hope and try not to care.  Caring is, like.. SO uncool dude.  Nowadays everyone is flippant and casual and frivolous and throws their hands in the air like they just don’t care.  Caring too quickly makes you look desperate and needy and like you’re not still the 26 or 27 year old you hope to appear and imagine you are in your head.  So no, you mustn’t care or be impatient or honest or want everything immediately.

You knew how this worked.  It had all happened before, sort of.  You were building yourself up to fall.  And yet still, STILL you audaciously dared to hope..   You gigantic anus.

Gareth Bale had galloped beyond the defender once more, his left foot primed to whip the ball across the penalty area, as tantalisingly close to exhilarating glory as to agonising defeat.  You were both on the edge of your armchair and Jermain Defoe, charging into the penalty area; about to lunge for the ball in a stadium full of fifty thousand people, ready to sink to your knees alone in your flat, dagger to the heart.

*

Empty glumness is hard to shake off when hope fades, despite self-talking-tos. You told yourself not to do this and you’ve no right to miss something you never had. This is precisely why investing hope is so dangerous, you mug.  It’s possible to grieve for hope, although it feels considerably less respectable, more lame, this undignified permanent sense of embattled disappointment you haul around with you.

It’s involuntary though, which almost makes it excusable. Consciously choosing to invest hope is impossible.  “Yes, I will choose to hope about this thing”.  No.  Hope is more subtle, gradually sliding into you before you find you’re freakishly possessed.

It was worse after meeting and seeing that holy fucking shit yes, she IS that attractive.  Extremely attractive.  GOD you wanted to sleep with her so badly.  So what if you thought with your dick a bit.  What man in that position wouldn’t?  Your admiration extended further than that.

Pangs of bitter regret recurred long after you realised there was nothing doing, her interest had died, the frequency of messages had dwindled, her replies grown shorter, questions apparently outlawed – inquisitive ‘did you’s clipped to rhetorical ‘hope you’s.  After pinning your colours to the mast, brave and unambiguous and punchdrunk, her gently subverted response of I’m Not Really Into You So Leave Me Alone Now appeared clear enough.  Perhaps there was different, newer attention.  Perhaps not.

What had previously been a busy junction of two-way traffic – meaty email marathons, semi-regular texts, quickfire instant message chats – was no longer.  It was a transient confection rapidly scaled down to a one-way street; little returning besides token tumbleweed acknowledgements. With it came a slow dawning realisation that now she sincerely gave not even the faintest of shits.

It was fine.  You got over it then lapsed into gloom, then got over it again and then lapsed again.

You angrily reprimanded yourself: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING OF ANYWAY!?  Someone like her: sure, some layer of pretence but still ostensibly an intimidating preening glamour-puss with expensive tastes and talent and drive. And you, who usually goes to work wearing slippers, doing something just about tolerable, albeit unchallenging and boring?  To entertain the notion of any kind of ‘match’ was tantamount to self-harm.  Although it demonstrated a level of perverse ambition too.

At least you could take comfort in its brevity, the small mercy that it wasn’t a protracted period.  Usually it’s only ever a short matter of time between discovering that Yes, oh no, oh shit, you suddenly hope – Bale galloping; and learning that you are of course once again doomed to fail – Defoe missing.  Hope then slips away once more, like a tidal swell dictated by a sadistic god.

kissing and comfort zones

I’m not comprehensively disabled around small people.  On the contrary, I enjoy their company and like playing the goofy uncle who asks silly questions.  It’s the greetings and goodbyes which I tend to fumble, and could do without.  It’s possible my own Dad wasn’t such a great example here, being himself rather disabled around small people and in showing affection towards them.  Yet it feels like an innate disability of my own too, a personal gene of inhibition.

Kissing children makes me uncomfortable.  Upon meeting and parting I much prefer to pat them on the head, ruffle their hair or, if it seems as if I must, kiss the top of their head.  Kissing their faces just feels a little ‘icky’ somehow, for me, a bloke with little experience of small people before these particular small people came along.  Of course it’s different if they’re yours or if you have parental experience.

But then, I find kissing grown-ups on the cheek to often be a little icky too.  While I naturally affect breezy confidence when kissing cheeks, in truth I’d prefer if the casual convention for males to kiss females upon meeting didn’t exist at all.

There’s far too much jeopardy, too many variables, stuff that can go wrong.  She doesn’t present a cheek or doesn’t expect or want a kiss – stay the hell away you creep, and just accepts a hug instead, leaving you almost head-butting the back of her head and not knowing what to do with your face, or dangling out into thin air, or kissing her ear, or what if you both turn your head in the same direction and accidentally kiss each other’s lips instead?  All of these things have happened and sporadically return to haunt me.  I remember them far too well.

Even as a child I had weird issues with it; one vivid memory of refusing to kiss “Auntie” Pat on the cheek and throwing a huge tantrum because it meant not getting a slice of my favourite chocolate cake and crying the whole car journey home.

Then there was the time when I’d just kissed one female former colleague and went to kiss a second I knew equally well but was so taken aback by her awful skin I just shook her hand instead, “oh hey you, aahh..”   As her limp, dead, hate-filled hand sat in mine I became the most evil person ever.

So in that moment at the weekend when my brother asked me to strip naked and then dress his daughter, 2, I was stung with no little terror.  We’d been happily playing with a Peppa Pig jigsaw I’d bought her for Christmas when he dumped a pile of clothes down next to us.  Was I cool with this?  I asked myself.  Sure, I mean, I suppose..  erm..   I asked her if she wanted to put some clothes on and my brother poked his head back around the door, asked if I was ok with doing that.  I’d never dressed anyone before, never changed a nappy, kept some discretionary uncle distance.  Actually I wasn’t ok doing it.  I was massively awkward.  I was jelly.  “Er not really,” I confessed.  “I am a bit awkward to be honest.  Don’t want her kicking off.”  I felt clumsy, inadequate, failed, relieved.

There was a similar feeling later that day when we visited extended family discovered in the last few years thanks to the internet.  Our families have met several times since and enjoyed a poetic symmetry.  My mother’s new found half-sister had two daughters, whereas she had two sons; the elder daughter had two children, a boy and a girl, roughly the same age as my elder brother’s two children, a boy and a girl; the younger daughter was single.

At dinner I was enclosed in a corner of the table against the wall and subsequently found it difficult to contribute to wider conversation further down the table, contending with children’s squealing playful noises and my brother’s commanding central seat.  After a few faltering attempts I gave up.  Conversation then moved towards the absent younger daughter who, it was casually mentioned, now had a man.  Terrific, I thought.  Well done.  How dare she shatter the hitherto perfect symmetry of our families?  The bitch.

I rose from the table, went into the garden to play football with a six year old and broke his goalposts.

cruel dream

There she was, sitting down on the floor, her back to the tiled swimming pool wall.  You said hello and began chatting, clumsily half crouching / half leaning to her level.  Why didn’t you just sit down?  She was doing well in her work, it seemed, doing impressive things.  You remembered you still had those shared interests, she’d been to different places you yourself would like to visit, often hiked the mountains nearby, like you’d like to.  You didn’t speak about this and weren’t sure how things were between her and her boyfriend / husband.  She was down here in the hotel swimming pool on her own, looking a little sad?  Had something happened between them?  Not that you’d ever dare try to elbow in or anything, being generally averse to the indignity of competition, as well as always suspecting that better candidates than you exist for everything.  Where had that Scottish twang in her accent come from?  She was from Cornwall.

Speaking to her brought it back:  the warmth of feeling, the painful sense that she might have been it; you shared so much, she was still damned cute, you had hurt so much and for so long when you parted, nobody has even come close since.  ‘Since’ has been a long time.

On Facebook she initially sent a friend request a few years back, which you falteringly accepted.  After a while quietly unfriended her because you didn’t like seeing and feeling those things.  Then a few months ago you sent another request to re-friend.  Odd behaviour.  An idea that any new friend is an audience expanded if you’re trying to subtly pimp business interests, combined with new unsubscribe settings that mean you can immediately opt out of someone’s inanities if they prove too idiotic, combined with curiosity and nostalgia, combined with whisky; all shaken into a nervous cocktail that made you tap the Add As Friend button.  You were still interested to know where she was up to – married yet, kids?  Just moved in, in turned out.  The photo albums hadn’t changed much.  Perhaps a few more looking beamingly happy and couply on mountaintops.  No messages were exchanged upon re-friending, as they had been upon initial friending.  Not a frequent user, you presumed by her activity, possibly wrongly.  She merely accepted the request.

You’ve heard tale, or maybe fable, of weak old men who once upon a time missed a boat, who didn’t struggle as much as they should have to stay afloat, and subsequently paddled off elsewhere, living out their lives on an island of dim regret.

Water came trickling in around the poolside and began to rise, over the edges of your slippers and socks.  Why were you wearing slippers and socks?  You couldn’t detect its source, the pool didn’t appear to be overflowing.  She was apparently unfussed, sitting in her bathing suit.  But it unsettled you and you sought higher ground, pleased at the meeting, heartened almost, yet also knowing it had meant nothing.  You wondered where your friends were and what you’d be getting up to that day, cycling the cobbled roads and coastlines of that island.  Later on you’d have a spat with a friend whose behaviour you deeply question, all the while faintly knowing that this is all just another nonsensical, cruel dream.  One which will leave remnant fug when you eventually wake up.

*

Wistful residue which results from dreaming about females is easier when the female subject is entirely fictional.

get what you’re given

This Christmas I laid out a mission to be slightly better around my parents, when it was just me, them and the dog.  Try to be a less objectionable, surly teenager, I told myself.  It can’t be hard.  While my brother frowns upon this behaviour as he finds it easy to act, be cheerful and upbeat, which shouldn’t be all that hard for him – looking from the outside at his beautiful family and life, it’s also not too uncommon to regress to former selves like this.

Many do it, a self-fulfilling prophecy, almost what’s expected of you.  In a podcast interview I listened to recently the successful Hollywood actor, Michael Sheen, from a small South Wales town of Port Talbot, confessed the same.  It happens a lot, so I’ve never beaten myself up for it hugely.  But it was still no reason not to try and be better.

And be better was, I think, what I achieved.  In fact, I was given fairly solid evidence of it by overhearing my Mum comment to my Dad, “he’s better company this year.”

Er, thanks Mum.  Success!

Recent exposure to horrible, tragic and traumatic real life stories enforces perspective too.  Look what you have around you, your family unit, your generally fit and healthy parents, your brother and his gorgeous kids and nice wife.  So you don’t see any of them all that often.  So they all have their quirks and oddities, some of which perhaps you wish they didn’t.  Who doesn’t?  You have tons.  It’s about learning to accept all of them as you get older, appreciate them – they’re less likely to change, to care less, to grieve less about stuff you don’t have.

It reinforced a belief and personal paradox: that it’s important to surround yourself by people, if you possibly can.  I was reminded of this again last night, after a curry and beers with my oldest school-friends, most of whom I only see a handful of times a year at most, but we all click back into our roles, helped by the large slabs of shared experience.  Humans are what matters.

And yet, here comes the paradox, I don’t like lots of them.  In fact I take an instant dislike to many, live and work very much alone so could legitimately be labelled a sad loner.  Despite the fact that I think humans are very important.

No, I don’t understand either.

This is beginning to sound like a slightly embarrassing, sanctimonious sermon borne of an unspectacular but perfectly pleasant seasonal period of reconciliation and acceptance – as well as a dash of broader perspective.  I’m sure I’ll be moaning and whining about the usual things before too long.

belief and a lamppost

It was boredom which teased you out alone, the desire for more general stimuli than exists in your flat, the desire for a populated environment, for that warm festive buzz you supposedly revile; as well as an antipathy towards your own company in your own flat for yet another evening.

Although you like your flat and could have watched the match there, you were bored.  You fancied alcohol and more variables. In your flat someone might email you!  Or reply to a tweet!  Your phone may even ring!  These are all quite unlikely though.  Twitter’s weird.  More people replied to a tweet asking what to do with some eggs than they have to anything you’ve ever tweeted in two years of using the thing.

There a wider possibilities in a pub, although as an individual with no friends you’ll most likely sit in a corner intermittently studying the large screen showing live football and the small screen in your palm.  Still, there are other people in the same room to illicitly consider at and make judgements about.

It was raining as you walked to the pub.  You looked back over your left shoulder into a newish trendy bar, considered doubling back into there instead.  No.  It was too trendy to go into on your own and watch the football, wasn’t it?  Yeah..

-A metallic clang was audible a millisecond before the scuffing impact and the searing pain into the centre-right region of the forehead was felt.  gaahh.  Ouch.  Really ouch.  FUCKING ouch.  Shit.

Several yards down the street a handful of people at a bus stop looked towards you, remarkably none laughing, so possibly reacting more to your sudden halt, and swearing.  You took a moment out standing in an empty doorway, getting rained on a little less, waited for the world to stop spinning and the pain to subside.  You wondered if this would prompt a brain tumour to hemorrhage.

A minute or two later you confidently ascertained that you were wet and throbbing and had a rucked, probably swelling forehead, your dignity was severely compromised – despite there being no evidence anyone had actually witnessed your calamity.  But there was no blood.  That was a good thing.  You’d live long enough to watch the Blackburn-Bolton game.  At least the first half.  So slowly, carefully, you made my way towards the pub.

Once inside the surprisingly crowded room and maybe still mildly concussed(?) you bumped into a shortish but burly, typical doorman.  Not softly either.  You thwacked a full shoulder of your frame and apologised immediately, a pacifying hand on his shoulder.  He glared back at you, up in your eyes, steely and unimpressed, two glasses in his hands, the level of one not up to the level of the other.  You apologised again.  His face was unmoved.  He probably enjoyed his moment, thinking you were shitting yourself and might get immediately ejected.  You were shitting yourself a bit.  He said nothing and you left him, continued on to the bar and got a pint before seeking out a quieter corner of the pub near a television screen.

Also near two separate couples on dates.  All handsome people.  The better looking pair were more polite and slightly less relaxed with each other than the other.

You’d developed a soft spot for bottom-of-the-league Blackburn Rovers, a luckless football team with numerous solid, experienced professionals who never appear to play that badly.  You admired the dignity of their besieged manager, Steve Kean, who received a barracking from his own fans at every match, home and away; constant abuse and hounding to quit.   You wondered about his domestic back-up, judged that there must be a strong woman at home who supports and believes in him.

A glance at a laughing couple below the screen.  Your wobbly, still-throbbing head went on to generate thoughts about the consequences of isolation, loneliness and perceived constant shunning by people.  How that can infect a person and ultimately lead to misogyny and misanthropy.  Hell, if nothing and nobody – literally nobody: females, friends, employers, family, lampposts – accepts you, then why the fuck should you accept them? Fuck em all.

Where does that leave you? A crazy lunatic who wants to punish the world?  A paranoia-wracked schizophrenic?  A person who scuffles with lampposts?

In spite of everything you feel an enduring faith in people, entirely devolved from religion or religious values.  And also an obligation to the belief that life must be about surrounding yourself with people, if you can.  You rarely see an artistic endorsement of happiness, contentment and oneness through total isolation.  Not in a relatively young person.  It’s commonly portrayed as leading to madness, self-harm and suicide.  Potentially brilliant art too.  But no, sociability is where it’s at.  It’s what seems to work for the majority of humans.  And it’s what you believe in, despite it being completely at odds with how you appear and how you live and how you instantly dislike a lot of people.

There are no guarantees though.  As painfully unfair as it seems, shit things happen to generally good people all the time and in lots of ways.  Good things you want might for yourself, through no fault of your own, might easily never happen.  They don’t happen for everyone. But you still have to invest in romantic ideals, or you could end up just wanting to kill everyone which, on balance, doesn’t sound like the greatest idea.

Blackburn lost once again by a fine margin to their near-neighbours and fellow strugglers, Bolton Wanderers.  A slice of luck in the dying moments could easily have seen them earn a brave point.  The wet ball skidded off Samba’s shining head and wide of the post.

shite christmas

For the year-round loners and lonely, Christmas is rarely welcome.  Everything about your own personal living circumstances is highlighted, underlined and turned up to ten.  It’s a time when the media aggressively force-feed images of “people coming together” and “having fun”.

Meanwhile in reality, our beloved PM, David Cameron is barking on about the sanctity of family and marriage.  Fuck off, Dave.  We’re really not allowed to be on our own then, no?  More penalties, taxes, single person charges, general scorn, invasive suspicions about our sexuality and public pity?  Cheers then.  Merry Christmas.

Singles, whether perfectly happy and well-adjusted in their status, or not (and I suspect that many of the former are secretly the latter), might easily be convinced that they are deviant.  There’s little out there to reassure the loners and the lonely that it’s fine, everything’s alright.  Especially at this time of year when everything is saturated with warmth and love and fucking tootsywootsy “Consider Yourself” BBC bumpers, and sociability, and the sheer volume of other people.

In contrast with this, news stories like the man who got bored with his fiancé, tazered her and buried her in a shallow grave make me feel an absently amused empathy (although I’m a deeply caring person, honest).  Although thinking that probably indicates that it’s best I stay single and very alone forever.

I’m obviously an endlessly fascinating and engaging individual, which makes me such a magnet for other people and both of you readers. But some people – in fact the majority of other people who aren’t me – I find can get really boring.  This poor tazered woman might have got really boring, though it’s highly unlikely I would have taken the extreme actions of her groom.  Guess religion was behind it somewhere.

Thresholds, compromise, tolerance, acceptance. The spectrum and where we land on it makes us humans great and happy and sad, and all the places between. It’s what often influences a person’s social gravity, or magnetism, or success, or willingness to accept and settle.

The tazered lady escaped by carving herself out of an inadequate cardboard coffin using her engagement ring, which I thought was beautifully romantic – obviously in an unconventional, inverted sense.  Plus her survival made it possible to be amused.

Maybe being amused is the answer, because it’s a frequently used device for deflecting scorn, concern and general attention.  More usually though, the lonely look inwards and are generally miserable, however they present themselves externally.  It almost requires a public broadcast by a gratifyingly dour comedian like Jack Dee or Jon Richardson.

Hey losers, don’t worry about all those wankers.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t have decorations up; if your weak number of Christmas cards lie in a sorry pile; if you live and work completely alone so haven’t been to any Christmas parties of any kind at all; if your small handful of friends seem to have been particularly elusive recently so you’ve barely even spoken to anyone for a week; if you go home for a few days and play out the charade with your parents before swiftly returning, burying yourself in booze and fake internet friends, the vapid artifice of which may just spiral into even more self-hate; if you’re not quite confident enough in your cashflow to book a trip away somewhere different and forget about the time of year.

No, that’s all fine.  We’re with you.  In fact there’s loads of us.  More than you think.  Don’t beat yourself up about it.  Just get it over with, do the awkward seasonal shuffle, blot it out with alcohol, art, culture, sleep; it’ll pass.

Before you know it we’ll be well into January, Valentine’s Day looming.

then there were none

This one stems from another exhausted attempt with females; that once again defeated deleted what is the fucking point? futility..  Patience spent.

Single women often affect an exterior of confidence but when it comes to making decisions about men, even to meeting, they seem to almost subconsciously erect obstacles or barriers.  Of course this could be because they specifically don’t want to meet me.  I’m wide awake to this possibility, of course.  But I sense that other common factors are often at work too.

My hunch is this.  The one serious, possibly but not necessarily previous relationship, left them crushed and almost critically low on confidence.  Particularly if it was a small town childhood sweetheart upon whose word they hung unconditionally.

Particularly if that childhood sweetheart was an overbearing, oppressive, insecure twat who wanted to demolish them for anyone else.  Men do this.  It’s most effective if the women are left on the cusp of middle age, maybe with a child or two in tow.

Advancing through the emotional wreckage and feeling recovered, a remnant nervousness or flaky uncertainty can still exist, particularly when it comes to relating with men in real life, on that level, in meeting them, at that point when convenient cosy barriers must come down.  This frequently leads to them making excuses, overthinking and bottling it.

Merely a theory but I’m sure there are many like this.

Also unhelpful is the devilish deception of virtual communications.  That feeling of effectively being in each other’s pockets all the time; the blithe underestimation of the non-verbal, which itself carries masses of information.  Words are all we need, right?  That and the odd bloody “LOL”, an emoticon here and there.  Sorted.  Actually meeting can come later, even if you have to wait forfuckingever.

Still I find myself being held prisoner to virtual online communications.  It leads to a protracted period of unsatisfying and insubstantial communication about fluffy things which may easily have no bearing upon liking one another.  Opposites who appear to have little in common with each other can attract too.

Right now I’m again exhausted by the amount of time and effort which needs to be expelled in the virtual world, for nothing.  Months of time and effort and hope so regularly (basically always) turn out to be completely pointless.

You can chat to several people at once, even though doing so can feel oddly duplicitous, but everyone does.  You develop favourites.  You try to take it somewhere, and it eventually flumps on its disappointed arse and you realise your time would be better spent reading books or taking more photographs or playing on your Xbox or watching shit telly or doing practically anything else.

What instead?  Pretend like real life is an episode of Friends and talk to people in coffee shops?  Can you imagine the excruciating results?

I’d still like a dog.