Diary of an up and coming sociopath

After a particularly extended day at work finishing off targets and stuff, I came home, had dinner, then later in the evening we picked up Tom from the train station where he had arrived on his way dahn saaf to see his relatives. As some of you may recall, Tom lived with us in Oxford for two years before returning to Scotland to carve out a life for himself free of the London filth that Ian and I had decided to brave.

He got in pretty late on Friday so Nikki gave him some pasta and then we hung around in Ian’s room for a while before hitting the sack. Before that, he did tells us about the weirdoes he frequently comes into contact with, including the Breatharian who believes he can take in all nutrients from the air, and thus stopped eating. He became so light-headed and spiritual that he had to start eating again because it was too intense, though he only does so these days because he likes the taste. This is why I don’t talk to strangers.

On Saturday morning we went to Tescos and then into London. We managed to choose the same day as the European Pride parade which meant plenty of characters made the place seem  far more diverse than usual. And by “diverse” I mean that people were walking around dressed in cloth sacks as if it were usual behaviour. We went to Fopp where I bought Fear & Loathing on the campaign trail because I am recently interested in Hunter S. Thompson. Recently, though, I’ve been finding reading on the tube difficult because it’s hot and I’m tired and all the books I’ve got are by authors who write under the influence of mushrooms and acid. I was looking into more, er, straightforward books, like that Pixies biography, so I’m not sure another HST work is the way to go, but it’s too late now.

In Forbidden Planet, I bought myself an El Gala figure to go with my Hyatt figure. Buying Anime figures is a recent, if dangerous trend, but I figure I like so little anime I can afford to do it. I showed Tom the counter-culture section that I’ve been meaning to drag him to for years, and he bought a few books including an interesting-looking thing about social versus lifestyle anarchism. I was saying that he was making me feel unintellectual because I was buying toys and he was buying books about alternative politics but he assured me that if they had an Excel figure he would’ve been buying that too, so I’m off the hook.

We then walked up to Holborn. We stopped off at Sainsburys for some refreshments, and I accidentally bought some Fanta Z. Gah. Not as bad as the time I bought a 6-pack of that Coke Zero swill because the black-coloured cans seduced me, but still a stupid thing to do. We caught the train up to Camden where Rachel was watching England get kicked out of that sporting event that’s going on. The World’s Cup or something. You can probably tell it’s upset me deeply. We sat in the pub for a while on an increasingly hot balcony, Ian drinking his (suddenly trendy) cider, until Dan and Rachel turned up after the football was done. Dan is the only person I know who understands E from the eels in the same way I do, so we traded stories of hilarity regarding E’s behaviour on the recent dates we saw him play. Nikki gave Rachel the book from Fopp that tells travellers “69 uses for a water bottle” - you’d be surprised how many of them involve cutting off the top and filling it with fluid. Seb came into the city to meet us and we went to some ex-wetherspoons near Chalk Farm and waited like an hour for our food orders to arrive. Apparently the Chef was “very busy” but it seems more likely he was “watching” the “football” as you might say.

Rach and Seb eventually had to catch the train back, and Dan went to meet his other friends. Nicky Wire was doing a solo appearance at Stay Beautiful and it seemed an incredibly tempting prospect, but having been zonked out by the weather and sort of missed the chance to buy tickets because of hanging around in the pub, we went home. Next time we see Rachel it’ll be after she gets back from India in about 2 months, so who knows what wacky things could happen in the mean time. When I look back on my life 2 months ago, I sure realise that a lot can change. For instance, I didn’t have the anime figures I bought, nor had I got, er, my DS lite. What I’ve actually realised, in retrospect, is that in 2 months I’ll have whored out the tattered shreds of my value system yet further in pursuit of material goods. But who knows what wacky goods I’ll buy?

When we got home I degraded myself further by watching Diary Room Uncut on Channel 4, a program which takes all the tedious and unimportant things people on Big Brother say and making idiots like me watch them. I passed out shortly afterwards, and sleept until 10am. Later we wandered up to the Uxbridge road and I bought a coke glass which turned out to be pre-broken, though I did get the Lemonade Ice Lolly I’ve been craving since Summer began. At one point Tom and I were sitting on the lawn chairs in Woolworths and some guy tried to buy the nearby fans off us. We must look like respectable chaps. I then dropped Tom off at the station and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to cool down. I wish, in some ways, that I was back at Uni because in those days I just slept through the afternoon and did all the stuff I couldn’t do because of the heat in the middle of the night instead, but unfortunately for that plan, work demands a rigid schedule. I’m taking some time off in a week or two, so I can always get down with the fucked up sleeping patterns then, I suppose, but I’m secretly (openly) hoping the weather will take a turn for the worse before then. Cross your fingers.