14th April 2001 - 7:07 p.m.

Oh shush, you. I never said this was going to be a regular event. It’s like the Six Nations; it’s like the Cheltenham Festival; it’s like the Local and General elections: Diary cancelled due to endemic Foot-in-Mouth.

Every day, on my way home from work, I wonder how I might make this something that could be worth writing about, how I might straddle the Ordinary and find a world of words into which I can ground myself...

“With one leg jutted out behind and twisted awkwardly towards the stairwell, I balance haphazardly on the shuddering floor and try to stop my bag’s pendulumic swings from reaching as far as the tired face of the short old man on my right, as he clasps the orange bar suspended from the ceiling and sways about like some kind of cloth-clapped monkey. I push my hand into the front of the shoulder-bag and begin to pull out my copy of Dazed and Confused, before I notice that the back cover is a Miss Sixty feature-advertisement with a glamourpic of a partially-clad twenty-something looking for all the world like a porn coverstar.. Not good (and few things are) for flashing about on public transport. Perhaps if I flip it over... No-one will notice… On the front, a large monochrome print of a pretty young child model. People are looking… The mag goes back in the bag. I try for a moment to consider matters weighty, perhaps flirt with political ideals, but the train of thought is derailed by concerns as to how awfully cramped the bus is, and how the overweight man in front of me is irritating me by talking to himself and selfishly spurning the normal social sensibilities, and how I wish that none of these people had ever been born, so that I could have a whole seat all to myself.”

It’s easy to be liberal when you have time on your hands.

It’s a struggle at the best of times, if I’m honest, to speak coherently. And even more difficult when I’m up at 6:30am each morning, when I spend the whole day charming receptionists on the phone only for them to relay the information, courtesy of the Marketing Director standing behind them, that the Marketing Director is in meetings all day and can’t speak to me.. Even more difficult when I spend all day every day praying that my Sales Director will choose not to mock me today, when I have to socialise with people who announce, fag in one hand, Expresso in the other, that “drugs are for mugs” (I laugh. “No, I’m serious”. I look grave). Life is odder than ever. A long-time employee is sacked, after which everyone decides that he was a paedophile anyway and probably would have killed someone had he stayed. I am presumed, by all in the office, to be Gay as a Barn (not their words), and everyone hushes and takes secret glances at my reactions whenever anyone tells an ill-judged anti-gay joke. An office memo is circulated, stating that:

“Whilst I appreciate that office banter, and specifically talk of a sexual nature, is vital to the morale of the sales-room, some older people may get offended if they should happen to be passing through..”

Sales are down for the next few days, after which the memo is officially withdrawn.

I’m jolted about by buses, nauseated by forced-down early morning breakfasts, castigated and berated without fail at the office, and yet I’m still barely registering consciousness when I get home of an evening. And by then, anyway, it’s too late, for I’m back in bed as soon as the telly starts swearing for the night. My new cds pile up unplayed in my bedroom, my bookcase remains untouched by anything but dust; the only thing sneaking its way into my attention being a sole refrain of Marvin Gaye.. “This ain’t living/ This ain’t living..”

On Tuesday evening, I stood beneath the branches of the slender tree in our garden, and inhaled deeply from a Davidoff, and sighed the smoke out into the cool air, and watched it disperse into the star-heavy heavens. And then I noticed the branches themselves, and how a light covering of pink blossom had suddenly pushed itself into the world. Spring is here. And perhaps things can still change.

So to heck with bleary-eyed resignation! To blazes with incoherence! Tentatively written on an otherwise empty page of my notepad: “Remember – there ARE words you can use”. And so there are.