second childhood

Old age. I’m getting there, as the British rail ads used to say. In my aunt’s house I picked up a magazine clearly targeted at the elderly - there was an article on deep vein thrombosis and all the personals were under the heading ‘friendship’. A woman in her sixties described herself as ‘nice to look at’ (‘unpleasant to touch’ was the unwritten implication), while an elderly man requested ‘genuine ladies only’. Was he being an old-fashioned gent, or had he had his fill of pre-op transsexuals? I prefer to think it was the latter.

Not that I’m losing touch with the Zeitgeist. Only that morning I’d been lying in bed staring vacantly at some CBeebies programme trying to teach me the ‘Funky Monkey’, a dance in imitation (or, perhaps, gleeful mockery) of our primate cousins. ‘Have you got that?’, the male presenter asked the female one after he’d demonstrated it about fifty times. ‘Yes we have!’, she said (the lack of irony is astounding). ‘You were great!’, this woman gushed at the camera as the programme ended. That’s what we need, TV that congratulates you for lying in bed doing nothing.

Then I switched over to T4: a competition asking ‘budding writers’ to finish a scene from Hollyoaks. It was hard to think of anything that didn’t involve a drive-by shooting or localized thermonuclear explosion. I’m meant to be creative, but it isn’t easy. Mat has been setting the occupants of the house artistic tasks in the hope that the household will become an ‘art movement’. The first was a self portrait. I chose a medium suited to my capabilities - only genuine Crayola would suffice. After a many, many abortive attempts in which I came out looking like most of the (non-human) cast of Planet of the Apes and - on one horrible occasion - Elton John, I finally came up with an artwork in which I somewhat resemble a defeated bulldog. It perfectly captures one of my main characteristics: an inability to draw well.

great nights out I have avoided

Naturally I expect to be woken up when my housemates and whoever is with them get home from clubs. It’s now becoming a sport, however: they’re competing to see who will be the first to jolt me from my dreams. Hannah won on Thursday night, by a finger (on the doorbell), but Dave also made a heroic attempt by tumbling loudly down the stairs. He fetched up under the clothes horse. Trembling in fear, Mat approached the still form draped with washing at the bottom of the stairs. He tentatively twitched aside a pair of damp pants to reveal Dave’s grinning face: ‘Hello’. I am continuing to take my washing home.

It was the Pink Toothbrush I was avoiding that night or, more specifically, Bez, who was DJ-ing (ie: shouting incoherently over the music). Tonight I am not going to school disco night at Sam’s, in which punters relive their carefree schooldays (before returning to school a couple of days later). I am quite looking forward to not going. ‘You could be a teacher’, they say. I’m sure I could radiate the expected disapproval. I could sit alone and bend my cane, as the song has it. Probably get thrown out, though.

Mat got thrown out of the Pink Toothbrush. For dancing. Or that’s what he called it - he was very drunk and horny, so anything could have happened. To paraphrase The Simpsons, his growing insanity continues to be a worry. He has more or less given up work since he downloaded this program that provides a hypnotic visual accompaniment to the music he plays. I come in from work and he glances briefly away from the screen, looking like a startled bush baby. Then it’s back to the swirling patterns again. His only ambition now is to take hallucinogenic drugs and make the patterns real.

supermonkey goldmine

There was a woman on the local news the other day going round schools warning pupils of ‘the dangers of teenage suicide’. Yes I imagine that could be quite dangerous. Hopefully she will be teaching them some of the safer ways of killing themselves.

I’ve returned to work after a week or so off, in which my major achievement was watching The Powerpuff Girls Movie. All the way through. It’s shrill as a roomful of overexcited kids, but redeemed by evil monkeys with superpowers: makers of the next Jennifer Lopez vehicle please take note.

The return to work brings with it an immense weariness. There must be other things I could devote my life to. Correcting Mike Skinner’s grammar? Or I could become a star without even trying: Chad is threatening to plagiarise our lives in a series of animations based on our wacky household, to which he is a frequent visitor. Chad's full of ideas. He suggested to Hannah in the pub the other night that she could give up work, have a baby a year, and sell them on e-bay. Naturally, she was filled with moral revulsion: ‘I’d never get my figure back!’

biomorphic

A week off: an opportunity to step back and assess my altered situation. What have I gained? Answer: guilt-free daytime TV (I never had a working TV in my room before). It’s true that all human life is there. As soon as I wake up (late) in the morning I’m getting simultaneous broadcasts from both extremes of society. Homes Under The Hammer features people who can actually afford to buy property; meanwhile, on the other side, unselfconscious lowlifes are battling it out on Trisha. (Or, if Trisha’s pretending to care gets on your nerves, there’s always Jeremy Kyle, where the emphasis is more on keeping them in line.) Then there’s Douglas Sirk melodramas in the afternoon. Deal Or No Deal. Watching daytime TV is a full-time job. Or, more accurately, I wish it was.

Housemate Dave went on holiday to Canada, and was instantly replaced by Rhys, from Cardiff. Since he too has done time with Mat at university, it came as no surprise that, half an hour after they went into Brentwood to do some shopping, I got a phone call from the pub. ‘Join us. We’re going to drink our way back to the house.’ An attempt which had to be abandoned when it was understood that there really weren’t any pubs on the way back to the house, unless you took the scenic route. We ended up in Sainsbury’s. There’s something about being even slightly drunk in a supermarket that makes you feel at odds with life. Who are all these strange people in my way? What do they think they’re doing?

Mat’s protein shakes haven’t yet altered his physique - only everything else they come into contact with. Brown particles adhering to pint glasses, to the sink. Where, unless viciously expunged, they take root and grow into globules of synthetic flesh. Mat’s goal is a Bruce Lee torso that can be used to attract ‘shallow women’ in nightclubs. Even if he fails to achieve it, his insides should be something to see.