Left behind...

Returning back from my trip even further up North I relaxed back on the settee and could feel my aching muscles. 135 miles I'd cycled in 3 days. And I was fucked.

Then there was a knock on the front door. I struggled off the settee and thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't cracked open whilst doing it. I opened the door to be greeted by my next door neighbour. Ordinarily she only wanted one of two things: someone to open her bottle of wine when the husband was away (I might explore that one in more detail in my next post...next year), or to hand over a parcel that the postie couldn't be arsed to leave in the shed.

She was carrying neither wine, which is probably good news at it was 1.00 in the afternoon, nor porn, err I mean parcel.

"You haven't shut your car door properly" she said in a sort of ner, ner, ner, ner, ner fashion, before turning on her heel and going back to her own abode.

"Oh right, thanks" I replied, wondering whether it was pure coincidence that I'd been away for 4 days and nights without the car and she'd knocked on my door 5 minutes after I got back, or whether she'd been knocking on my door hourly for 4 days with any one of wine, parcels or bad news.

Anyway I was also thinking that it was odd, as I can pretty much guarantee that I always shut the car door properly. I'm a bit careful like that, but this time she was right - it wasn't shut properly. So I opens it, then shuts it. 'Why couldn't she just have done that, instead of waiting till I get home to tell me?' I thought as I creaked back to the house.

A little later after a shower and a rub down by a Thai masseuse - I dont know if masseuse is male or female, but I mean the female variety if it's male, it's irrelevant anyway as it was a fantasy and not reality - I pick my keys up and head out to the car to go to the shops.

Sitting in the drivers seat I'm immediately aware of the glove compartment open, then aware of my satnav missing, then glance down and notice my envelope of petrol receipts gone, then the colour of the loose change in the ashtray bit is a bit silverless, etc.

It appears that the car had been relieved of the valuable stuff in it by the local valuable stuff relievers. They are very thorough.

When I say I can pretty much guarantee that I always shut the car door properly, I cant always say the same about locking the car. It does it automatically after 30 seconds so I get a bit lazy. How lazy exactly do you have to be to not be arsed to press a button on something that is in your hand?

That's probably for another day.

Anyway, it transpires that when I'd picked the bike up from it's service at the local bike emporium before I went away, the bike rack had prevented the boot from shutting properly, which in turn had prevented the car from locking itself.

The local car door tryers had struck gold when they undertoook their monthly try of car doors, hoping for one to be unlocked.

As I drove to the shops, I changed the cd in the cd player and perused the quandry.

How bad does your taste in music have to be exactly, to have everything in your car stolen except for the cd's?

First steps

Watski searches under the bed – he wont tell you what it is he’s searching for but it’s definitely not old porn. No way.

His outstretched arm nudges something and he stretches a little, pulling another muscle in his neck whilst doing so. His fingertips pull it towards him to a point where he can grab hold of it.

“What’s this?” he says to himself as he cradles the book like shape in his hands, before blowing the dust and cobwebs off and rubbing his hand across the front to wipe of the residual dust.

‘Watski’s World” stares back at him from the cover.

“Well I never, my old blog” he smiles as he thinks back to the wonderful times he had with his virtual friends. He is smiling but inside he's a little disappointed that it's not the 1996 Christmas Razzle Special with Debbie from Reading dressed up as an elf.

Heart thumping, memories swirling, he goes to open the blog but the key is missing (for key read password – go with me on this one!), he tries a few variations before stumbling across the right one

“Where the hell did I come up with that one?” He curses to himself. He then struggles to think of an analogy to represent google having some sort of influence nowadays but makes a mental note to moan about it at some point in the future because as good as it might be, it’ll never be as good as it was before.

The blog creaks open.

“Now, how does this thing work again?”

For Sale: One overused mind

I've had a pretty poor year and a bit really, lots of things have conspired to meet up at a particular time and place and kick me up the arse. It started probably about 18 months ago when I decided to leave a job which I hated and meant me driving at least 4 hours a day for the priviledge of attending. I thought I was being proactive at the time, even a bit dangerous, the Watski of old would never have given up a comfortable life in favour of uncertainty. The problem was that I took about 3 months off and became very lazy in the process - my day consisted of nothing, other than titting about on the internet and taking for granted my then girlfriend, CJ.

This came to head precisely a year ago (yesterday) when CJ and I decided to split up. I guess I alluded to this as much on here. To be honest, it killed me. And made me realise that a relationship I never put much effort into actually meant a lot more to me than I thought it did. The following months were filled with a lot of heartbreak, we saw each other occasionally and actually got on better than we had done in the final few months - which made the final cutoff seperation far, far harder to deal with. I play games with my mind, but it always beats me in the end.

It still kills me to this day, probably more with each passing day. CJ was pretty perfect really, beautiful, clever, funny, cute - we had lots in common, but like many people there were bits about each other that we didn't like. The worst part about it is that I was the master of my own downfall in that if I had appreciated and worked on what I had at the time more, then I probably wouldn't be nearly as unhappy as I am at this moment. But my unhappiness now can only be a small part of how unhappy I must have made CJ. If I'd have paid her and our relationship more attention then there is every chance that now we would have been planning the rest of our lives together. It's the knowing that it was all in my hands that is the hardest thing.

We haven't seen or spoken to each other in 10 months, our paths would never cross anyway but I would go as far as saying that CJ is and will remain the biggest regret I will possibly ever have in my life. It's still very difficult to believe that you will never speak again to a person you spent just about every minute with for 2 and half years, for maybe the rest of your life.

Today, I'm not much further on really - I'm probably even further back. The only positive thing is that I'm in a new job, which is ok. I cant seem to give it the effort it deserves though because I'm not at peace with my mind. I wish I could wake up just for one morning and not be brought back to earth with a list of worries and things that aren't right about my life.

I want to wake up happy and looking forward to the day ahead. I only look back, on how things have turned out, looking forward occasionally with fear of how long the day is and how I'm going to get through it on my own, before realising that there are going to be another 6 days just like it. My mind is full of what ifs and regret at missed opportunities. I'm becoming a bad person, I used to put other people first, now I'm just striking out for myself and alienating people left, right and centre. I met a few people and discarded them pretty much straight away, mainly because they weren't CJ, or they were just the right person at the wrong time. And now I'm just in the company of people who are plainly no good for me. I'm a slave to my mind, it continually reminds me how bad things are, tricks me into thinking that the person who is no good for me is actually very good for me - and gets me wondering why they haven't rung in a while.

I sort of gave up writing this blog, mainly as a way of helping me forget, to drawing a line under a bad part of my life and trying to move on. Unfortunately I hadn't. I guess, on the outside people see me as fun and able to cope. Little do they know.

Maybe more tomorrow.

Hanging on the telephone

"Ring Ring" The house phone sang.

This morning.

At 6am.

Well it didn't sing it like that, but it rang - you know what I mean.

The trouble was that it was 6am. And I was asleep. 'Was' being the operative word.

As is usual with the house phone, I leave it to go onto the answerphone - anyone worth talking to will start leaving a message and if I want to talk to them then I can pick it up and do so.

"Beeeeeep" it said. Meaning that whoever wanted to speak to me had decided better of it and hung up. Either that or it was someone wanting to sell me something.

I rolled over, eager to get back to Britney.

I'd just started to snooze, when:

"Ring, Ring"

The phone rang again. I left it again.

This time the ringing was interrupted by a womans voice on the answerphone:

"Hello, I rang a few minutes ago - I just wanted to let you know I'd got the wrong number".

Oh good. Thanks for that.

Technophobe

The hurrying onset of new technology only serves to prove how little I know about it in the first place. Take my mobile phone for example, Nokia must have me on some sort of CCTV as scientists must do with monkeys in animal experiments:

"Ah, look at him. It looks like he's getting the hang of this mobile phone. Let's bring another one out, make it hard as hell to work, then make him think he can't go on living without having it"

Finnish bastards.

I have a new mobile phone. There was nothing wrong with the last one, other than the fact it wasn't my new one. And because I desperately need to find the quickest way to the local Asda at any time, this phone comes with sat nav installed on it. Told you I desperately needed it.

The problem is that it's temperamental. I switch it on, it switches itself off. Then I have to go through a combination of things to try and tempt it to work again. The repertoire includes turning it off and turning it on again. Removing the memory card and then putting it back in again. And then a combination of both. Nothing is guaranteed to work, it just sometimes does.

Last week I had to go to Marlow for a meeting.

"Do you want a map sending" they said

'Great! A chance to use my satnav for something useful' I thought to myself. 'Map? Pah'

"No, dont worry - just give me the road and I'll get the sat nav to get me there" I said to the enormously impressed woman on the other end of the phone.

It took me 30 minutes to get it to work. By this time I was well down the M1. I know how to get to Marlow, I just wanted the satnav to get me there, to listen to the dulcit tones - 'keep right' it would say. If only I could get the fucking thing to work.

Eventually it started working:

"take the M42" it says as I get close to the turn off.

'Hmmm', I thought 'that's an odd way to go - maybe it knows something I don't'. So went the suggested way, headlong into a traffic jam which took the best part of an hour to emerge from.

Emerging from the traffic jam the satnav gets me to within 10 minutes of Marlow, then my phone rings - yes, it takes calls too. I inadvertently switch the satnav off when answering the call and it refuses to work when I try and switch it back on.

Already 20 minutes late for my meeting I'm driving aimlessly around Marlow swearing at regular intervals. Suddenly it takes pity on me and works, directs me into my destination which is a place I would never have found even if I'd lived next to it.

After the meeting, the satnav is my best friend as I get it to direct me home.

Before the battery runs out half way there.

They just dont get it.

Old Mugabe is in trouble again. Bet he's quaking in his boots.

Human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, worsening from an already lower than low point before the decision to remove 700,000 people from their homes, are now at such a level that the British government has decided to act at last.

'Wahey', I hear you cry. 'What will be their punishment for this effective genocide of his own people we constantly are reading about? How will our goverment help these poor people? Please tell us Watski and make it quick'

Will the UN be deployed? Will tougher sanctions be instilled on an already starving population? Will a rogue leader be ousted in a US/UK funded internal revolt to help world peace? Will we go the whole hog and 'booooomb the bastards' Kenny Everett style?

Not quite.

Jack Straw has written a strong letter to the ICC asking for Zimbabwe to be banned from cricket.

That'll show Mugabe. You don't mess with Britain otherwise this is what happens.

No laughing at the back.

Guess who's back - Watski's back

And so I return. From my all too brief hiatus. Please direct all emails suggesting a longer hiatus to my literary agent.

And I return differently. As a role model, as a guider, as a looker outer and as a holder. My chest is puffed out regularly and there is a skip in my step.

Watski is now officially an Uncle. Oh yes. The lady has well and truly dropped the sprog.

'Uncle Watski' has a nice ring to it. Never did I think I'd hear those words without them being accompanied by 'I am arresting you and confiscating your puppies, lollipops and DVD collection'.