Halloween

Last year I went as a French maid.  I probably would've recycled the costume and worn it again this year, only I foolishly left it at my ex's house and I don't think it's really cricket to turn up at the door enquiring after one's maid outfit.

So I have managed to cobble something together, and while it isn't perfect it is at least a fuck sight better than the year I went as a paedophile and had to walk around all night with my shirt poking out of my undone flies.  Strangely enough, that is not one of the Halloweens I recall with pleasure.

Apparently Heaven has introduced a breathalyser.  That is Heaven, the club in London, and not the religious ideal of an afterlife, though perhaps that heaven should also introduce a breathalyser to keep out the riffraff.  But for now, it remains the club.

If there's anything that just shits on Halloween, it's a breathalyser at the doorway.

Happy Halloween.

I have always wanted to go as a plague doctor, but the costume so far eludes me.

In the army

I mentioned yesterday that I spent a year in the Territorial Army, which was a ludicrous decision on my part and which I suspect primarily resulted from enjoying the film Dog Soldiers a bit too much.  What I declined to mention at the time was that I was promised, or essentially betrothed, to Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy for the training of officers.

Clearly that would have been an absolutely devastating blow to the British Military, which likely would have crumbled in my very presence and resulted in a Guinness World Record of Mutinies and the eventual toppling of the monarchy.  Thankfully, I had the good sense to decline the offer before it was too late, which followed after a conversation with the army doctor at my last medical examination.

Doctor: So you mentioned on your form that you suffer from mental problems.  Care to expand on that a bit for me?

Cecil: Well it's just anxiety, really.  Depression.  Minor-sounding sort of things.

Doctor: Minor-sounding, yes.  What symptoms do you get with the anxiety?

Cecil: Heart palpitations.  Paranoia.  General feelings of... doom, and such.

Doctor: Doom?

Cecil: General doom.

Doctor: (writing) General doom...  Ok.  Any idea what might be causing that?

Cecil: Not especially.

Doctor: Any issues at home?  Family, relationship, money?

Cecil: No.  Nice family.  Zero relationship.  Zero money, but it's been worse.

Doctor: It would help if there was something you could pin it on.  Some kind of reason.

Cecil: Pfff... (blowing air out of the mouth in defeated consideration) Boredom, I would think.  I had nothing to do over the summer and I got so bored it drove me mad.

Doctor: Mad mad?

Cecil: Not Jack the Ripper mad, no.

Doctor: So nothing very specific?

Cecil: I'm afraid not.

Pause.

Doctor: The problem is, you see, that I can't really write he got so bored he developed an anxiety disorder.

Cecil: That is essentially what happened, though.

Doctor: But still.  Are you sure there weren't any relationship issues?

Cecil: I wish there had been the opportunity for some.

Doctor: I see.  Well.  I'll note it down then.

Writes.  Probably writes 'relationship issues.'

Doctor: But I can't see why it should be any barrier to you joining the army.

Cecil: Oh.

Doctor: So that's good, isn't it?

Horrified pause.

Cecil: Well I'm just not sure I'm really the right sort of person for leading men into battle.

Doctor: I think the army would do well for having someone like you with them.  We have a lot of psychopaths, you know.  Nice to get some variety.

Cecil: Psychopaths?

Doctor: Psychopaths.  Anyway, that all seems in order.  Now whip off your pants and we'll see if that's all in order too.

Curtain.

But despite the doctor's diagnosis and his following thorough investigation of my balls, I decided that the military was not for me.

It is, however, full of psychopaths.  So sleep well, knowing the safe and reasonable hands your country is in.

I am in this photo somewhere, though luckily not close enough to see how wildly out-of-place I look.

Sleeping is a drag

You don't need to suffer from anxiety to simultaneously suffer from a shit night's sleep.  My parents always were, and I'm sure remain to be, up at all hours, watching the clock.  My father, however, is one of those loathsome morning people who happily gets up at 6am and proceeds to do one thousand sit ups before work.  And that is no word of a lie.  On holidays he adds an extra five hundred as a treat.

Once asleep, I am generally able to remain that way.  It is, however, the getting there that troubles me.  I can lie awake for hours staring into the dark, and then work myself up into borderline hysteria by either contemplating what might happen if a monster propelled itself at me from the depths of the wardrobe, or pondering on the inevitability of death and the meaning of infinity.

I must be a lark to spend a day with.

Being as I have to haul myself up for work at 6.15am Monday to Friday, this clearly is not the ideal scenario.  I have found in the past that prolonged periods without sleep can result in the most unpleasant hallucinations.  Only last month I was beset by tiny black creatures hurtling down my bedroom wall, which threw me all manner of lurid expressions until I looked at one directly, when it would mysteriously vanish into the air.  And this is not something that has happened to me with such severity since my ill-advised year in the Territorial Army, when I spent one night on sentry duty and the sapling opposite took on a most grotesque form of a zombie soldier.  I damn near shot it and I was only carrying blanks.

Since then, I have attempted to devise a number of methods that might aid me in departing to the Land of Nod and preventing those black monsters from ever reappearing.  Some have been successful, and some not so.

Drinking copious amounts of alcohol was one of the latter.  Not only did I feel gravely ill by 2am, but I had to go to work the following morning with a debilitating hangover and a persistent need to vomit.  And being a teaching assistant, I cannot readily plonk myself down in the classroom and bemoan my stomach churning with bargain bin wine.

Music too did not help, as the mind inevitably wandered back to anxieties of the day, and even somebody giving me a funny look at the train station could lead me to wonder if I was unconsciously doing something horrible, like wanking, or screaming without realising at the prospect of another ten hour shift.

For now, what I have settled on is leaving the laptop beside my bed with myriad Youtube videos playing one after the other.  I confess, quite ashamedly, that I am something of a fan of Let's Plays - that being one of those videos where someone plays a game and one sort of... watches along.  I know that they are generally considered the territory of twelve year old boys who play COD and use words like 'rekd' and 'scrub,' but I still enjoy them.  Believe you me, I take no great pleasure in admitting this, because I have thus far kept it a closely guarded secret, but if it can help someone other than myself, then all the better for it.

So if you too might consider this a tactic, here is a recommendation, bearing in mind that I am in no way affiliated with any Youtuber, and am not simply acting as an incredibly poor and roundabout advertiser.  I personally enjoy Lazy Game Reviews, which have a charming combination of a pleasant-voice gentleman and amusing commentary.  While I occasionally laugh myself awake, they do a wonderful job of taking my mind off my various imagined maladies and the fate of the universe.  For the past couple of weeks I have happily fallen asleep to them, and woken up about thirty videos down and with a growing electricity bill.  It is, for the time being, working.

I have also tried Pewdiepie and Cr1TiKaL, but there tend to be a few more gunshots in those and gunshots are not especially conducive to sleep.  Even if they are blanks fired into zombie soldiers.

I don't care what anyone says.  I like Pewdiepie.

Well he isn't for everyone.

How not to frighten away your partner

After a tragically arid year, I find myself coming up to a one month anniversary with my partner.  It's not an anniversary I would ever consider actively celebrating, but it is nonetheless nice to know that some sort of milestone has been reached, and that it will hopefully be the first of many.  Especially after a time so excruciatingly bereft of coitus that I was beginning to have visions of the monastery.

My partner, H, is a serving soldier and everything that I fail to be.  That is, calm, rational, comfortably sociable, and with a level of masculinity that I could only dream of.  It's at that sort of stage where we are happy enough in each others' company to, 1. go for a team wee, and 2. discuss matters that a few weeks ago would've made us run, screaming, in opposite directions with their seriousness.  I don't mean marriage or any such madness, but just a level of commitment that crops up after a certain amount of time.

What hasn't been brought up though, is the topic of MHI (I absolutely abhor using the term 'mental health issues' so I am abbreviating it thus).  I am unsure how to, or even if I should, drop it into the conversation.

'I have periods of black despair.'
'I must talk with you about my forthcoming malaise.'
'Like the Phantom of the Opera, I do on occasion find myself overcome by the melancholia.  I just want to warn you ahead of time because now we are together you are going to have to suffer my cranial torment.'

Now I don't especially want to say these things, because I don't want to send poor H backing away lest I whip out a carving knife or worse, treating me any differently because of it.  As it is, I have only cried once in our time together, but that was because I was extraordinarily drunk and somehow managed to deflect my vomit back into my own face.  So far it hasn't really been an issue.  But sooner or later there's going to come one of those days when, without warning, all that interminable palpitating starts and the twitchy hands come out and I refuse to travel further than the off licence for some much-needed but probably detrimental cigarettes.  And when that dark day does arrive, I want it to be understood that all I really need is a cup of tea and a bit of time, and not that I'm being standoffish, weird, and a shit.  Somehow, that needs to be understood.  And I'm not sure how.

For the time being, the pondering continues.

He probably doesn't cry as much as I do.

Everybody panic

I am as yet unsure on the statistics of panic attacks, and of how many people shall be forced, wailing, to endure them, but I assume it is not as low as I would think.

What I was entirely unaware of was the sheer variety of panic attacks, the multitude of forms that they may take.  It's a bit like wine; one man's Merlot is another man's urine, and one man's ejaculation is another man's Cabernet Sauvignon.  Would that any of them were as tasty as Merlot.

From a short perusal of the NHS website, one would assume that they consist entirely of clutching one's arm, out of breath, and probably lunging over the desk of A&E to check yourself in a little swifter than the staff can manage.  Which, in reality, is probably not very swift at all.  Half your face could've fallen off and they'd still tell you to take a seat and behave.  Now I'm not saying I've never done this, because I have, and there was an ungodly amount of screaming involved, but that was more due to a pathetically palpitating heart than an actual panic attack.  No.  Mine tend to make themselves known at the most inopportune moments, often on trains, and they attack in an altogether different manner of fury.

I sit, still, silent, with an incomprehensible and overwhelming sense of doom oozing out of every pore.  Death is mere moments away.  The Reaper is tapping at my shoulder.  I am seconds away from curling up on the floor and weeping, which is not an altogether infrequent thing for me, but I try to avoid it in public simply because I value my reputation as an Englishman.  So instead I sit still, life flashing before my eyes and regrets boiling out of my ears, occasionally nibbling at my nails when I work up enough courage to move.  Then I convince myself I must've accidentally eaten some drugs and am currently overdosing on an unrecognised narcotic that they won't be able to diagnose at the hospital so I will recede into cramps and general bleeding until I die, twitching, on the floor of Accident and Emergency because I've fallen off one of the seats again.

And then I'll likely be told to sit back down and stop being a ridiculous man.  And I won't be able to stop being ridiculous, because I'll be dead.

That's the sort of panic attack I get.  And I do wonder how many types there are, and I wonder if the next time I see someone staring off into the distance on a train, they are contemplating their entire livelihood and its moment of ending.  If you see me, that's what I'll be doing.

Apologies to the staff of the Royal Free who had to put up with my shenanigans each week.

Sherlock Holmes and the Ripper Murders

I had the Dubious Honour of being invited to the theatre by a friend last night.  Now ordinarily I wouldn't consider such an invitation Dubious, because I do enjoy a trip to the theatre.  Only, it became Dubious ten minutes in when the quality of the production was revealed.

This was Sherlock Holmes and the Ripper Murders at Reading Hexagon, which sees Holmes and Watson taking on the nefarious Victorian killer, Jack the Ripper.  It all sounded rather fun and the few reviews I had cast my eye over beforehand hadn't been entirely scathing.  Unfortunately it later transpired that they were wrong, and that I too was wrong for having agreed so eagerly to go along.

Written by Brian Clemens - allegedly anyway; frankly I don't think it was written at all - it also stars his son, Samuel, as Holmes.  Samuel Clemens, you may have noticed, was also the real name of Mark Twain, and indeed, they are related.  While it would be unfair to expect the Current Clemens Clan to have inherited the literary genius of their forebear, you would hope some semblance of the gene might have survived the ages.  Alas, it appears to have been interred with Twain, where last night it was no doubt viciously tossed about as he span.  One can only hope for the family's sake that another thing he failed to pass down was his middle name, 'Langhorne.'

The main problem - and that's main, mark you, not only - was the fact that the story didn't flow.  You could've shuffled the scenes about hither and yon and it wouldn't have made any more sense.  In fact I'm not entirely convinced some stagehand didn't drop all the scripts on the floor before he gave them to the actors and then everyone just went with it.  There were pictures of Mary Kelly's body popping up before Mary Kelly was even dead.  And when she did die, it wasn't in the place that she really died and therefore the pictures that could've weakly been explained away as 'foreshadowing' were now just void.  The set was passable, though one could frequently see the actors hidden behind the projection screen waiting for their cue.  The last time I experienced that was at Blackpool Pleasure Beach watching a so-called 'magic show,' which was without a doubt the worst performance I have ever seen, but then I was at Blackpool so I managed to quell my horror until I had removed myself from the theatre and cheered myself up with a ride on the teacups.  The music was really quite hideous and it just wouldn't stop, and the sound effects mistimed and unusual.  Jack the Ripper kept whipping his knife out with a screech more suited to a two-handed battleaxe from the Mines of Moria bouncing off a goblin shield - and usually a couple of seconds too late.  Once, on a request from Holmes to close the curtains, Watson only had to turn and give said curtains a stony glare before they had tugged themselves together in fright.

I felt a little bad for the actors, because there wasn't a whole lot they could've done to rescue the situation.  But they could've at least tried.  Holmes was bland and his voice impossible to decipher unless he was looking right at me, which he did do sometimes but I found it unnerving, like I was being singled out and he was probably in the process of making some Holmesian deduction that I was having an awful time.  The ill-conceived and irrelevant love interest, Mrs Meade, was projecting far too loudly into her co-actors' faces and also seemed to have the uncanny ability to speak solely out of her nose.  Only Watson had any real character, though he was blessed with all four of the decent lines, and his cockney twang did feel a little... out-of-place, for the occasion.  However, special mention should go to the man who had the fit, because having a fit on stage looks like one of the most gut-wrenchingly humiliating things the human body could ever be forced to endure, and I only snorted with laughter once.  So well done you, sir.

I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, but one should at least try not to alienate all of the people in the first ten minutes.  The last play I went to see was a student performance called Bricking It at King's College London.  It was better written, better directed, and better acted than Sherlock Holmes and it only cost a fiver.  It was entirely put together by students with little experience, in their spare time, and I know for a fact that students do not have a lot of spare time because they must spend it all studying and recovering from crippling hangovers.  It made the audience laugh for all the right reasons and I didn't look at my watch once.  I would say that the company behind Sherlock could learn a thing or two from them, but really, I shouldn't have to.  There's no excuse for such a poor show, and certainly not when it's charging twenty pounds for the privilege.  I could've got half-way to rat-arsed in the nearest Wetherspoons for that amount of money.

And right now, I wish I did.

After reading this, the director called me a twat and made fun of my name.

Reading is bad for you

Cecil, in the library, with the medical encyclopedia.  I must've been about five years old, and still in a state of wide-eyed innocence concerning the realism of my own mortality.  But there, in that dark, unfriendly library that smelt of urine and tragedy, this naivety was swiftly and mercilessly killed.  By some stroke of incredible misfortune, I opened the book straight onto the page about brain tumours, and history was made.  I became fixated on the idea that it was now inevitable that I would contract one, and that my head would likely have exploded by the end of the month.

I'm told I wouldn't sleep on my own for the rest of the week, and that I cried until I got so dehydrated I fell off a swing.  I'm sure they put me on the swing to cheer me up, but I was still crying while swinging and I probably slipped off on my own tears.  All this resulted in was a slightly lacerated arse, but that at least had the happy effect of distracting me from brain tumours.  I managed to stop crying for quite frequent intervals, and as more time went by without my cranium having gone Super Saiyan, I relaxed a little.

While my head still hasn't exploded, and the most serious illness I have suffered from was a short bout of rubella, I am still dogged by irrational terrors that said head might pop.  Each time there's a pain on one side of my skull I think I must be having a stroke.  A twinge in my chest is probably an embolism.  I know it almost certainly isn't an embolism, but I am convinced at the time that it is.  It is a strange thing.

All this came to a bit of a head last year, when I convinced myself that I was having my third heart attack (my first two having been dismissed as indigestion), and burst into A&E claiming my demise was imminent and I must have an electric shock before I shuffle off this mortal coil, all the while crying, again.  But, ten blood tests and five ECGs and two chest x-rays and one twenty-four hour heart monitor later, I was told I was not suffering from a heart problem, and I was not about to die and please stop coming in, Mr Cavender, you are wasting NHS resources.

But even if the symptoms were psychosomatic, they were still there.  So instead of a heart attack, the diagnosis became anxiety, and then depression, and then all the sorts of things I had never, ironically, worried about getting.  But now they're here and as real as a brain tumour, and if reading got me into this then perhaps writing can get me out.  Maybe it might make all the talk of medication and therapy a little less terrifying.

This has to be more common than it feels.

A real, medical example of a severely distended cranium.