Returning to old habits, but I don’t mind. I might even eat here. I tell myself I need to buy coffee but perhaps I don’t. Coffee can just be a treat on days off. I could have stayed at home and watched films today. I still get restless if I stay at home all day. Staying at home feels unproductive. I’ll watch films later, and iron clothes. I should cook food too.
On the train here a man in front of me stood up and took his top off in a posturing, wanting to be seen way. He later did the same style posturing as he enrobed again ready to get off. The display of flesh is not the best I’ve seen, nothing exciting, just normal. Quite strange behaviour on a crowded air conditioned train.
There was a group of asian men near me earlier. Two are quite attractive, with large deep soulful eyes. They left, now three of them have returned. I wonder why. Their conversation has diminished, they’re drinking Guinness and looking sombre. Perhaps they’re taking turns going to a wake that none of them really want to attend.
Sometimes I would like Sundays to be more like the one represented in the famous Hancock’s Half Hour episode, languidly reposing at home, being content not doing much, because there was no expectation otherwise. The best radio episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour were those based around the home at Railway Cuttings and the surrounding urban village. Of the TV episodes I liked the final UK series, by which time Tony had lost all his friends, home and East Cheam community status, and was reduced to the status of listless single man, past his prime, living in a rented room in Earls Court. When I was a teenager I had a romantic notion of living that life myself one day. It could come true still. The Cromwell Road and the westway have a romantic pull for me. There’s an unseen vista of possibility somewhere that way, between the present and the sunset. I’m getting nostalgic about familiar comfortable tv series’ now. The Good Life, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, The Durrells. I pay for arthouse film services, so I suppose I should watch them more.
I wish I could learn to just enjoy life more. I need to find a way to let go of work, whether literally, or metaphorically. I’m just bored with it now, unstimulated. There’s a dull secondment about voucher balances coming up. I was made to apply for it even though I didn’t want to. It will be very officey. I could treat it as therapy, a chance to take a break, step back, re-evaluate. I wonder if I could just exist in the job until an early retirement, then live in Berlin or Glasgow, dance all night, watch the sun rise, wait for the subway to start, eat hearty brunch, have sex in front of an open fire in a room with faded paint and cracking plaster. That’s the future then.
Andrew Stevenson 