when im with you it feels like we have an audience.

so the first train home was total jokes... i was all sloppy and drunk and eating cold pizza out of tin foil and exchanging filth via text message with my friend too next to this guy in a suit and alls i could think was "my suit is at home today."

second train was much better. i usually have to travel alone because you know, i live forever away from everyone so it was unreal to catch a mates mum in the seat in front of me. how i laughed. she said she knew it was me on the phone (to her son as well) when she heard me talking about how i had disgraced myself. i apologised in case my behaviour had embarrased her and she said she doesnt waste time getting embarrassed. she would be the best mother in law ever, serious.

as we pulled up to the supermarket someone was getting arrested and i wondered if it was someone i knew... it wasnt. i saw a friend i havent spoken to in a very long time (on purpose) inside and instead of a punch i got a hug. i told her about my job and she told me she was waiting on a video rental callback. i said, "how nice that we've both ended up in the film industry" and for a split second when we laughed there was a little bit of the past there.

we had a big family meal because we are never ever together as a unit anymore. most of the discussion centered around fat people and how some of them get flat bottoms from sitting down too long, which was engaging. i havent had a sunday dinner in months. me and my housemate dont have a freezer or like, anything so it all puts a bit of a limit on a few things... this dinner was top notch as well.

i went to see a friend after. her family are hilarious. the kids are mental comedy genius, if i ever reproduce i hope mine are a bit like that. i love seeing her because she never does that ridiculous small talk thing, she just jumps into a random conversation. i really admire people who see the importance of doing this for me when i see them. only the best people do it.

saturday was unreal. it was so sad and decent all at once when we left the coffee shop after meeting my old bosses best mate and all three of us agreed that none of us had laughed like that in as long as we could remember. when did we all turn into these old, miserable people? i seriously cant hack it. it was great to have a break from that for a bit.

saturday night was absolutley ridiculous. we all got terribly reckless and i literally felt exactly how i had wanted to feel for ages, which was 18 again. it seeped into the next day effortlessley, and when we got my mum to drop us at the park i found something i written on it in 2004.

i was an absolute state. we both were, and i loved every second of it. i never get to be a state anymore and i never get to answer "how are you?"truthfully and i never ever get an understanding nod instead of raised eyebrows... it was so good just to have people to talk to about everything and anything. while i was sat on the park i realised how rubbish it would be to take a step backwards in my life but at the same time, i think being so lonely is slowly eating away at me.

it twisted my stomach to hear how everyone was so bored and overworked. i mean, at least we are in this shit together but wow, we have all changed. last night and this morning were so crucial... i hope i never forget them.

ive had my eye on a bag for ages.

huge, waterproof and light blue with a fancy scribbly flower pattern all over it, at £20 it was a reasonable price but still something i needed to persuade myself i had worked hard enough for.

after my seventeen hour shift, i went to get it.

im not a fan of retail therapy, shopping gives me a headache and makes me feel drunk so i avoid it at all costs and in any case, every stupid purchase i make now could mean one less day living in canada next year... that is really what it boils down to.

however, this bag cheered me up. i have needed a decent one for ages and taking everything out of my old one which was falling apart and putting them into this shiny new one was the higlight of my sad little life for an entire day.

i can see how buying materialistic items works for people, but i am lucky enough to have a best friend who sends me beautiful letters which begin with things like "oh hello scarecrow" and follow with the sort of words which make you realise that even the paper they are written on and the ink they are written with really means nothing because something invisible and immeasurable exists which makes nothing hurt quite as much as it ought to.

i would sellotape everything from my bag onto my clothes for my best friend.

"i am very proud that you have become an adult but when you come home can we be children again? and break into the village hall and play with that lion and eat playdough and laugh like we are the most important thing that has ever and will ever exist...?"

nothing else matters.

i like to think we are going to protect each other.

This morning when I opened my eyes, one of my best friends from home was staring back at me, smiling.

I've been sleeping with kyanite under my pillow again so I thought it was all a dream, not a beautiful surprise.

when to keep a friend

"That's not an answer, love. I know I'm the kind of guy you hate till I'm inside you but like it or not, I don't like to think you're in a bad way."

on leaving university

I thought I would feel more. I thought there would be plenty of leaving parties and last hugs goodbye, but there wasn't. People just started to fade away, and I continued to go to work everyday, completley unaffected.

Perhaps it will hit me when September comes, and I realise that we will never sit in a classroom together again, or make a trip to the local pub in between lectures, or laugh and share hangovers and stupid in-jokes. I think that because I am not leaving myself, it doesn't feel like such a huge step. It is nice to return from a long shift and think "well that's me done then, goodnight."

Just before I left for University, someone told me that if I walked out of their front door we would no longer be friends. I called their bluff and left, and we didn't speak for a year. When my Mum found out I was walking home in the middle of the night she came and picked me up and for the first time in our lives, we had a heart-to-heart. She told me what was on her mind, and I returned the favour. Mum said that she thought uni would be good for me and she knew I would be fine because I had always adapted really well to change. I imagined myself to be someone who would find change hard, but over the years I have realised that it affects me so little that it is almost worrying.

I like to be able to fret about tiny things, huge things just seem to happen. I suppose it will be the tiny things I miss most too; Coffee with Chris, laughing with Claire, having a cigarette with Joe and wondering why we weren't closer. Bumping into Alexia and Laurena when we were all late for lectures, and always getting something out of even a really small conversation with them. Sitting on the rock while the lads smoked roll ups and let me join in their crude and hilarious conversations as an honourary man. I'll miss Georgia, because I don't think I will ever meet another person like her.

So yes, the tiny things will creep up on me and demand I feel their absence, but nothing really feels any different.

it has all gone too fast.

if i stop to think too slowly

i will cry and i won't stop

and it wont help.

we lay on a hobo blanket in his front garden.
my legs were in the air.
the flashdance top which had fashioned itself as a dress through choosing a size too big was riding up and revealing the tops of my thighs to the neighbourhood.
his legs lay across mine.
we didnt care.
he drew and i wrote.


he asked me what i wanted to do if i could do anything at all.
"go to canada. become famous. not too famous, just famous enough to matter. then come home and be nobody again, i think that would be cool."
"yeah, that would be cool. i want to have intercourse with barack and michelle obama. i guess your wish is slightly more plausible."
we laughed, almost catnapped, and when the clouds covered the sun we went inside to watch a film.

just a perfect day

i loved that mental jetlag.

my body was sat, arse frozen on my doorstep puffing on a roll-up i wish i hadnt told myself i wanted, while my mind was still 100 miles away on warm grass in the sunshine with everyone who mattered once.

having another place to call home means i can escape and three years are quickly erased. the memories we cant share are wiped clean and all that is left is an easier, simpler time when we were just friends with few real cares or worries, living out of each others pockets with a naive outlook on the world.in a small town you can dream that you will become anything.

today is my half birthday,

the day i went to belgium last year and experienced one of the biggest learning curves of my life

and the day my parents started going out in their second year of university.

i went to bed at 4am and got a call at 5am telling me to go outside. i thought i was dreaming and went to look. my friend sam was stood outside the house with his bike wearing sunglasses. i invited him in and we had a little talk. i read the toon tellegen letter from the squirrel to the ant and then we went to sleep.

i had a dream last night that someone cut off my limbs and i was going to die, and a man took me in his arms and kissed me. i cried and said "thank you for making me feel less undesirable." i told my friends i was cross that i couldnt think of a poem to say as my final words and we all laughed.

my housemate took me into her room today to show me a lilac clockwork bunny with chicken feet called mr. easter... this wasnt a dream.

everything is temporary

im so lazy with my addictions.

at this moment in time it is hard to imagine a time when i didnt go more than 24 hours without a drink (i rarely find time to drink now)
but it is equally hard to remember how on earth i gave up smoking last year.

i have given up three times this year already, and i know it is better to be healthy and miss it, but right now i dont have time to go outside and forget myself by running through the meadows or drinking in the streets.

smoking on a rainy doorstep is my only current getaway. momentarily it substitutes being around everyone in the picture.


i long for a time when i can holiday again,

i want ghent 2009 back,

i want to play in paris,

i want to surf in cornwall.
The other day i noticed that i am rarely homesick for cheshire anymore and i think this is because the time when i leave leicester for good to go back there temporarily is shrinking right before my eyes so now i am trying to hold on very tightly to something which i spent a lot of time over the summer trying to escape. funny, that.

i would like christmas to hurry back soon...

"you are always causing trouble"

perhaps,

but at least i am self aware enough to realise when i am being irritatingly smug, flaky or pretentious... i am being smug about this right now, just so you know.

this is what smug looks like.

you really cant win can you.
if you keep something to yourself, it eats you up and makes you bitter.
if you share it, you are bitching,
and if you are honest, you are trouble.

sometimes i really want to grab a few induviduals and shout

OH MY GOD YOU ARE JUST AS SHIT AS I AM!

because i dont remember anyone in this world having the authority to let them think they were anything else.

well well well

"i asked him how he could still be friends with them both when they had gone behind his back"

if i had said it was possible i would be starting a very contradictory argument.

if i said it wasnt, i would be reminding her that she had done the same to me.