Day 41: Miserable Photo #2

It is a cold Tuesday morning. You get off the bus, and step into a puddle. You look up, and you see this. I don't even know where to begin.

I mean, it's not unusual for charity shops to have strange window displays - if anything it's fairly standard practice. I particularly enjoy the way they try and entice you in with what they feel are likely to be the finest pieces of shite they have on offer; which usually tends to be a handful of Steven Seagal films on VHS, and a dusty boxed copy of Wing Commander III.

But this... This is just bleak.

Day 36: Bad Day

Some days I just get out of bed the wrong way, and the world seems somehow perfectly shaped into awkward pointy bits that seem intent on repeatedly poking me in the eyes. That was a metaphor, by the way - people haven't actually been poking me in the eyes mum, don't worry. It's at this point though that I do all I can to remind myself that things really could be worse. And of course, it could be so much worse - because I could be that guy. I could be trapped in an inexplicable rage, wanting nothing more than an endless corridor of swinging doors to blast through, with backing music by Nick Cave. But i'm not that guy.

One day though, it really could all go to shit. It could all go totally wrong - big time. One day I might just give up, and retire to a simple life of hiding under duvets and growling at passers by, cautiously venturing out of my quilted fortress to hunt for videogames and biscuits; crying myself to sleep amidst a sea of crumbs. This could happen. But I will never be that guy. That guy has to be that guy for the rest of his life. I couldn't live with that. Could you?

I'm thinking of getting it framed and keeping a copy on my desk, just to help stop me from slipping into a black hole of self indulgent misery. In the meantime, I've just bought myself eight luxury chocolate croissants, which should hopefully make a dent in this wall of Tuesday meh.

Wish me luck.

Day 28: Pocket Lint

Check your pockets right now- you're likely to find at least one.

My desk is spattered with a handful; folded and frayed. A quick scan has me spotting six.

The murky depths of every set of pockets I command are clogged with their sediment; the mashed up paper hiding untold tales of our thrilling forgotten lives:

N/VALLEY OAT & HONEY, GO/AH R/BERRY BRK, PREPACKED BROCCOLI.

They've always gotten in the way - a fistful of coins squeezed and scrunched into a pocket - smoothness of motion hindered by their unwanted wrapping paper. Often difficult to distinguish from weathered five pound notes - leading to various unfortunate conclusions.

They're a nuisance.

Oh, and the fact that you're given them with fucking everything also ensures they've lost almost all significance, which tends to cause complications when expense claims get thrown into the mix.

Lately however, rather than being handed a bit of crumple with your cash, handy little machines dispense them so you can take them yourself. This would seem a brilliant idea - letting you take your receipt if you want to.

Of course whilst it's technically entirely your choice whether or not you take the receipt, it rarely feels that way. As you turn to leave, staff immediately point at the forgotten slip of paper peeking out of the machine whilst glaring at you with their sickeningly helpful, smiling eyes. Being a painfully polite soul myself, I'll turn back and awkwardly take it - with clear emphasis on awkward due to the fact that by this stage my hands are full of loose change, shopping bags, iphone, and wallet. I'm clearly at full capacity, and yet they insist on adding more.

If you've got your hands even vaguely full when offered a leaflet by someone in the street, it's a standard response to give that little 'no hands!' shrug before wandering off. And yet I'll happily go out of my way to ensure i'm able to take a small piece of paper informing me i've just bought a Mars bar, adding it to a ceaseless flow of utterly useless crumpled up bits of rubbish that i'll inexplicably keep for a couple of weeks at least.

No, I don't have a Clubcard.

Day 2

Last night I spent the evening trying to fix the somewhat lacklustre Internet Virgin Media kindly spunked through my letterbox last month. In the past I've been somewhat of a technical genius when it comes to plugging cables into things, but it seems I've met my match. Hunched sideways on the floor of the drafty hallway where our router resides left me feeling like a bonsai kitten, shaken, on the rocks. With a healthy splash of despair. Garnished with a weak metaphor.

Turns out the router I bought to replace the junk Virgin provided only has an RJ-11 ADSL WAN output, where I of course need an RJ-45 LAN output to connect to the Virgin modem box thing for full-on virgin cable MEGA-WAN. It's quite likely that you'll find the above to be insurmountable blabber, and that's entirely reasonable. In the same way a man like me will genuinely ask whether or not it's important to have those funny little bubble bits in the heels of running shoes, I can't reasonably expect other people to have any knowledge on tech junk. My standard pub quiz answer to anything sports related for example, is consistently "FOOTBALL" with a varying quantity of exclamation marks on the end.

But this is supposed to be my specialist subject, and despite that I've managed to buy a router which is entirely useless, before spending a good part of an hour fumbling around in a haze of wild profanity and misplaced optimism before unavoidably admitting that I don't really have a clue what I'm doing. Failure's one thing, but it's the painfully stereotypical nature of it that hurts most, as to me it seems worryingly like textbook 'DAD' behaviour.

I'll no doubt be revisiting the topic again in 2020, where I'll most likely be Cyber-Blog-Chastising youths for their neuro-implants and hoverboard antics, and stoically maintaining that I'm perfectly capable of fixing my own Skynet. Don't touch it son - you'll break it.