I have not started this blog for creative purposes. I have no wish to express myself. I don't want to use this space as a forum for debate or to advocate some political point of view that I feel I can no longer suppress. I don't even like blogs. I have, my dear reader, set up this account out of sheer boredom. Nothing more nothing less.
Summer is upon us, which surely means that good times are upon us too. Summer is about strutting around the garden shirtless drinking ice-cold beer, right? It's about laying naked in hammocks reading chunky bestsellers whilst your entire body braises like some delicious steak and a lowly peasant massages suntan lotion into your back and fans you dutifully. It's about beaches and sunglasses and blue skies and ice cream. It's about It's about swimming pools and barbeques and iced tea and revealing outfits. Nope. Summer, for me, is the worst of the four seasons. The loser. The runt of the litter. Give me the rain and sleet and snowmen of winter anyday, or the rebirth of spring or the flurrying leaves of autumn... Summer, by contrast, is one three-month long sweaty haze. Going outside is a chore. The heat makes me nauseous and sick. It makes me want to insult random people in the street. It allows people to wear baseball caps and get away with it. My lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer are spent indoors, in the dark, with the curtains closed, aggressively muttering obscenities.
So, I've been thinking long and hard. How can I make these boiling days of torture more bearable? I was going to say pleasurable there, but hey, let's not run before we can walk. Bearable is a good place to start. I have no summer holiday to look forward to - well, not as such. I was offered the oppertunity to accompany my Mother's side of the family to France for 2 weeks. I know what you're thinking - why didn't you want to go to France you lunatic? Well, banish all images of crusty baguettes, snails and The Eiffel Tower... the French "holiday" upon which I was invited was to be spent in a Buddhist retreat. Now, I have nothing against any of that, but to me, the notion of being awoken at 6am by a loud ringing bell and spending the day doing chores, meditating or attending lectures in Vietnamese didn't sound like fun. Why not just invite me to go and hang out in the slums of some third world country and call that a holiday too? I politely declined.
But all things considered, I do want a holiday. Just not that holiday. A holiday that sounds, well, um, you know, like a holiday. All the people I know, which to be fair you could probably count on the fingers of one hand, would rather go abroad on holiday to a place that is even more hideously hot than it is here. No thank you. They want to go to places like Ibiza, where they'd sunbathe and dance and drink cocktails with sexually suggestive names and sleep with strangers. Not for me. So, I span my globe and decided that my holiday destination of choice would be - *drum roll please* - Cardiff. Yep, that's right. Cardiff. C - A - R - D - I - F - F. The capital of Wales. I know what you're thinking - Cardiff??? Why would you want to go to Cardiff? That Buddhist retreat sounds preferable to a few days in Cardiff! But I've always wanted to go. I like the Welsh accent (a lot) and the place is renowned for its perpetually torrential rain. It'd be perfect. Of course, nobody in their right mind would agree to go with me. I can't think of anyone I could ask who might say yes. I can't even think of anyone I could pay to come with me. So, unless you're reading this and thinking 'Wow, Cardiff, what a great idea! I'd LOVE to go!", I think I am destined to go alone. Still, I could stay in a cheap B&B, take some books... soul search, clear my head, use a false name. Who knows what might happen?
The other route to cautiously tip-toeing down is the world of work. Except I've submitted CVs until I'm blue as a Smurf's face. I had an interview for the local library, except I didn't put enough emphasis on the fact that you can now buy coffee at libraries, so apparently I wasn't what they were looking for. And I'm not yet well-qualified enough to get a job in a supermarket... still, gives me something to aspire towards. So my Mother suggests on a twice-weekly basis that I should do some voluntary work; give something back to the community, not that I feel I owe them anything, mind. I was thinking the Samaritans, maybe? Problem there is that I'll get somebody desperately suicidal ring up, I'm bound to say the wrong thing and then I'll end up with a dead body on my conscience. Mum says it'll make me feel good about myself, but if I end up feeling responsible for a death then I'm not convinced I would feel good about myself at all.
Idea Number Three - Read. Read lots. Read books, lots of books, long books, short books, old books, new books, books with pictures, books without, hardbacks, paperbacks, bestsellers, classics... can anybody recommend any of the following? I've got a teetering pile of books on my bedroom cabinet: The Plot Against America (Philip Roth), 1984 and Animal Farm (George Orwell), Fremder (Russell Hoban), The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen), Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Woolf), The Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger), Brick Lane (Monica Ali), Life of Pi (Yann Martel), The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger), A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens), Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier), Tess of the D'Ubervilles (Thomas Hardy), Lunar Park (Bret Easton Ellis), The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks), The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghirst), Solar (Ian McEwan), The Accidental (Ali Smith), The Dark Tower (Stephen King), The Sea (John Banville), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami). And breathe! Plenty to get on with there, books of all varieties there. And books alleviate boredom, right? Right?
Other potential ideas include drink more - you can't be bored if you're drunk. You can get headaches, you can vomit and you can become overly sentimental, but I defy anybody to equate drunkenness to boredom. I could kill myself of course... problem solved in the blink of an eye. I could sleep more. You can't be bored if you're asleep. Unless of course you dream about being bored. I could devote these long, sticky days to exercise; time well spent. Turn my keg into a six-pack, or at least a four-pack. And I've got my dog's 4th birthday party approaching at the end of the month; that'll take planning. Scary how quickly they grow up.
Right, off now to stare blankly into space for a bit.
Byyyeeeee!!!
