The Procrastinator

In an effort to kill the procrastinator in me once and for all (but I so love it) I have joined up with some other comedians in order to improve and focus our comedy writing.  I think it's fair to say that I love nothing more than to allow my brain to puke a load of rubbish in crappy formats such as this when really I should be forcing myself to once again write constructively. 

...so, here I am, attempting to rein myself in and not just spill the darkest depths of my strange thought patterns (I've learned that the last lot about the bathroom crossed the line of being mildly amusing to actually Sket, you may need to seek some professional help.  I had been thinking people would understand and agree that they too have similar thoughts!) Right, one of the exercises for this week is to write something called 'The 7 Ages of Me'.  I need to pick a theme (the example was living arrangements eg. living with parents, student accommodation, getting your own house, losing said house and living back with parents etc. etc.) and then adding afterthoughts.  I have decided to write about the 7 ages of my mental health.  Shit, there's a definite theme to my life isn't there?  Ok, here goes:

1. Childhood:  As a child I was brave and fearless.  I was scared of nothing as neither the Fates nor my parents had yet been given the opportunity to fuck me up in those extra special ways that only those two agencies, are they agencies, can. I was a mentally healthy and happy child UNTIL it would seem that I developed a fear of taking a shit. Yup, as a child I feared the faeces.  Not actually the faeces itself but the ACT of defecation.  I understand that I would be playing happily, most often in just pants with a towel tied around my neck and a giant S lipsticked across my chest, as I played Superman with the toy lobster I particularly loved.  I do need to question who exactly buys their kid a lobster though. I do have to say that on reflection, I'd LOVE to live in just my pants and a cape only I guess that my housemate would more than likely object which, quite frankly is very rude and judegemental although I can, in a certain light, appreciate that if I refused to wear a bra and had lipstick smeared across my breasts people might talk, and not in a good way.  My housemate might ask me to move out and then I'd be homeless... in just my pants and a cape which might attract the attention of the authorities.  I digress. My Mother tells me that I would be playing happily before stopping, teeth clenched, face scrunched and pretending that it was totally normal to have a sphincter tighter than erm, something really REALLY tight. 
2. AT SCHOOL: By this time I'd met people and was now beginning my life of paranoia.  I fully believed everyone hated me and so felt the need to find out what they were saying.  During a school trip I had been forced to share...........I'm bored now. 
3. COLLEGE: Monsters
4. WORK: Monsters
5. DATING: Don't touch me and Monsters
6. SINGLETON: Something about being found rotted into the carpet covered in flies by TV's Life of Grime crew.
7. OLD GIT: Something about being a piss stained crazy cat lady wearing just my incontinence pants and a red cape with my ancient withered boobs hanging down around my knees

I'm so ashamed of myself.  The procrastinator within me ALWAYS wins. 

The Bathroom

I may have mentioned before that I get bizarre thoughts every time I go into my bathroom.  I've only shared one of the scenarios that haunts my head with you and that's the one where I wonder what would happen if aliens kidnapped me and I was placed in some weird alien zoo in what they think is my natural habitat (the bathroom) and only feed me whatever they have analysed has been in my stomach on the day I was taken.  Yeah, I know.......probably shouldn't be sharing the thoughts I get.

Anyhoo, I have a new bathroom scenario now.  Have you ever seen that film The Mist? It's based on a Steven King story and all the people get trapped in a supermarket by a mist which contains monsters from another dimension or something?  It's always been my dream to be trapped in a supermarket. On my own of course, not with a bunch of freaks and weirdos.  Any way, I was sitting on the loo, looking around and my dog sort of threw herself at the closed door in a futile attempt at making me let her in.  She demands play ALL the sodding time, even when I'm on my knees with my head down the pan bringing my guts up.  I'll eventually turn around and find a squeaky fried egg, a squeaky chop, a formerly squeaky bone and a chewed up plastic Ozzy Osborne dropped around my feet and a ridiculously hairy dog in the 'ready' position (head on floor, arse in the air - you know the type of thing) waiting for me to kick stuff at her.  She's some kind of sheepdog throwback.  It's a nightmare.  Y'know, once I tried to test whether she had any Lassie-like skills and did a dramatic, heart clutching death in front of her to see what she'd do.  Sat on the back of my fucking head, that's what she did. 

...but I digress.  To recap, me sitting on loo, dog banged door.  So yeah, the simple act of the dog banging against the closed door of the bathroom gave my freaky brain the opportunity to start thinking stuff I should really keep to myself.  Initially I got a thrill that I was on one side of the door and if a bunch of small monsters took over the house (no, I don't know why or how either....) they wouldn't have the brain to know that the door wasn't still part of the wall and then I could live in there without them knowing.  I looked around the bathroom as I have done many times before and nodded silently to myself that I could happily live in the bathroom.  I then spied that the window was slightly open.  With horror I remembered THE MIST and then got lost in thought about the little monsters in the house and decided they'd come out of the mist.  SHIT - I needed to close the window before the flying bug things flew in, stung me and made my face blow up until I was dead!  OR the monstrous spiders could get in and their webs burn through you and the man was full of spider-monster eggs and OH. MY. GOD close the window Sket!

I couldn't be arsed to close the window.  Heck, it was only bizarre spewings from my ridiculous excuse of a brain any way.  I worried about my dog (The Kraken - it's lovely when she's asleep.  NEVER wake the dog) and decided that if the monsters came I would be brave enough to quickly open the bathroom door and drag her in rather than live with the guilt of having allowed her to be killed.  Hell, it would be nice to have some company but would she give me away by whining when the hunger got to her.  I'd already decided I'd be able to live on toothpaste for a short time but a dog?  Nah, the dog'd NEVER accept a bit of minty toothpaste for dinner.  If the monsters realised there was someone living behind what they thought was a wall they might attack the door and then I'd be fucked.  I decided they probably wouldn't like being sprayed with water from the shower head but then I'd have to live in just the shower cubicle and never sleep in case they climbed over the top to get me!  What if tentacle monsters or the spiders or something came up through the plug hole?  I'd be fucked!  By the time I was rescued I'd be mental and knackered and possibly blind 'cause I'd had my contact lenses in for longer than the prescripted amount of time! 

...at least I'd have minty breath.

I need to just go to the loo, do my business (of powdering.  I'm a lady and we don't create waste products, we emit a perfumed powder - that's why we have Ladies Powder Rooms) and get the frig out of there. 

Ooh, quickly - Samuel Pepys said something about 'caring not a turd' about something in his diary.  I love this man.  I wonder what he thought about then he went to the loo?

My bit of Pepys-ing.  Peter Falk, the greatest TV detective of all time - COLUMBO died yesterday.  My house mate's mother once told her she was like Columbo which made her proud until the woman said 'Yeah, he was a scruff too!'

...and finally.  I had to attend Court in the course of my work (the work which actually funds my comedy and real life) and thought I'd dressed appropriately.  Unfortunately, I'd put on day glo yellow and orange socks and hadn't realised that, as I sat po-faced with my legs crossed, everyone was blinded by the aforementioned socks.  My manager was sitting opposite and made some comedic comment to our Barrister and I don't really know what happened but I panicked a bit and just spewed out a load of nonsense that I always ensured I wore something bizarre so I could be easily identified if I were murdered and that I was also wearing Animal from The Muppets underpants.  WHY did I say that?  I then went on to reflect that the actress playing me in the reconstruction would have to wear the same socks and that she might feel a bit embarrassed. The Barrister just sat there.  Didn't laugh or acknowledge any of the shit I'd just said.  Neither did the woman in BHS who jokingly told me that the coats were displayed by the nightwear which was a strange place to put them and I'd said it was because we'd ALL, at some time put a coat on over our PJ's to go to the shop...

Oh Christ - why do I bother to get up in the mornings?

Who am I again?

I've heard it all now.  Get this:

(Phone rings)

Me: Hello

Female Caller (in urgent tone): JEAN?

Me: No, sorry you've got the wrong number.

Caller: Is this (states my phone number)?

Me: Yes, that's this number but there's no one called Jean here.

Caller: Well who are you then?

Me: Erm......I don't really want to say 'cause I don't know who you are.

Caller: Well YOU called me!

Me: Um, no.  YOU called me...

Bizarre Caller: YOU called me!!

Me (getting really actually fucking testy): NO.  YOU.  CALLED.  ME  and there is NO ONE called Jean here.  If there were I think I'd bloody well know it but there isn't, ALRIGHT pal?

Bizarre Caller (sounding really rather pleasant and normal all of a sudden): Oh ok, sorry to disturb you.

?

??

I turned to look at a quizical looking housemate, shaking my head slowly and we had a bit of a laugh.  I mean, who gets a wrong number from someone who then sees fit to argue with you over it?  I then started to reflect on how certain the woman sounded on the phone. 

It made me doubt. 

I've gone wrong haven't I?  I recognise this but my unhelpful inner voice is a complete fucking nightmare.  I began to worry that I really was called Jean and that I had Alzheimer's and was just coming out of a fantasy world and back into reality which was ME/Jean, aged 86, sitting in my own piss in some cheap old folks home and the reality of my current life was all fake.  Perfect, fucking perfect.  My whole life is just the mad ramblings of some dementia riddled old woman who couldn't even create a decent fucking fantasy world to disappear into.  Couldn't Jean have imagined me to have decent hair at least?  Couldn't her shrunken brain have provided me with more money and some sex?  Oh god, the sex.  Trust me to have been imagined by some prudish rambling old duffer who couldn't even have a filthy few minutes which had been dragged up from her memory banks for me? 

Yeah, thanks Jean for setting my beloved '71 VW Beetle on fire whilst I was driving it. 

Thanks for the death of Batdog and Batfool. 

Thanks for the lack of sex (I keep coming back to this one don't I?). 

Thanks for that disastrous gig at Komedia when I puked everywhere beforehand and went on stage a bit sorta delirious and completely forget my set. 

Oh, and thanks for the audience being just that bit too far away from the stage to engage with too. 

Oh yeah, THANKS Jean for consistently humiliating me through the medium of faeces.

Thank you for giving me some bizarre phobias that not even I can understand (certain round things.  Possibly organic round things but not berries or normal round things.  See, even I don't know what's going to set me off!)

I've often wondered why I've made some bizarre decisions in my life.  The sort of decisions that I later wonder what the hell possessed me to make.  I get it now, I'm the figment of some one's dying brain. 

Shit......

The Paranoiac

So, I get home from work and the Tidiness Nazi's precious dog is in the house - but no Tidiness Nazi housemate!  Wherever she is, she's taken her car so I guess she's nipped to the shop. I love having the house to myself and would have loved to lie in bed for a bit but decided to have a quick game of 'throw the ball up the stairs' at the dog (just to show the arriving housemate that I do play with the creature despite it being the most aggravating hound on the face of the earth) but alas she does not return and I grow bored.
Then I read the paper.  Still no Nazi

I check my emails.  No Nazi

Hmmmmmm, where the frick has she gone? 

Asking myself a question was the fatal mistake.  It gave my unhelpful inner dialogue an opportunity to start talking to me and interfering.

Inner Dialogue: You know she's been murdered don't you?

Me: Wha?

Inner Dialogue: Murdered.  In fact, her body has probably been upstairs in her bedroom all this time. Hell, she's probably lying there in YOUR bedroom! You haven't been upstairs yet have you, you lazy cow?

Me: Erm...no I haven't. Murdered, really?  Bloody hell.  I don't really think that's what's happened.  I mean, she's just a bit late back that's all and anyway, where's her car? Eh, tell me that!

Inner Dialogue: ...so, you think she's been in a car crash then?  A fatal one?

Me: NO!  She's just a bit late that's all.

Inner Dialogue: That brings us back to her being dead upstairs.  You've been in the house now for the best part of 40 minutes.  Gives you plenty of time to have killed her.  You'll go down for this y'know!

Me: FUCK!  No, I've got an alib...

Inner Dialogue: ...alibi?  Have you, have- you- really?

Me: Yeah.  I've been at work.  I've spoken to people on the phone.  The police can check my phone records and see that at 4.45 I was in Carlton Road talking to Emma at the office.  They will be able to examine the dead flies and lava on her and know what her time of death was and I'm sure I'll be picked up on CCTV SOMEWHERE at that time.  They won't get me for this one, oh no siree...

Inner Dialogue: ...but the killer would want to get away with it so is bound to have planted some evidence that you can't explain that would point the finger at you.  You're being FRAMED bitch!

Me (panic stricken): Noooooooo; they'll never take me alive! I'd never survive in prison.....Actually, I'd love it in prison if they'd let me stay in solitary and never speak to another fucker ever again.  Think they'd let me have some books, paper and perhaps do some Open University and watch tv on my own?  Heaven, I'd be able to conquer my procrastination issues and get some comedy written.

Inner Dialogue (losing the upper hand): Hang on, you can't go down for this - she's a heroine, the papers said so years ago when all that stuff happened and the public would hate you for killing her - you'd be public enemy number one for AGES and the lags would be after you AND how would you do your Stand Up?  It'd kill your mother! 

Me:  Ok, I'll just talk my way out of it all.  I'll be ok 'cause the truth is on my side.

Inner Dialogue: Pah, you always assume that during cross questioning you would be able to go into a Zen like state, say nothing and you'd be really cool.  Now we BOTH know that you're more likely to  panic and confess to anything and everything before the 'bad cop' even enters the room with his scary Gene Hunt routine. 

Me: Yeah, I do confess to stuff I didn't do but I'd definitely 'do' Gene Hunt but only in Life on Mars.  He was a nob in Ashes to Ashes.  Really killed the charac....

Inner Dialogue: ....so what you gonna spend the money on?  The money you're bound to get in her will.

Me: C'mon, that's disgusting.  She's not dead.  I'd sell the house, pay off my debts, quit my job and move back to Brum.  I'm going upstairs to check she's not dead. 

She wasn't up there dead but then I got lost in reverie thinking about if I were murdered and what the coroner would find in my stomach.  All I'd eaten today was a chocolate milkshake, a Thorntons chocolate and a load of ice water.  I'd then thrown the lot up (I have shitty digestion).  When I'd got home I had some ice cream to take down the swelling from puking.  So that was it, my stomach contents would be ice cream and nowt else.  Bloody hell.  I then thought about the last clothing I'd worn - grey trousers, a grey polo neck and a long grey cardigan WHAT WAS I THINKING? I'd look shite on the CCTV clips being shown on TV plotting my last movements.  My hair was a mess too.  What photo would they use of me on the news?  Perhaps that one on my Facebook page showing my new hair; that's the last one but hell, should I change the silly picture I've currently got up there?  It's not very fitting for all the tribute (in the singular) I'd get.  Perhaps that shambolic Stand Up clip on YouTube would shoot me to fame in death (probably not). The CCTV would make me look fat in death too wouldn't it?  Well, unless it was CCTV taken from a flattering angle above looking down so you can see my cheek bones.  The Tidiness Nazi wanders in.  I'd forgotten she'd gone out with our friend Lynne to look at all the places that are supposed to be haunted in the town in order to create a historic ghost walk..

...I thought about being a ghost last night but I've been paraoid and weird enough for one day.