A January Day: Year 2011

Energy, where is it and how do you get it? Definitely can feel the batteries getting lower as the years go by. Today was a dark January day, kind of wonderful in a half light kind of way. I had things to do today like go up to the back lands of Harlow to pick up some DHL packages for Tamdin which had arrived for her from India, and then I had to send money across to her in India as well, stuff like that. Then in the afternoon bombing across to Lakeside to pick up a bit of clobber and then on my way back dropping in on Waitrose South Woodford to get a bunch of food shopping for the next few days...you know, grub for my survival. And then when all that was done getting back to the ranch and feeling pretty damn shattered. So shattered in fact that at 5 pm I had to go and lie down upstairs... more or less stayed there for a couple of hours.

Where did that come from? The sudden collapse of energy...that need to go and lie down or else I might die? Well, I dunno...was it a collapse or more like bowing to the inevitable?

energy banks / wanna mine the highways of infinity / on the luminous roads / way up to the stars / but the reality is / I can barely keep myself together here on earth...

So, to recap for this January day in the year 2011 -

Woke up at 7 am, dark morning, wet and the wind was blowing but it was not cold. Got up, brushed my teeth threw some water over my face and dunked my head in the basin full of warm water, the usual tricks I have been employing for ooh my god I dunno, maybe the last 25 years, pretty much in that period on every day of my life. Then after washing, rituals in the shrine room, a little bit of mantras, prayers and meditation. Guess all that took a maximum of half an hour, grey rolling clouds out the window but not much inspiration to sit with it, so downstairs where I brewed a pot of coffee, enough for a good couple of mugs and with some still left over for a cowboy coffee later in the day.

Did my coffee drinking checking the net on the lap, and getting various bits of paperwork together - banking for Tamdin, collection documents for DHL for when I went to Harlow, and also arranging for taking money out myself in order to send to India. Little bits and pieces in other words but the funny thing is that to do it right you need to be organised. Seemed to take a while for me to get all the necessary stuff sorted but when I was finally ready at around 9:45 am it was straight up the M11 to Harlow. It was just as well that I punched the DHL postcode into the satnav on the Prius because it turned out the DHL depot was a tricky place to get to, mainly due to the fact Harlow is a new town and spread out over a fairly large area, with lots of roads and roundabouts to negotiate. In its own way I found it rather beautiful and a part of me thought how great it would be to live there...to up sticks and move to Harlow, but like I said without the satnav I would have come to grief.

Found the DHL depot and picked up the packages for Tamdin after showing some ID but not as much ID as I had been led to believe that I would need when I spoke to them on the blower a couple of days ago, and this would have saved me more than little of anguish. Guess I had spent a fair bit of time worrying that they might turn me away for some obscure reason because I did not have the correct identification, but as it turned out there was none of that, not even a hint or a whisper. Paid the customs charges due on the packages then loaded them up into the back of the Prius under the grey Harlow skies and then I was set to go. Took a drive through the town and then returned to Woodford through Epping and the forest rather than the M11. When I drove out of the city to Harlow I saw that there was a stack back on the motorway coming back in, so, best to be avoided in other words. Grey old day by this point, approx 11am but that was fine by me as all I had to do was drive my Prius, take in the scenery with the Chemical Brothers on the sound system. All the same even then, just sitting and just driving, a part of me, down inside, felt pretty damn tired. Winter tiredness no doubt, too much dark, wake in the dark, work and then leave the office in the dark; not enough sun.

Got back to Woodford by around 11:30, took the DHL boxes out of the car and got them into the house. After a quick piss I was out again, down to the bank to pay cheques in and to get money out, then across the road to sort out sending money to Tamdin through Western Union. All this was done with not much problem, paid the money over to the agent and got the code. On the way back home I dropped into Budgens and picked up a couple of Danish pastries for breakfast as I was feeling pretty hungry due to the fact that apart from the coffee I had eaten nothing.

Then had about an hour in the house, had a mug of tea and the pastries, texted Tamdin with the details of the money I was sending her. As I expected, it was not long after texting her that she gave me a call, and we had a chat for a good 20 minutes, going over what she was up to out there with her family. This was the first time in eleven years that I had not gone out to India at around this time, mainly because I had gone to Oz with Dad back in September. Then after talking with Tamdin I sorted through more paperwork, filed stuff away and cleaned a couple of household objects. That done it was around 1 pm and I decided to drive over to Lakeside as I wanted to buy one more pair of trousers for work. I had bought a couple the week before but felt that another pair was needed.

So, back in the Prius and into the January grey, this time I had Mojo by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the system, having bought the CD after seeing Bogdanovich's epic four hour documentary on Tom Petty, Chasing Down a Dream on BBC 4 last Friday. Drove eastwards along the North Circular to the Beckton roundabout and then on to the A13 heading east to Lakeside which was about 10 miles down the road. Driving through the outer edges of East London; Barking, Dagenham... yeah, i guess you know the score. Kinda awesome in its own special way. Grey weather still and wet, but even with my energy low it felt quite amazing to be alive, driving through the Ford City of Dagenham along the north bank of the Thames just where the river gets pretty damn industrial and dirty, not long before the Dartford bridge, but that was OK with me as it is possible to see beauty everywhere. Even there when you drive in the car through all that industry there are cows in the low lying fields next to the towers of power stations and god knows what and all looks well with the cows, they could just as well have been in the Outer Hebrides.

Must have hit Lakeside by around 1:45 / 2pm. Tried Next for my trousers but struck out this time around after buying a pair from there the week before, hit lucky in M&S though which was a relief as it might have been a bit of a downer going all the way out there and not getting what I wanted. Things like that can make all the difference; buy something and and you have achieved purpose, not get anything and you can be staring into the abyss. Well and truly staring...On top of getting a pair of trousers I bought a shirt and then a pair of shoes from Jones the Bookmaker in their sale, all in all felt sorted and all for just over 105 quid, even if one of the shoes felt slightly too big. This all must have taken an hour or so and as I was getting hungry I thought about eating at Lakeside but could not quite bring myself to going into Burger King or Ed's Easy Diner so left without getting anything, just popped a tic tac into my mouth when I got back to the car.

Drove back down the A13 to hit the North Circular again at Beckton with a view to dropping off at the Redbridge roundabout so that I could hit the back roads to Waitrose South Woodford. Back past the grazing cows, wind farms and Ford City. Going westwards on the North Circular I began to hit a bit of traffic and by the time I had got off at the Redbridge roundabout things were heating up a bit. One of those borderline East London times when an accident further down the pipe soon has everything else into a state of semi-chaos. This was pretty much how it was. After the roundabout it was very busy and very slow going through the back roads as by then everyone else had had the same idea in a desperate attempt to avoid getting stuck in the jam. Finally got to Waitrose and there I spent the best part of 30 quid on grub and booze. Had seen a couple of crazy examples of frustrated driving along the way as well, which could so easily have ended in tears, we live in a time when for a significant proportion of the population complete selfishness is fused with a patience level that is close to zero. One day it is sure to all kick off.

After I had done my shopping I ate a couple of deep filled sausage rolls in the Prius in the car park as I knew it would be a little while before I got back home due to the continued heavy traffic. Quaffed those rolls down like a caveman, letting the pastry flakes fall into my lap with cold sausage meat on my breath. Gut filled I then drove back down to Charlie Browns roundabout and got home along the Chigwell road. Good move as the traffic down that way was pretty clear. After unloading the car and then sorting everything out - beers in the fridge etc - on my return it was around 4:45 pm and already dark. By five I sat down to read a bit more David Copperfield but it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes open at this point. Energy was shot, didn't even have the strength to get the pan out to heat up my cowboy coffee to see if that would wake me up. Decided the only thing that I could do under the circumstances was go up and lie down for a while.

Sensible decision. But...energy!! Where does it come from and how does it go? Is it really the case that my batteries are running out? Might be the case that I had done quite a bit so it was natural for me to want a rest...an' yah, yah, blah blah...really dunno. Fact is I was shit whacked and had to rest, no other option. Lay there in the dark in the second bedroom, window open January breeze of the dark early evening blowin' on my face, rest of the body safely under the covers. Lay there in a state of half bliss, bathing in the security of knowing I could rest for an hour, two hours, didn't matter as there was nuthin' to get up for.

Fact of the matter was I felt as full as hell from the two sausage rolls i had eaten in the motor, lay there and thought to myself yet again that there must be better, more gentle ways that I can go about feeding myself. Lay there and wondered if I might be dyin', thought in the half bliss state I was in just how much or how little there really was for me live for, and also if I might be dying it was pointless and stupid for me to want to live for as long as possible anyway. I think that at that moment if anyone asked me if I was afraid of death I guess that I would have to say no, not really. Why? Well, I think that in many respects I have hit the buffers as far as hopes and dreams for my life go anyway...I mean, I do what I do and it does not seem like that there is much chance that it is going to change much. On and on we go... the prospect of years more of the same does not really fill me with elation; just acceptance, tired acceptance. So maybe I can just work myself into the ground before the big shut off and it will all be OK. Just don't know how much energy I really have left to sustain me. Might be enough for another 50 years or maybe it will not even be enough to get me to the end of 2011. Who really cares? Either way I really don't think that I mind that much. Just do what I do and as long as I don't upset people or cause too much misery for them that is OK and then i am sure that I will be OK as well, including if I just lay down one day and didn't wake up. Energy spent, batteries totally flat.

Managed to finally raise myself at 7 pm, really couldn't make it any earlier than that. Came downstairs in a daze like what always happens if I crash in the early evening. Made myself that cowboy coffee then sat and watched a bit of news on TV, some amazing floods taking place in Oz which had me glued to the screen. Not so amazing if you were caught up in them though, then maybe more like a nightmare. Man against nature, really at the end of the day there is not much contest as to who will win I am afraid. Then went up for some meditation but it was not that great, too spaced out, too hot as well, and I found the process was not doing me much good at all; expecting things to be great is not really the point anyway, so I cut the meditation short and came downstairs, opened a cool can of beer from the fridge and began to write this, a January day in the year 2011.