QUIET NIGHT IN

So there I was, left all alone for the evening, and for far longer than I expected to be, so, after I’d dealt with a few unexpected bits of dashing about, I was left to fret and worry (as I always do) about whether the beloved was alright and hadn’t suffered some mishap or other as she attended a “works outing” in the big scary city…

So, in order to keep myself busy, and to keep myself awake, I once more headed up to the place where I seem to spend most of my time these days, adjacent to a keyboard, which makes a change from the younger me, who might very well have spent such an evening with a video or three.

How I’ve changed… Proactive pastimes rather than passive ones.

Sadly, however, perhaps because of the distraction of all that fretting and anxiety and worrying, and because I find it very difficult to settle when there’s an unknown element involved in my evening’s activity when the phone might ring at any moment and summon me to the railway station on retrieval duties, my mind struggled to come up with anything to actually write about, and so I found myself at something of a loss as to quite what to do with my time.

It’s odd really, I’ve never found it easy to relax or concentrate when I know that there’s “something to do” later on in the day. It’s almost as if, once that “leaving time” is decided upon, say perhaps something like a 4.00pm departure for a film screening, or an appointment, the rest of the day becomes lost because of the distinct possibility that, if I was getting too focused upon doing something else, that departure time might just sail by unnoticed and much disappointment could ensue.

Instead a day of “clock-watching” will unfold and any or all of the displacement activities that fill the intervening hours will somehow never quite manage to satisfy or be fully appreciated. The mind is otherwhere, and I’m no longer able to live in “the now” as I believe it’s known.

Similarly, I’ve never really been able to sleep properly if I know that I will have to get up at a certain time. For years now I’ve not needed an alarm clock, and I vividly recall that when I was a student I could never sleep when I knew that there was due to be a fire alarm practice overnight at some point. Just knowing that at any moment that wretched bell might be going off would feed my youthful insomnia and was quite probably habit forming.  I’d’ve made a rubbish fireman (in so many ways, but chiefly because I’d never have slept...). Later on in life, we once rented a single-glazed room in a B&B in Hay-on-Wye, which was within earshot of the town clock, which rang, as they are prone to do, every fifteen minutes throughout the night.

Three long nights and very little sleep. If any. A very relaxing break (he muttered sarcastically).

“The Beast”

So, what did my weary old body with its surprisingly heavy eyelids find to do for all those hours during that long, long evening until the last train pulled in? Well, for a while I battled with an old adversary, “The Beast”, that one game of “FreeCell” that I’ve ever found that refuses to be solvable. That one single game in the “lose” column, the one numbered 1,220,517,331, which I occasionally decide to tangle with again just to see if I can, finally break it and prove my old adage that “they’re all solvable, you know” even though this one is proving to be a right old demon and I hadn’t yet cracked it, despite regular attempts.

And I still haven’t.

After an hour or so of that, I decided to bite the bullet and attempt a bit of banter and verbal badinage on the old internet, and I popped over to visit TwitWorld, but nobody seemed to be playing that evening, just a lot of newsy stuff that I really didn’t want to involve myself with. After all, I can get quite depressed enough on my own without the help of the media.

Still, it was all deathly quiet and I wondered why…? I even went against my better judgment and put a general message out there telling people that I was wondering why… but to no avail.

Nobody was biting… there were no fish to fry…

So I popped into FizzBok and asked the same question and did, at least actually get a reply. There was footballing on, it seemed, which apparently explained everything…

Of course, I then felt like a right idiot for not really being aware of such a thing. I mean, I knew that there was some kind of a tournament going on because it had been mentioned in the “Radio Times” but the details of it had, like a lot of things seem to these days – people running along holding up some fire, royal weddings, TV that involves “real” people, soap operas – kind of passed me by.

Adverts come on the television these days and some product is being promoted by someone who I imagine it is assumed that I will recognise, and, in most cases, I haven’t got the foggiest who they might be. I suppose it just comes from not reading a regular newspaper any more or watching much of the kind of TV it would seem that most people do.

Mind you, perhaps it’s always been this way. Apart from my almost encyclopedic knowledge of what might once have been called “Cult TV” way back when, my “pop culture” references have always been very narrow. I remember one older lady who, at a New Year Party I once went to, got teamed up with me on some “Picture quiz” game where you were supposed to recognise the famous faces. She thought that with me being a “young person” (well, it was a while ago…) that she would be cruising into a prize-winning position, but I was hopeless at it.

I don’t think she ever spoke to me again…

Still, with all this in mind, and with a distinct lack of knowledge of what the hell everyone else is talking about, perhaps it’s time I put myself forward as a candidate to be a local magistrate… I might actually be quite good at that, if the cliché holds any truth… Oh yes, typically I know all about those comedy clichés and tropes, because that’s just the sort of useless nonsense that my head is full of and which no doubt stops me engaging with the real world...