Shopping and ****ing

Two things I’ve noticed since I took over shopping duties from our absent mother: Internet shopping is a godsend, and it’s amazing how low your food bill is when it doesn’t include a trolley full of whisky.
I’m enjoying the responsibility and the distraction. I’m also enjoying ordering food that isn’t the cheapest thing in Aisle 7, and getting to cook and taste food that doesn’t taste like reconstituted cats liver. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed cooking for myself while I was at university. For a while, I was quite the gourmet, until those bastards from KFC opened a franchise within walking distance of the residence and within three months I’d expanded like an American. Bloody take-aways, with their bloody secret sauces and their bloody special coatings. I get almost erect thinking about Colonel Sanders and his Magic Blend of Spices and Herbs. I’d like to make love to someone dressed in a KFC uniform, rolling around on the floor among half-eaten Tower Burgers and thrown-away side pots of coleslaw and beans, before cleaning myself up on a lemon-scented moist towelette. The Stuff Of Dreams, my friends.

Is it obvious from this pause in proceedings that I’ve just spent ten minutes in the bathroom?

Someone from the council called today asking if we’d still like to continue with the tenancy, and how would we like to pay henceforth? I told them we’re abandoned by our mother and therefore high priority, and aren’t there benefits available to cover everything? She said she’d get back to me shortly. Finally, the hours of watching chav clans on Jeremy Kyle have borne fruit in my existence..

RC 31-7-08
1715 GMT

Dreams

With mum gone, I’m feeling a rare sense of fulfilment and opportunity. Last night I began a ‘wish-list’ of things I’d like to achieve while mum is gone..
1. Meet and Enjoy my Cyber-girlfriend Melissa Pryke (27) of Florida
2. Learn French, with a view to emigration next summer
3. Construct A Life-Size Replica Of Lorraine Kelly Out Of Used Pot Noodles And Wool.
(Obviously, some of these are more pressing than others, but why bother having dreams if you’re not going to acknowledge them and chase them?)
4. Visit my grandfather’s grave in Normandy.
5. Re-read Erich Von Daniken’s books, to remind myself how awful they are, and then plan ways to hunt him down and hurt him.
6. Evade capture.
(Admittedly, I’m slipping into violent fantasy here, but I figure ‘at least if I’m writing them down I’m not harbouring them inside me and nurturing them’ or alternatively ‘at least if I’m writing them down I’m providing the police with evidence of pre-meditation for future prosecutions.’ Whatever…)
7. Cook and eat a large cheese, ham, egg and bean toasted sandwich
(This one was achieved pretty quickly actually)
8. Lose 5 stone so I’m nearer ‘cuddly’ than ‘obese’
(not sure this follows on well from no. 7. but there we are..)
9. Find myself employment that is fulfilling and enriching
10. Write this blog and post it every single day.

I think I’m stretching things too far with no. 10 but it’s good to set the bar high, I figure.

RC 30-7-08
1530 GMT

A Farewell To Harms

Mother won’t be with us anymore. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the courts decision, but hers. Apparently it’s all our fault that she needs to drink and acts like a mentally abstract walrus every day, so she’s taken herself off to the city ‘for the good of her health’. It feels very odd. The woman who bore me and raised me is out of my life in an unexpected way, and now the burden of housekeeper has fallen onto my shoulders. On the plus side, though, I feel safe venturing from my bedroom for the first time in 18 months, and the smell of faint piss and spilt whisky is finally beginning to lighten in the living room.
It was never the same since I came back from university really. No, that’s inaccurate - it was never the same since I was thirteen, when mum decided to neglect her parental duties in favour of watching Supermarket Sweep and accepted liver damage into her life like the God she had searched for since puberty.
I wonder what she was like before puberty? Was she full of hope and ready to be thrust upon the world as a valued, trusted member of society? Was she planning a career in nursing, or working towards a dedication to academia? I suspect she was spending more time in the off licence than the classroom, and showing boys her fanny for the price of a cigarette.
She’s asked us not to contact her until she ‘settles down and finds herself.’ We’ve asked her not to come home before Hell freezes over, or she’s sober.
I bet I know which will happen first…

RC 27-8-08
1825 BST

Random Thoughts

The bloody R-A- bloody F are flying low over our house again. Do-gooding bastards. Supposedly our Armed Forces are over-stretched and we can barely supply our troops with ammunition. We’re still in Afghanistan, we’re ‘liberating’ Iraq for the next two hundred years, and we’ve got bases all over Europe and Africa; so why the Hell are fly-boys jollying it up in the Norfolk skies while I’m trying to relax in my garden? Why don’t they piss off to Basra and bomb a few schools to oblivion? I pay my taxes to pay their wages so they can ruin my afternoons by shattering the sound barrier over my house. Hardly a fair exchange, is it?

Mother is no longer with us. Not dead, just incarcerated. She broke the terms of her ‘house arrest’ by walking three miles to the all-night off-licence for some gin. Then she spat at the policeman who stopped her on the way home. Then she pissed herself in the cop car. Triple whammy. Three strikes and she’s in. I find it hard to talk about at the moment. Partly because our homelife has been turned on its head, and partly because its so bloody nice without her around.. Life is very different without The Incredible Alcoholic Hulk lurking and sweating in every corner of the building. A calming cloud of serenity has descended upon our household. I feel elated, but very guilty.

RC 8-7-08
1425 BST