this is the day, part two

…but hello to the even-less-cheerful swamps of your walk home, the skechers’ insoles losing the small amount of spring they used to add to your step. past some graffiti by somebody called WAkON (how would you pronounce this, wake-on or wack-on?), the disused world war two air defence cannons (what there is to defend these days, reform-voting housing estates and lib-dem semi-detached bungalows? they should turn fire on themselves, you smirk from your cant-be-bothered-to-vote-but-you-draw-detailed-vaginas-on-every-ballot-and-have-done-since-twenty-ten hmo), and the shit-filled (figuratively and literally) river. over the railway bridge they’ve, as pippa says to you, only just re-opened after two years it’s utterly ridiculous they closed it that long, it’s just a footbridge, people need to get to work there and it’s unconscionable for me to walk the long way around to caffe nero or god forbid costa (you applaud yourself for not letting off the largest eye roll you’ve ever done in your life) and stopping on the way to pet the neighbour’s cat. she’s called shirlee, the two es revealing her owners to be members of the crushed velvet/peaky blinders dichotomy, but the crocheted collar and silver nametag fulfilling her requirements for love. it’s not a crime to enjoy peaky blinders anyway. better that than your endless watches and rewatches of girls, both gilmore and standalone.

it’s getting warmer, and the sun has at least deigned to grace your walk home for at least half of its duration. no longer will you head home with keys jammed between your fingers, even if you rather enjoy the sensation, the infinite possibility of inflicting pain upon a hypothetical assailant, drawing hypothetical blood and leaving them hypothetically sprawled on the floor, curled up in hypothetical agony. you don’t really know what to do with your fingers in the meanwhile, so you constantly twirl and untwirl your headphone cords. the last time you went to see anna’s family, lucy told you that you could be serving such a lily rose depp look, no like i’m serious if you switched out the bulky headphones for some apple wired ones and smoked actual cigarettes you could literally be her carbon copy; i’m going to take you to brandy and we can finally make something of your absolutely gorg cheekbones, some low-risers and a dye of your trenchcoat and every girlie at work will be DYING to be you, you’ll be the very first coquette office siren and i’m not even joking like genuinely if you wanted to you could be in the stratosphere, anna really doesn’t hold a candle to you on that front, lowkey you’re kind of out her league but don’t tell her i said that to you!!! or she’ll be furious, like really seriously angry, which i guess is valid but still i don’t want to deal with that. to this day, you don’t know how what once was an endearingly needy fourteen year old transformed into the most backhanded twenty-one year old who doesn’t understand the appeal of sennheisers that never run out of battery and sound a million times better than the motley crew of uninterestingly interesting pop stars coursing into her ears.

to be fair, the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree — catherine was a right piece of work. she wasn’t homophobic unlike richard, which was nice, but if she wasn’t the most spiteful, petty, vindictive arsehole you’ve met in your life, who is? probably yourself, but no need to dwell on that now. soon enough catherine will be able to take the crown. anyway, you should thank yourself that anna took more richard. past the homophobia he really was rather nice, after the cheese wheel détente he only called you a poofter once, and you were both so twatted that it made you laugh more than stirring anger. he texted you a couple days ago, asked how you were and if you were watching the new series of vigil, it’s not as good as the first one but doctor foster and ygret seem to be an item now! I mean when I watched that lezzer show anna recommended me I was like oh that’s doctor foster! So she’s got previous in that department, but she’s a cracking actor anyway, really keeps the second series together. New series of race across the world on in a couple weeks as well, so that will be fun! Lots of love xx Ricard. the most endearing quality about richard is that he exclusively refers to actors by their character names. the second most endearing quality about him is that he somehow manages to misspell his own name in a variety of ridiculous ways. ricard is a classic, but he’s sent richerd, richarrd, and rechord before. he doesn’t misspell any other words, yet him signing off his messages with his name (also relatively endearing) somehow leads to this comical coterie of misspellings. you broached this topic with anna a while ago, and she said that he’s like william shakespeare in that sense, but that sense alone — you’d disagree though, he’s the bard of bbc one. really it’s what brought the both of you together, the shared penchant for sunday at nine television, by which time anna would always be in bed reading but you would be situated on the sofa with a glass of white wine and some almonds, ready to watch whatever vaguely actiony, vaguely dramatic, vaguely vague programme the top executives at the bbc decided to broadcast across the british isles. if you only chat to your parents once a week and work in a university where not having watched at least two terence malick films labels you as a social outcast, then the time would probably be better spent in bed, curled up with some deleuze (glass of white still required, of course) and radio three humming softly. but for you, what bought you any status at the kitchenette was an ability to wax lyrical about line of duty, even if the ending sucked, even if you mainly watched it because you have a massive crush on vicky mcclure, and even if really if we’re honest it started going downhill as soon as dot cotton died, what on earth was all that with thandiwe newton and mrsa, still liked her more than stephen graham though (and not just because your first orgasm was to her in that godawful film with simon pegg), no i like him generally but he was really one note in it, there’s a reason they killed him off early.

you’ve done it before. year ten, where you got sick of it all, the constant anxiety over who likes you and who doesn’t, the stress of end-of-year mocks like a glass anvil on your shoulders. and of course, mr. norton. it was two days after he first touched you, a colder than usual winter. the modified engine of his vauxhall corsa meant even keeping the inside heated, the faint smell of mcnuggets wafted into your face through the vents, led to a chugging sound so loud you thought the fat controller would come and board his shitty car up inside the lawrence hill underpass. the only words you uttered after entering into the tinted-windowed hall of doom was to ask him to switch the engine off. his stella artois-ed breath left a pentagon on the windowpane, the last detail you felt before slipping away. the only thing that brought you back to the world was the blister pack your mum had left on the kitchen counter — there was a fifty/fifty chance she actually got a spontaneous headache, or she drank too much wine and took (as she would term it) precautionary measures before discharging my duties (read: making sure i don’t go to work tomorrow with a splitting headache). for what it’s worth, every time you’ve remembered to take two paracetamols before nodding off, no matter how much you’ve drank that evening, you only wake up with a faint pounding in your head. but the blister pack promised bliss, and you took it up on its offer.

you had measured your life out in paracetamol pills, the seven you popped out onto the counter arranged into a christmas tree, baubled by james’ unwiped-down breadcrumbs. you’d completed most of your shopping two days before, mr. norton caught out the corner of your eye as you trundled into marks and spencers, ready to use your dad’s 20% discount. he’d always grumble that this’d get him fired, the big cheeses at the company (until twelve, you thought your dad’s bosses were called mark and spencer) would keelhaul him over the sixth-floor climbing wall. you’d use it all the same, the money from your saturday job just about finished (the recession love, i’m sorry but we can’t keep you on, jane relayed to you, her tears riddling the unbaked loaves of rye with pockmarks) on getting katie a nice top, and james a nice top, and your mum a nice top, and your dad a nice pair of oven gloves. you went to the cinema with your friends, unable to remark on anything that the film had presented, the usual admonishment for when your friends would throw popcorn at the screen absent, and in sitting down at the nandos, pondering what sauce to get, you decided that it really would be the day. you shuffled home, prepared the christmas tree that had the most perfect present of all underneath, and washed it down with your half-finished, half-melted tango ice blast. seven had to be enough. surely. lucky number seven, to shepherd you away from this cruel, cruel world, grandmas asking you if you’ve got a boyfriend yet and the nos that would result and the regaling with a story about how my reginald was a real gentleman, he waited outside the cinema for me one day with a bouquet of flowers and a devil-may-care smile and asked if i’d like to go out with him, the wiping of a tear with her cardigan and your mum passing her a tissue (specially bought branded tissues, after she overheard your grandma asking if you had anything other than sandpaper in the house) an undisturbed ritual. the thought which stayed with you as you slept was of how a couple months earlier, your dad told you that this mythical reginald, struck down in his prime of 81 by cigarillo-induced lung cancer, was actually horrible, that real-gentleman-reggie hit both your grandma and your dad with such vigour that they each had to go to hospital on many occasions. it was a suitably morose thought for what you morosely thought would happen to you, spiralling down the washbasin of life with only a gurgle to mark your going.