Anne Guish

I had a very vivid and troubling dream last night.  There was nothing nightmarish about the subject matter, but it was one of those dreams that could have passed for an actual memory.  Nothing supernatural happened, and I wasn't sat it the basket of hot air balloon with Brian May or anything.  No, all the events were played out in plausible surroundings with "real" human beings filling all the major leads.  It was so mundane in fact that the befuddled night manager of my brain thought it was real and flicked the "go" switch.  At this I started shouting and flailing, which is what I was doing in the dream.  Loudly and violently enough to wake my wife as it happens.  I thought being paralytic during sleep was supposed to stop things like this happening?

And so it was that this morning I woke up physically refreshed, but a little lateral in the noggin department.  And I've been at 6s and 7s all day since.  I don't know quite what prompted this whole thing, a combination of factors in all probability.  I may have eaten something that disagreed with me for a start.  Also the council in my locale has introduced a "mini-Holland" scheme to promote cycling, which is as condescending and cock-headed as the name implies.

They've closed a largely commercial street to traffic, much to the annoyance of local business owners, and decanted the cars to several residential streets instead - my own among them.  This has given home-owners to pip, as you can imagine.  The worst aspect of the whole idiot exercise for me is the fact that I am lifelong cyclist: commuting, touring, racing, utility-cycling, I do it all, and it has made my cycling life worse.  I now cannot cycle the roads that have become rat runs, due to there being too much traffic on them.  I also cannot cycle down the main street in my village (the one that was closed to traffic).  It is supposed to have been given over to cyclists, but the locals now think of it as having been pedestrianised, so it's always thronged with people window-shopping or simply staring off into the middle distance, like expensively-dressed pink cattle.   

So all-in-all it's been a colossal fuck-up.  This is what is annoying my mind.  I have a phobia about flabby, illogical thinking.  I work with a lot of marketing types.  Marketing tends to attract two types: people who think plugging, selling and hawking are a necessary evil but are good at it.  And those who actually think it's laudable, akin to being a healer or a prophet.  The first type are women and the second men.  The men also all think they can count and think clearly, when the actual fact of the matter is that they know shit and pretty much do shit for a living.  So I've developed quite a specific aversion to dunces throwing their fuck-nutted weight around.  Having some of their brain-storming ordure, still warm from the colon, dumped on my doorstep, then, has got right in among me.

I will rise above it, however

Black sabbath

Sunday's an odd day, isn't it?  You have a day off, unless you're a priest or a work in Homebase that is, but it's not one of unalloyed joy and carefree jollies, is it?  No, there's always the spectre of Monday looming ever larger on the horizon to spoil matters.

I've always hated Sundays.  My earliest memories of this day of alleged rest are of recurring nightmares.  I used to dream I was having an out-of-body experience in the assembly hall of my school.  My...well, spirit, I suppose, would float around for a bit and then shoot up a corner of the rafters and just sit there.  At this point I'd be overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety and wake up in a panic.  I was five years-old.  

Although these nightmares don't sound scary per se (You'd certainly have your work cut out trying to pitch a film treatment of one), I used to dread them.  They were relentless in their regularity.  Looking back now it's rather sad that a child as young as this should have been beset by nightmares.  The upshot of all this is that I developed a phobia about Sunday.  Actually, it's Monday that prompts the real fear, but Sunday is his sinister hand-maiden.  She pretends to be benign, but would betray you at the drop of a fez.

I thought for years that I had an especial and irrational hatred of Sunday, but talking to most seemingly normal adults, it turns out to be a very common malady.  This does rather beg the question what the fcuk are we doing with our lives.  If we all find life by turns boring, dreadful and workaday, then what's the point of continuing?  We should all resign en bloc an take up tightrope walking, or whatever perverted pastime we feel might afford us some fulfilment.