A Leeeeeee Leeds

Felt inhibited on the train today. Wrote nothing. I think the tiresome exercise of moving my right hand and slowly putting together some kind of thought is just too much for me sometimes. Especially when bored people stare at me.

People never do anything interesting on trains. Except me. I am the exception that proves the rule, disproves my theory and makes me seem much more important than I am.

I want to see the general public drawing things. Or writing things. And I don’t mean essays. What more horrific sight than a worried student, clutching a business studies text book, surrounded by notes, scribbling furiously onto some lined paper in order to make a deadline in a few hours for some course they have no interest in and chose purely in order to pacify their abstractly ambitious and predictably conformist parents. That’s not writing, that’s punishment for shoplifting.

I attended my mate’s birthday party at the weekend in a partly refurbished warehouse in Leeds, called Common Place. A lovely building complete with spacious kitchen, sofas, a dance floor area and the obligatory political posters and dreadlocked regulars. Most fun was had at the “bar” where I was instructed to buy a raffle ticket from a member of staff and to claim my “prize” from the member of staff directly next to the first member of staff that I just mentioned before (the one who sold me the ticket). With me?

Thankfully, the “prizes” were consistently excellent and represented a much better value for money than most raffles where you spend five quid on a few strips and come away with fuck all, or worse still, a life-size teddy bear so big that you would have pangs of humane guilt at setting fire to it. No, this bar had proportionately priced rewards where essentially “everyone was a winner”. Just many cans of beer.

Upon arriving quite early at the party, just before the vegan food was being served, I was sadly informed that no bread was present and would I like to forage around the centre of Leeds at around 7pm in order to correct this? Gladly accepting the task, I did wander the streets (something of a transferable skill considering my current employment) with my friend Hannah, determined to solve this frankly unthinkable shortage of carbs.

We thought it would be a good idea to enquire in a sheesha bar. Maybe they’d have some bread we could buy. The man looked at us, clearly sympathetic to our cause. He got it. Yes of course, hippy barbeque – no bread. Fuck, that’s terrible.

So, refusing to accept our cash (how much would you charge?) he handed over a plastic bag with some bread rolls in it.

It’s well easy being a tramp. You’ve just got to resign yourself to the fact that you’re more of a taker than a giver.

Another half an hour was spent sniffing around chip shops and newsagents, failing to find any more sodding bread that wasn’t a burger bap. We entertained the irony of returning to this politically motivated gathering of people, with a bag of McDonald’s bread buns. Yeah, it would have been funny now, but probably quite awkward actually, at the time, like.

Anyway, the night took its usual shape. A natural curve, whereby at midnight I’m dancing like a jazz-induced nightmare spaz-ferret, and at some point later, during the early hours of the morning, I flake and decide that I’ve had my eyes open for too long really and would quite like a soft place to rest my head now, ok?

Obviously, this is fine by me, but for some reason those of my friends who chomp on pills like they are cows eating long grass, tend to take issue with this and insist on staying up another seven hours just to spite me.

I think, having just reread this post, I now know what it’s like to be my girlfriend, always waiting for me to get to the point of a story, and being horrendously disappointed when it becomes clear that not only does the story lack a discernable narrative, event or moral, but it even lacks characters, and is instead a dreadfully vague abstraction about tennis, delivered clumsily by a stupid-faced idiot. I feel for her. What a terrible thing to have to be exposed to such mediocrity on a regular basis.

Fuck, I’ve gotta get up early tomorrow. I’m outta here!