Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir)

by Spalding, Nick

  But none of that mattered.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and saw with horror that while I was in fitness heaven, I also looked like a complete prick.

  I glanced at the small group of people also using the gym and they looked like pricks too. A collection of sweating, heaving hamsters, caught in the machinery of ridiculous exercise bikes, rowers and stair-masters.

  Here we all were, otherwise sane and rational people, spending our valuable free time in monotonous and repetitive activity, trying to achieve a physical image created by advertising executives in order to sell us after-shave and perfume.

  ‘Oh my God! What the hell am I doing!?’

  An epiphany like this cannot be ignored.

  I got off the accursed nautilus machine, stormed out of the gym and changed into my street clothes, mumbling various comments about the stupidity of the world under my breath.

  I left the gym for the final time and went home.

  When I got there I stuck a movie on and ordered a kebab.

  It was the best tasting pound of cholesterol I’ve ever had.

  The practical upshot is:

  While there’s benefit in taking gentle exercise and watching what you eat, spending a fortune and all your time behaving like a small, furry rodent for the sake of losing a couple of pounds is as pointless as trying to drink the Pacific with a straw.

  And anyone who says different?

  Fuck ‘em.

  Life’s too short and so is my patience.

  8.40 pm

  50830 Words

  I went off on a bit of a rant there.

  Apologies.

  I hope your feelings are similar, though.

  I think the world probably needs more people who don’t obey the rules, just because it’s the done thing.

  These rules were made up by very greedy people in multi-national companies, intent on separating us from our hard earned pennies.

  If you’re fat, thin, short, tall, greasy, hairy, pale or any number of things they tell us we shouldn’t be, but you’re happy with who you are, then don’t get caught in their web!

  Live free, live large and I’ll see you down the kebab shop!

  Not that you’ll be very hungry right now, seeing as that poor barbecued chicken has been stripped to the bone.

  I didn’t get that much, you know…

  With all the cookies you’ve been eating as well, you might start showing a little bit of extra padding around the middle if you’re not careful. Having said that, I can see you’ve taken my advice to heart and aren’t going to worry about such things.

  Good for you!

  There’s a few digestives left if you’re up for them.

  I’ve really warmed to you as my muse over the past twenty six hours.

  You seem to be an intelligent, up-standing member of society that I’d be glad to vote for in any elections you might want to run in.

  I’m almost jealous.

  Good grief.

  I’m comparing myself to someone I can’t see, can’t hear and is at least several months into the future from now.

  I think the lack of sleep has made me a little nuts.

  You have to stop me from doing stuff like that, you know. Endlessly comparing myself to others - real or imaginary - and worrying whether I match up or not.

  If I carry on, I’ll lose all confidence and this book will dribble to an inconclusive halt.

  Self confidence is a hard thing to come by when you’re as prone to neurotic thoughts as me, so deciding whether I’m better than the next person is a big mistake.

  Especially if the next guy is Steve McQueen. Yes, I know he’s dead, but I’m pretty sure he’s still cooler than I am.

  I have a friend I met during my amateur dramatic days - short-lived as they were - who had confidence you could bounce large and pointy rocks off.

  He’s an actor and I suppose its necessary for that kind of profession - but it gets a bit grating after a while.

  Nothing troubles him.

  His name’s Max and when Max is in a room, he’s automatically the centre of attention, steam-rolling his way through conversations with a sublime indifference to what those around him are thinking.

  I don’t know whether it’s a good personality trait or not.

  You may end up offending people, but if you don’t care, you won’t spend hours agonising about it afterwards, so who gives a monkeys?

  I admire Max and loathe him in equal measure - but he’s good for a laugh and when I’m with him I never have to worry that people are analysing me for faults, because I’m very much the background extra, while he’s the featured lead.

  I’m fairly sure my penis is larger than his though, which gives me some solace.

  Max is trying to get a career off the ground and I wish him every success.

  He’s certainly got the attitude for the job – where a degree of self-assurance about your abilities is vital if you’re going to get over the rejections that come with endless auditioning.

  Everyone wants to be a success, of course.

  I’ve never met anyone that’s said to me:

  ‘No, no, I don’t want to be successful and popular. I’d be much happier to face failure at every turn, because I believe it makes me a better person.’

  If you do know anyone like that, do them a favour and put them out of their misery.

  Success is what we all strive for: with our jobs, with the opposite sex, with our hobbies, with our talent, with money.

  Money.

  That’s a biggie, isn’t it?

  Our culture supports the idea that having a big pile of cash means you’re a success, and can safely ignore the little people on your drive to the country club in the Aston Martin.

  We’re supposed to look up to the rich and down on the poor, aren’t we?

  The more glitzy and expensive stuff someone has, the more the world sees them as being the bee’s knees, the dog’s danglies, the mutt’s nuts.

  In short: a better person.

  Is there a better way of demonstrating how wonderful you are than having a sports car in the drive, a yacht in the harbour and a set of gleaming white teeth moths like to circle round at night?

  It’s what we all aspire to because at some point it was decided that material wealth was the way people should be judged.

  …I must have missed that meeting.

  If you can’t earn the money, you can always play the lottery.

  Yeah.

  There’s a real winner of an idea.

  The National Lottery had the strap-line:

  It Could Be You!

  This should probably have been revised to reflect the reality of the situation:

  It Could Be You! …but it probably won’t be, you nasty little person!

  No, it probably won’t. Odds of fourteen million to one against guarantee it.

  The only silver lining is the fact that you know full well that while you haven’t won, nobody you know has won either.

  You’d have no problem with a friend or loved one cashing in, but somebody who really pisses you off?

  That’d be awful.

  There you are, buying your tickets every Wednesday and Saturday, winning jack-shit and Carol from Accounts - who you’ve hated since she grassed on you for claiming too much overtime last year - wins quarter of a million and fucks off to Barbados for a month.

  Wouldn’t that just make you spit?

  Especially if Carol was one of those idiots who say things like this when they win the lottery:

  ‘Oh no, I won’t quit my job! I love what I do!’

  What are you, mental?

  They’ll make the argument that there’s no point in them quitting work, as they enjoy it and its stress free.

  Well, of course it’s stress free, you’ve just won the flaming lottery!!

  You don’t care about your job anymore because the monthly wage you earn is now less than the interest that big, fat mountain of cash you’ve just lucked into is ac
cruing in your Swiss bank account!

  Not only does someone you hate win the lottery, they also have the gall to come back to work and rub your nose in it.

  In they stride, wearing a two thousand pound leather jacket, a four hundred pound haircut and twirling the keys to the Ferrari parked out front.

  They may buy everyone in the office a nice meal at the local Harvester, but it would have been much nicer if they’d just buggered off to Barbados permanently and left the rest to carry on working, watching the clock on the wall and groaning at 6.30 every Monday morning.

  You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who’d carry on working after winning the lottery are also the ones who come into work when they’re sick, the ones who set the time on their alarm clocks five minutes earlier and the type to say you could never quit smoking.

  It’s a club, you know.

  They have meetings where they think of new ways to annoy the rest of us. When I find the club house, I’m going to burn the fucker to the ground.

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate rich people.

  Jealous of them? yes. Hate them? no.

  I just don’t like rich folk who make a big deal out of being minted.

  It’s not classy.

  The only analogy I can draw from personal experience is if I went around showing people my sizeable chopper at every opportunity.

  That wouldn’t be classy at all.

  Illegal, as well.

  …fun at weddings, though.

  Here’s a tip:

  Don’t bother being envious of people who have more money than you. You don’t know how they got it and don’t know whether the rest of their life is crap or not. Just comparing their bank balance with yours isn’t a true indicator of how you stack up against them as a human being.

  The same goes for how other people look as well:

  She’s got bigger boobs than you? So what? She’s probably got the IQ of an ice cube.

  He’s got bigger muscles than you? To Hell with it! He probably has body odour that’d knock out an elephant.

  The next time you find yourself comparing body parts or bank balances, just imagine some really nasty defect for them. That’ll equal things out a bit.

  On one of my overseas trips I visited the one place on the planet where your worth as a human being is definitely dictated by how much money you put on display. Where plastic is fantastic and never mind about those troublesome brain cells.

  Hollywood.

  More specifically we’re talking Beverly Hills, a place where the faces are stretched, the breasts are fake and the eyes are vacant.

  I was enjoying a stroll down Rodeo Drive, looking in the shop windows and trying to contain my amazement that anyone would charge several thousand dollars for a small rug with a zigzag pattern on it.

  These were the days when smoking a cigarette in L.A wouldn’t immediately get you locked up in the nearest penitentiary with Bubba, the three hundred pound sex pervert. I sparked up as I strolled along, polluting this most rarefied of atmospheres.

  From behind me I hear a very nasal ‘Excuse me?’

  I turn to find myself confronted with a human lizard in a bright yellow Chanel outfit, with matching handbag and shoes.

  Shielding my eyes from the onslaught of colour, I approached with curiosity.

  ‘Yes? Can I help?’ I said, in a faintly amused voice.

  The woman - I think it was a woman. It may have been a gecko, I couldn’t quite tell - heard my accent and her face lit up in a frightful way that pulled her already over-stretched skin even further back on her skull.

  ‘Oh! You’re English!’ she exclaimed, in a high-pitched Californian twang.

  Oh dear.

  If you’ve British and have never been to America, but intend to go some time in the future, expect this kind of conversation at least once.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Oh, I luuurve the English!’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘They’re my favourite foreign people, because they speak English and like Americans.’

  Well, you’re certainly right on the first point there, love. Not too sure about the second one these days. Mind you, at least you got rid of that maniac Bush and replaced him with some who actually has a brain.

  The lizard switches track at this point, remembering why she’s accosted me in the first place, and produces what looks like a solid gold cigarette holder from a solid gold Chanel handbag and puts a solid gold cigarette into it.

  This all screams:

  I have money! Lots of lovely money!

  ‘Can I have a light?’ she asked, squinting at me in the mid-morning sun.

  I flip open the Zippo and provide her with fire.

  She gratefully sucks at it through the cigarette holder and lets out a plume of smoke smelling vaguely of coffee. That’s how you know a cigarette’s expensive - when it stinks of something it probably shouldn’t.

  ‘I love England,’ she continues, not intent on letting me go until she’s had her say. ‘My husband and I like to go shopping in London.’

  Like to go shopping in London.

  Not on holiday to London… oh no.

  She treats travelling half-way across the world in first class in the same way we’d treat popping down town on a Saturday afternoon to pick up some new shelves from B&Q.

  I’m at a loss for a response – which happens rarely. How do you provide a comeback to a statement like that?

  ‘That’s nice for you,’ I eventually mumble. ‘I went to London to see Cats a few months ago.’

  A brilliant piece of small talk, I’m sure you’ll agree.

  Frankly, I want to get away from Godzilla as soon as possible. The smell of her cigarette is starting to make me nauseous and I’m going slightly blind from the sun reflecting off the yellow outfit.

  I say a perfunctory goodbye and make my exit - feigning interest in the nice rug with zigzags on it I’ve seen in a nearby shop window.

  Meeting this aging monster made me feel a lot better about myself.

  It’s true I can’t afford to hop on a plane to New York and do a spot of browsing round JC Penney, but it’s also true that my eyes don’t constantly water due to face-lifts and I don’t look like a lizard in a hideous outfit that advertises some pompous fashion label.

  I’ve met people like this many times. Not quite to her extent maybe, but displaying many of the same traits.

  I work in marketing after all and it’s a business that sees the little man – me - come up against the big man - fat, sweaty pharmaceutical giant - on many occasions.

  Comparisons with the well-to-do are unavoidable sometimes, especially when you’re working your way up the employment ladder to the dizzy heights of a private parking space and twenty weeks holiday a year.

  Now I’m older, wiser and a heap-load more cynical, I like to ignore the material aspect of my fellow man and judge them purely on their actions.

  Then if I happen to see some guy in a flash car and an even flasher suit, I’ll wait to see what kind of man he is up close and personal before I decide whether I like him and want to be like him or not.

  Ten times out of ten so far, I’ve discovered I don’t.

  I’ve never met anyone with a great personality that also liked to show off their wealth and success - but the search goes on.

  What’s that? Did I hear you mumble ‘pigs might fly’?

  10.01 pm

  53225 Words

  You know what?

  I’m running out of stuff to talk about.

  If I carry on much longer I’m going to start repeating myself and that’ll do us no good at all.

  Covered a lot though, haven’t we?

  Love, marriage, children, work and malfunctioning bowels to name a few.

  We’ve been back and forth through time, dipping into Spalding’s life at random moments to glimpse past incidents that have served to highlight a point, explain how I think and bring on a chuckle or two.

  Now we’r
e in the final downhill run, careering towards a conclusion at break-neck speed with no concern for our own safety.

  At the beginning I said starting was easy and keeping going was the hard bit. I’m now starting to think that ending might be tricky, too.

  Not much new there, eh?

  How many times do we find it hard to end something? How many times do we feel sad when something comes to a conclusion?

  If you’re the one to end a relationship it’s never easy, because you feel the guilt of upsetting the other party. Or, if they’ve turned out to be a nutcase it can be difficult, because you don’t want them to put your favourite pet in a bubbling pot of water, or write nasty things about you on toilet doors.

  Switch it around and you’re the one being dumped. Is there anything more horrible than a relationship ending that you’ve been happy with?

  How about leaving a job?

  That can be hard, if its one you enjoy.

  Even if the new job pays better and is nearer to your house.

  If you’ve built up friendships at the place you’ve worked for the last seven years, then it’s bound to be difficult to wander off into the sunset without a pang of regret.

  Even short term things can be hard to finish:

  The fantastic week’s holiday you’ve just had in Morocco for instance, where you wandered through the bazaars, chatted up the local skirt and drank too much alcohol.

  I always have problems when I come back from a trip abroad and have to slide back into normal life.

  It also takes me ages to get the pictures downloaded onto the laptop, as if that last exercise is the final indication the holiday is actually over.

  What about the end of the Christmas break, if you’re lucky enough to get one?

  There are no happy people in this world at the beginning of January. With the exception of gym owners, perhaps.

  Getting more short term:

  What about the great parties on a Saturday night, where the music rocks, the booze is free and you’re surrounded by like-minded people who won’t take the piss too much if you crap yourself in public. Problem is, you know the party has to end sometime and that Monday morning is looming on the horizon …