It's Not Me, It's You

by Jon Richardson

  Being happy and single would be a lot easier if more people were willing to give it a try. My neighbours next-door are proof that, for some ridiculous reason, people would rather be locked into a miserable relationship than contemplate not being in one at all. What a depressing assessment of society that the only way to get through it is to drag someone else down with you! I believe passionately in love, I even believe in ‘the one’ to a certain extent, but I am willing to play the waiting game and patiently await their arrival rather than dive into relationships I know not to be right in the mean time.

  Any second … now? Now?

  And after a number of failed guesses, the alarm finally bursts into action and I reach back over my head and turn it off. That was close enough, I reckon! Maybe today is going to be a good day after all, though if it is I certainly need to get my mind off the path it seems to be on at the moment. I am happy with the choices I have made. It seems even my sleeping brain seeks to remind me of the benefits of such a solitary lifestyle and this morning, as every morning, I have woken up in the familiar position of lying diagonally across the bed, making a Z shape with its top and bottom.

  Look at this! You couldn’t sleep like this if you had a girlfriend … Not without being kicked in the ribs every half an hour!

  As true as this may be, the 45-degree angle is not one I am comfortable with and so I will right myself when I can shake my hangover enough to muster the energy to move. I have always believed that there is a reason they call it the right angle, and that is because the other 359 are all wrong. Although in truth, 356 would be more accurate as I have no beef with 180, 270 or the full 360 degrees.

  The evidence of my love is that the 45-degree angle that exists between the bed frame and myself is the only one in the room; I got rid of all the others yesterday so that everything else is a picture of perfect symmetry. The bed sits underneath a cupboard from which hangs on either side a built-in wardrobe. Such large units are no longer fashionable but I cannot escape my affection for their symmetry and sheer practicality. A unit this size can hide a multitude of sins in a way that shelves and bookcases simply cannot.

  Directly ahead of me, sitting in the space in front of a bay window, is a desk upon which sits my list for the day, a small kettle next to a basket containing two sachets of coffee, two teabags and four sugars, a book of ‘house-rules’ dressed up as a guest guide to the area and a small television that in the digital age seems to go back three miles from the screen. I wonder if I used both the teabags whether she would be angry at my greed? Over the right shoulder of the bed is the door to the landing and mirrored on the left is the door to a small en-suite bathroom.

  I need my bedrooms to be ordered to allow me to feel some shred of comfort in the morning. If my waking eyes looked out over a mess of dirty clothes, wonky pictures and dirty glasses I don’t think I could resist the to urge to pull the blanket over my head and bury my face into it praying for some higher power I don’t believe in to step in and make it all go away. Once, in a rather more posh hotel than this one, I stayed in a four-poster bed. I found that the closed drapes around the edge limited even further the damage to which morning eyes are subjected. There is always so much to cope with on top of the mattress first thing in morning that planning beyond it can seem too daunting a task.

  I have resisted the urge to buy a similar bed for my home as I imagine that, eventually, sleeping alone in such a regal bed might feel even lonelier than it does in a standard double. I resent the fact that I have been made to feel that sleeping alone in a double bed is some kind of failure on my part. I would happily have a single bed but for the mockery that would ensue when I had visitors.

  It is a source of confusion to me that as a child, say, in your first fifteen years, you learn more than you will ever learn in the same time period for the rest of your life. You learn how to walk and to talk, you learn about illness, death and about not getting your own way. You learn that life is sometimes unfair and that, for no reason at all, bad things happen to good people. You learn that there will come a time when all help ceases and you will be in sole charge of your own happiness and responsible for your own actions. You learn about money and what it is to be without it and you learn (if you are lucky) to ask questions about religion and what might exist beyond the world we know.

  Not only this, but you must also get to grips with school, exams, bullying, physical education and physical attraction and the prospect of being poorly suited to success in both, not to mention the constant see-sawing of emotion caused by the hormonal changes going on in your body and doubts about sexuality and the consequences this might have on your future.

  All of these issues are to be confronted night after night, staring up at the ceiling on your own with your brain fit to burst, in a single bed. Then suddenly you become ‘an adult’ and you are told that the inability to find someone with whom you can share a double bed is the single biggest failure you can make in life. Well, bullshit! If I could, I would still have a neat and tidy little single bed while I am single … in fact if I am to be truly honest with you, and I don’t see why I should stop now, I would have a cabin bed.

  If you have the option available to you, I urge you to go and find your nearest furniture catalogue and spend a few minutes eyeing up the wide range of functional and stylish beds available for the under-tens. Why it is only children who are granted the organisational joy of having a bed that sits high off the ground and also serves as a wardrobe, a desk and a secret den is beyond me. I still buy Variety Packs of cereal though – you can’t take that joy away from me!

  Before I step out from the plain, foot-high double bed that is my reality this morning, I must prepare my mind for the first tasks of the day. I must psyche myself up to get dressed without falling over, stubbing my toe or opening the wardrobe door into my face. Since getting dressed is the first thing I will do today it will therefore set the standard for how the rest of the day is likely to progress.

  Sometimes life sends you a warning that things are stacked against you and if I start with a failure in such a rudimentary task then I suppose I might just as well go straight back to bed for all the good the day will do. Like falling over at the beginning of a hundred-metre sprint, victory is all but impossible.

  My desire to control everything that goes on inside my bedroom is a direct result of my inability to cope with everything that lurks outside it – not just this village, or Swindon when I am at home, but what lies beyond in the big, wide world. A thin pane of glass is a flimsy barrier between the world and myself, but it will just about hold strong until I fully open the blinds. The control for the slats is broken, so as I lie in bed staring at the window I can see that they are not closed tightly together. There is no light outside to penetrate the darkness in the room anyway.

  The sun is already up but is hidden behind a blanket of thick cloud. The fine rain from last night has worsened, but only slightly. The skies are grey and it is as if all the colours have been washed away from the world by persistent rain. The greens of the trees and the blues of the skies are exposed as a veneer that couldn’t stand-up to the abuse the world has given them.

  Unlike most people, I love days like these!

  Sunny days are arrogant – they appear to challenge you to try and achieve enough to warrant the splendorous conditions they have created for you. They exist for morning people to get out and steal all the achievement so that they can be back in bed by seven o’clock in the evening with smug grins on their faces and their freshly ironed pyjamas on their peachy skinned bodies.

  ‘Still in bed, Jon?’ these days cry. ‘Why you’ve already wasted so much time! Go! Find your true love, feed them cherries on a chequered blanket by a lake. Ride bikes down hills and laugh heartily at the wonder of it all!’

  I’m alright, thanks. You keep that.

  But there is no such challenge on a day like today. On a day when even the world outside the window cannot bring itself to smile, simply getting round to making
a piece of toast feels like a victory over the circumstances.

  The imaginary metronome in my head is running and I am counting down the last few seconds before I step out of bed out loud: a loud, clear tock to match every verbal tick. Tick. Tock.

  My final thought is to wonder why, if my waking mind is so sure that I can be happy on my own, have I once again woken up lying on my side squeezing a pillow so tightly to my chest? Was I dreaming of Gemma? I am not even out of bed and already the world is too confusing to cope with. Like every day since ‘the number incident’ I don’t know whether to take heed of these unspoken signs that I need someone in my life, or whether to go on listening to the bickering and door slamming next door, and convince myself that they are the ones who have it wrong. I can’t bear the thought that it might be like this for ever, because I know that as each year passes these arguments get harder and harder to remember. I meant them vividly eight years ago when I formed them, when the last person I loved told me that the fight was over.

  Tick. Tock. Eight o’clock. Up and at ’em!

  08.00

  GET DRESSED

  What to wear is a big concern to a lot of people. I am not predisposed to caring much for fashion. It annoys me that once something becomes fashionable, it becomes popular, but then in becoming popular, ceases to be considered fashionable any more. Large cities are teeming with people who, having run out of new clothes to wear or new ways to wear cloth of any sort, are on the lookout for household objects to wear. Ring-binders for hats and epaulettes made of spatulas are going to be big this summer, mark my words.

  (Note: If on reading those words, you were at all tempted to check the year of publication and wonder if that might be actual fashion advice, then there is a number you should call – you have a problem.)

  I, on the other hand, consider clothes to be something I wear in order not to get thrown out of supermarkets. Exposing one’s penis by the courgettes is considered bad etiquette, and so trousers are required by the modern gentleman if he is not to be considered a mad genitalman. I do not so much wear clothing as allow it, against its will, to be wrapped around my angular body, giving me the appearance of someone wearing clothes handed down to him by an older brother regardless of my age.

  People who are into fashion notice these problems straight away and take pity on me. They would no sooner point out that what I am wearing looks terrible than point at a cancer sufferer who has lost their hair; after all it isn’t my fault, just a problem from which I suffer. Heaven forbid they might make a suggestion as to how I could look better in clothes, but just give me enough Jean-Paul Gaultier-designed Egyptian silk rope with which to hang myself. I know people notice these things because one former girlfriend let slip the secret pity of the fashionistas over a coffee once we had ‘become friends’ following our break-up.

  ‘Oh, I’ll never forget the first time we met,’ she giggled, preparing me for an anecdote about a particular witty riposte I had made or how our eyes connected and she fell in love in a way she had never thought previously possible. ‘You were wearing those fucking awful jeans with those ghastly black and white trainers! Where did your arse used to go in those jeans. Urgh!’

  Charming. I never did remember what she was wearing, which I like to think wasn’t a lack of care for her, but a prioritisation of more important things. It was enough that we were making eye contact or that she laughed at my jokes. I would no sooner judge a person by the clothes they were wearing than I would judge a car by the scent of the air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  Since I will be spending today in the car I do not have to make any attempt to look presentable so I remove from my suitcase a pair of Wallace and Gromit boxer shorts I have owned for at least a decade, some jeans and a plain black T-shirt. I buy new clothes with the same regularity as when I buy a new car, namely, when the old one has ceased to work. When my undergarments no longer conceal my possessions, or when my waistline exceeds their elastic capabilities, they get replaced, but not a moment before.

  I can only hope Gemma is not the sort of girl to judge a man on his sartorial elegance or else this is another bridge we are going have to cross together. In my stronger mind I want to believe that if she does judge a man by his clothing then she isn’t the girl for me, but in truth I am so desperate to finally be with someone that if she looked at what I was wearing and had to stifle a tut of disgust, I would be crushed.

  08.16

  HAVE BREAKFAST

  Some mornings I like to switch on the news straight away to find out if anything exciting has happened overnight, but recently I find I can’t face it without first having had a strong cup of tea. Such a British reaction to things, I know, and I think in truth it is the time spent staring out of the window holding something warm that I crave. Watching the news is like being given a huge ‘To do’ list for the entire world. I can barely cope with my own, and it doesn’t have things on it like:

  1. Diffuse tensions in Middle East

  2. Prevent all murders (solve existing cases where needed)

  3. Combat global warming (or spend months in prehab, reverting intelligence back far enough to successfully enter ‘Clarksonian denial’)

  4. Generate more nurses and teachers and policemen (How?)

  5. Solve the UK’s ongoing international financial crisis and what to do about the bankers

  6. Break for elevenses – prepare list for afternoon

  Everything outside is already so grey and desperate with a vague foreboding that I don’t need to overload myself with the specifics of what horrors are waiting for me beyond my current horizon, sure to leap out at me when I step out of the front door and turn to face the world. If I don’t check the news I can convince myself for a few brief moments that everything outside has disappeared and I am the last survivor on earth. Although this seems pleasant at first, no fantasy can thrive in my mind for too long before the negative voice kicks in with a fatal dose of realism.

  You don’t have any practical skills. You’ll die as soon as all the fresh vegetables run out, if they haven’t been wiped out already by whatever killed all the people. Besides, you’ll get even lonelier.

  It is certainly true that there is a huge difference between knowing that people are out there and choosing to avoid them (as is my current position) and wanting to speak to someone but knowing that there is nobody there. This is the cause of my irrational hatred of those people who say things like, ‘I often find I can be loneliest in a crowded room!’

  Oh, fucking can you? Well, that’s a huge coincidence, because I often find I can be hungriest just after I’ve eaten a massive cake.

  Most people who say things like this have simply never had to confront a situation in which they want for all the world to talk to someone but have literally not a single option available to them for conversation. Please do not confuse loneliness with disliking your friends or, rather more likely, the friends of your friends. It amazes me how often the people who love the people we love can seem so abhorrent to us. Whatever slight issue you may have with your friends, you can be sure they will be amplified one hundred times over when you see your friends once removed.

  If your best friend Sarah can be a tad gregarious, then you can be sure that Sarah’s parties will be filled with screaming, obnoxious morons. Similarly, if old buddy Michael can be a little dull, then expect his gathering to have all the joy of a beloved pet’s funeral (on the moon). This is why everybody gets drunk at parties and then, when drunk, ends up sleeping with one of the people who drove you to drinking in the first place. Now you have become one of them! All you have to do is make sure you are drunk all the time you spend together and they will always seem worth sleeping with; it’s not such a heavy price to pay, is it? Downstairs at breakfast I will no doubt be forced to sit alongside couples who find themselves stuck with the person they settled for one night forty or so years ago. Now they have weekends away, not from the area they live in, but the lives they have ended up with.


  I am not looking forward to dining with strangers downstairs, nor to the pot of tea that will be presented to me when I sit down. I like tea in a mug and can never get the balance of milk and sugar quite right in a cup and saucer. At home I have a routine – there are rules! Some hot water goes in first to warm the mug, then is tipped out before milk and tea bag go in together with one sugar and fill to the top. Leave for a minute, stir thoroughly, then drink. Some people get very angry about my putting the milk in with the tea bag before the water, but a scientist once told me that the resulting liquid then forms an emulsion rather than a mixture, which coats the tongue more evenly with flavour.

  I won’t lie – I can’t taste any difference. But it pleases me to know that there is a scientific basis for my actions. Where such evidence exists it should certainly be put to use. As long as you don’t tell people you can’t taste the difference, people still tend to shut up pretty quickly when you explain why you do as you do in so much detail. Probably just out of pity for me at the way I live my life, but never mind, a win is a win.

  Since it is a Sunday and I will not have to cook any of it myself, nor wash up afterwards, I will treat myself to a full fry-up at Mrs Snooty’s expense. While I say this is also a treat, it is also a form of exercise for me, a continuation of my training programme aimed at the perfection consumption of one of Britain’s best loved meals. When eating a fry-up finally gets acknowledged as an Olympic sport, I will surely be our Steve Redgrave. A people’s favourite, strong and consistent, competing in a sport that actually nobody is all that sure about, but for the fact we seem to do quite well at it.