Chronicle 2014

by Andrew Woodmaker

  *

  I handed it over to my editor, who took a quick read through it and screwed up the printout and threw it at me. She said she wouldn’t let it through until I have more confirmed information, instead of ‘rumour this and hearsay that’. I admit, she’s right, I was hoping they’d let it slide, but then, why should they.

  Later on, the boss called me into his office and told me he’d said he didn’t want me doing new stories about Reaction Engines. I told him I thought it was OK now, since the Oxford Daily bought the rights to the last lot, but he said he didn’t want me to waste any more time on the story, and that there were plenty more good local companies to do articles on, and maybe I could find some I could do an unbiased story about - ‘if you know what one of those is,’ he finished with.

  If I know what an unbiased story is. Of course I bloody well do, but I also know that the locals want to see their newspapers championing the local businesses, sticking up for the community, not being dry and impartial, and to be quite frank, boring.

  Wednesday

  I know it’s wrong to celebrate someone’s death, but I feel like doing a Tom Cruise and jumping up and down insanely on the sofa. President Assad of Syria was found dead in his bedroom this morning. It seems some naughty naughty person has managed to get into his rooms, and kill him. First reports indicate that they killed him by poisoning him with sarin. How amazingly appropriate, the same chemical that was one of the main weapons he used against his own people, used to kill him. Everyone is denying knowing anything about it, and the Syrian government has promised to declare war against whoever did it.

  Someone, somewhere, has a big smug grin on their face because they know who did it, and I’d like to buy that person a drink. It doesn’t bring back the 800,000 people who died in Damascus, but it’s justice for them. Nobody should be able to do something like that and get away with it, and now, they haven’t.

  I for one hope it was the SAS, or MI6, that did it, I’d like to think we have a good sense of justice in this country, and the capability to act on it. I expect a few other countries have the capability. The Americans obviously. The French we know can do things like this since they blew up that Greenpeace boat all those years ago. When it comes to it, probably most of the developed world is a candidate for this medal.

  Thursday

  The Syrian government did a strange thing today, something I’ve never seen before, and I can’t find a reference of ever happening before. They’ve officially declared war against ‘the nation or nations responsible for the assassination of president Assad’. So they are at war, but they don’t know who against.

  They delivered their announcement to the UN, broadcast around the world. I expect the reaction they were hoping for was one of concern, maybe some ambassador would give the game away by looking worried cos he knew his country was the guilty party. Instead the Syrian ambassador was actually laughed at. A whole bunch of ambassadors and representatives just laughed out loud at how ludicrous the announcement was. They are at war but they don’t know who with, and they have neither the equipment, manpower, or money to actually carry out the war they’ve declared. There was a film I remember seeing when I was a kid, about a situation like this. I now know why it was a comedy, I just didn’t expect its script to play out in real diplomatic circles.

  Things are a fair bit better at home. I’ve bought a new PS4 games console for the flat. I had to buy it on credit, but it’s really nice to have a distraction from work that isn’t just the TV. I let Taima beat me on the racing game we played together, I could’ve won if I’d wanted to, I just chose not to. I could easily win!

  Oh shush!

  Sunday, October 26th to Saturday, November 1st 2014

  I got into the office on Monday morning to find the Didcot part time police were already there. Some morons had broken into the office over the weekend, and completely vandalised it. Trashed all the computers, spray paint on the big screen TV we use to watch the news on, they set fire to a filing cabinet full of papers, and the other cabinets were upended and the papers are all over the place. Thankfully the fire hadn’t taken hold or there would have been nothing left. The boss was looking devastated. The filing cabinet that was destroyed had a copy of every single issue of the paper we’d ever published, back to the very first. Probably the only copies of most of the papers, the bosses years of work, all destroyed. I still don’t like the guy but he looked broken, he just sat there and stared into space.

  We were all sent home, there was no way to do a print run this week, the computers, with all the software, had all been thrown around the room.

  I have a horrible feeling I’ll be needing another job. Even if the insurance comes through quickly, there’s no way they can set it all back up before the company runs out of money. I don’t know much about the company finances, but I suspect that we run pretty close to the edge most of the time.

  Then of course, bad went to worse. I was on the way home, just dropping Taima a message to let her know what had happened, and some complete fuckwit wasn’t looking where he was going, and he walked into me. I dropped my pad and smashed the screen. It had survived being thrown out of an upstairs window at the B&B, but this time, I drop it from a metre, and it dies. Typical. It’s going to be £200 to replace the screen, and I’ll be without a pad for a week. I’m voicing this into the pad now, and trying not to get glass on my fingers as I hold it. Stupid fuckwit just said ‘oh sorry, are you OK’ and walked off, before I could even reply. I guess he realised he’d made me drop my pad, and didn’t want to get landed with the bill for repairing it. I hope he chokes on his dishonesty, I really do. If it had been me, I’d have stopped and given him my number, so we could work out how I could repay him for the damage, but I guess honesty and being nice is a dying thing in this country.

  Anyway, this will be my last entry for a week now, as I need to send the pad off to be repaired. No idea where I’m going to find £200, and even if I can, will I still have a job this time next week? I honestly don’t know. I wish I hadn’t bought that PS4 now, we can’t afford it, and it was frivolous, stupid of me.

  Sunday, November 2nd to Saturday, November 8th 2014

  Tuesday

  My pad came back today, and I have to say, I take back my negative feelings from this time last week.

  Sometimes, some people do restore your faith in humanity. Not often, but sometimes.

  Monday afternoon last week, the boss got a call from the Oxford Daily. They’d heard what had happened, and offered to let us use their equipment. It meant we’d have to go in at night, when they weren’t using it, and some of their kit was a bit different to ours - they tended to have newer and better stuff than some of the clapped-out rubbish we had - but we managed. We managed to get our weekly edition out on time last week. I can’t begin to tell you how much I like those guys at the Oxford Daily, they didn’t have to do this, but they did, and they supplied coffee and energy drinks so we could work through the night. Those guys are awesome, they’re the kind of paper I want to be working at.

  So here we are, Tuesday evening, and I’m just about to start work for the day. The night. You know what I mean.

  Wednesday

  The plus side of working nights right now is that I can go cover the fireworks tonight and it’s in work hours. I took Taima out to the display in Didcot. It was a modest affair, but it was fun. We stood outside in the freezing cold, waiting for the rain to start, and amazingly, it didn’t, and we got a twenty minute display. OK some of the fireworks looked like they came from the Tesco bargain bin, but it’s a small town, that’s part of the charm. London will be spending a hundred grand on their fireworks on Saturday, I expect, and Didcot probably spent no more than a hundred pounds. Quaint, is the word. We’ll go off to Oxford to see bigger fireworks at the weekend. I’m glad Didcot does theirs on the night instead of on the closest Saturday, it means we get to go to two displays!

  Saturday

  I wrote an article on Thursday, just in time
for the deadline, about community spirit, which talked about the break in, the vandalising of the office, and the extremely generous help from the Oxford Daily. I didn’t get edited a single word, as I think everyone is so relieved to still have a job right now, all of my gushing praise was happily let through. Another bonus about working overnight at the Daily, as we don’t have to send the files off to Oxford, and get them proofed and agreed on and sent forth, sent back who knows how many times, the deadline for print is almost a whole day later. This makes my work a whole lot easier!

  This evening, we headed into Oxford for the town’s firework display. It was great. I have to admit though, I didn’t see much of it. In a highly uncharacteristic display, Taima beckoned me to follow when we were in the crowd, and she led me off to a more deserted part of the field, where she revealed she was wearing some rather fun new underwear - and that’s all she was wearing underneath her long coat. It was cold, but we didn’t really feel the cold, and the fireworks made a very exciting accompaniment, we were both nervous as hell about being caught, and that made it even better. I have to say, that may be one of the most exciting half hours I’ve ever had. Especially when the fireworks finished before we did, and people started to leave the field, some of them walking only metres from us as they left. We weren’t discovered, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t going to stop even if we were!

  Wow.

  Sunday, November 9th to Saturday, November 15th 2014

  I lost most of Sunday in a bit of a haze after Saturday night, I was walking round with a big grin on my face. Then on Sunday evening, she dragged me out to Didcot high street. There’s a row of houses with hedges, and we did it again, right opposite Pizza Hut, right in someone’s front garden. They were home, we could see the TV flickering in the front room, if anyone had looked out of the front window, we’d have been busted! We could see people just on the other side of the hedge walking in and out of the Pizza Hut across the road, and there we were, just metres away, mostly undressed, and certainly breaking several laws!

  I don’t quite know what’s gotten into Taima, but I like it! I really do!

  In the end Monday came, and work reared its head again. The new retirement age law was passed in parliament, and signed into law. The boss was obviously cranky about that, but that was to be expected. Taima had a job interview on Monday in Reading, so she left in the morning, while I was still sleeping, getting ready for more overnight work in Oxford. She still wasn’t home when I left for work at 9pm, which worried me a bit, but she emailed me at about 11 to say she was home safe. I got home and she was still awake, watching TV. She said the interview had seemed to go really well, but she didn’t seem to be in a great mood, so I didn’t push it. I guess the last few days are over now, and back to normal domestic bliss.

  On Tuesday, I managed to completely miss the big news by not checking the net before I left home, and got into the office to find everyone from the Daily still working, and the Didcot Gazette staff all sitting around in the canteen.

  It turns out, that in protest at the new retirement age laws, the Liberal Democrats had quit the ConDem alliance, sorry, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, and Labour had promptly called a confidence vote. The Tories had managed to lose the vote, and in doing so had forced a general election. The date had been set for December 4th, and everyone in the Oxford Daily was working through the night to get articles written for the morning edition.

  At about midnight, the boss told us to all go home, we weren’t getting any work done tonight with the Daily guys all hogging the computers. OK so they were their computers, but all the same, they could have gone home at some point and let us on! Thankfully he wasn’t as grumpy as he could be, as the insurance money had come through and the office was being re-fitted with new equipment back in Didcot. Even at the worst, we should be back in the office by next week.

  Wednesday

  Taima got the job! She is now officially a teacher at South Reading Academy. I was so excited for her, more excited that she seemed to be, I think! She starts next week, replacing another teacher who was fired. I didn’t want to go into work tonight, I’d much rather have stayed home and help her celebrate, but she told me she needed to try and work on some lesson plans, so I left her to it and headed into work.

  Everything was chaos at the Daily. Luckily I don’t really need a computer, I just use my pad for my articles, but the editors and photographers (all two of each) were bounced from computer to computer as various Daily staff members came in and went out. I sat in the corner and voiced an article about the election for this weeks edition. It wasn’t exciting enough to insert here, it really wasn’t, it was quite long, quite full of statistics, and to my amazement, the boss said he’d have it as the front page article.

  My first front page, I’m so excited! I went over the story a dozen times with Debby, changing a bit here, a bit there. She was pleased for me that I’d got the front page, we’ve been getting on much better since the road accident, and she turned out to be nice instead of just the editor that put me down all the while. I think we did good work. It was still boring and full of stats and numbers, but it flowed well, and was a good piece of journalism.

  Thursday

  The polls have started to come in, and not surprisingly, it’s looking like it’ll be close. Labour on 39%, Conservative on 37%, 6% Lib Dems, 9% for UKIP, and 9% other. That’s a pretty disastrous number for the Lib Dems, who got 23% last election, and it doesn’t look good for the Tories either, although 37% is up a little it on their share from last election, they look like they’ll be losing out to Labour this election. What surprises me though is UKIP, they got a whole 3% last election, and they’re up to 9%, that’s a big surprise.

  My front page is going to print tonight, for tomorrows distribution run. I’ve had to concentrate on other articles though, or I’ll spend all night tweaking and re-writing it, when it’s already doing the job.

  Sunday, November 16th to Saturday, November 22nd 2014

  Taima started her new job this week. She’s teaching maths to the 11-16 year age range. Rather her than me. At that age they’re all full of hormones, don’t care about school, and run wild if they get the chance. She’s worked really hard the last few days trying to prepare for the classes. The old teacher who was fired left absolutely nothing in terms of lesson plans. No surprise there, if you get fired you’re probably not the best teacher in the world, so why would you have plans available for your successor. It’s meant she’s had to put in extra hours ever since the job was offered. She’s spent all day, every day, in Reading, and I barely saw her all weekend. I’ll be glad when it settles down a little, but I don’t begrudge her her work, she moved here to help me with my career, it is the least I can do to offer her the same level of support.

  On Monday she looked really nervous when she left. I did my best to distract her, but I don’t think she was really in the mood to be distracted. By 7am she was out of the flat, and I went back to bed for an hour.

  Monday in the office, I think we were all impressed. The insurance payout had been generous, and the new set up was really nice. All of the new equipment was brand new, and it all just worked. The set up before the break-in was all cobbled together and would break down on a daily basis. The new stuff just hummed along and did its job perfectly. I could sync my pad to the office network just by walking into the office now, instead of fighting with it for half an hour just to transfer some files. This will make work so much easier.

  I have to admit that that evening I was annoyed. I know I shouldn’t be, but I went to a whole load of effort, I actually cooked Taima’s favourite dinner, amazingly without burning it either. She got in late from work and was so tired that she wasn’t hungry and went straight to bed. We didn’t get to talk about her first day, I ate my half of the food, which isn’t MY favourite so I didn’t really enjoy much, and then I just watched TV and fumed a bit while she slept.

  By midweek, I was heartily sick of TV adverts fro
m the political parties. I’m glad that unlike US elections our politicians don’t actually have that much money, and so we’re somewhat limited in the number of ads we have to endure, but even those ones were driving me mad. Every few minutes one of the big three parties would be on TV telling us how they’re great and the others are all just lying and after our votes for nefarious reasons. As if anyone believes any of them. We’re just going to pick the one that we feel will do least damage, and annoys us least, and we’ll just have to hope we’ll survive the next few years till the next election. Democracy isn’t great really, I’d be all for a benevolent dictatorship, a single leader who gets things done, no opposition, just does what needs to be done. Unfortunately that kind of power always seems to be corrupting in the end, I can’t recall a single supreme leader who ended up being a good guy. Shame really, it would be by far the best way of doing things, if we could avoid the corruption.

  By the end of the week, Taima seemed to be a bit more relaxed again. She apologised for being grumpy on Monday, which I didn’t really care about, I was just glad to see she was feeling a bit better. Apparently the classes had been rough, and the kids no better than savages. Well, she may have exaggerated there, but from the dishevelled look she often comes home with, probably not by much. We made up for the blown Monday dinner by going out on Friday night. With two incomes, we’ll be able to afford to eat out a bit more often now, and maybe even spend a little money on those luxuries in life.

  That would be nice.

  Sunday, November 23rd to Saturday, November 29th 2014

  I got Sunday to myself this week, as Taima was off visiting her parents for her mother’s birthday. I played some games on the PS4, and vegged in front of the TV. I didn’t even put the news on until late. Glad I didn’t because the news was disappointing. The NASA Mars rover, Curiosity, had failed. Apparently it had been driving, and there was an unexpected subsidence, and the rover fell into a deep hole. It was still functional, but, being down a hole could only communicate very infrequently when either a satellite was overhead, or the rotation of Mars had it pointing directly at the Earth. And - being down a hole - it was fairly much pointless, with no science it could do, and no more exploring. There were a lot of long faces in the NASA press briefing, and I share their disappointment. But saying that, they should quit with robots and send people to Mars. If a human falls down a hole, they can climb out again, instead of just saying ‘well, that’s me dead then.’ I’d go if they asked me. I think that they need some British press on the mission, it may be essential to success! Anyone want my number?

  No? Well, fine then, be like that! :-(

  I was thinking of bed when Taima got home, she had blood on her, and I was pretty freaked till she told me it wasn’t hers. She’d been walking back from the train station, and found a cat that had been badly injured, probably by a car. She’d picked it up and carried it to the vet’s surgery. The cat had no collar, no chip, no way to identify it. She’s told the vet to try and save it, so there goes her first month’s salary. But it’s her money and she could spend it on worse things. A bit of human kindness every now and again is never a bad thing, we could do with more of it.

  I didn’t mention to her that we quite desperately need her wages to pay rent this month, I’ll just have to let the payment bounce, and hope the landlord doesn’t get too pissy about it. We’ll only be a couple of days late between when rent should be due, and when my wages go into the account, so I can’t see it being a huge deal. Thankfully we have a freezer full of food, but we’ll be late on the PS4 loan repayment, and the council tax. It’s a damned good thing she got that job, even if her first paycheque is blown, I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about money for a while, I’ve been sticking my head in the sand a bit. But hooray, it’s all good now, new job, new income, we’ll be fine.

  I won’t bother going into much detail about work this week, it was all election election election. Yawn yawn yawn. How exciting can I make a story about a 1% shift in the polls? Answer: not very. No wonder people hate the press at election time, and here I am, I’m not part of the solution, I’m part of the problem :-(

  Taima spent several evenings this week down at the vet’s with the injured cat. I have a horrible feeling that we’re going to end up adopting this thing. I’m more a dog than a cat person, but if it makes her happy, I won’t put up too much of a fight. I’ll argue a bit about it, I don’t want her to just think I’ll cave at the first demand, but it isn’t important enough to put up a real fight over. To be honest I’m surprised it’s still alive. From how Taima first described it, I was expecting it to be an ex-cat by now. But nope, it’s still hanging on. It lost a chunk of tail and one eye when it was hurt, but it does seem to be pulling through. I haven’t even seen this moggy and already it’s costing money and time, not the most auspicious start.

  Sunday, November 30th to Saturday, December 6th 2014

  Monday

  Election week. And will I be glad when it’s over. For a group of political parties with limited budgets, they’ve managed to really plaster their message wall to wall over the TV these last few days before the election.

  New unemployment figures came out today, and how conveniently, unemployment is down by 0.7%, the lowest value in the last nine months. How shocking that unemployment is down three days before the election, whoever saw that coming, I sure didn’t. I’m surprised they didn’t fix it - I mean find it - even lower.

  It worries me that the election polls are showing UKIP so far ahead of where they were last time. I don’t like all of the right wing nationalistic stuff they sprout, we need to work together to solve problems not be all isolationist and ‘screw everyone else, we’re just gonna help ourselves’. I hope it’s a temporary blip and that everyone opens their eyes a bit and realises we’re one island in a pretty big world, and we can’t just ignore everyone else.

  Wednesday. Election day

  Work was pretty much a non-event today, everyone is waiting for the election results. I’m at home, with Taima, and popcorn. We’re on the sofa in front of the TV, and I’m typing, as she poked me in the ribs when I started to use voice to enter this.

  As always Sunderland South was first to declare, and they’ve stayed Labour, 38% of the vote, Conservative 28%, UKIP 16%, Lib Dems 6%, and then a spattering of other candidates getting the rest, including a Monster Raving Loony candidate with 207 votes. I do like to see the Loony candidates, this one is in a banana suit with a big Stetson hat on the top of the banana. Call UK politics what you like, but we can laugh at ourselves better than anyone else in the world.

  As the evening progressed, the result that took shape was a surprise to pretty much everyone, and by the end of the night, we knew that the Tories had gained enough seats to form a new government, and the Lib Dems had been butchered, knocked into fourth place by UKIP. David Cameron’s acceptance speech was a typical, nothing speciOW!

  I have no idea what just happened, I just sliced open my hand on my glass a few minutes ago. I think I clutched it too hard and it broke, I just heard Cameron’s speech and wanted to break the smug git’s nose, and my hand hurt, and I’d clenched my hand around my glass. I’m just voicing this before Taima carts me off to A&E, as there’s quite a bit of blood. It doesn’t hurt though, I’m more just surprised. I don’t even know why I was so angry at him, he’s not doing anything I haven’t seen PMs do many times before.

  Thursday

  We waited forever in the hospital A&E. With the budget cuts over recent years it seems that the waiting times get longer and longer. I was seen in the end, it must have been after about seven hours. Luckily the bleeding wasn’t too bad after the first 20 minutes, so I survived, and I expect if I’d been gushing they would have prioritised me.

  I was seen by a doctor who looked like she’d seen about 300 people already, and looked really run down and tired. She bandaged up my hand, just a few stitches, and gave me some painkillers. She then booked me an appointment with Dr. Smith, the psychologi
st I’d stopped seeing a couple of months ago. I tried to explain that Dr. Smith is a psychologist not my GP or anything, but the doctor insisted that in my patient file, were instructions to refer me back to her. They dished out a weeks worth of painkillers, but said I’d have to see Dr. Smith to get more. Great, so now I have to go to a doctor I don’t need or really like, to be able to get painkillers for an injury that isn’t her speciality. The NHS is a mess, a right mess. At least the glass is all out though, and apparently there’s no long term damage done, so there’s that at least.

  So anyway, back to the election, who cares about my cuts and bruises. Before the evening started, I don’t think anyone would have bet against Labour winning, even if they had to form a new coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but the Conservatives have somehow managed to pull it off, and David Cameron is back as the Prime Minister, and this time without having to get the backing of the Lib Dems to do his job. I don’t think anyone at all is surprised that the Lib Dems have been almost wiped off the map, only 12 seats went to them compared to 57 last election. Joining forces with the Tories, and especially their U-turn on tuition fees for universities which pretty much alienated their entire core vote among the students, and they were doomed. To be quite frank, I’m amazed they got twelve seats, I’d have expected more like none, but I guess a political party can only self-combust so much.

  So this means another five years of the austerity program, which hasn’t worked so far, but economists still seem to think it’s the best bet for long term prosperity. I don’t know, I’m not an economist, but I’d like to think they know what they’re talking about, and the pain now will be worth it in the end.

  UKIP with 16%, that shocks me, but it doesn’t surprise me. When things go badly in the economy, there is always a swing to the right. Every developed country in the world has seen it, Germany even has a ‘neo-Nazi’ candidate holding a seat in their parliament, and for modern Germany that’s just crazy. I remember there was such an uproar when that happened last year. At least the BNP seems to have lost some ground. Those guys are borderline fascists themselves, and I live in dread for the day they get their hands on any actual power in this country, it would be a day of shame.

  Cameron’s face looked pretty smug, and who can blame him. ‘The British public have spoken’ he said, as he unceremoniously kicked every Liberal Democrat out of the cabinet, and back to the opposition’s back benches. Not that there are many of them left that were part of the government last time. Nick Clegg lost his seat, and he was party leader, and deputy Prime Minister until yesterday, now he’s unemployed. I expect the party will find some work for him, and he’ll try and get his seat back next election, but how embarrassing to lose your leader. How careless. They made William Hague deputy Prime Minister, not a bad recovery for a previous leader of the party who was blamed for losing an election he really should have won a few years back. He was considered unemployable, and now he’s back and second in command.

  I won’t bore you with the rest of the details - more to the point I really can’t be bothered to get the list up on the pad. I mean, it won’t mean anything, just more of the same as the last four years, doesn’t really matter whose face is on the front of it, it’s all Cameron.

  Sunday, December 7th to Saturday, December 13th 2014

  More politics all week, I ended up glad to do a story on the list of proposals for the new power plant to be built on the site of Didcot-A that was knocked down a while ago. It’s a mix of renewable proposals, another big coal plant, though why build one of those when you just knocked one down, and a plan for a nuclear plant. I can’t see the nuclear plant getting anywhere, not so close to Oxford, and not to mention, it would have to use the Thames for its water supply. Anyone doing the research knows that nuclear plants don’t cause radiation unless something goes wrong, but the idea of using Thames water, and then the Thames heading off into London, yeah I doubt it’ll happen, no matter how safe it is. Londoners will kick up the worlds biggest stink if it gets serious consideration.

  On Thursday, the expected fight happened, Taima brought the cat home from the vet. I gave in fairly quickly to be honest. The cat is quite cute and did win me over a little. Only having one eye, it squints a lot, and that was cute, it looks like it’s frowning all the time, all so serious. It’s a black and white patchwork cat, no name yet, we’ll see if it lives to the end of the month before giving it a name, I think. No point getting attached if it - he - will end up not making it.

  Friday was the doctors appointment with Dr. Smith the psychologist. She sat me down and we talked. She asked me why I hadn’t made the last appointment we had back in October, and I was honest and said that I felt it was a bit of a waste of time, she’d not even talked about the motorway accident that I’d been there to see her about.

  She told me she didn’t need to talk about the accident, nor did I, and she’d been trying to help me find why the accident was still on my mind. I tried to tell her it isn’t on my mind any more, but she insisted it was. I replied that I should know what’s on my mind, and I hadn’t thought about it in weeks before she brought it up again.

  Her response was to tell me that if it hadn’t been on my mind, I wouldn’t have ended up in the A&E last week, which is even crazier. I’ve started to wonder if she isn’t that good at her job, because she certainly seems to have no idea what she’s doing when we talk.

  I ended up promising to go back next Friday. I will go, but honestly, I’m wasting my time, I could be doing better things on a Friday evening.

  Saturday we went out shopping. The work’s Christmas do is on Monday, and they’ve decided on a ‘formal dinner’ and I haven’t got anything formal, nor has Taima, so we now have to go spend several hundred pounds on clothes we’ll almost never wear again to go to an event we don’t really want to go to, using money we don’t have. What an awesomely fun time. I was more grumpy than she was, she does like clothes shopping. OK what woman doesn’t, but she really enjoys it. It seems she enjoys it more the more expensive the clothes are. I don’t know if it’s because they’re better, they look nicer, or it’s purely because they’re more expensive. Some parts of a woman’s psyche are meant to be unknown to men, I just wish it was one of the cheaper parts, as her clothes cost over £250, mine cost £75. Still, saying that, she did look very very - very - good in them.

  Sunday, December 14th to Saturday, December 20th 2014

  The Christmas party came and went on Monday. Everyone else had gone to the same kind of effort we had, although I expect, as I’m the youngest person in the company, most of the others already had their expensive stuff, and didn’t have to break the bank to be there. Our proofreader, Alan, looked like his tux had seen better days, that’s for sure. We spent most of the evening chatting to Floyd, the photographer I’m friends with, and his wife whose name I honestly can’t remember. I didn’t drink much, I never do, but Taima, uncharacteristically for her, did. For a non-practising Muslim who feels uncomfortable around bacon, she seemed to have no problem ignoring the rules they have on alcohol. She was most unwell and her new dress needed to go to the dry cleaners. We had to leave early because she’d just packed drinks down all night. I’m a bit shocked at her, in all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her even get merry on drinks, let alone paralytic.

  I had another of my articles rejected this week, on the basis it had zero local interest, which is kindof true, but I still felt it was important. I picked up a Reuters news feed article about the South Asian Vulture becoming extinct. I’d have expected Vultures to be the last animals on the planet to die off, living on carrion as they do, but it turns out that this was their downfall.

  Farmers in India had been feeding a chemical called diclofenac to their cattle. It’s an anti-inflammatory drug, and the farmers dish it out by the bucket load as a general painkiller for their animals. The problem arose from the cattle who died with the drug in their system, and were fed on by the vultures. It turned out to be fatal to the birds in a
matter of hours, days at the outside. In the last fifteen years, the population fell from millions, to none today. Some of the vultures survive in captivity, but in the wild, they’re gone, another species lost due to careless human activity.

  But, the story wasn’t relevant. I even tried to hook in local farming practices, but I was told in no uncertain terms that comparing farmers in Oxfordshire to those in India wasn’t going to happen, ‘not in this paper, not in my lifetime.’

  Typical closed-minded attitude from the boss.

  Instead I ended up writing a column on the choking dangers of boiled sweets for children. In today’s politically correct society, it’s sure to be a hot topic sooner or later.

  I got my hand bandage off, and it seems to have healed up a lot. Still a load of scabs, long lines from the cuts right across my palms. If I was into palm-reading, I’d be worried as I’m sure it cuts through all of the major lines, but that’s not my thing and so I’m not at all concerned. If I do suddenly drop dead next week though, tell the palm readers they may be onto something!

  The new cat, cat of no name, still has his bandages on his tail and a cone on his head to stop him licking or pulling the bandages off. He isn’t very active, mostly just lies there on a beanbag we got for him. He looks a bit scared to be honest. We’re trying to give him some attention and get him to relax, but I think he’s probably still in a lot of pain so isn’t likely to relax for a while until he trusts we won’t hurt him.

  End of the week, I hit another problem. We ran out of money. I had to go to one of those nasty ‘payday loans’ companies on the high street, where you get a couple of hundred pounds, and have to pay double back in six weeks. I always laughed at people who used them, but there was a long line of people in the shop as I joined the ranks of the desperate. Any other month I wouldn’t do it, but I haven’t got Taima’s Christmas pressie yet, and regardless of how broke we are, life wouldn’t be worth living if I just said ‘sorry, can’t afford one this year.’

  Friday evening, as I’d promised I went back to see Dr. Smith. She had me go through the night of the election, when I injured my hand, in minute detail. I told her that the injury happened when the PM finished his acceptance speech, and was obviously because I hadn’t liked something he’d said, although I have no real idea what, and I can’t see how this relates to anything. Everyone gets annoyed at politicians, and at worst I could do with an anger management course or something.

  She told me that anger management wasn’t the issue, the issue was PTSD, caused by the shock several months ago of expecting to see a few dented cars, and walking into a place where a half dozen people had died in gruesome ways. What she’d been trying to help me find was what kept me thinking about it. What had made me lose control on election night, and at times before when I’d been angry at people recently.

  She told me things like that can often affect us in ways we don’t expect, and asked me to go through the other times I’d felt violent or angry before.

  I mentioned the time when I threw my pad out of the window in the B&B when I was escaping from Taima’s smothering, and she asked me to discuss what had happened.

  I told her I’d been watching some live music festival on TV, I hadn’t been that interested in it, but it was better than watching some of the other stuff that was on that night. And I’d just felt angrier and angrier as the show went on, obviously because Taima hadn’t replied to the email I’d sent her some time earlier.

  I started to get annoyed at Dr. Smith at that point, she didn’t even seem to be listening, she was stretching her arms over her head, just looking up and staring at her hands as she did so, paying no attention to what I was saying. I asked her if I was boring her, and why the hell didn’t she do her job and listen and solve the issue.

  I feel bad now, for raising my voice like that, because she was doing her job. She was being sure of her theory of my problem. And she told me what was wrong.

  Written Saturday evening

  I spent a lot of time today thinking about it, and it seems much clearer now. It was the clapping at the music, it was her focussing on her arms, it was the applause at the PM’s speech, it was people using their arms, like the poor guy – I never saw the person at the accident, but like his arm that was lying in the road. He’ll never clap again, and how easy it is to have things taken away without notice. He’d been just driving along minding his own business, and he’ll never be able to clap again. That could happen to anyone, it could happen to me next time I leave my flat. I hadn’t thought about it, but it was scaring me. I didn’t even know it was, but I’d responded to fear with anger.

  It’s strange to think about. Logically, I can see the link, I can see why, but I don’t know deep down why I reacted that way. I know Dr. Smith is right, but in my brain it doesn’t really make sense. She’s told me that I’ll understand it in time, and knowing the problem is a good way towards solving it. I need to not let my emotions about that poor guys arm get away from me, I need to put it away and try and let it heal itself over time, she said.

  I’ll be back there in the new year. I don’t think she’s working over the Christmas break, and who can blame her. But for now, I need to just keep my eye on it, make sure if I start to get angry again, I take a step back and understand where it comes from.

  Sunday, December 21st to Wednesday, December 31st 2014

  It’s a good job the Sunday trading laws were relaxed last year, or I’d have been doomed with a capital D. I went and did my Christmas shopping on the Sunday, got something for Taima, Floyd, my parents, and had some change to buy a tree.

  Wow, I sound like a Dickens novel there don’t I. Had some change to buy a tree. Quick, I need to find a passing urchin and have him buy us a goose too! Oi, I’m becoming a living stereotype of myself. Let us never speak of this again.

  Monday evening we went out and watched the new Hobbit film. We’d been waiting ages for it, and it didn’t disappoint. We’ve both read the book, so there were no real surprises, but the whole thing was just spectacular. It’s just a shame there was no more Stephen Fry. I know his part was done and finished with in the last film, but it was still a shame.

  We spent Christmas day at home. It was the first Christmas we’d spent together, as while at uni we’d both usually gone back to see parents in the holidays. I liked it, it was a new thing, and Taima seemed to really relax. I think the new job is stressing her quite a bit, and getting two weeks off really made a difference for her. I’ve just got a week and a half off, as the paper shuts down for a week on the 24th, so I don’t have to go back till Jan 5th.

  During the week between Christmas and new year, it snowed. Shame it couldn’t have been a bit earlier and given us a white Christmas, but you can’t have everything. The snow came down thick and fast for three days. We ended up with over 70cm of snow, and it was drifting even deeper. Taima’s evident relaxation being on a break from work, along with her new-found sexually adventuresome spirit, became evident when in the middle of a snowstorm, we went out to the town’s park in the middle of the day and carved ourselves a much packed down little niche in the snow, where we could have been caught really easily. Not even a bush to shield us this time, just the depth of the snow, and we could hear people walking not too far away. It was incredibly exciting, the risk of getting caught just seemed to switch on every nerve in my whole body, I was shaking with excitement before we’d even begun!

  We spent New Year’s at home. I downloaded a 3D fireplace for the TV, and put a fan heater behind it, so it almost felt like a log fire. Except for the noisy fan heater. We switched it off because yeah it gave heat to the fake fire, but it really broke the mood.

  Midnight is almost here, and I think that Taima is planning to celebrate the new year with more than just a kiss, so you know, I’m stopping recording here until next year. Happy New Year to all of you readers who’ve bought my diary, and have stuck with it for the first year! May there be many more!

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