Day 075 Ian's Journal Vol 1 (DR1)

repeatedly make a sound, but which also stops, whenever I look backwards to investigate... Odd. There. With that out of the way, I can hopefully commit my first thought to this:

New Journal Perhaps that’s a bit over-enthusiastic, but hey. Sometimes, that’s how I roll.

Despite the repeated mechanical scraping (which gives me a feeling of anxiety and panic), I’m OK to write/share. I guess.

Or at least, write. I’m supposed to keep a diary; simply because I can’t stop ‘cursing’.

No, not any Tourettes-like ‘cursing’. But the regular stopping to curse the world around me. Therapy Joanie explained to me my two alternatives after the screaming incident with the angry and confused gentleman in the market aisle where they keep the food colourings; the Man whom I’ll forever refer to, apologetically as ‘BBB’ the ‘Bright Blue Bloke.’

She tells me I must choose between ‘court mandated anger management therapy’ or the equivalent with a licensed therapist, which fortunately for Joanie, and everyone else she already is, even what with her Chuck E. Cheese® inflatable room furniture and all her American-style therapy gimmicks.

And so, the only option she gave me was Journaling.

Now there’s a commendable application of a twelve-year university degree... Hers, not mine.

I guess I’ve had my Fear Of Therapy since I was twelve.

Mum told me there would be no ‘formal therapy’ for anyone who couldn’t simply start by ‘opening up’ and telling my family anything I needed to get off my chest.

This impracticality was quickly dispensed with, as I literally didn’t trust anyone with the contents of my head after that whole ‘Horsham Salad Bar incident of ‘98.

Further support for my assertion that I will be keeping some thoughts to myself.

So, it’s to be Journaling-Therapy...

Which could hopefully be the comedy-traffic-school of anger-management, for me.

Therapy Joanie tells me to ‘Be honest and clear, and speak/write with intention’ – and especially, to re-read whatever I’ve written. :-)

On this she and I agree fully; especially with how ‘being an Editor’ helps you take on the full perspective of it all.

Speaking of American things, Lucy says to me in her East Village-speak, ‘You’re a creative type, Ian, and you should already be doing this I would think,’ but all the while, I know she’s checking me out. OK don’t be silly, you’re just winding her up now, in case she reads this some day.

No, okay, not ‘checking me out’ per se, but encouraging me along with helpful, almost ‘flirty’ little glances…

Sorry, Serge. OK, I was trying something there, and I’ve now remembered that this is going to be read aloud at my next therapy – I’m most embarrassed.

OK, I can’t concentrate, bloody ceiling fan – So instead, today I’ll leave you with this story that happened to me this morning:

‘Argument At The Taxidermist’s’ As I was walking to work, I approached Menzie’s, the taxidermists’.

A lady who had brought in her deceased cat was having it returned to her now, incorrectly, as a ferret-like creature.

The Taxidermist’s Wife, apparently, had briefly mislaid the ticket with the lady’s name and details on it, but had chosen to proceed anyway, and had given this questionable feline an inter-species makeover of the century.

As I passed the door, the Lady, who was most rightfully outraged, kept shrieking ‘bad pussy’ over and over again, at the top of her lungs, as my attention was now being called from my phone to the open doorway, through which the entire world could view this taking place.

The owner faced the road, trying to clarify that she was saying ‘bad!’ in a scolding tone, and ‘pussy!’ in a corrective tone to his Wife, who stood haplessly with a shrug and who said but two words ‘confusing… ugly’ in response to the Lady, through her impenetrable Romanian accent – but by then I was long past and nearly at work.

Ok, I’m done ‘journaling’ for today basically, ‘writing’ as the knife-sharpening scrape of the fan has merely instilled in me the fear that the entire assembly would come

TUESDAY 24 September 2019 Had back pains again this morning.

Thought I should take a paracetamol, but couldn’t – cos the parrot’s ‘et em all.

(I promise I won’t do this sort of thing any more.)

What is intelligence?

I guess it’s all relative. I mean, who doesn’t think they’re intelligent?

But when I hear someone say, ‘OH - you’re so intelligent’ it gets under my skin. How is anyone expected to react? The most one can say, I guess, is ‘thanks’.

It’s actually strange as a compliment because it’s not the kind you’d return to someone who’d pay that kind of compliment in the first place.

Nothing worse than the recipient hanging for something to say. ‘Thanks, I wish you were too.’

Today in the conference room, I had to point out to Annika that our brand Mirabilis is Latin, after she burst in to say that the French client was on the phone.

I recall saying, ‘Come on, you still must have your basic 2nd-form grasp of Greek and Latin right?’

Annika responds, ‘Sorry, I only studied the Greek and

Latin boy bands.’ She declares herself as intelligent, and I can’t blame her for trying.

I’m going to be brief. There’s a storm a brewin’. Nuff said.

(I’m now questioning why I even wrote this. And what it even means, I’ve left no hints on why the weird-Americanisms. Perhaps it was it all the ‘Friends’ repeats? Bloody hell.)

WEDNESDAY 25 September 2019 TO DO • Stamps • Goats • Fish Oil • Ointment (again) • Laundry (whites) • Shine shoes • Reinstall OS • Reinstall Adobe • Buy ACTUAL shoes!!!

• Shave • Weight?

I’m sorry, I’ve just realized this is completely bogus, and I’ve reduced my journal into a paper version of the iPhone’s Notes app.

I do apologize.

THURSDAY 26 September 2019 Hmm, so I’m supposed to write about what made me mad today?

No, no. Don’t get me started.

What if I tried to draw it instead?

The Pump House location Woodley Doug Mr. Kwak, telling me that I cannot do any kind of electrical modifications in my flat without a permit, not even to upgrade the internet Susan (following up for Woodley, when he ‘needed his liedown’) Everything, every day.

It’s all about preserving the right attitude to prevent your spirit get crushed.

Ugh. I need a lie down.

SATURDAY 28 September 2019 OK. Must journal daily, Joanie reminded me in a text today, which I promptly ignored as I was on the Tube. Now look at me.

Ronan blathers on about how he writes, every day without fail. He even goes to the Park to do it, I can’t recall which one, if it’s Huntsberry or Green, but that somehow sweetens the deal a little. I wonder where he finds this daily reserve of energy and time, though. We go to the same office with the same rituals, but at the end of the day, he’s got a chapter.

Perhaps I just haven’t got much to say, really.

Oh, who am I kidding? I want to do it all, write it all. I want to leave my mark. I just hav

SUNDAY 29 September 2019 Oops.

When I came to in bed this morning I found I’d left my thoughts unfinished last night. I don’t recall going to bed.

I recall writing quickly, with deep focus, and then -- Here I am.

I have a terrible headache and feel dehydrated. It seems strange as I drank 2 bottles of water last night, and now I feel bone dry, achey. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go anywhere today, this is my favourite kind of day.

Chapter 2

OCTOBER 2019 FRIDAY 4 October 2019 Woodley calls this morning at 8AM, in a fit. I couldn’t even stop to save the Excel timeline I was working on, he was suddenly demanding to know what we were going to do about his exhibition in one month. He wasn’t calling because something was late, he wasn’t even calling late enough in the morning to even start making sense; Woodley’s first instinct that morning had been, upon awakening, to pick up the phone and use it to start tearing someone a new bumhole.

He had been raging on incoherently via speakerphone for five minutes, and it was like waiting for a tower of dishes to finish fully crashing to the floor in slow motion. The din was unexpectedly long, and it felt like my nerves were still shattering, or spinning, for what felt like minutes.

‘It’s all in the timetable I’m detailing here, right now,’ I assured, as I looked at my unprocessed stack of notes.

‘I’m not sure why you’re alarmed, everything’s on schedule,’ I would keep saying, failing to reassure him for more than eleven minutes at a stretch, before the next ‘ALSO….!’

call.

Then, around the 4th or 5th call, Woodley’s tone abruptly changed – ‘Oh good, good.’ As if anyone telling him anything positive could possibly satisfy him. I closed my eyes, waiting for the next slew of angry froth from him, but he was suddenly happy. ‘OK. Well then! Speak to you ‘laters’ then,’ he said cheerily, and hung up. I presume he had suddenly seen something brighter or shinier than me, on his iPhone, and had flown away to investigate.

By this time I could finally look back toward my monitor, my Mac had frozen, penultimate before the black screen of death, and the unsaved timeline would need to be recreated.

Fortunately I was able to photograph the progress I’d made on my screen with my phone, that’s all that saved me from a full on conniption fit.

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s having to do anything twice, and from scratch.

Perhaps I’ve just grown to expect more from myself than that.

Efficiency, practicality.

Then I found myself getting into an hour-long thing with Doug, over his use of the term ‘Internet theater’, over which I took some offense.

We were sitting together in the conference room, with Serge sitting several feet away at the end of the table where nobody could really see him, ‘taking minutes’, which meant, in all likelihood, doodling like some LSD freak.

‘You have to tout what we do as Internet theater??’ I began to insist, after Doug set up his plans, to re-brand RE:fresh Partners in 2020 as a new generation of agency, excelling in ‘internet theatre’ ‘I’m in it for the drama, myself,’ came the remark from the end of the table, between furious scribbles.

Doug insisted, ‘We provide a particular ‘over-arcing’ service to clients, which is broader and above and beyond their expectations.’

I countered that ‘Theatre’ your paying client that your treating them with some kind of disdain, like you’re putting on an act of sorts, and you’re not being terribly sincere about it, either.

In the end, a frantic phone call from Woodley would tear

me back out of The Crisis Room and back to my desk, where I would end up performing a Google like function for him and then he would hang up as usual without saying ‘thank you.’

I think I recall Woodley once expressing his thanks to me.

It was in an email.

He wrote ‘ty’on its own line, a double space above his name. I might have thought that he was completing another word like ‘twen-’ somewhere else, but no, it was an isolated thought, after the closing idea. Woodley had even thoroughly punctuated one of his sentences with the correct usage of commas and a single period at the very end, instead of two, or four. He had taken care, with this email, and he had stopped, at the end, before signing his name, and the philanthropist Woodley, wrote me a separate line, expressing thanks.

‘I’ll take the ‘T-Y’ -- even lowercase,’ I recall saying that day, and I’ve not looked back since.

MONDAY 7 October 2019 Today, Doug gave me the coordinates at long last for the Woodley exhibition, after being forced to stand in the restroom for twelve minutes holding my breath, waiting for him to figure out how to turn a fizzy soda can into a makeshift bong, just so that he could blow weed-smoke all over the room (and especially into my face), whilst making cryptic gestures using his hands about ‘baffling technologies’, such as his iPhone.

In short, I learned: ‘Pandemonium’ will display at The Pump House from Dec 2019 through March 2020, down by the riverside studios, with Susan setting up the ‘New Works’ there (actual titles, TBD) during the coming month.

The large pump house floor will be filled symbolically with water, about two feet deep, and the works will be suspended an even three feet above the waterline.

The gallery visitors will be able to view the works from a small raised landing extending like a jetty into the Pump House from the adjacent Café interior.

Lasers inside the darkened space will illuminate the paintings, in an otherwise fully blackened (and ‘immersive’) environment.

This means that Susan will probably have to buy a pair of waders, as no doubt the Pump House cafe owner will unthinkingly fill the Gallery space with all the water first, and poor Susan, who’s only about five-foot-four, will also likely need to keep moving a step ladder-round, for literally every piece, that’s my mental projection. (Just you watch me be so unfortunately correct in my predictions on this one.)

Now, someone must come up with the primary Catalogue essays (Doug will probably insist upon writing the keynote, dragging us to the edges of the deadline while we wait for him to deliver it) – plus, short, factual bits of copy to accompany the paintings.

Ronan keeps bugging me to put in a word to get him his shot, re-inventing his career track, from Programmer to Copywriter in one go. His grammar, unfortunately, gets in the way of his message as he usually panics when doing any kind of business writing, while he threads all man

ner of ephemera and opinion into the mix. The tangential nature of his web writing requires a Programmer who can also add a proverbial ‘Reset’ button to the page, for the confused. Ronan asks me for a leg up for a raise – so who’s going to look after my leg-up then? (Sorry, I just re-read that) These New Works come much touted by Doug, who has remained tight-lipped about The Xenophobes and another recent collection called Hyperotica, which based on a verbal description alone by Woodley kept Doug pontificating for weeks, about ‘How art finally became sexy – in 2019.’

Ok, let’s see it, then.

We can’t even go to press yet for the Cover, which is supposed to be printed on a new synthetic paper stock so thick it can only be cut with a matte knife.

My design concept is a cryptic wrap-around sleeve, covering the book itself, whose covers front and back are emblazoned with ‘phantasmagorical, nightmarish details from Woodley’s most controversial new works,’ as Doug insisted we word it in the press release.

The printer insists we give them a month, just to deal with the potential horrors of CMYK plus 3 metallic spot-colour

printing on a brand new stock of ‘paper’, which in their fears, might repel all attempts to print in gun-metal inks, without even a test first.

Still so many unknowns But – without titles, paintings, or even ‘Works’ anyone has seen, we’re left waiting upon Woodley (as usual) – who is either weeks ahead of the deadline, otherwise, typically hours late past the final cutoff. Let’s please hope he’ll pull the former, in this case.

FRIDAY 11 October 2019 Was it my imagination, or did Maria wink at me, like never before, during this morning’s marketing meeting?

I merely glanced over at her, to find her already looking somewhat intently at me, that even my eye catching hers didn’t sway her immediately to stop staring. Instead, the smile grew even a bit more intimate, as she winked, and looked at me for one second longer, and then returned to whatever the bloody crap Doug was talking about. I still can’t remember a word.

I would perhaps ‘do’ Maria (Does my use of quote marks around a ‘sex word’ make me a nerd?) – even knowing she was related to Doug.

Euggghh. Somehow Doug’s face puts things in a grotesque perspective, I dunno. Maria is unusually attractive, but they say you should never sh*t where you eat. Which, upon reflection, is a horrific way to reference prospective lovemaking, in any capacity. I’m really very sorry.

(It’s strange, I keep finding myself, apologizing in my own journal. To whom exactly?)

I think Maria was into me at one time, as I’d just joined the company, because she used to send me all sorts of texts with flirty emojis, until it became clear she was doing that with everyone (at least in the internet theatre), and her Daddy told her it must stop. She would have been about nineteen at the time, back when I started – about four years ago.

‘Four Years’ that I’ve been working at this sh*thole called ‘Morrowvale’s #2 Agency’.

That’s a laugh. I can’t even seem to work at an agency with the confidence to call itself #1 at SOMETHING. Anything.

That’s the problem with this city, this town, I don’t know what to call this place. It behaves like a scaled down version of London – except with the confidence of a border town where everything could get shut down at a moment’s notice, if the nose on the wrong face got bent out of shape.

(That’s my obscure and long-winded way of saying, Losers)

Someday, someone should do something about this.

It’s ridiculous we’re not even on ‘The Big Map’, we’re nowhere on Wikipedia, and that our content gets higher strikes on YouTube than any other content, and for no evident reason.

I have to keep reminding myself that, one flight to London later, this would probably feel like a strange dream.

There’s probably a lower sense of morale in Morrowvale than in any other industrial city I’ve ever seen.

Morrowvale - Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop

It’s only gotten worse since Brexit, with the uptick in emigrants from places like the greater London and Manchester areas, creating the most recent housing shortages, while climbing rental prices make headlines everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everywhere in Morrowvale, since our news doesn’t seem to grab international headlines.

Tourism would seemingly be at a boom, but since nobody cares about ‘BarceLondon’ any more, that never worked.

It’s the best hashtag nobody ever heard of, and it was a

tourism brand unfortunately timed ten years before people knew what #hashtags bloody were.

Now, in a state of perpetual urban decay, it would be an ironic hashtag at best:

Come See Our Brilliant Use of Scaffolding – #2 in All The Land!

Tourism could do with a real boost right now, attracting the kind of tourist who doesn’t pitch a tent outside Tesco’s and stay forever, choosing the dole in a crappy economy, lost somewhere in the North Sea, waiting for something to happen. Now that’ll make for a great Tweet:

#ComeToMorrowvale While you #SitOnYourFatArse #WaitingForSomethingToHappen We could begin with our surplus of tube stations that are all ridiculously way-too-close together. Sorry Luce, not so much you can do about there from Marketing. There’s something like a HUNDRED of them, and Morrowvale is only one-quarter of the size of London, so go figure. That’s something like 90-100 feet, on average in some parts of town, between tube stops, and so it’s almost more sensible

to stay out of trouble above-ground, instead.

If I’m to be honest, I might not cut it as the best marketing guy for Aurora Nova, and we’ll have to leave this to the next guy. I’m happy just making and developing interactive entertainment closer to my own story – the one I’m waiting to tell.

Sometimes it’s still fuzzy, still too foggy to make out. Just a little dot here, another dot there at the moment. But it is taking shape.

A kind of mosaic, I guess?

Hmm.

MONDAY 21 October 2019 I think I’m going mad now.

Every twelve minutes, it’s another call from His Royal ArseClown. For a philanthropist, Woodley’s actual philanthropy seems to end right at the doorstep of his aides and personal assistants; that’s where the slavery kicks in. I find myself constantly dropping things I’m already doing to get interrupted by him while I’m already being interrupted (also by him, sometimes on more than a single phone line.)

This morning I awoke to the tail-end of a nightmare about Woodley in a proctologist’s office smock, about to give me an invasive rectal exam I screamed at the top of my lungs ‘NOOOO!’, as Woodley, the puppet master, was trying to shove his arm up my arse and control me like a puppeteer by wiggling my jaw to make me speak.

Barbara Woodley all the while, stood leering suggestively at all of this, muttering: ‘OH YES -- you’re definitely Woodley’s ‘Right-Hand Man’.’

I recall trying to scream, but in my nightmare I could only thrash about, mute with a case of lock-jaw.

‘French Toast!’ was what I recall hearing myself yell, as I woke up, exhausted and with a horrible shudder. ...

Today alone, I think I was interrupted 22 times on the phone, wherein I began to keep a scorecard, each time I’d be forced to take an ‘emergency call’ from Woodley, who would each time claim to be ‘right, just checking in, in case you need me.’

We’re still over a month out from the event, all the materials have been chosen. All the lighting and curation decisions have been made, by Doug, with Woodley vetoing nearly every one and doing it instead in a different colour, requiring my confirmation, every single time.

As Doug hovered over my workstation to share with me a packet of designs for the suspended panel layout in the Pump House, I expected notepad drawings; not the 15 or so coffeehouse napkins, which tumbled from Doug‘s pocket

onto my desk, along with pastry crumbs and a First Orders receipt with a preposterous number of sugar packets.

(Doug complained that First Orders threatened him to start charging for them - I now see why!)

Once I’d managed to (at last) decipher the bizarre direction which Doug appeared to be taking with his new creative, he would later only respond to declaring the whole thing ‘a catastrophe which i was forced to jot down over the phone, during an urgent IBS episode!’ – which meant, he’d done all the creative work from inside the lav at the coffeehouse using a wad of napkins instead of a clean notepad, as I’d originally made him promise.

I managed to find my way, through the remainder of his unpleasantly-soiled ‘blueprints’ and designs, by the end of the afternoon, but by which time I felt tainted, more for having handled what was part of a stack of Doug’s bogroll substitute. Two and a half hours later (at least I pray he wasn’t also using these for TP, he blurs a lot of boundaries), I had a headache and wanted more than anything to go home.

Re-dialing, in response to one ‘final’ voicemail from Wood

ley, I could at last visualise my exit...

Woodley – after an extremely long delay in picking up – instantly began by saying he wanted to know if I’d begun working on the Exhibition yet, and hoped to talk over some things that were just now occurring to him.

Upon muting my phone, I remember screaming and instantly winding back my arm, to hurl my iPhone at the wall only 3 feet away – – but instantly, upon catching myself in my moment of rage, I experienced an incapacitating head-rush, and so instantly sat down, waiting for my breathing to return to normal.

1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9............ 9 and a half…………………….. 10.

I unmuted – Assured Woodley I’d speak with him in the morning, and managed to sound convincingly done with my day, that Woodley finally accepted it and hung up. ...

A couple minutes later, I felt well enough to get up off the floor, and grab my bag to take the short tube ride home.

Had a strange sense of being watched, on the tube. My usual short tube journey, of a single station, felt like miles away tonight.

First, some bloke in a hoodie was sitting in the corner of the tube car, a grimace on his face before I even arrived, except I made the mistake of sitting in the crosshairs of this Red Mist laser show, dagger-eyes now pointing at me during the rest of the brief-yet-all-too-long journeys, of one stop.

This was not going to be one of those ‘All right?’ kind of moments, where you can go back to your book, after a disarming nod, or a smile. It was more about keeping moving. I did and briskly walked out the station, up the escalators to the Grand Mall entrance of the Depot.

Tonight, I chose to take the central stairwell block to go up, I don’t know why, maybe it seemed quickest.

Keeping a positive mindset about me, I think I sprinted up three full flights of stairs, telling myself there was no

possible way anything should possibly be wrong, by the time I fiinally decided to glance back over my shoulder for the first time.

Bottom of the landing – HOODIE bloke was now most DEFINITELY following me.

I could see him steadily keeping up a few landings below.

Here I’d arrived, MOSTLY home, by the time I noticed this, and now what? ...’OOH — shall I lead the Killer to my front door step?’

I followed an instinct, and I exited the stairwell a floor early, entering at the level of flats, just above The Roost hotel’s three floors, by coming in at the 5th floor instead of the 6th. I waited outside the landing, expecting the door to open, so I could smash him with my Titanium laptop I’d removed from my bag, which I now held, raised over my head, shaking on the landing inside the stairwell.

About forty-five minutes later, I finally lowered the laptop.

I’d done the yoga and calisthenics equivalent of more than two days’ worth, and as I write this, I can no longer raise

my arms above my waist, they’re so sore.

The 5th floor landing door never opened, and nobody ever stepped out to kill me. Somehow, with my heart racing, I managed to tiptoe my way around the NorthEast stairwell, where I finished my ascent to the 6th Floor Atrium at the door of my flat. Everything appeared to be in order.

I stood at my doorstep, feeling the handle, and checking that it wasn’t unlocked or anything as I let myself in. Once inside, I don’t think I’ve ever looked so quickly for so many chairs to block a door with.

I don’t think I’ve done anything else today, except write this entry, but I’m starving now.

Off to make (not order) a curry and watch something hopefully funny, like the News.

TUESDAY 22 October 2019 Funny how I now recall the detail I forgot to share yesterday, which occurred to me only as I was drifting off to sleep. I think I kept myself awake for nearly half an hour trying to memorize it so that I wouldn’t have to get out of bed, it was so cold in the flat, the thermostat read 17°C where I’m sure that was an exaggeration, it alway reads about 5° high.

So anyway: Racing home from an encounter with a hoodie’d stranger, reminded me of the commercial I’d seen which just began running on the local affiliate station, like what might have been called ‘public access’ in the States during the ‘90s.

It was two hoodie’d blokes selling security and smoke alarms. Dressed like faceless, hoodie’d thugs, and their pitch is to install security, for you, in your house. Smoking Security, something like that. I think Ronan had looked them up later on YouTube, but the point was, it’s a far cry from actual security with real nightwatchmen, am I wrong?

What’s this world coming to, what ever next? Machetéd roofing contractors? (Ideally not.)

FRIDAY 25 October 2019 Decided to work remotely today.

I just didn’t feel so well, after snapping out of a particularly long staring spell, it seemed.

Upon calling in, I was never able to reach Doug, Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan, Peter or anybody else at their desks to explain that I was feeling under the weather and would be working from home today.

I never easily found out what everyone was up to — after leaving a bevy of increasingly bewildered voicemails in the mailboxes of all the above, a text from Serge finally arrived telling me to stay home and quit filling up everyone’s voicemails, as they were all sitting in Doug’s office, being forced to listen as he tested his wife Pat’s new MLM video and opening spiel on anyone who would listen. Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan and Peter were currently being held hostage, and nobody had been excused during the siege for bathroom or food breaks in over 3 hours, complained Serge.

By text, I also heard from Maria a little later that everyone had left for home immediately after hitting the

bathroom in their one last attempt to pee-and-flee, aka ‘stretch their legs.’ She concluded with some emojis, which looked like a shoe, another shoe and a pair of glasses, flanked by an eggplant on either side.

I’m definitely getting mixed signals from her, and not sure what to make of hers coming in at 4:45 on a Friday night? I wanted to reply with a little ‘Drinks?’ emoji but that might be too forward, I’m not looking to get all #MeToo’d, I don’t really need any of this in the first place.

But, just saying... Could Maria really be into me?

THURSDAY 31 October 2019 Today was supposed to be the office ‘Dress-Up’ day as there were numerous requests by office staff to wear costumes at least one day a year.

Doug complained we were getting ‘too American’ and deliberately wore his classic (ill-fitting) Braccio Murmani suit, which makes his pants look a penguin’s lower half. I think somehow, placed next to Peter’s Batman guise, full with bat-suit, bat cape and bat-smartphone, you could say they were a match made in Gotham.

Sensing competition, Maria dressed up like Catwoman, prowling through the office leaving treats and toys on the desks of alternate co-workers. Hers appeared to be an odd/even distribution ceremony; a pouty CatMaria sashaying through the design bay, leaving trick or treats like any typical dominatrix-sales executive might on a Thursday.

It was actually a bit of a turn-on, we boys were into it, Ronan in particular appearing unusually gutted when she passed him up in order to place a KitKat bar on mine and Serge’s desks; as she slunk away slowly, giving me another

of those long, confusing looks she’s been practicing with me lately... (Frankly that was the hottest thing that happened all day.)

Annika, on the other hand, dressed in her usual Cosplay look with her blue wig, cyberpunk miniskirt, pink purse and chest-mounted device panel, the inside of which looked like an engorged and faultily-wired junction box. Annika had dressed for her idea of a regular Thursday; and it might have come off a bit more ‘Trick-or-Treat’ if she’d dressed up as an actual receptionist, with skills. (Now, that’s not fair) (Well.) ...

Oh yeah. The murders.

Someone reported a disappearance last March, and the Roost was the last known stop for the tourist who vanished. I guess this tells me I must live in a dodgy building.

The best thing I overheard today, in the lift after work on the way up to the 6th floor, from a tattooed man and a heavily-pierced lady standing behind me: MAN: Hiya!

LADY: Oh hiya. (after a pause) So which are you more worried about — the murders… or the smells?

MAN: …I’m more worried about the tap water in my flat, it’s black today.

LADY: Ooh… Mine’s brown!

MAN: Mine was brown yesterday, I’m on the 5th floor.

You? LADY: 4th.

MAN: Oh! Well then the problem is clearly still working its way down, from the roof.

LADY: Ta, this is my floor.

Laters!

MAN: Cheers! (etc, kisses, hugs, etc) Not the most encouraging sendoff to October. Not sure what’s creepier.

Chapter 3 NOVEMBER 2019 WEDNESDAY 6 November 2019 Fear of Music It might all be different, but it isn’t.

I’m by hobby a musicologist, except still conquering a deathly fear of music.

By my early teens, I conquered the basic phobia issue by simply becoming a music fan, and getting deeper into my music, my artists, my genres...

But every day of every year between the ages of 10 and 14 were spent in abject horror of getting called upon in Music class afe the nasty and unpleasant Mrs. Visscher showed up. She was approximately 102 years old, but with the energy of an angry dynamo because she was spinster-powered. She could pick out if anyone in a choir WASN’T singing, especially by the absence of breath molecules hitting her on the face from thirty feet away.

She was a terror to everyone; of course, everyone called her Mrs. Vicious. A terror, in particular, to me, because

I’d made the mistake of catching a cold three days before the start of the school year, spending the opening week in bed with a streptococcus infection, shared with me when a spastic coughed and expectorated violently in my face, at the corner shop earlier that day.

I say ‘spastic’, but it was an actual spastic, so don’t worry. Don’t go calling the ‘spastics police’ to try and report an incorrect use of the term for spasticity as pejorative, it wasn’t that at all. It was Mr. Cumphorne, the gangly assistant who stocked the shelves, having a violent lurch away from the cereals and into my direction, and coupled with a wet sneeze became the instigator for my complete lack of musical talent or future. It was basic, I simply couldn’t get out of the way of the stream, which I still feel in my mind, I can see, coming straight at me like a beige mist – a memory still completely seared in, whenever I struggle to perform the opening notes of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! and don’t know if I’m supposed to be going up, or down.

Mrs. Visscher was quickest to test my lack of musical understanding on my first actual day present in school, searching for ways to humiliate me for missing the first

four days.

She would usually stand with her great, hairy, misshapen ear right up to the opening of my mouth as I sang with the rest of the choir, exaggerating the ‘speak-up’-ness in her sarcasm. Every child went mostly quiet as soon as her musical torch shone directly upon them, and even the children with all the musical talent would quickly concur that little good could come from this sudden level of attention.

Personally, she called me out as ‘tuneless’ and merely insisted that I sing louder, as if that would correct for my horrid pitch problems.

Instead, I began to skip out on her class -I would regularly raise my hand to get excused to the toilet, and then I would go upon an exceptionally long walkabout before getting back, hoping to completely miss her window of the day, before she would go back off and retreat to her Hobbit’s bog, or whatever she slept in.

As the year rolled on, my attempts at ‘faking it’ seemed to be working, in that I never got any special marks for my growing number of improvised absences. I recall the most baffling one of all was the incident where Mrs. Visscher arrived, at which time I mentioned urination with my hand up and moments later found myself roaming the corridors, free as an escaped jailbird seeking a latrine. Somehow, through a door left open to the school auditorium, I could see a trail of students disappearing inside, and thought this might be the only place to blend in and better hide for the next 20-30 minutes… It only turned out to be a musical recital for the other group of 6th formers and I was immediately on a different conveyor belt to the same, horrifying musical destination, once I returned to my chair.

So, as I fled back to my Music class once again, I knew I was determined to get this sorted, to better avoid a nervous breakdown, or an unnecessary medical investigation into the supposed irritability of my bladder.

I would ask my family for help, but even non-musical as they were in the present day, each of my parents had at least once attempted music further along than I had. I would insist that they get me private teaching, if they

couldn’t explain it to me, and I would somehow catch up.

How desperately wrong I was.

Neither of my parents could really read or teach music, nor could they fully grasp the patience needed to explain it to a frustrated ten-year-old, as I was relentless in my inability to process what a crotchet or quarter note meant, when thrown into a conversation.

So, no offense to spastics, everywhere, in case that’s who’s picking this journal up years upon my seemingly unmusical demise.

THURSDAY 7 November 2019 I’m growing desperate, I tell you.

Will nobody look at my work?

It would mean the world to me if someone would just take an interest in my work, my life, anything.

Oh. Ugh. I just caught myself actually saying that.

Are attitudes like this helpful? Unhelpful?

Mostly unhelpful, I think. I mean, it’s this arrogant ‘aching’ inside, which completely consumes a creative person, when they’re at their weakest.

I think there must be days when I’m exhausted or ‘feeble’ enough that I come across in this manner, whining about ‘not getting the chance I deserve’, because I need to get it more easily than anyone else too. I’m pleading, ‘Discover me’ because I’ve been at it for a while, but also, I’m annoyed that people are forgetting about me as an independent Creative, and only remembering me when they need a tedious service performed, something they’re ‘too good’ for.

Not because of it being a money thing, obviously. I’m deeply grateful for the income, and would hopefully never even dream of letting on my dissatisfaction, to anyone who’s prepared to pay me a living.

But don’t they realize who I am yet?

FRIDAY 8 November 2019 In which: I plan to ask for a raise but rationalize the whole process first to death, leaving me a confused wreck.

Boldly declare what you want, what you really really want.

Today.

I’m going to look Doug in the eye and I’m going to break the ice by just asking for my raise today. No preamble, no buttering up, I’m just going to go for it.

If it works, it works, and then it’s over and done with.

What’s the worst that can happen? He’s not going to fire you for asking for what you deserve. Just go for it, balls to the wall, as Serge would say.

I am a bit frustrated and perhaps also a tiny bit depressed about the daily slog; working with clients, fully qualified but never getting wealthy from it.

So forget ‘moving forward’… it’s just about trying to maintain the status quo.

‘Do you think you’re getting manipulated a bit?’ offers Joanie.

OH – Yeah…. I mean ______******

SATURDAY 9 November 2019 Let’s figure out the money. It’s a 15% increase, if you take into account that I haven’t seen a pay rise in two years.

Ronan is chomping at the bit to get Doug to move him from full time programmer to part-time copywriter, and that’s clearly gone nowhere for the past 3 months.

So I know my odds are slim if I sit and wait for a door to open. I’ve got to go in and barrel on through until, as they say, I’ve done my best.

SUNDAY 10 November 2019 I don’t want to blow this, I get one chance when I come out with my ‘big ask’ — no, it’s NOT a Big Ask, It’s what I deserve for my years of hard work. And for getting passed by for a rise last year.

I don’t even have a business card that says anything intelligent about what I do.

Serge’s card simply reads ‘Art Director’, and nobody ever needs to ask him what that means.

My current card, which Doug printed for me under duress when I pressured him about having completely forgotten me during the company business card run, ended up reading thus: IAN CREED-MILES Convergent Thinker ‘Convergent Thinking’…? What the fuck is that? Is that even what I do?

I think I’m the opposite really, what’s that then? I’m more of an ‘Effusive Speaker’ really.

I’m forced to picture the relatively inept kid, Benny, in 6th form Art class, whose clumsiness with ink never disappointed. The day he spilt an entire inkwell on the floor, the class room got a lesson in wood-staining as well, as he chose to sit in the middle, trying to wipe up a growing ink spill outwards, from the centre of the crisis… A stain which started 3 inches in radius ended up over 9 feet in diameter before the Prof caught up with him and made him stand outside while a custodial crew reset Benny’s space.

Or, how about ‘Strategist’? …’Creative Strategist’, even?

If Doug puts ‘Right-Hand-Man’ on a card with my name on it, I’ll scream first, before I properly begin to lose control and shower him with a fountain of my vituperative spume. (This basically means, puke on Doug.)

I’ll make sure I put down ‘Solutions Engineer’ as a backup in case I think I’m losing the battle at any point.

Professional IAN, v.2.0 ‘The New Ian needs a brand’ Strategies and problem solving Account Specialist Convergent Thinker Solutions Engineer Custom systems Animated Still Life - video Transforming Data Creative Data Strategy

MONDAY 11 November 2019 23:30 I don’t know how to talk about my day today.

Maybe I should try telling it in reverse.

But I’m a little concerned that I might just fill up the rest of this journal with everything that happened today, alone.

I’m sitting here alone, in the ‘warm corner’ of my flat (furthest from the window), and I’ve brewed a kettle because I might need something to help me fall asleep, and warm chamomile might finally taste good today, you never know.

Deep breath ~ Mr. Woodley may no longer be with us.

We don’t know how, or what, or where, or anything, but – Woodley may be dead.

He might have died from a dueling pistol. And/or possibly a noose.

And/or, an overdose of anti-anxiety medications.

‘They’re looking into it,’ Doug speculated, based on what

he’d heard, from Barbara. She, on the other and, seems to have been ‘traumatised’ by some of the night’s events, so I’m speculating – it’s not good.

All we seem to know for sure is that Woodley ‘disappeared’ sometime in the night Sunday.

TODAY was such a crazy story. I’ll try to write it all in order, though I can’t guarantee much, in my present mental state.

08:15 It began brightly, based on hopes and dreams, and a plan to get myself a raise.

But before my day started, it was already mired in a Doug-tastrophe.

Leaving the flat this morning, I passed another of those curious yellow-green lizard things on the way to First Orders, and told myself that I would actually make a note of it this time, in the journal, so there. I’ve mentioned you, Mr. Lizard.

Or, Another-Mister-Lizard, since I saw one of your colourful brothers down by the Railway lines yesterday,

and you today, weren’t far from where Doug and I were scheduled, last minute, to meet and discuss the NIGHTlinkRailway presentation slides before catching the tube in.

I had been rehearsing my confidence-building monologue, but it quickly turned into this: (and, I was foolish enough to record myself on my iphone while walking, intent upon studying my own technique, later on…)

‘Maybe I’m over-compensating, of course, for my privilege. Saying ‘Like me, promote me, notice me’ is my way over off-balancing a feeling that I was born with too much privilege and so therefore don’t deserve to get friends easily, that I should have to work HARDER than everyone to earn friendships…’

Never warm-up to ask for a raise like that again. You sound like a Mental Cripple.

And remember to DEMAND a proper arseing job title too.

As I walked I think my stupid business card looked like this in my stupid head: (MENTAL CRIPPLE CARD)

I also didn’t have the slides; Doug had them (apparently loose, in a box) and had left me a voicemail round 3:30 in the morning about doing a dry run over coffee before grabbing the tube to NLRW HQ. I arrived at the coffee house, confusedly expecting to feel and steer my way into the ‘getting a raise’ pitch during the quick grab-and-go – except this is where Doug – dressed in an unusually light-coloured suit – decided to drop his Woodley News-Bomb over his ‘sixth coffee’ of the morning, then plainly urged me back onto my feet and out the door.

So much for my pitch-confidence-window.

I’ll have to come all the way back to Woodley before the end.

During the ensuing tube ride, Doug finally confessed to me his burning anxiety about today’s slides being merely roughs, which he’d run hastily last night to a digital slide printer, creating actual slides to be run on an old school carousel projector. Of all things. Standing in my face during the morning rush, he let out a belch which smelled like only what could be described as an old library book freshly soaked in espresso.

He then proceeded to warm up for the presentation by insulting a fifteen-year old girl who sat on the train car, and whose comfort animal-dog-friend had mistakenly chosen to sniff and then lick him on the hand.

A Dougpocalypse unleashed, as he tried to impress upon this Gen Z- stranger that he’d fought some kind of war for people like her.

To my ears, it ended up sounding more of a pedantic lecture about his having been a Situationist-art-punk in the 60s, before she told him plainly to fuck off – addressing him as ‘Grandad’ in a tone so dispassionately ‘woke’ that I truly wish it could’ve called it my own work. (OK Boomer.)

09:00 What then followed when we arrived at NLRW HQ could only be described as a vaguely demented (though well-intentioned) Corporate Transit presentation, with Doug as the ringleader,Before he misjudged, and descended instantly into a s(l)ideshow of self-deprecating inner monologue.

Loudly teasing our team’s roughs as ‘eyesores’, and summarizing our prior work as a ‘mess’ in inverted finger-commas was only his Opening Act.

What then followed, was a poorly-worded and frustrated-sounding apology for all things he apparently didn’t understand. All might have gone more smoothly had Doug simply stuffed even more bran muffins into his gob and kept stumm and waving his arms like an agitated Colonel Sanders for nearly an hour and a half. Lucy’s covertly taken iPhone shot was the perfect memento.

It otherwise went down advantageously in that nobody understood a word of what Doug (or I) were putting our focus upon in today’s presentation, so the roughness of the comps ultimately mattered nil.

We arrived, believing we were there to discuss a long-delayed iBoost in the morale for commuters with longer wait times by creating an awareness campaign on social media, using sexy videos and images of commuters, dancing on mostly-vacated train platforms; Our clients, however — who outnumbered us by a dozen at one point – believed they were there to talk about signage and the revised EU priorities given to the meeting of accessibility standards and, ‘Why haven’t these already been addressed across all its existing signage!’

We couldn’t have shown up MORE under-prepared for their (apparently shared) agenda. Not to mention the completely-different slideshow this would have required. Or, sideshow.

Instead, the way in which I slowly deduced we were off course went more like this: I would begin with some (misinterpreted) aspect of what NLRW were expecting, before Doug would chime in unhelpfully, and Lucy would try to help champion a positive aspect of what I’d pitched, Geoff would disagree, Diana would offer her two pennies, causing Geoff to reverse a little and go with whatever she had just said, making the rest of the room generally uncomfortable. And then the rest of their meeting execs would refocus us upon a target in the agenda which we had missed.

On and on, over and over again, for most of an hour, once it became clear that Doug had not given proper attention to their brief this time, and had been frivolously misdirecting me as preparation instead, never-the-wiser, until today.

Near the midpoint of the presentation, I was presenting a 12-second video viral, set to an electro-hip-hop track, while the video jog- shuttles back and forth on the tube platform dancer’s movements, creating a playful effect.

I’d made 3 spots – In each, a different solo dancer was featured, wearing headphones and dancing solo in a Tube Station. After a few seconds watching their reactions to our Flashmob dance approach, Doug began to go on about our ‘Mobile Disco’ approach, at one point saying (this is how I recall it) ‘…With an absence of a purely obvious rhythm, to the spinning, we get a sort of happy mindlessness from it, er, which is good for, er, our demographic. Spastic. Spastically dancing, but arhythmically, so it’s all a bit spastic. (beat) Wait, can we say ‘spastics’? I mean, outside of charity shops?...I mean, you have to use words like that, these days.’

I couldn’t begin to understand why Doug was all of a sudden so keen to say ‘spastics’ outside a charity shop, completely supplanting my attempts to introduce approved lingo like ‘Flashmob silent disco’, ‘kinetic motion’, and ‘… unbranded, completely viral ads employing simple misdirection.’

I also explained how these ads would ‘contribute to the longevity of the NLRW brand, as image pieces set upon winning over more of the disenfranchised youth with a heart to wrestle away from that entitlement mind-set.’

Doug then reinforcing, in front of NIGHTlink, that our dancers perhaps should appear to be ‘repetitively, mindlessly dancing.’

Diana then deflated the impact of my visuals by asking if I’d done it using Boomerang on Instagram, which, no, I did not. Although after she mentioned it I could see how much time that might have saved me in five hours in Adobe AfterEffects.

Then Geoff equated the overall campaign to a ‘One-Under’ waiting to happen, citing a city of depressed commuters dancing into the path of trains, like lemmings.

Most of Today’s Meeting went a lot like that.

NIGHTlink’s internal politics at one point became so intense that Lucy would just STARE at me, frustrated, anticipating the speed with which Geoff would newly adapt to Diana’s feedback. At least once, Luce mouthed Geoff’s reply predictively and to the letter, while staring at me,

unblinking.

Unfortunately, her comic performance, (intended only for me) made me snort with laughter in such a disruptive way that I had to pretend I was having a sneeze while pretending to search for a tissue, in vain…

You could mostly hear a pin drop during the times when it was my turn to speak and present, had it not been for the noise made by the slides, which kept falling from RE:fresh’s broken carousel projector, (which Doug had made me carry for him on the Tube.)

‘Amy phoned last week to say Geoff didn’t have the USB to bluetooth thingy to make the pictures go up on the bigscreen-thing from the computers, but they could manage a Projector, and did we have one? So I told them of course,’ had been Doug’s pathetic apology to me, on the train.

Now – as I attempted to present their latest Style Guides onscreen, using a slide I’d remembered which actually was helpful to their agenda – the projector would spit out each 35mm positive like a vending machine, after flicking it internally against the faulty mechanism with an aggressive ‘SNAP’. This was painful to endure, as I stood in front of a mostly silent crowd of NIGHTlinkRailway marketing ex-

ecutives and members of upper management, and tried to explain how NONE of the visuals they were looking at, had anything to do with the originally proposed brief, while Doug urged me, through stern looks, to ‘keep it moving.’

This could have mostly been remedied, had Doug merely accepted the need to apologize for misinterpreting the gist of their creative brief at the beginning. Instead, he chose to push on, and use it as a platform to ‘rail on’ about the differences in the ‘design vernacular’ used by different generations, and ‘how easy’ the younger set have it with all their smartphone productivity apps.

Then there followed a pause, while Geoff excused himself to accept a rather embarrassing call on speakerphone, in front of us, during which his boss – conspicuous by his absence from the meeting – not only informed him of his duty to sack RE:fresh as the marketing team during today’s meeting, but also informing Geoff that he’d been let go of as well.

Geoff, bless him, actually had the nerve to ask Doug if we would please consider putting in a good word for him, while we were packing up and heading for the door, tails

between our legs.

Diana may have been trying to apologize to me, when she stopped me clumsily at the exit. Something I said, curtly about ‘not engaging in mental combat with the unarmed’ – I guess I really wasn’t having it.

10:45 On the tube back, Doug complained about NLRW not even honoring his request to be reimbursed for the Tube ride. I think they saw his request as trivial, though they claimed simply that Maura who does petty cash was on her break.

Doug complained about them bitterly, much of the way back to the office.

Now what? We’re officially down two clients in one day, and it’s not even lunch.

Then Doug said with a nod, ‘Just you watch’, and looking furtively, hopped the ticketing barrier inelegantly with both legs, where he was instantly halted by a Platform superintendent (Harting?) who had been hiding in wait, trying to remain unseen by errant commuters like Doug.

An officious finger-wag later, and Doug had to return to the correct side of the barrier. He even waited for Harting’s back to be turned, before the recidivist in him officially took over.

Another quick hop over the barrier, before Doug was legging it quickly down the corridor, as though swinging his free arm slightly might make this all appear more nonchalant.

Harting, again within instants, had leapt from his post like a grasshopper, to the precise spot where Doug was hustling off to and instantly marched him back to the gates, now with an official NLRW demerit on his record, whilst calling him ‘Douglas Stickleback Nourse’, I guess, like a testy headmaster who’d at last caught the class troublemaker in the act.

‘This will go on your permanent record,’ he warned Doug.

The ‘stickleback’ I can only assume came from the way Doug chose to run, quickly, on the points of his toes; drawing a lot of attention from the entire terminal.

On the tube car, I chose to eat a ramen bowl I’d quickly picked up en route. Doug, sitting running his hands through his hair, sat hunched over in a manner which suggested he wanted to be alone in his thoughts, so I ate quietly opposite him while the carriage rattled and swayed to and fro. I didn’t think anything was wrong, until I heard Doug’s stomach groan.

‘Excuse you,’ I said flippantly.

For Doug, it was over. Combining with all his coffees and espressos, all the mini-bran-muffins, tumbling and sloshing around in there like a whole mess of little sneakers in a washer during the bumpiest bit of the ride.

Doug looked even more sick, raising a hand as he vomited miserably onto the floor at my feet.

Within seconds, the train car was shaken and plunged into a violent blackness; the railway line’s power cut lurching us all quickly to a stop; seconds later, the smell of groaning exhaust, the carriage suddenly smelling of diesel farts, which turned even my own stomach a little bit.

In the darkness I could hear the sound of Doug step-

ping in the wet puddle of his own sick and going ‘Bleugh’, before the loud, wretched flatulence which followed, before Doug was exclaiming, for the whole car to hear, ‘OH FOR F-- I’ve bloody shat myself.’

Which is a fantastic testimonial to what 5 coffees can do for you.

NOON Walking shamefacedly back in to RE:fresh, Doug had to go change his (no longer) ‘really light suit’ which now had a giant, new diarrhea stain in addition to a couple droplets of blood from where he’d cut his finger while trying to escape from the platform attendant. Oh yes, and the puke which had backsplashed onto the legs when he’d bent down and vomited on his briefcase. That was it. Plus the dirt stains he picked up from sitting on the tube train seats no doubt hadn’t helped.

She tells me I must choose between ‘court mandated anger management therapy’ or the equivalent with a licensed therapist, which fortunately for Joanie, and everyone else she already is, even what with her Chuck E. Cheese® inflatable room furniture and all her American-style therapy gimmicks.

And so, the only option she gave me was Journaling.

Now there’s a commendable application of a twelve-year university degree... Hers, not mine.

I guess I’ve had my Fear Of Therapy since I was twelve.

Mum told me there would be no ‘formal therapy’ for anyone who couldn’t simply start by ‘opening up’ and telling my family anything I needed to get off my chest.

This impracticality was quickly dispensed with, as I literally didn’t trust anyone with the contents of my head after that whole ‘Horsham Salad Bar incident of ‘98.

Further support for my assertion that I will be keeping some thoughts to myself.

So, it’s to be Journaling-Therapy...

Which could hopefully be the comedy-traffic-school of anger-management, for me.

Therapy Joanie tells me to ‘Be honest and clear, and speak/write with intention’ – and especially, to re-read whatever I’ve written.

On this she and I agree fully; especially with how ‘being an Editor’ helps you take on the full perspective of it all.

Speaking of American things, Lucy says to me in her East Village-speak, ‘You’re a creative type, Ian, and you should already be doing this I would think,’ but all the while, I know she’s checking me out. OK don’t be silly, you’re just winding her up now, in case she reads this some day.

No, okay, not ‘checking me out’ per se, but encouraging me along with helpful, almost ‘flirty’ little glances…

Sorry, Serge. OK, I was trying something there, and I’ve now remembered that this is going to be read aloud at my next therapy – I’m most embarrassed.

OK, I can’t concentrate, bloody ceiling fan – So instead, today I’ll leave you with this story that happened to me this morning:

‘Argument At The Taxidermist’s’ As I was walking to work, I approached Menzie’s, the taxidermists’.

A lady who had brought in her deceased cat was having it returned to her now, incorrectly, as a ferret-like creature. The Taxidermist’s Wife, apparently, had briefly mislaid the ticket with the lady’s name and details on it, but had chosen to proceed anyway, and had given this questionable feline an inter-species makeover of the century.

As I passed the door, the Lady, who was most rightfully outraged, kept shrieking ‘bad pussy’ over and over again, at the top of her lungs, as my attention was now being called from my phone to the open doorway, through which the entire world could view this taking place.

The owner faced the road, trying to clarify that she was saying ‘bad!’ in a scolding tone, and ‘pussy!’ in a corrective tone to his Wife, who stood haplessly with a shrug and who said but two words ‘con-

fusing… ugly’ in response to the Lady, through her impenetrable Romanian accent – but by then I was long past and nearly at work.

Ok, I’m done ‘journaling’ for today basically, ‘writing’ as the knife-sharpening scrape of the fan has merely instilled in me the fear that the entire assembly would come breaking apart at thirty miles per hour, and one of the fan blades hurtles loose, impaling me through my medulla, as that would mean the cruelest and stupidest end to an impassioned and meaningful life already filled with hard work and artistry...

I’ll need to climb onto a chair and tighten that blade now.

Success will be mine!

My potential has not yet been realized, but I, Ian Creed-Miles, will most certainly vanquish.

That’s so silly, putting my name in here, like some Crimean king.

What was I trying to do there??

TUESDAY 24 September 2019 Had back pains again this morning.

Thought I should take a paracetamol, but couldn’t – cos the parrot’s ‘et em all.

(I promise I won’t do this sort of thing any more.)

What is intelligence?

I guess it’s all relative. I mean, who doesn’t think they’re intelligent?

But when I hear someone say, ‘OH - you’re so intelligent’ it gets under my skin. How is anyone expected to react? The most one can say, I guess, is ‘thanks’.

It’s actually strange as a compliment because it’s not the kind you’d return to someone who’d pay that kind of compliment in the first place.

Nothing worse than the recipient hanging for something to say. ‘Thanks, I wish you were too.’

Today in the conference room, I had to point out to Annika that our brand Mirabilis is Latin, after she burst in to say that the French client was on the phone.

I recall saying, ‘Come on, you still must have your basic 2nd-form grasp of Greek and Latin right?’

Annika responds, ‘Sorry, I only studied the Greek and

Latin boy bands.’ She declares herself as intelligent, and I can’t blame her for trying.

I’m going to be brief. There’s a storm a brewin’. Nuff said.

(I’m now questioning why I even wrote this. And what it even means, I’ve left no hints on why the weird-Americanisms. Perhaps it was it all the ‘Friends’ repeats? Bloody hell.)

WEDNESDAY 25 September 2019 TO DO • Stamps • Goats • Fish Oil • Ointment (again) • Laundry (whites) • Shine shoes • Reinstall OS • Reinstall Adobe • Buy ACTUAL shoes!!!

• Shave • Weight?

I’m sorry, I’ve just realized this is completely bogus, and I’ve reduced my journal into a paper version of the iPhone’s Notes app.

I do apologize.

THURSDAY 26 September 2019 Hmm, so I’m supposed to write about what made me mad today?

No, no. Don’t get me started.

What if I tried to draw it instead?

The Pump House location Woodley Doug Mr. Kwak, telling me that I cannot do any kind of electrical modifications in my flat without a permit, not even to upgrade the internet Susan (following up for Woodley, when he ‘needed his liedown’) Everything, every day.

It’s all about preserving the right attitude to prevent your spirit get crushed.

Ugh. I need a lie down.

SATURDAY 28 September 2019 OK. Must journal daily, Joanie reminded me in a text today, which I promptly ignored as I was on the Tube. Now look at me.

Ronan blathers on about how he writes, every day without fail. He even goes to the Park to do it, I can’t recall which one, if it’s Huntsberry or Green, but that somehow sweetens the deal a little. I wonder where he finds this daily reserve of energy and time, though. We go to the same office with the same rituals, but at the end of the day, he’s got a chapter.

Perhaps I just haven’t got much to say, really.

Oh, who am I kidding? I want to do it all, write it all. I want to leave my mark. I just hav SUNDAY 29 September 2019 Oops.

When I came to in bed this morning I found I’d left my thoughts unfinished last night. I don’t recall going to bed.

I recall writing quickly, with deep focus, and then -- Here I am.

I have a terrible headache and feel dehydrated. It seems strange as I drank 2 bottles of water last night, and now I feel bone dry, achey. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go anywhere today, this is my favourite kind of day.

OCTOBER 2019 FRIDAY 4 October 2019 Woodley calls this morning at 8AM, in a fit. I couldn’t even stop to save the Excel timeline I was working on, he was suddenly demanding to know what we were going to do about his exhibition in one month. He wasn’t calling because something was late, he wasn’t even calling late enough in the morning to even start making sense; Woodley’s first instinct that morning had been, upon awakening, to pick up the phone and use it to start tearing someone a new bumhole.

He had been raging on incoherently via speakerphone for five minutes, and it was like waiting for a tower of dishes to finish fully crashing to the floor in slow motion. The din was unexpectedly long, and it felt like my nerves were still

shattering, or spinning, for what felt like minutes.

‘It’s all in the timetable I’m detailing here, right now,’ I assured, as I looked at my unprocessed stack of notes.

‘I’m not sure why you’re alarmed, everything’s on schedule,’ I would keep saying, failing to reassure him for more than eleven minutes at a stretch, before the next ‘ALSO….!’ call.

Then, around the 4th or 5th call, Woodley’s tone abruptly changed – ‘Oh good, good.’ As if anyone telling him anything positive could possibly satisfy him. I closed my eyes, waiting for the next slew of angry froth from him, but he was suddenly happy. ‘OK. Well then! Speak to you ‘laters’ then,’ he said cheerily, and hung up. I presume he had suddenly seen something brighter or shinier than me, on his iPhone, and had flown away to investigate.

By this time I could finally look back toward my monitor, my Mac had frozen, penultimate before the black screen of death, and the unsaved timeline would need to be recreated.

Fortunately I was able to photograph the progress I’d made on my screen with my phone, that’s all that saved me

from a full on conniption fit.

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s having to do anything twice, and from scratch.

Perhaps I’ve just grown to expect more from myself than that.

Efficiency, practicality.

Then I found myself getting into an hour-long thing with Doug, over his use of the term ‘Internet theater’, over which I took some offense.

We were sitting together in the conference room, with Serge sitting several feet away at the end of the table where nobody could really see him, ‘taking minutes’, which meant, in all likelihood, doodling like some LSD freak.

‘You have to tout what we do as Internet theater??’ I began to insist, after Doug set up his plans, to re-brand RE:fresh Partners in 2020 as a new generation of agency, excelling in ‘internet theatre’ ‘I’m in it for the drama, myself,’ came the remark from the end of the table, between furious scribbles.

Doug insisted, ‘We provide a particular ‘over-arcing’ service to clients, which is broader and above and beyond

their expectations.’

I countered that ‘Theatre’ your paying client that your treating them with some kind of disdain, like you’re putting on an act of sorts, and you’re not being terribly sincere about it, either.

In the end, a frantic phone call from Woodley would tear me back out of The Crisis Room and back to my desk, where I would end up performing a Google like function for him and then he would hang up as usual without saying ‘thank you.’

I think I recall Woodley once expressing his thanks to me.

It was in an email.

He wrote ‘ty’on its own line, a double space above his name. I might have thought that he was completing another word like ‘twen-’ somewhere else, but no, it was an isolated thought, after the closing idea. Woodley had even thoroughly punctuated one of his sentences with the correct usage of commas and a single period at the very end, instead of two, or four. He had taken care, with this email, and he had stopped, at the end, before signing his name, and the philanthropist Woodley, wrote me a separate line, expressing thanks.

‘I’ll take the ‘T-Y’ -- even lowercase,’ I recall saying that day, and I’ve not looked back since.

MONDAY 7 October 2019 Today, Doug gave me the coordinates at long last for the Woodley exhibition, after being forced to stand in the restroom for twelve minutes holding my breath, waiting for him to figure out how to turn a fizzy soda can into a makeshift bong, just so that he could blow weed-smoke all over the room (and especially into my face), whilst making cryptic gestures using his hands about ‘baffling technologies’, such as his iPhone.

In short, I learned: ‘Pandemonium’ will display at The Pump House from Dec 2019 through March 2020, down by the riverside studios, with Susan setting up the ‘New Works’ there (actual titles, TBD) during the coming month.

The large pump house floor will be filled symbolically with water, about two feet deep, and the works will be

suspended an even three feet above the waterline.

The gallery visitors will be able to view the works from a small raised landing extending like a jetty into the Pump House from the adjacent Café interior.

Lasers inside the darkened space will illuminate the paintings, in an otherwise fully blackened (and ‘immersive’) environment.

This means that Susan will probably have to buy a pair of waders, as no doubt the Pump House cafe owner will unthinkingly fill the Gallery space with all the water first, and poor Susan, who’s only about five-foot-four, will also likely need to keep moving a step ladder-round, for literally every piece, that’s my mental projection. (Just you watch me be so unfortunately correct in my predic-

tions on this one.)

Now, someone must come up with the primary Catalogue essays (Doug will probably insist upon writing the keynote, dragging us to the edges of the deadline while we wait for him to deliver it) – plus, short, factual bits of copy to accompany the paintings.

Ronan keeps bugging me to put in a word to get him his shot, re-inventing his career track, from Programmer to Copywriter in one go. His grammar, unfortunately, gets in the way of his message as he usually panics when doing any kind of business writing, while he threads all manner of ephemera and opinion into the mix. The tangential nature of his web writing requires a Programmer who can also add a proverbial ‘Reset’ button to the page, for the confused. Ronan asks me for a leg up for a raise – so who’s going to look after my leg-up then? (Sorry, I just re-read that) These New Works come much touted by Doug, who has remained tight-lipped about The Xenophobes and another recent collection called Hyperotica, which based on a verbal description alone by Woodley kept Doug pontificating

for weeks, about ‘How art finally became sexy – in 2019.’

Ok, let’s see it, then.

We can’t even go to press yet for the Cover, which is supposed to be printed on a new synthetic paper stock so thick it can only be cut with a matte knife.

My design concept is a cryptic wrap-around sleeve, covering the book itself, whose covers front and back are emblazoned with ‘phantasmagorical, nightmarish details from Woodley’s most controversial new works,’ as Doug insisted we word it in the press release.

The printer insists we give them a month, just to deal with the potential horrors of CMYK plus 3 metallic spot-colour printing on a brand new stock of ‘paper’, which in their fears, might repel all attempts to print in gun-metal inks, without even a test first.

Still so many unknowns But – without titles, paintings, or even ‘Works’ anyone has seen, we’re left waiting upon Woodley (as usual) – who is either weeks ahead of the deadline, otherwise, typically hours late past the final cutoff. Let’s please hope he’ll pull the former, in this case.

FRIDAY 11 October 2019 Was it my imagination, or did Maria wink at me, like never before, during this morning’s marketing meeting?

I merely glanced over at her, to find her already looking somewhat intently at me, that even my eye catching hers didn’t sway her immediately to stop staring. Instead, the smile grew even a bit more intimate, as she winked, and looked at me for one second longer, and then returned to whatever the bloody crap Doug was talking about. I still can’t remember a word.

I would perhaps ‘do’ Maria (Does my use of quote marks around a ‘sex word’ make me a nerd?) – even knowing she was related to Doug.

Euggghh. Somehow Doug’s face puts things in a grotesque perspective, I dunno. Maria is unusually attractive, but they say you should never sh*t where you eat. Which, upon reflection, is a horrific way to reference prospective lovemaking, in any capacity. I’m really very sorry.

(It’s strange, I keep finding myself, apologizing in my own

journal. To whom exactly?)

I think Maria was into me at one time, as I’d just joined the company, because she used to send me all sorts of texts with flirty emojis, until it became clear she was doing that with everyone (at least in the internet theatre), and her Daddy told her it must stop. She would have been about nineteen at the time, back when I started – about four years ago.

‘Four Years’ that I’ve been working at this sh*thole called ‘Morrowvale’s #2 Agency’.

That’s a laugh. I can’t even seem to work at an agency with the confidence to call itself #1 at SOMETHING. Anything.

That’s the problem with this city, this town, I don’t know what to call this place. It behaves like a scaled down version of London – except with the confidence of a border town where everything could get shut down at a moment’s notice, if the nose on the wrong face got bent out of shape.

(That’s my obscure and long-winded way of saying, Losers)

Someday, someone should do something about this.

It’s ridiculous we’re not even on ‘The Big Map’, we’re nowhere on Wikipedia, and that our content gets higher strikes on YouTube than any other content, and for no evident reason.

I have to keep reminding myself that, one flight to London later, this would probably feel like a strange dream.

There’s probably a lower sense of morale in Morrowvale than in any other industrial city I’ve ever seen.

Morrowvale - Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop

It’s only gotten worse since Brexit, with the uptick in emigrants from places like the greater London and Manchester areas, creating the most recent housing shortages, while climbing rental prices make headlines everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everywhere in Morrowvale, since our news doesn’t seem to grab international headlines.

Tourism would seemingly be at a boom, but since nobody cares about ‘BarceLondon’ any more, that never worked.

It’s the best hashtag nobody ever heard of, and it was a tourism brand unfortunately timed ten years before people knew what #hashtags bloody were.

Now, in a state of perpetual urban decay, it would be an ironic hashtag at best:

Come See Our Brilliant Use of Scaffolding – #2 in All The Land!

Tourism could do with a real boost right now, attracting the kind of tourist who doesn’t pitch a tent outside Tesco’s and stay forever, choosing the dole in a crappy economy, lost somewhere in the North Sea, waiting for something to happen. Now that’ll make for a great Tweet: #ComeToMorrowvale While you #SitOnYourFatArse #WaitingForSomethingToHappen We could begin

with our surplus of tube stations that are all ridiculously way-too-close together. Sorry Luce, not so much you can do about there from Marketing. There’s something like a HUNDRED of them, and Morrowvale is only one-quarter of the size of London, so go figure. That’s something like 90-100 feet, on average in some parts of town, between tube stops, and so it’s almost more sensible to stay out of trouble above-ground, instead.

If I’m to be honest, I might not cut it as the best marketing guy for Aurora Nova, and we’ll have to leave this to the next guy. I’m happy just making and developing interactive entertainment closer to my own story – the one I’m waiting to tell.

Sometimes it’s still fuzzy, still too foggy to make out. Just a little dot here, another dot there at the moment. But it is taking shape.

A kind of mosaic, I guess?

Hmm.

MONDAY 21 October 2019 I think I’m going mad now.

Every twelve minutes, it’s another call from His Royal ArseClown. For a philanthropist, Woodley’s actual philanthropy seems to end right at the doorstep of his aides and personal assistants; that’s where the slavery kicks in. I find myself constantly dropping things I’m already doing to get interrupted by him while I’m already being interrupted (also by him, sometimes on more than a single phone line.)

This morning I awoke to the tail-end of a nightmare about Woodley in a proctologist’s office smock, about to give me an invasive rectal exam I screamed at the top of my lungs ‘NOOOO!’, as Woodley, the puppet master, was trying to shove his arm up my arse and control me like a puppeteer by wiggling my jaw to make me speak.

Barbara Woodley all the while, stood leering suggestively at all of this, muttering: ‘OH YES -- you’re definitely Woodley’s ‘Right-Hand Man’.’

I recall trying to scream, but in my nightmare I could only thrash about, mute with a case of lock-jaw.

‘French Toast!’ was what I recall hearing myself yell, as I woke up, exhausted and with a horrible shudder. ...

Today alone, I think I was interrupted 22 times on the phone, wherein I began to keep a scorecard, each time I’d be forced to take an ‘emergency call’ from Woodley, who would each time claim to be ‘right, just checking in, in case you need me.’

We’re still over a month out from the event, all the materials have been chosen. All the lighting and curation decisions have been made, by Doug, with Woodley vetoing nearly every one and doing it instead in a different colour, requiring my confirmation, every single time.

As Doug hovered over my workstation to share with me a packet of designs for the suspended panel layout in the Pump House, I expected notepad drawings; not the 15 or so coffeehouse napkins, which tumbled from Doug‘s pocket

onto my desk, along with pastry crumbs and a First Orders receipt with a preposterous number of sugar packets.

(Doug complained that First Orders threatened him to start charging for them - I now see why!)

Once I’d managed to (at last) decipher the bizarre direction which Doug appeared to be taking with his new creative, he would later only respond to declaring the whole thing ‘a catastrophe which i was forced to jot down over the phone, during an urgent IBS episode!’ – which meant, he’d done all the creative work from inside the lav at the coffeehouse using a wad of napkins instead of a clean notepad, as I’d originally made him promise.

I managed to find my way, through the remainder of his unpleasantly-soiled ‘blueprints’ and designs, by the end of the afternoon, but by which time I felt tainted, more for having handled what was part of a stack of Doug’s bogroll substitute. Two and a half hours later (at least I pray he wasn’t also using these for TP, he blurs a lot of boundaries), I had a headache and wanted more than anything to go home.

Re-dialing, in response to one ‘final’ voicemail from Wood-

ley, I could at last visualise my exit...

Woodley – after an extremely long delay in picking up – instantly began by saying he wanted to know if I’d begun working on the Exhibition yet, and hoped to talk over some things that were just now occurring to him.

Upon muting my phone, I remember screaming and instantly winding back my arm, to hurl my iPhone at the wall only 3 feet away – – but instantly, upon catching myself in my moment of rage, I experienced an incapacitating head-rush, and so instantly sat down, waiting for my breathing to return to normal.

1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7…

8… 9............ 9 and a half…………………….. 10.

I unmuted – Assured Woodley I’d speak with him in the morning, and managed to sound convincingly done with my day, that Woodley finally accepted it and hung up. ...

A couple minutes later, I felt well enough to get up off the floor, and grab my bag to take the short tube ride home.

Had a strange sense of being watched, on the tube. My usual short tube journey, of a single station, felt like miles away tonight.

First, some bloke in a hoodie was sitting in the corner of the tube car, a grimace on his face before I even arrived, except I made the mistake of sitting in the crosshairs of this Red Mist laser show, dagger-eyes now pointing at me during the rest of the brief-yet-all-too-long journeys, of one stop.

This was not going to be one of those ‘All right?’ kind of moments, where you can go back to your book, after

a disarming nod, or a smile. It was more about keeping moving. I did and briskly walked out the station, up the escalators to the Grand Mall entrance of the Depot.

Tonight, I chose to take the central stairwell block to go up, I don’t know why, maybe it seemed quickest.

Keeping a positive mindset about me, I think I sprinted up three full

flights of stairs, telling myself there was no possible way anything should possibly be wrong, by the time I fiinally decided to glance back over my shoulder for the first time.

Bottom of the landing – HOODIE bloke was now most DEFINITELY following me.

I could see him steadily keeping up a few landings below.

Here I’d arrived, MOSTLY home, by the time I noticed this, and now

what? ...’OOH — shall I lead the Killer to my front door step?’

I followed an instinct, and I exited the stairwell a floor early, entering at the level of flats, just above The Roost hotel’s three floors, by coming in at the 5th floor instead of the 6th. I waited outside the landing, expecting the door to open, so I could smash him with my Titanium laptop I’d removed from my bag, which I now held, raised over my head, shaking on the landing inside the stairwell.

About forty-five minutes later, I finally lowered the laptop.

I’d done the yoga and calisthenics equivalent of more than two days’ worth, and as I write this, I can no longer raise my arms above my waist, they’re so sore.

The 5th floor landing door never opened, and nobody ever stepped out to kill me. Somehow, with my heart racing, I managed to tiptoe my way around the NorthEast stairwell, where I finished my ascent to the 6th Floor Atrium at the door of my flat. Everything appeared to be in order.

I stood at my doorstep, feeling the handle, and checking

that it wasn’t unlocked or anything as I let myself in. Once inside, I don’t think I’ve ever looked so quickly for so many chairs to block a door with.

I don’t think I’ve done anything else today, except write this entry, but I’m starving now.

Off to make (not order) a curry and watch something hopefully funny, like the News.

TUESDAY 22 October 2019 Funny how I now recall the detail I forgot to share yesterday, which occurred to me only as I was drifting off to sleep. I think I kept myself awake for nearly half an hour trying to memorize it so that I wouldn’t have to get out of bed, it was so cold in the flat, the thermostat read 17°C where I’m sure that was an exaggeration, it alway reads about 5° high.

So anyway: Racing home from an encounter with a hoodie’d stranger, reminded me of the commercial I’d seen which just began running on the local affiliate station, like what might have been called ‘public access’ in the States during the ‘90s.

It was two hoodie’d blokes selling security and smoke alarms. Dressed like faceless, hoodie’d thugs, and their pitch is to install security, for you, in your house. Smoking Security, something like that. I think Ronan had looked them up later on YouTube, but the point was, it’s a far cry from actual security with real nightwatchmen, am I wrong?

What’s this world coming to, what ever next? Machetéd roofing contractors? (Ideally not.)

FRIDAY 25 October 2019 Decided to work remotely today.

I just didn’t feel so well, after snapping out of a particularly long staring spell, it seemed.

Upon calling in, I was never able to reach Doug, Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan, Peter or anybody else at their desks to explain that I was feeling under the weather and would be working from home today.

I never easily found out what everyone was up to — after leaving a bevy of increasingly bewildered voicemails in the mailboxes of all the above, a text from Serge finally arrived telling me to stay home and quit filling up everyone’s

voicemails, as they were all sitting in Doug’s office, being forced to listen as he tested his wife Pat’s new MLM video and opening spiel on anyone who would listen. Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan and Peter were currently being held hostage, and nobody had been excused during the siege for bathroom or food breaks in over 3 hours, complained Serge.

By text, I also heard from Maria a little later that everyone had left for home immediately after hitting the bathroom in their one last attempt to pee-and-flee, aka ‘stretch their legs.’ She concluded with some emojis, which looked like a shoe, another shoe and a pair of glasses, flanked by an eggplant on either side.

I’m definitely getting mixed signals from her, and not sure what to make of hers coming in at 4:45 on a Friday night? I wanted to reply with a little ‘Drinks?’ emoji but that might be too forward, I’m not looking to get all #MeToo’d, I don’t really need any of this in the first place.

But, just saying... Could Maria really be into me?

THURSDAY 31 October 2019 Today was supposed to be the office ‘Dress-Up’ day as there were numerous requests by office staff to wear costumes at least one day a year.

Doug complained we were getting ‘too American’ and deliberately wore his classic (ill-fitting) Braccio Murmani suit, which makes his pants look a penguin’s lower half. I think somehow, placed next to Peter’s Batman guise, full with bat-suit, bat cape and bat-smartphone, you could say they were a match made in Gotham.

Sensing competition, Maria dressed up like Catwoman, prowling through the office leaving treats and toys on the desks of alternate co-workers. Hers appeared to be an odd/even distribution ceremony; a pouty CatMaria sashaying through the design bay, leaving trick or treats like any typical

dominatrix-sales executive might on a Thursday.

It was actually a bit of a turn-on, we boys were into it, Ronan in particular appearing unusually gutted when she passed him up in order to place a KitKat bar on mine and Serge’s desks; as she slunk away slowly, giving me another of those long, confusing looks she’s been practicing with me lately... (Frankly that was the hottest thing that happened all day.)

Annika, on the other hand, dressed in her usual Cosplay look with her blue wig, cyberpunk miniskirt, pink purse and chest-mounted device panel, the inside of which looked like an engorged and faultily-wired junction box. Annika had dressed for her idea of a regular Thursday; and it might have come off a bit more ‘Trick-or-Treat’ if she’d dressed up as an actual receptionist, with skills. (Now, that’s not fair) (Well.) ...

Oh yeah. The murders.

Someone reported a disappearance last March, and the Roost was the last known stop for the tourist who vanished. I guess this tells me I must live in a dodgy building.

The best thing I overheard today, in the lift after work on

the way up to the 6th floor, from a tattooed man and a heavily-pierced lady standing behind me: MAN: Hiya!

LADY: Oh hiya. (after a pause) So which are you more worried about — the murders… or the smells?

MAN: …I’m more worried about the tap water in my flat, it’s black today.

LADY: Ooh… Mine’s brown!

MAN: Mine was brown yesterday, I’m on the 5th floor.

You? LADY: 4th.

MAN: Oh! Well then the problem is clearly still working its way down, from the roof.

LADY: Ta, this is my floor. Laters!

MAN: Cheers! (etc, kisses, hugs, etc) Not the most encouraging send-off to October. Not sure what’s creepier.

Chapter 3 NOVEMBER 2019 WEDNESDAY 6 November 2019 Fear of Music It might all be different, but it isn’t.

I’m by hobby a musicologist, except still conquering a deathly fear of music.

By my early teens, I conquered the basic phobia issue by simply becoming a music fan, and getting deeper into my music, my artists, my genres...

But every day of every year between the ages of 10 and 14 were spent in abject horror of getting called upon in Music class afe the nasty and unpleasant Mrs. Visscher showed up. She was approximately 102 years old, but with the energy of an angry dynamo because she was spinster-powered. She could pick out if anyone in a choir WASN’T singing, especially by the absence of breath molecules hitting her on the face from thirty feet away.

She was a terror to everyone; of course, everyone called her Mrs. Vicious. A terror, in particular, to me, because

I’d made the mistake of catching a cold three days before the start of the school year, spending the opening week in bed with a streptococcus infection, shared with me when a spastic coughed and expectorated violently in my face, at the corner shop earlier that day.

I say ‘spastic’, but it was an actual spastic, so don’t worry. Don’t go calling the ‘spastics police’ to try and report an incorrect use of the term for spasticity as pejorative, it wasn’t that at all. It was Mr. Cumphorne, the gangly assistant who stocked the shelves, having a violent lurch away from the cereals and into my direction, and coupled with a wet sneeze became the instigator for my complete lack of musical talent or future. It was basic, I simply couldn’t get out of the way of the stream, which I still feel in my mind, I can see, coming straight at me like a beige mist – a memory still completely seared in, whenever I struggle to perform the opening notes of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! and don’t know if I’m supposed to be going up, or down.

Mrs. Visscher was quickest to test my lack of musical understanding on my first actual day present in school, searching for ways to humiliate me for missing the first

four days.

She would usually stand with her great, hairy, misshapen ear right up to the opening of my mouth as I sang with the rest of the choir, exaggerating the ‘speak-up’-ness in her sarcasm. Every child went mostly quiet as soon as her musical torch shone directly upon them, and even the children with all the musical talent would quickly concur that little good could come from this sudden level of attention.

Personally, she called me out as ‘tuneless’ and merely insisted that I sing louder, as if that would correct for my horrid pitch problems.

Instead, I began to skip out on her class - I would regularly raise my hand to get excused to the toilet, and then I would go upon an exceptionally long walkabout before getting back, hoping to completely miss her window of the day, before she would go back off and retreat to her Hobbit’s bog, or whatever she slept in.

As the year rolled on, my attempts at ‘faking it’ seemed to be working, in that I never got any special marks for my growing number of improvised absences. I recall the most

baffling one of all was the incident where Mrs. Visscher arrived, at which time I mentioned urination with my hand up and moments later found myself roaming the corridors, free as an escaped jailbird seeking a latrine. Somehow, through a door left open to the school auditorium, I could see a trail of students disappearing inside, and thought this might be the only place to blend in and better hide for the next 20-30 minutes… It only turned out to be a musical recital for the other group of 6th formers and I was immediately on a different conveyor belt to the same, horrifying musical destination, once I returned to my chair.

So, as I fled back to my Music class once again, I knew I was determined to get this sorted, to better avoid a nervous breakdown, or an unnecessary medical investigation into the supposed irritability of my bladder.

I would ask my family for help, but even non-musical as they were in the present day, each of my parents had at least once attempted music further along than I had.

I would insist that they get me private teaching, if they couldn’t explain it to me, and I would somehow catch up.

How desperately wrong I was.

Neither of my parents could really read or teach music, nor could they fully grasp the patience needed to explain it to a frustrated ten-year-old, as I was relentless in my inability to process what a crotchet or quarter note meant, when thrown into a conversation.

So, no offense to spastics, everywhere, in case that’s who’s picking this journal up years upon my seemingly unmusical demise.

THURSDAY 7 November 2019 I’m growing desperate, I tell you.

Will nobody look at my work?

It would mean the world to me if someone would just take an interest in my work, my life, anything.

Oh. Ugh. I just caught myself actually saying that.

Are attitudes like this helpful? Unhelpful?

Mostly unhelpful, I think. I mean, it’s this arrogant ‘ach-

ing’ inside, which completely consumes a creative person, when they’re at their weakest.

I think there must be days when I’m exhausted or ‘feeble’ enough that I come across in this manner, whining about ‘not getting the chance I deserve’, because I need to get it more easily than anyone else too. I’m pleading, ‘Discover me’ because I’ve been at it for a while, but also, I’m annoyed that people are forgetting about me as an independent Creative, and only remembering me when they need a tedious service performed, something they’re ‘too good’ for.

Not because of it being a money thing, obviously. I’m deeply grateful for the income, and would hopefully never even dream of letting on my dissatisfaction, to anyone who’s prepared to pay me a living.

But don’t they realize who I am yet?

FRIDAY 8 November 2019 In which: I plan to ask for a raise but rationalize the whole process first to death, leaving me a confused wreck.

Boldly declare what you want, what you really really want.

Today.

I’m going to look Doug in the eye and I’m going to break the ice by just asking for my raise today. No preamble, no buttering up, I’m just going to go for it.

If it works, it works, and then it’s over and done with.

What’s the worst that can happen? He’s not going to fire you for asking for what you deserve. Just go for it, balls to the wall, as Serge would say.

I am a bit frustrated and perhaps also a tiny bit depressed about the daily slog; working with clients, fully qualified but never getting wealthy from it.

So forget ‘moving forward’… it’s just about trying to maintain the status quo.

‘Do you think you’re getting manipulated a bit?’ offers Joanie.

OH – Yeah…. I mean ______******

SATURDAY 9 November 2019 Let’s figure out the money. It’s a 15% increase, if you take into account that I haven’t seen a pay rise in two years.

Ronan is chomping at the bit to get Doug to move him from full time programmer to part-time copywriter, and that’s clearly gone nowhere for the past 3 months.

So I know my odds are slim if I sit and wait for a door to open. I’ve got to go in and barrel on through until, as they say, I’ve done my best.

SUNDAY 10 November 2019 I don’t want to blow this, I get one chance when I come out with my ‘big ask’ — no, it’s NOT a Big Ask, It’s what I deserve for my years of hard work. And for getting passed by for a rise last year.

I don’t even have a business card that says anything intelligent about what I do.

Serge’s card simply reads ‘Art Director’, and nobody ever

needs to ask him what that means.

My current card, which Doug printed for me under duress when I pressured him about having completely forgotten me during the company business card run, ended up reading thus: IAN CREED-MILES Convergent Thinker ‘Convergent Thinking’…? What the fuck is that? Is that even what I do?

I think I’m the opposite really, what’s that then? I’m more of an ‘Effusive Speaker’ really.

I’m forced to picture the relatively inept kid, Benny, in 6th form Art class, whose clumsiness with ink never disappointed. The day he spilt an entire inkwell on the floor, the class room got a lesson in wood-staining as well, as he chose to sit in the middle, trying to wipe up a growing ink spill outwards, from the centre of the crisis… A stain which started 3 inches in radius ended up over 9 feet in diameter before the Prof caught up with him and made him stand

outside while a custodial crew reset Benny’s space.

Or, how about ‘Strategist’? …’Creative Strategist’, even?

If Doug puts ‘Right-Hand-Man’ on a card with my name on it, I’ll scream first, before I properly begin to lose control and shower him with a fountain of my vituperative spume. (This basically means, puke on Doug.)

I’ll make sure I put down ‘Solutions Engineer’ as a backup in case I think I’m losing the battle at any point.

Professional IAN, v.2.0 ‘The New Ian needs a brand’ Strategies and problem solving Account Specialist Convergent Thinker

Solutions Engineer Custom systems Animated Still Life - video Transforming Data Creative Data Strategy MONDAY 11 November 2019 23:30 I don’t know how to talk about my day today.

Maybe I should try telling it in reverse.

But I’m a little concerned that I might just fill up the rest of this journal with everything that happened today, alone.

I’m sitting here alone, in the ‘warm corner’ of my flat (furthest from the window), and I’ve brewed a kettle because I might need something to help me fall asleep, and warm chamomile might finally taste good today, you never know.

Deep breath ~ Mr. Woodley may no longer be with us.

We don’t know how, or what, or where, or anything, but –

Woodley may be dead.

He might have died from a dueling pistol. And/or possibly a noose.

And/or, an overdose of anti-anxiety medications.

‘They’re looking into it,’ Doug speculated, based on what he’d heard, from Barbara. She, on the other and, seems to have been ‘traumatised’ by some of the night’s events, so I’m speculating – it’s not good.

All we seem to know for sure is that Woodley ‘disappeared’ sometime in the night Sunday.

TODAY was such a crazy story. I’ll try to write it all in order, though I can’t guarantee much, in my present mental state.

08:15 It began brightly, based on hopes and dreams, and a plan to get myself a raise.

But before my day started, it was already mired in a Doug-tastrophe.

Leaving the flat this morning, I passed another of those

curious yellow-green lizard things on the way to First Orders, and told myself that I would actually make a note of it this time, in the journal, so there. I’ve mentioned you, Mr. Lizard.

Or, Another-Mister-Lizard, since I saw one of your colourful brothers down by the Railway lines yesterday, and you today, weren’t far from where Doug and I were scheduled, last minute, to meet and discuss the NIGHTlinkRailway presentation slides before catching the tube in.

I had been rehearsing my confidence-building monologue, but it quickly turned into this: (and, I was foolish enough to record myself on my iphone while walking, intent upon studying my own technique, later on…)

‘Maybe I’m over-compensating, of course, for my privilege. Saying ‘Like me, promote me, notice me’ is my way over off-balancing a feeling that I was born with too much privilege and so therefore don’t deserve to get friends easily, that I should have to work HARDER than everyone to earn friendships…’

Never warm-up to ask for a raise like that again. You sound like a Mental Cripple.

And remember to DEMAND a proper arseing job title too.

As I walked I think my stupid business card looked like this in my stupid head: (MENTAL CRIPPLE CARD)

I also didn’t have the slides; Doug had them (apparently loose, in a box) and had left me a voicemail round 3:30 in the morning about doing a dry run over coffee before grabbing the tube to NLRW HQ. I arrived at the coffee house, confusedly expecting to feel and steer my way into the ‘getting a raise’ pitch during the quick grab-and-go – except this is where Doug – dressed in an unusually light-coloured suit – decided to drop his Woodley News-Bomb over his ‘sixth coffee’ of the morning, then plainly urged me back onto my feet and out the door.

So much for my pitch-confidence-window.

I’ll have to come all the way back to Woodley before the end.

During the ensuing tube ride, Doug finally confessed to me his burning anxiety about today’s slides being merely roughs, which he’d run hastily last night to a digital slide printer, creating actual slides to be run on an old school carousel projector. Of all things. Standing in my face during the morning rush, he let out a belch which smelled like only what could be described as an old library book freshly soaked in espresso.

He then proceeded to warm up for the presentation by insulting a fifteen-year old girl who sat on the train car, and whose comfort animal-dog-friend had mistakenly chosen to sniff and then lick him on the hand.

A Dougpocalypse unleashed, as he tried to impress upon this Gen Z- stranger that he’d fought some kind of war for people like her.

To my ears, it ended up sounding more of a pedantic lecture about his having been a Situationist-art-punk in the 60s, before she told him plainly to fuck off – addressing him as ‘Grandad’ in a tone so dispassionately ‘woke’ that I truly wish it could’ve called it my own work. (OK Boomer.)

09:00 What then followed when we arrived at NLRW HQ could only be described as a vaguely demented (though well-intentioned) Corporate Transit presentation, with Doug as the ringleader,Before he misjudged, and descended instantly into a s(l)ideshow of self-deprecating inner monologue.

Loudly teasing our team’s roughs as ‘eyesores’, and summarizing our prior work as a ‘mess’ in inverted finger-commas was only his Opening Act.

What then followed, was a poorly-worded and frustrated-sounding apology for all things he apparently didn’t understand. All might have gone more smoothly had Doug simply stuffed even more bran muffins into his gob and kept stumm and waving his arms like an agitated Colonel Sanders for nearly an hour and a half. Lucy’s covertly taken iPhone shot was the perfect memento.

It otherwise went down advantageously in that nobody understood a word of what Doug (or I) were putting our focus upon in today’s presentation, so the roughness of the comps ultimately mattered nil.

We arrived, believing we were there to discuss a long-delayed iBoost in the morale for commuters with longer wait times by creating an awareness campaign on social media, using sexy videos and images of commuters, dancing on mostly-vacated train platforms; Our clients, however — who outnumbered us by a dozen at one point – believed they were there to talk about signage and the revised EU priorities given to the meeting of accessibility standards and, ‘Why haven’t these already been addressed across all its existing signage!’

We couldn’t have shown up MORE under-prepared for their (apparently shared) agenda. Not to mention the completely-different slideshow this would have required. Or, sideshow.

Instead, the way in which I slowly deduced we were off course went more like this: I would begin with some (misinterpreted) aspect of what NLRW were expecting, before Doug would chime in unhelpfully, and Lucy would try to help champion a positive

aspect of what I’d pitched, Geoff would disagree, Diana would offer her two pennies, causing Geoff to reverse a little and go with whatever she had just said, making the rest of the room generally uncomfortable. And then the rest of their meeting execs would refocus us upon a target in the agenda which we had missed.

On and on, over and over again, for most of an hour, once it became clear that Doug had not given proper attention to their brief this time, and had been frivolously misdirecting me as preparation instead, never-the-wiser, until today.

Near the midpoint of the presentation, I was presenting a 12-second video viral, set to an electro-hip-hop track, while the video jog- shuttles back and forth on the tube platform dancer’s movements, creating a playful effect.

I’d made 3 spots – In each, a different solo dancer was featured, wearing headphones and dancing solo in a Tube Station. After a few seconds watching their reactions to our Flashmob dance approach, Doug began to go on about our ‘Mobile Disco’ approach, at one point saying (this is how I recall it) ‘…With an absence of a purely obvious rhythm, to

the spinning, we get a sort of happy mindlessness from it, er, which is good for, er, our demographic. Spastic. Spastically dancing, but arhythmically, so it’s all a bit spastic. (beat) Wait, can we say ‘spastics’? I mean, outside of charity shops?...I mean, you have to use words like that, these days.’

I couldn’t begin to understand why Doug was all of a sudden so keen to say ‘spastics’ outside a charity shop, completely supplanting my attempts to introduce approved lingo like ‘Flashmob silent disco’, ‘kinetic motion’, and ‘… unbranded, completely viral ads employing simple misdirection.’

I also explained how these ads would ‘contribute to the longevity of the NLRW brand, as image pieces set upon winning over more of the disenfranchised youth with a heart to wrestle away from that entitlement mind-set.’

Doug then reinforcing, in front of NIGHTlink, that our dancers perhaps should appear to be ‘repetitively, mindlessly dancing.’

Diana then deflated the impact of my visuals by asking if I’d done it using Boomerang on Instagram, which, no, I did not. Although after she mentioned it I could see how much time that might have saved me in five hours in Adobe

AfterEffects.

Then Geoff equated the overall campaign to a ‘One-Under’ waiting to happen, citing a city of depressed commuters dancing into the path of trains, like lemmings.

Most of Today’s Meeting went a lot like that.

NIGHTlink’s internal politics at one point became so intense that Lucy would just STARE at me, frustrated, anticipating the speed with which Geoff would newly adapt to Diana’s feedback. At least once, Luce mouthed Geoff’s reply predictively and to the letter, while staring at me, unblinking.

Unfortunately, her comic performance, (intended only for me) made me snort with laughter in such a disruptive way that I had to pretend I was having a sneeze while pretending to search for a tissue, in vain…

You could mostly hear a pin

drop during the times when it was my turn to speak and present, had it not been for the noise made by the slides, which kept falling from RE:fresh’s broken carousel projector, (which Doug had made me carry for him on the Tube.)

‘Amy phoned last week to say Geoff didn’t have the USB to bluetooth thingy to make the pictures go up on the bigscreen-thing from the computers, but they could manage a Projector, and did we have one? So I told them of course,’ had been Doug’s pathetic apology to me, on the train.

Now – as I attempted to present their latest Style Guides onscreen, using a slide I’d remembered which actually was helpful to their agenda – the projector would spit out each 35mm positive like a vending machine, after flicking it internally against the faulty mechanism with an aggressive ‘SNAP’. This was painful to endure, as I stood in front of a mostly silent crowd of NIGHTlinkRailway marketing executives and members of upper management, and tried to explain how NONE of the visuals they were looking at, had anything to do with the originally proposed brief, while Doug urged me, through stern looks, to ‘keep it moving.’

This could have mostly been remedied, had Doug merely accepted the need to apologize for misinterpreting the gist

of their creative brief at the beginning. Instead, he chose to push on, and use it as a platform to ‘rail on’ about the differences in the ‘design vernacular’ used by different generations, and ‘how easy’ the younger set have it with all their smartphone productivity apps.

Then there followed a pause, while Geoff excused himself to accept a rather embarrassing call on speakerphone, in front of us, during which his boss – conspic-

uous by his absence from the meeting – not only informed him of his duty to sack RE:fresh as the marketing team during today’s meeting, but also informing Geoff that he’d been let go of as well.

Geoff, bless him, actually had the nerve to ask Doug if we would please consider putting in a good word for him, while we were packing up and heading for the door, tails between our legs.

Diana may have been trying to apologize to me, when she stopped me clumsily at the exit. Something I said, curtly about ‘not engaging in mental combat with the unarmed’ – I guess I really wasn’t having it.

10:45 On the tube back, Doug complained about NLRW not even honoring his request to be reimbursed for the Tube ride. I think they saw his request as trivial, though they claimed simply that Maura who does petty cash was on her break.

Doug complained about them bitterly, much of the way back to the office.

Now what? We’re officially down two clients in one day, and it’s not even lunch.

Then Doug said with a nod, ‘Just you watch’, and looking furtively, hopped the ticketing barrier inelegantly with both legs, where he was instantly halted by a Platform superintendent (Harting?) who had been hiding in wait, trying to remain unseen by errant commuters like Doug.

An officious finger-wag later, and Doug had to return to the correct side of the barrier. He even waited for Harting’s back to be turned, before the recidivist in him officially took over.

Another quick hop over the barrier, before Doug was legging it quickly down the corridor, as though swinging his free arm slightly might make this all appear more nonchalant.

Harting, again within instants, had leapt from his post like a grasshopper, to the precise spot where Doug was hustling off to and instantly marched him back to the gates, now with an official NLRW demerit on his record, whilst calling him ‘Douglas Stickleback Nourse’, I guess, like a

testy headmaster who’d at last caught the class troublemaker in the act.

‘This will go on your permanent record,’ he warned Doug. The ‘stickleback’ I can only assume came from the way Doug chose to run, quickly, on the points of his toes; drawing a lot of attention from the entire terminal.

On the

tube car, I chose to eat a ramen bowl I’d quickly picked up en route. Doug, sitting running his hands through his hair, sat hunched over in a manner which suggested he wanted to be alone in his thoughts, so I ate quietly opposite him while the carriage rattled and swayed to and fro.

I didn’t think anything was wrong, until I heard Doug’s stomach groan.

‘Excuse you,’ I said flippantly.

For Doug, it was over. Combining with all his coffees and espressos, all the mini-bran-muffins, tumbling and sloshing around in there like a whole mess of little sneakers in a washer during the bumpiest bit of the ride.

Doug looked even more sick, raising a hand as he vomited miserably onto the floor at my feet.

Within seconds, the train car was shaken and plunged into a violent blackness; the railway line’s power cut lurching us all quickly to a stop; seconds later, the smell of groaning exhaust, the carriage suddenly smelling of diesel farts, which turned even my own stomach a little bit.

In the darkness I could hear the sound of Doug stepping in the wet puddle of his own sick and going ‘Bleugh’,

before the loud, wretched flatulence which followed, before Doug was exclaiming, for the whole car to hear, ‘OH FOR F-- I’ve bloody shat myself.’

Which is a fantastic testimonial to what 5 coffees can do for you.

NOON Walking shamefacedly back in to RE:fresh, Doug had to go change his (no longer) ‘really light suit’ which now had a giant, new diarrhea stain in addition to a couple droplets of blood from where he’d cut his finger while trying to escape from the platform attendant. Oh yes, and the puke which had backsplashed onto the legs when he’d bent down and vomited on his briefcase. That was it. Plus the dirt stains he picked up from sitting on the tube train seats no doubt hadn’t helped.

Perhaps that’s a bit over-enthusiastic, but hey. Sometimes, that’s how I roll.

Despite the repeated mechanical scraping (which gives me a feeling of anxiety and panic), I’m OK to write/share. I guess.

Or at least, write. I’m supposed to keep a diary; simply because I can’t stop ‘cursing’.

No, not any Tourettes-like ‘cursing’. But the regular stopping to curse the world around me. Therapy Joanie explained to me my two alternatives after the screaming incident with the angry and confused gentleman in the market aisle where they keep the food colourings; the Man whom I’ll forever refer to, apologetically as ‘BBB’ the ‘Bright Blue Bloke.’

She tells me I must choose between ‘court mandated anger management therapy’ or the equivalent with a licensed therapist, which fortunately for Joanie, and everyone else she already is, even what with her Chuck E. Cheese® inflatable room furniture and all her American-style therapy gimmicks.

And so, the only option she gave me was Journaling.

Now there’s a commendable application of a twelve-year university degree... Hers, not mine.

I guess I’ve had my Fear Of Therapy since I was twelve.

Mum told me there would be no ‘formal therapy’ for anyone who couldn’t simply start by ‘opening up’ and telling my family anything I needed to get off my chest.

This impracticality was quickly dispensed with, as I literally didn’t trust anyone with the contents of my head after that whole ‘Horsham Salad Bar incident of ‘98.

Further support for my assertion that I will be keeping some thoughts to myself.

So, it’s to be Journaling-Therapy...

Which could hopefully be the comedy-traffic-school of anger-management, for me.

Therapy Joanie tells me to ‘Be honest and clear, and speak/write with intention’ – and especially, to re-read whatever I’ve written.

On this she and I agree fully; especially with how ‘being an Editor’ helps you take on the full perspective of it all.

Speaking of American things, Lucy says to me in her East Village-speak, ‘You’re a creative type, Ian, and you should already be doing this I would think,’ but all the while, I know she’s checking me out. OK don’t be silly, you’re just winding her up now, in case she reads this some day.

No, okay, not ‘checking me out’ per se, but encouraging

me along with helpful, almost ‘flirty’ little glances…

Sorry, Serge. OK, I was trying something there, and I’ve now remembered that this is going to be read aloud at my next therapy – I’m most embarrassed.

OK, I can’t concentrate, bloody ceiling fan – So instead, today I’ll leave you with this story that happened to me this morning: ‘Argument At The Taxidermist’s’ As I was walking to work, I approached Menzie’s, the taxidermists’.

A lady who had brought in her deceased cat was having it returned to her now, incorrectly, as a ferret-like creature.

The Taxidermist’s Wife, apparently, had briefly mislaid the ticket with the lady’s name and details on it, but had chosen to proceed anyway, and had given this questionable feline an inter-species makeover of the century.

As I passed the door, the Lady, who was most rightfully outraged, kept shrieking ‘bad pussy’ over and over again, at the top of her lungs, as my attention was now being called from my phone to the open doorway, through which the entire world could view this taking place.

The owner faced the road, trying to clarify that she was saying ‘bad!’ in a scolding tone, and ‘pussy!’ in a correc-

tive tone to his Wife, who stood haplessly with a shrug and who said but two words ‘confusing… ugly’ in response to the Lady, through her impenetrable Romanian accent – but by then I was long past and nearly at work.

Ok, I’m done ‘journaling’ for today basically, ‘writing’ as the knife-sharpening scrape of the fan has merely instilled in me the fear that the entire assembly would come breaking apart at thirty miles per hour, and one of the fan blades hurtles loose, impaling me through my medulla, as that would mean the cruelest and stupidest end to an impassioned and meaningful life already filled with hard work and artistry...

I’ll need to climb onto a chair and tighten that blade now.

Success will be mine!

My potential has not yet been realized, but I, Ian Creed-Miles, will most certainly vanquish.

That’s so silly, putting my name in here, like some Crimean king.

What was I trying to do there??

TUESDAY 24 September 2019 Had back pains again this morning.

Thought I should take a paracetamol, but couldn’t – cos the parrot’s ‘et em all.

(I promise I won’t do this sort of thing any more.)

What is intelligence?

I guess it’s all relative. I mean, who doesn’t think they’re intelligent?

But when I hear someone say, ‘OH - you’re so intelligent’ it gets under my skin. How is anyone expected to react? The most one can say, I guess, is ‘thanks’.

It’s actually strange as a compliment because it’s not the kind you’d return to someone who’d pay that kind of compliment in the first place.

Nothing worse than the recipient hanging for something to say. ‘Thanks, I wish you were too.’

Today in the conference room, I had to point out to Annika that our brand Mirabilis is Latin, after she burst in to say that the French client was on the phone.

I recall saying, ‘Come on, you still must have your basic 2nd-form grasp of Greek and Latin right?’

Annika responds, ‘Sorry, I only studied the Greek and

Latin boy bands.’ She declares herself as intelligent, and I can’t blame her for trying.

I’m going to be brief. There’s a storm a brewin’. Nuff said.

(I’m now questioning why I even wrote this. And what it even means, I’ve left no hints on why the weird-Americanisms. Perhaps it was it all the ‘Friends’ repeats? Bloody hell.)

WEDNESDAY 25 September 2019 TO DO • Stamps • Goats • Fish Oil • Ointment (again) • Laundry (whites) • Shine shoes • Reinstall OS • Reinstall Adobe • Buy ACTUAL shoes!!!

• Shave • Weight?

I’m sorry, I’ve just realized this is completely bogus, and

I’ve reduced my journal into a paper version of the iPhone’s Notes app.

I do apologize.

THURSDAY 26 September 2019 Hmm, so I’m supposed to write about what made me mad today?

No, no. Don’t get me started.

What if I tried to draw it instead?

The Pump House location Woodley Doug Mr. Kwak, telling me that I cannot do any kind of electrical modifications in my flat without a permit, not even to upgrade the internet Susan (following up for Woodley, when he ‘needed his liedown’) Everything, every day.

It’s all about preserving the right attitude to prevent your spirit get crushed.

Ugh. I need a lie down.

SATURDAY 28 September 2019 OK. Must journal daily, Joanie reminded me in a text today, which I promptly ignored as I was on the Tube. Now look at me.

Ronan blathers on about how he writes, every day without fail. He even goes to the Park to do it, I can’t recall which one, if it’s Huntsberry or Green, but that somehow sweetens the deal a little. I wonder where he finds this daily reserve of energy and time, though. We go to the same office with the same rituals, but at the end of the day, he’s got a chapter.

Perhaps I just haven’t got much to say, really.

Oh, who am I kidding? I want to do it all, write it all. I want to leave my mark. I just hav SUNDAY 29 September 2019 Oops.

When I came to in bed this morning I found I’d left my thoughts unfinished last night. I don’t recall going to bed.

I recall writing quickly, with deep focus, and then -- Here I am.

I have a terrible headache and feel dehydrated. It seems strange as I drank 2 bottles of water last night, and now I feel bone dry, achey. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go anywhere today, this is my favourite kind of day.

OCTOBER 2019 FRIDAY 4 October 2019 Woodley calls this morning at 8AM, in a fit. I couldn’t even stop to save the Excel timeline I was working on, he was suddenly demanding to know what we were going to do about his exhibition in one month. He wasn’t calling because something was late, he wasn’t even calling late enough in the morning to even start making sense; Woodley’s first instinct that morning had been, upon awakening, to pick up the phone and use it to start tearing someone a new bumhole.

He had been raging on incoherently via speakerphone for five minutes, and it was like waiting for a tower of dishes to finish fully crashing to the floor in slow motion. The din was unexpectedly long, and it felt like my nerves were still

shattering, or spinning, for what felt like minutes.

‘It’s all in the timetable I’m detailing here, right now,’ I assured, as I looked at my unprocessed stack of notes.

‘I’m not sure why you’re alarmed, everything’s on schedule,’ I would keep saying, failing to reassure him for more than eleven minutes at a stretch, before the next ‘ALSO….!’ call.

Then, around the 4th or 5th call, Woodley’s tone abruptly changed – ‘Oh good, good.’ As if anyone telling him anything positive could possibly satisfy him. I closed my eyes, waiting for the next slew of angry froth from him, but he was suddenly happy. ‘OK. Well then! Speak to you ‘laters’ then,’ he said cheerily, and hung up. I presume he had suddenly seen something brighter or shinier than me, on his iPhone, and had flown away to investigate.

By this time I could finally look back toward my monitor, my Mac had frozen, penultimate before the black screen of death, and the unsaved timeline would need to be recreated.

Fortunately I was able to photograph the progress I’d made on my screen with my phone, that’s all that saved me

from a full on conniption fit.

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s having to do anything twice, and from scratch.

Perhaps I’ve just grown to expect more from myself than that.

Efficiency, practicality.

Then I found myself getting into an hour-long thing with Doug, over his use of the term ‘Internet theater’, over which I took some offense.

We were sitting together in the conference room, with Serge sitting several feet away at the end of the table where nobody could really see him, ‘taking minutes’, which meant, in all likelihood, doodling like some LSD freak.

‘You have to tout what we do as Internet theater??’ I began to insist, after Doug set up his plans, to re-brand RE:fresh Partners in 2020 as a new generation of agency, excelling in ‘internet theatre’ ‘I’m in it for the drama, myself,’ came the remark from the end of the table, between furious scribbles.

Doug insisted, ‘We provide a particular ‘over-arcing’ service to clients, which is broader and above and beyond

their expectations.’

I countered that ‘Theatre’ your paying client that your treating them with some kind of disdain, like you’re putting on an act of sorts, and you’re not being terribly sincere about it, either.

In the end, a frantic phone call from Woodley would tear me back out of The Crisis Room and back to my desk, where I would end up performing a Google like function for him and then he would hang up as usual without saying ‘thank you.’

I think I recall Woodley once expressing his thanks to me.

It was in an email.

He wrote ‘ty’on its own line, a double space above his name. I might have thought that he was completing another word like ‘twen-’ somewhere else, but no, it was an isolated thought, after the closing idea. Woodley had even thoroughly punctuated one of his sentences with the correct usage of commas and a single period at the very end, instead of two, or four. He had taken care, with this email, and he had stopped, at the end, before signing his name, and the philanthropist Woodley, wrote me a separate line, expressing thanks.

‘I’ll take the ‘T-Y’ -- even lowercase,’ I recall saying that day, and I’ve not looked back since.

MONDAY 7 October 2019 Today, Doug gave me the coordinates at long last for the Woodley exhibition, after being forced to stand in the restroom for twelve minutes holding my breath, waiting for him to figure out how to turn a fizzy soda can into a makeshift bong, just so that he could blow weed-smoke all over the room (and especially into my face), whilst making cryptic gestures using his hands about ‘baffling technologies’, such as his iPhone.

In short, I learned: ‘Pandemonium’ will display at The Pump House from Dec 2019 through March 2020, down by the riverside studios, with Susan setting up the ‘New Works’ there (actual titles, TBD) during the coming month.

The large pump house floor will be filled symbolically with water, about two feet deep, and the works will be

suspended an even three feet above the waterline.

The gallery visitors will be able to view the works from a small raised landing extending like a jetty into the Pump House from the adjacent Café interior.

Lasers inside the darkened space will illuminate the paintings, in an otherwise fully blackened (and ‘immersive’) environment.

This means that Susan will probably have to buy a pair of waders, as no doubt the Pump House cafe owner will unthinkingly fill the Gallery space with all the water first, and poor Susan, who’s only about five-foot-four, will also likely need to keep moving a step ladder-round, for literally every piece, that’s my mental projection. (Just you watch me be so unfortunately correct in my predictions on this one.)

Now, someone must come up with the primary Catalogue essays (Doug will probably insist upon writing the keynote, dragging us to the edges of the deadline while we wait for him to deliver it) – plus, short, factual bits of copy to accompany the paintings.

Ronan keeps bugging me to put in a word to get him his shot, re-inventing his career track, from Programmer to Copywriter in one go. His grammar, unfortunately, gets in the way of his message as he usually panics when doing any kind of business writing, while he threads all manner of ephemera and opinion into the mix. The tangential nature of his web writing requires a Programmer who can also add a proverbial ‘Reset’ button to the page, for the confused. Ronan asks me for a leg up for a raise – so who’s going to look after my leg-up then? (Sorry, I just re-read that) These New Works come much touted by Doug, who has remained tight-lipped about The Xenophobes and another recent collection called Hyperotica, which based on a verbal description alone by Woodley kept Doug pontificating for weeks, about ‘How art finally became sexy – in 2019.’

Ok, let’s see it, then.

We can’t even go to press yet for the Cover, which is supposed to be printed on a new synthetic paper stock so thick it can only be cut with a matte knife.

My design concept is a cryptic wrap-around sleeve, covering the book itself, whose covers front and back are em-

blazoned with ‘phantasmagorical, nightmarish details from Woodley’s most controversial new works,’ as Doug insisted we word it in the press release.

The printer insists we give them a month, just to deal with the potential horrors of CMYK plus 3 metallic spot-colour printing on a brand new stock of ‘paper’, which in their fears, might repel all attempts to print in gun-metal inks, without even a test first.

Still so many unknowns But – without titles, paintings, or even ‘Works’ anyone has seen, we’re left waiting upon Woodley (as usual) – who is either weeks ahead of the deadline, otherwise, typically hours late past the final cutoff. Let’s please hope he’ll pull the former, in this case.

FRIDAY 11 October 2019 Was it my imagination, or did Maria wink at me, like never before, during this morning’s marketing meeting?

I merely glanced over at her, to find her already looking somewhat intently at me, that even my eye catching hers

didn’t sway her immediately to stop staring. Instead, the smile grew even a bit more intimate, as she winked, and looked at me for one second longer, and then returned to whatever the bloody crap Doug was talking about. I still can’t remember a word.

I would perhaps ‘do’ Maria (Does my use of quote marks around a ‘sex word’ make me a nerd?) – even knowing she was related to Doug.

Euggghh. Somehow Doug’s face puts things in a grotesque perspective, I dunno. Maria is unusually attractive, but they say you should never sh*t where you eat. Which, upon reflection, is a horrific way to reference prospective lovemaking, in any capacity. I’m really very sorry.

(It’s strange, I keep finding myself, apologizing in my own journal. To whom exactly?)

I think Maria was into me at one time, as I’d just joined the company, because she used to send me all sorts of texts with flirty emojis, until it became clear she was doing that with everyone (at least in the internet theatre), and her Daddy told her it must stop. She would have been

about nineteen at the time, back when I started – about four years ago.

‘Four Years’ that I’ve been working at this sh*thole called ‘Morrowvale’s #2 Agency’.

That’s a laugh. I can’t even seem to work at an agency with the confidence to call itself #1 at SOMETHING. Anything.

That’s the problem with this city, this town, I don’t know what to call this place. It behaves like a scaled down version of London – except with the confidence of a border town where everything could get shut down at a moment’s notice, if the nose on the wrong face got bent out of shape.

(That’s my obscure and long-winded way of saying, Losers) Someday, someone should do something about this.

It’s ridiculous we’re not even on ‘The Big Map’, we’re nowhere on Wikipedia, and that our content gets higher strikes on YouTube than any other content, and for no evident reason.

I have to keep reminding myself that, one flight to London later, this would probably feel like a strange dream.

There’s probably a lower sense of morale in Morrowvale than in any other industrial city I’ve ever seen.

Morrowvale - Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop

It’s only gotten worse since Brexit, with the uptick in emigrants from places like the greater London and Manchester areas, creating the most recent housing shortages, while climbing rental prices make headlines everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everywhere in Morrowvale, since our news doesn’t seem to grab international headlines.

Tourism would seemingly be at a boom, but since nobody cares about ‘BarceLondon’ any more, that never worked.

It’s the best hashtag nobody ever heard of, and it was a tourism brand unfortunately timed ten years before people knew what #hashtags bloody were.

Now, in a state of perpetual urban decay, it would be an ironic hashtag at best:

Come See Our Brilliant Use of Scaffolding – #2 in

All The Land!

Tourism could do with a real boost right now, attracting the kind of tourist who doesn’t pitch a tent outside Tesco’s and stay forever, choosing the dole in a crappy economy, lost somewhere in the North Sea, waiting for something to happen. Now that’ll make for a great Tweet:

#ComeToMorrowvale While you #SitOnYourFatArse #WaitingForSomethingToHappen We could begin with our surplus of tube stations that are all ridiculously way-too-close together. Sorry Luce, not so much you can do about there from Marketing. There’s something like a HUNDRED of them, and Morrowvale is only one-quarter of the size of London, so go figure. That’s something like 90-100 feet, on average in some parts of town, between tube stops, and so it’s almost more sensible to stay out of trouble above-ground, instead.

If I’m to be honest, I might not cut it as the best marketing guy for Aurora Nova, and we’ll have to leave this to the next guy. I’m happy just making and developing interactive entertainment closer to my own story – the one

I’m waiting to tell.

Sometimes it’s still fuzzy, still too foggy to make out. Just a little dot here, another dot there at the moment. But it is taking shape.

A kind of mosaic, I guess?

Hmm. MONDAY 21 October 2019 I think I’m going mad now.

Every twelve minutes, it’s another call from His Royal ArseClown. For a philanthropist, Woodley’s actual philanthropy seems to end right at the doorstep of his aides and personal assistants; that’s where the slavery kicks in. I find myself constantly dropping things I’m already doing to get interrupted by him while I’m already being interrupted (also by him, sometimes on more than a single phone line.)

This morning I awoke to the tail-end of a nightmare about Woodley in a proctologist’s office smock, about to give me

an invasive rectal exam I screamed at the top of my lungs ‘NOOOO!’, as Woodley, the puppet master, was trying to shove his arm up my arse and control me like a puppeteer by wiggling my jaw to make me speak.

Barbara Woodley all the while, stood leering suggestively at all of this, muttering: ‘OH YES -- you’re definitely Woodley’s ‘Right-Hand Man’.’

I recall trying to scream, but in my nightmare I could only thrash about, mute with a case of lock-jaw.

‘French Toast!’ was what I recall hearing myself yell, as I woke up, exhausted and with a horrible shudder. ...

Today alone, I think I was interrupted 22 times on the phone, wherein I began to keep a scorecard, each time I’d be forced to take an ‘emergency call’ from Woodley, who would each time claim to be ‘right, just checking in, in case you need me.’

We’re still over a month out from the event, all the ma-

terials have been chosen. All the lighting and curation decisions have been made, by Doug, with Woodley vetoing nearly every one and doing it instead in a different colour, requiring my confirmation, every single time.

As Doug hovered over my workstation to share with me a packet of designs for the suspended panel layout in the Pump House, I expected notepad drawings; not the 15 or so coffeehouse napkins, which tumbled from Doug‘s pocket onto my desk, along with pastry crumbs and a First Orders receipt with a preposterous number of sugar packets.

(Doug complained that First Orders threatened him to start charging for them - I now see why!)

Once I’d managed to (at last) decipher the bizarre direction which Doug appeared to be taking with his new creative, he would later only respond to declaring the whole thing ‘a catastrophe which i was forced to jot down over the phone, during an urgent IBS episode!’ – which meant, he’d done all the creative work from inside the lav at the coffeehouse using a wad of napkins instead of a clean notepad, as I’d originally made him promise.

I managed to find my way, through the remainder of his

unpleasantly-soiled ‘blueprints’ and designs, by the end of the afternoon, but by which time I felt tainted, more for having handled what was part of a stack of Doug’s bogroll substitute. Two and a half hours later (at least I pray he wasn’t also using these for TP, he blurs a lot of boundaries), I had a headache and wanted more than anything to go home.

Re-dialing, in response to one ‘final’ voicemail from Woodley, I could at last visualise my exit...

Woodley – after an extremely long delay in picking up – instantly began by saying he wanted to know if I’d begun working on the Exhibition yet, and hoped to talk over some things that were just now occurring to him.

Upon muting my phone, I remember screaming and instantly winding back my arm, to hurl my iPhone at the wall only 3 feet away – – but instantly, upon catching myself in my moment of rage, I experienced an incapacitating head-rush, and so instantly sat down, waiting for my breathing to return to normal.

1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9............ 9 and a half…………………….. 10.

I unmuted – Assured Woodley I’d speak with him in the morning, and managed to sound convincingly done with my day, that Woodley finally accepted it and hung up. ...

A couple minutes later, I felt well enough to get up off the floor, and grab my bag to take the short tube ride home.

Had a strange sense of being watched, on the tube. My usual short tube journey, of a single station, felt like miles away tonight.

First, some bloke in a hoodie was sitting in the corner of the tube car, a grimace on his face before I even arrived, except I made the mistake of sitting in the crosshairs of this Red Mist laser show, dagger-eyes now pointing at me during the rest of the brief-yet-all-too-long journeys, of one stop.

This was not going to be one of those ‘All right?’ kind

of moments, where you can go back to your book, after a disarming nod, or a smile. It was more about keeping moving. I did and briskly walked out the station, up the escalators to the Grand Mall entrance of the Depot.

Tonight, I chose to take the central stairwell block to go up, I don’t know why, maybe it seemed quickest.

Keeping a positive mindset about me, I think I sprinted up three full flights of stairs, telling myself there was no possible way anything should possibly be wrong, by the time I fiinally decided to glance back over my shoulder for the first time.

Bottom of the landing – HOODIE bloke was now most DEFINITELY following me.

I could see him steadily keeping up a few landings below.

Here I’d arrived, MOSTLY home, by the time I noticed this, and now what? ...’OOH — shall I lead the Killer to my front door step?’

I followed an instinct, and I exited the stairwell a floor early, entering at the level of flats, just above The Roost hotel’s three floors, by coming in at the 5th floor instead of

the 6th. I waited outside the landing, expecting the door to open, so I could smash him with my Titanium laptop I’d removed from my bag, which I now held, raised over my head, shaking on the landing inside the stairwell.

About forty-five minutes later, I finally lowered the laptop.

I’d done the yoga and calisthenics equivalent of more than two days’ worth, and as I write this, I can no longer raise my arms above my waist, they’re so sore.

The 5th floor landing door never opened, and nobody ever stepped out to kill me. Somehow, with my heart racing, I managed to tiptoe my way around the NorthEast stairwell, where I finished my ascent to the 6th Floor Atrium at the door of my flat. Everything appeared to be in order.

I stood at my doorstep, feeling the handle, and checking that it wasn’t unlocked or anything as I let myself in. Once inside, I don’t think I’ve ever looked so quickly for so many chairs to block a door with.

I don’t think I’ve done anything else today, except write this entry, but I’m starving now.

Off to make (not order) a curry and watch something hopefully funny, like the News.

TUESDAY 22 October 2019 Funny how I now recall the detail I forgot to share yesterday, which occurred to me only as I was drifting off to sleep. I think I kept myself awake for nearly half an hour trying to memorize it so that I wouldn’t have to get out of bed, it was so cold in the flat, the thermostat read 17°C where I’m sure that was an exaggeration, it alway reads about 5° high.

So anyway: Racing home from an encounter with a hoodie’d stranger, reminded me of the commercial I’d seen which just began running on the local affiliate station, like what might have been called ‘public access’ in the States during the ‘90s.

It was two hoodie’d blokes selling security and smoke alarms. Dressed like faceless, hoodie’d thugs, and their pitch is to install security, for you, in your house. Smoking Security, something like that. I think Ronan had looked them up later on YouTube, but the point was, it’s a far cry from actual security with real nightwatchmen, am I

wrong?

What’s this world coming to, what ever next? Machetéd roofing contractors? (Ideally not.)

FRIDAY 25 October 2019 Decided to work remotely today.

I just didn’t feel so well, after snapping out of a particularly long staring spell, it seemed.

Upon calling in, I was never able to reach Doug, Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan, Peter or anybody else at their desks to explain that I was feeling under the weather and would be working from home today.

I never easily found out what everyone was up to — after leaving a bevy of increasingly bewildered voicemails in the mailboxes of all the above, a text from Serge finally arrived telling me to stay home and quit filling up everyone’s voicemails, as they were all sitting in Doug’s office, being forced to listen as he tested his wife Pat’s new MLM video and opening spiel on anyone who would listen. Annika, Maria, Serge, Ronan and Peter were currently being held hostage, and nobody had been excused during the siege for bathroom or food breaks in over 3 hours, complained

Serge.

By text, I also heard from Maria a little later that everyone had left for home immediately after hitting the bathroom in their one last attempt to pee-and-flee, aka ‘stretch their legs.’ She concluded with some emojis, which looked like a shoe, another shoe and a pair of glasses, flanked by an eggplant on either side.

I’m definitely getting mixed signals from her, and not sure what to make of hers coming in at 4:45 on a Friday night? I wanted to reply with a little ‘Drinks?’ emoji but that might be too forward, I’m not looking to get all #MeToo’d, I don’t really need any of this in the first place.

But, just saying... Could Maria really be into me?

THURSDAY 31 October 2019 Today was supposed to be the office ‘Dress-Up’ day as there were numerous requests by office staff to wear costumes at least one day a year.

Doug complained we were getting ‘too American’ and deliberately wore his classic (ill-fitting) Braccio Murmani suit, which makes his pants look a penguin’s lower half. I think somehow, placed next to Peter’s Batman guise, full with bat-suit, bat cape and bat-smartphone, you could say they were a match made in Gotham.

Sensing competition, Maria dressed up like Catwoman, prowling through the office leaving treats and toys on the desks of alternate co-workers. Hers appeared to be an odd/even distribution ceremony; a pouty CatMaria sashaying through the design bay, leaving trick or treats like any typical dominatrix-sales executive might on a Thursday.

It was actually a bit of a turn-on, we boys were into it, Ronan in particular appearing unusually gutted when she passed him up in order to place a KitKat bar on mine and Serge’s desks; as she slunk away slowly, giving me another of those long, confusing looks she’s been practicing with me lately... (Frankly that was the hottest thing that happened all day.)

Annika, on the other hand, dressed in her usual Cosplay look with her blue wig, cyberpunk miniskirt, pink purse

and chest-mounted device panel, the inside of which looked like an engorged and faultily-wired junction box. Annika had dressed for her idea of a regular Thursday; and it might have come off a bit more ‘Trick-or-Treat’ if she’d dressed up as an actual receptionist, with skills. (Now, that’s not fair) (Well.) ...

Oh yeah. The murders.

Someone reported a disappearance last March, and the Roost was the last known stop for the tourist who vanished. I guess this tells me I must live in a dodgy building.

The best thing I overheard today, in the lift after work on the way up to the 6th floor, from a tattooed man and a heavily-pierced lady standing behind me: MAN: Hiya!

LADY: Oh hiya. (after a pause) So which are you more worried about — the murders… or the smells?

MAN: …I’m more worried about the tap water in my flat, it’s black today.

LADY: Ooh… Mine’s brown!

MAN: Mine was brown yesterday, I’m on the 5th floor.

You? LADY: 4th.

MAN: Oh! Well then the problem is clearly still working its way down, from the roof.

LADY: Ta, this is my floor. Laters!

MAN: Cheers! (etc, kisses, hugs, etc) Not the most encouraging send-off to October. Not sure what’s creepier.

NOVEMBER 2019 WEDNESDAY 6 November 2019 Fear of Music It might all be different, but it isn’t.

I’m by hobby a musicologist, except still conquering a deathly fear of music.

By my early teens, I conquered the basic phobia issue by simply becoming a music fan, and getting deeper into my music, my artists, my genres...

But every day of every year between the ages of 10 and 14 were spent in abject horror of getting called upon in Music class afe the nasty and unpleasant Mrs. Visscher

showed up. She was approximately 102 years old, but with the energy of an angry dynamo because she was spinster-powered. She could pick out if anyone in a choir WASN’T singing, especially by the absence of breath molecules hitting her on the face from thirty feet away.

She was a terror to everyone; of course, everyone called her Mrs. Vicious. A terror, in particular, to me, because I’d made the mistake of catching a cold three days before the start of the school year, spending the opening week in bed with a streptococcus infection, shared with me when a spastic coughed and expectorated violently in my face, at the corner shop earlier that day.

I say ‘spastic’, but it was an actual spastic, so don’t worry. Don’t go calling the ‘spastics police’ to try and report an incorrect use of the term for spasticity as pejorative, it wasn’t that at all. It was Mr. Cumphorne, the gangly assistant who stocked the shelves, having a violent lurch away from the cereals and into my direction, and coupled with a wet sneeze became the instigator for my complete lack of musical talent or future. It was basic, I simply couldn’t get out of the way of the stream, which I still feel in my mind, I can see, coming straight at me like a beige

mist – a memory still completely seared in, whenever I struggle to perform the opening notes of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! and don’t know if I’m supposed to be going up, or down.

Mrs. Visscher was quickest to test my lack of musical understanding on my first actual day present in school, searching for ways to humiliate me for missing the first four days.

She would usually stand with her great, hairy, misshapen ear right up to the opening of my mouth as I sang with the rest of the choir, exaggerating the ‘speak-up’-ness in her sarcasm. Every child went mostly quiet as soon as her musical torch shone directly upon them, and even the children with all the musical talent would quickly concur that little good could come from this sudden level of attention.

Personally, she called me out as ‘tuneless’ and merely insisted that I sing louder, as if that would correct for my horrid pitch problems.

Instead, I began to skip out on her class - I would regularly raise my hand to get excused to the toilet, and then

I would go upon an exceptionally long walkabout before getting back, hoping to completely miss her window of the day, before she would go back off and retreat to her Hobbit’s bog, or whatever she slept in.

As the year rolled on, my attempts at ‘faking it’ seemed to be working, in that I never got any special marks for my growing number of improvised absences. I recall the most baffling one of all was the incident where Mrs. Visscher arrived, at which time I mentioned urination with my hand up and moments later found myself roaming the corridors, free as an escaped jailbird seeking a latrine. Somehow, through a door left open to the school auditorium, I could see a trail of students disappearing inside, and thought this might be the only place to blend in and better hide for the next 20-30 minutes… It only turned out to be a musical recital for the other group of 6th formers and I was immediately on a different conveyor belt to the same, horrifying musical destination, once I returned to my chair.

So, as I fled back to my Music class once again, I knew I was determined to get this sorted, to better avoid a nervous breakdown, or an unnecessary medical investigation into the supposed irritability of my bladder.

I would ask my family for help, but even non-musical as they were in the present day, each of my parents had at least once attempted music further along than I had.

I would insist that they get me private teaching, if they couldn’t explain it to me, and I would somehow catch up.

How desperately wrong I was.

Neither of my parents could really read or teach music, nor could they fully grasp the patience needed to explain it to a frustrated ten-year-old, as I was relentless in my inability to process what a crotchet or quarter note meant, when thrown into a conversation.

So, no offense to spastics, everywhere, in case that’s who’s picking this journal up years upon my seemingly unmusical demise.

THURSDAY 7 November 2019 I’m growing desperate, I tell you.

Will nobody look at my work?

It would mean the world to me if someone would just take an interest in my work, my life, anything.

Oh. Ugh. I just caught myself actually saying that.

Are attitudes like this helpful? Unhelpful?

Mostly unhelpful, I think. I mean, it’s this arrogant ‘aching’ inside, which completely consumes a creative person, when they’re at their weakest.

I think there must be days when I’m exhausted or ‘feeble’ enough that I come across in this manner, whining about ‘not getting the chance I deserve’, because I need to get it more easily than anyone else too. I’m pleading, ‘Discover me’ because I’ve been at it for a while, but also, I’m annoyed that people are forgetting about me as an independent Creative, and only remembering me when they need a tedious service performed, something they’re ‘too good’ for.

Not because of it being a money thing, obviously. I’m deeply grateful for the income, and would hopefully never even dream of letting on my dissatisfaction, to anyone who’s prepared to pay me a living.

But don’t they realize who I am yet?

FRIDAY 8 November 2019 In which: I plan to ask for a raise but rationalize the whole process first to death, leaving me a confused wreck.

Boldly declare what you want, what you really really want.

Today.

I’m going to look Doug in the eye and I’m going to break the ice by just asking for my raise today. No preamble, no buttering up, I’m just going to go for it.

If it works, it works, and then it’s over and done with.

What’s the worst that can happen? He’s not going to fire you for asking for what you deserve. Just go for it, balls to the wall, as Serge would say.

I am a bit frustrated and perhaps also a tiny bit de-

pressed about the daily slog; working with clients, fully qualified but never getting wealthy from it.

So forget ‘moving forward’… it’s just about trying to maintain the status quo.

‘Do you think you’re getting manipulated a bit?’ offers Joanie.

OH – Yeah…. I mean ______****** SATURDAY 9 November 2019 Let’s figure out the money. It’s a 15% increase, if you take into account that I haven’t seen a pay rise in two years.

Ronan is chomping at the bit to get Doug to move him from full time programmer to part-time copywriter, and that’s clearly gone nowhere for the past 3 months.

So I know my odds are slim if I sit and wait for a door to open. I’ve got to go in and barrel on through until, as they say, I’ve done my best.

SUNDAY 10 November 2019 I don’t want to blow this, I get one chance when I come out with my ‘big ask’ — no, it’s NOT a Big Ask, It’s what I deserve for my years of hard work. And for getting passed by for a rise last year.

I don’t even have a business card that says anything intelligent about what I do.

Serge’s card simply reads ‘Art Director’, and nobody ever needs to ask him what that means.

My current card, which Doug printed for me under duress when I pressured him about having completely forgotten me during the company business card run, ended up reading thus: IAN CREED-MILES Convergent Thinker ‘Convergent Thinking’…? What the fuck is that? Is that even what I do?

I think I’m the opposite really, what’s that then? I’m more of an ‘Effusive Speaker’ really.

I’m forced to picture the relatively inept kid, Benny, in 6th form Art class, whose clumsiness with ink never disappointed. The day he spilt an entire inkwell on the floor, the class room got a lesson in wood-staining as well, as he chose to sit in the middle, trying to wipe up a growing ink spill outwards, from the centre of the crisis… A stain which started 3 inches in radius ended up over 9 feet in diameter before the Prof caught up with him and made him stand outside while a custodial crew reset Benny’s space.

Or, how about ‘Strategist’? …’Creative Strategist’, even?

If Doug puts ‘Right-Hand-Man’ on a card with my name on it, I’ll scream first, before I properly begin to lose control and shower him with a fountain of my vituperative spume. (This basically means, puke on Doug.)

I’ll make sure I put down ‘Solutions Engineer’ as a backup in case I think I’m losing the battle at any point.

Professional IAN, v.2.0 ‘The New Ian needs a brand’ Strategies and problem solving Account Specialist Convergent Thinker Solutions Engineer Custom systems Animated Still Life - video Transforming Data Creative Data Strategy