Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 4

As I said, I wrote a lot last night and finally got to bed about 3am. However - and this is important - I didn't do any pointless surfing of inconsequential web pages. Not one page of lawyer jokes or cat pictures. I fully intended to lie in like a bastard by way of a reward.

I woke at 8 to the melodious sounds of the recycling truck. Peering out of the window I realised that both Luca and I had forgotten to put the box out so I leapt from my bed, donned a dressing gown and sandals and hurried outside. Sadly, I was too late; the bottle rattling was a red herring and only the normal bins were now being collected. However, it soon transpired that we'd both forgotten to empty those too so at least it wasn't a wasted trip. I felt awful, if virtuous, and stumbled back to bed. It was only 8; five hours' sleep is no way to prepare a man for Tuesday.

Laid back in bed, heart pounding with the exertion, it occurred to me that I was now fully awake and surely incapable of going back to sleep. Besides, I had work to do and wasn't that.. what's the word.. erm.. and with that, the grey mist descended, my head filled with sugarplum cans of lager and I was carried away on a RAT-A-TAT-TAT! Oh God, the front door. Up I got again, wondering which idiot had left my dressing gown on the floor, and why the angles of all the walls had changed so I kept barging into them as I made my way downstairs. I wasn't even fast enough for the poor delivery guy either; he was rapping again before I reached the door. God, I felt awful. He took one look at me as I opened up and simply said, "Woah; sorry mate."

"Nhrrnanglebubyrre.. ooh," said I as he handed me a large, flat cardboard envelope. Realising quite suddenly that my blood pressure was crashing I retreated with as much speed as I could muster and returned to bed. The cardboard thing was weird; it was sealed well in from the edge leaving only the very centre to bulge out in a roughly CD-sized area and it was perforated from the middle of one edge to the centre of the opposite edge. I attempted to tear it open but lying in bed with blurry vision I could not muster the strength and ended up twisting it like you're supposed to do with a telephone directory.

Inside was the Imogen Heap album that I ordered about a million years ago from Amazon and assumed had got lost in the post when the dinosaur extinction occurred. I resolved to get up just as soon as I felt ready and listen to it but first started reading the sleeve notes, observing to my amusement that she is a London-based artist which makes my time-consuming purchase of the American pressing even more ridiculous.

I woke up at about ten with the sleeve notes on my nose and a soggy, too-many-fags head which felt like a combination of heavy screen fatigue and the after effects of somebody hosing the inside of your ear with expanding insulation foam. I fully intended to take it easy but, wouldn't you know it, the phone rang within seconds of my being upright and started yapping at me in a voice curiously reminiscent of one of my clients, asking where her site updates were up to. God, some mornings a man needs a chemical barrier between his tender sensibilities and the unrelenting demands of the outside world. I'm not sure I'm psychologically equipped for a life of sobriety.

It was another productive day, which is good. I'm becoming quite the designer, if only because the girl to whom I normally farm such work out has the hump and hasn't been talking to me. I caught myself several times attempting to dial up Reddit but managed to distract myself with boingboing. I have decided that I simply cannot remove this one distraction from my day; to take breaks from work is so ingrained that it is counterproductively stressful to attempt to force myself to stick with the current problem if I need to switch focus away for a moment.

I was fully involved with work right through until about 2pm when I suddenly realised I hadn't eaten yet and cycled off to the shops. It was a very sudden departure as evidenced by the fact that I brought neither a bag nor the cheque I needed to deposit. I am a moron. I am also pretty sure that I don't make mistakes like that normally and wonder whether I'm under-compensating because I think I'm going to be sharper now that I've quit booze for nearly half a week. Maybe the sad truth is that I'm just a useless git and I need my little coping strategies not because I'm constantly hung over but because my brain function is just, well, substandard.

At least there were some tasty strawberries at the shop, which was a bonus. I scoffed them while I cooked and then sat by the computer to eat, reading the entire front page of boingboing to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Apparently there is a new iPhone coming, twice as good and one third of the price. Apple has now graduated to full cult status by ripping its faithful off more than everyone else without so much as a squeak of complaint in evidence from anyone. They're just excited about the 3G upgrade. Reminds me of another industry which, frankly, could name their price despite the product being essentially useless (and toxic) to its purchasers. Although NOT ME! Not this week at any rate.

Luca came home about ten after dinner and drinks with colleagues and beat me 2 games to 1 at ping pong, the rat bastard. Even my sporting ability is impaired by this abstention. I need to end this experiment as quickly as possible before I do permanent damage to myself.