Welcome to the adult world…

I went to the park at lunchtime to read my book (Zadie Smith, ‘The Autograph Man’, as it’s summer and I always read Zadie Smith in the summer. I remember back in Cambridge I took all the pillows in the whole house out onto the decking and read out there, occasionally going inside to make toast (that was all I used to eat, but fucking good made-on-an-aga toast, so fair play)), which was rather nice apart from the hordes of midget drunks careering around armed with footballs, grass cuttings and e-number filled ice creams. I’d heard that kids wouldn’t be at school today, what with the schools being used as polling stations and all (I’m sure this didn’t happen when I was a kid, but I suppose in London there aren’t any village halls, whose sole purpose is to provide a place for the elections and to host birthday parties for boisterous reception class children), but these kids just erupted into the park at 3pm. One kid kicked a ball at his mums head. I’d have fucking kicked it back but I suppose that says more about why I don’t have children than anything else.

The upshot of it is (to clarify, as I don’t think I have been at all clear in the previous paragraph: ‘it’ is my lunch break in the park) that my arms have turned slightly pink and my right hand is itchy from where it touched the grass. I come out in a rash when my skin touches the grass. It’s not especially annoying, and it has served me well. For example, I spent a good month going to my maths classes and saying: “Miss! Miss! I’ve got a rash, can I go to the sick room?” and taking the rest of the lesson off to either hang around on the field or go to the library (which, being a shit school, was not used very much, except by this guy called Steven Carr who founded the Star Trek club and his chronically obese friend (the only other member of said club), and by me and some of my friends, who saw the library as a place to go to fight, talk about sex very loudly and bully Steven and the fat dude) or go to my friends house to play computer games. Ah, my school was shit. I do have SOME fond memories of it. That’s not true. I was fucking glad I left.

I really didn’t want to come back to the office, and now I am back, I know that I was right for not wanting to come back. My colleague (the one who I try so hard to get on with but find it hard not to want to stick my head down a waste disposal sink thing) has spent the last fifteen minutes on the phone to IT saying “fucking this fucking that I’m not being funny yeah what?”

As I was walking back towards the office I was hit by a wall of melancholy and thought “fuck, at least that’s something good (read: miserable = more interesting for all of you) to put in my journal” but how things change, and the wave has gone and so I’ll save it for tomorrow.

All I want to do is lie in the sun today. Is that too much to ask?