It has been a long day, a day of submitting to absolutely nothing. My alarm went off at 2.20 am but I had already been awake, I'm always awake before the alarm goes off. My in-built body clock consists of an anxious nagging that something actually has to be done which eventually overrides my exhaustion. It's also partly due to my aching limbs, my arms were heavy and bloodless but at least they were operating. My mind, however, was all fragmented snapshots of bad dreams, repressed guilt laced with the imagery of some incomprehensible other world.
It had dumped another 4 inches of snow in the few hours I had managed to sleep. She was heavy and warm next to me, I hate that. I knew the drive would be far more arduous than I had allowed time for and that my patience and schedule would be stretched to the limit. Radio on, coffee down, I felt a shallow sort of excitement.
It was silently cold outside, as quiet as I have ever known, desolate and still. It took me a full 20 minutes to chisel the ice from the car windscreen as the radio blared obnoxiously into the night. Even by my own lackluster standards, the car was barely passable for an attempt at these roads but it would have to do.
I desperately needed petrol and the car had been screaming for oil for weeks but the first three garages were all closed as if just to add a little extra tension. But I made it slowly out of the countryside and on towards the airport. On arrival at the car park, I received a half-expected snub because why would anything go smoothly? "You're not booked here mate, wrong place you're with another firm." The two-hour cushion I had given myself had dwindled down to 40 minutes and I couldn't even see a fucking airport yet.
Eventually, I would find myself sat on the shuttle bus from the right car park sat in the kind of traffic jam that knew I was late. It was now 0620am and my stomach was in full-blown "I have missed my flight" mode. When I did alight the bus I thanked the bastard of a driver who took me by surprise when he called me brother. He said it with a real warmth that suggested he meant it and I somehow knew that as tense as the next 30 minutes would be, that I would catch that bastard flight. But it would be 30 minutes of bullying and hatred toward every pram and snowboard that came within ten feet of me. Two aborted toilet stops, one massive cue jump, no second coffee of the day later, I boarded the plane.
There's no buzz for me anymore in the cattle-herding of airports, but I do still like a takeoff, especially when I have managed a toilet break before taking my seat. I have even bagged a free copy of The Times and The Metro to kill an hour. Ahh, the review of the weekend's rugby which we lost handsomely. Not just the match, the whole fucking competition. Great.
But there is a relief as soon as we were off the tarmac and I can finally look down on the grey veneer that passes for an English sky. I allowed myself to fall asleep. Shame, the stewardess was smoking hot and my slack-jawed dribbling wouldn't do anyone any favors. I must have had a good hour and ten minutes but when I awoke my arms ached in that bloodless needles and pins way again.
A few shuffled feet and avoided gazes later I was in Lisbon. It was raining, my phone battery and sat nav had died and I had no way to find the restaurant I desperately wanted to treat myself to, the same restaurant I missed the last time I was in town. On my last visit, I had missed all the good bits of this city by about a street and a half. The good bits fitted into a matchbox, or a shoebox if your drunk which I had been. I pass up on convenient good smelling food walking past eatery after eatery. Eventually, I would walk back and join a cue after giving up to hunger and indecision.
Freshly stocked up on raw vegetable curry, one of the best nondairy cappuccinos I have ever had, and a small bottle of water I began the longest of walks. I hauled my increasingly heavy and extraordinarily uncomfortable rucksack down the estuary banks between the motorway and Railtrack. I decided to detour as I always do. I wouldn't take the train that runs directly to the ferry terminal, but instead, I would walk straight up the hill that is Lisbon into an executive no man's land of hospitals Embassies.
At the point of literal collapse, a taxi comes my way. It would only cost me five times as much as the train and ferry and would be void of any chance of cultural exchange. I take my seat and we hit the road. I realise I have spent all my cash, all of it. My bank card has no money on it, my phone battery was dead so there would be no simple transfer to pay my decreasingly friendly taxi driver with. But there is always a way, you just have to be uncomfortable for long enough to find it.
And then suddenly there I was, at her house, her beautiful mother let me in and let me know instantly that I was at home and I was welcome and able to be myself. I would do and be just that. So without hesitation, I stripped my bag of valuables, filled it with my book, a pen, a jumper, and a towel just in case the surf was right, and I headed to the beach. The surf was not right, not right at all. There were warning signs not to approach the sea all along the beach. The winter had devastated the cafes and beach bars that dotted the coastline.
It was warm in spurts, it was windy, it was cold. It was grey but blue in flashes. There were a few shells to pick up amongst the industrial plastics and dead sea birds. I instantly felt the weight of the previous three months of England fall from my shoulders. And as I walked one single line came to me, then another, and then another.
“Be selfish, take time to be yourself and to be by yourself. Take yourself on holiday just as everyone else would stick to with what they got.
Only take on work that interests you. Don't work for the glory and never work for the finance. Work for self-betterment and to further your intrigue and interest in a subject.
Charge the kind of money you want to earn but only ever charge what you know your work to be worth.
When you get paid give some of it away. Tip, buy someone else's dinner, pay for a stranger's train fare. Donate to whatever given cause takes your fancy, but don't tell anyone you did so.
Buy yourself things you will never own like coffee and time and use that time to throw stones loaded with deadweights and bad intentions into a foreign sea.”
It might be one of the truest and most honest things I ever write. The rest of the afternoon was a glorious smear of strange stray dogs, of moving someone's furniture back into their wave-beaten and barely standing house. I talked shit with some arrogant prick, and bought three beers and a litre and a half of wine for 3 euros and 95 cents. I cooked dinner for someone I was genuinely great full to share a space with whilst the arrogant prick poured scorn on my every word. I let him know just how little I cared for his attempts to upper hand me. And then came a deep and meaningful conversation with an elder woman that I fell in love with as we spoke. The balcony was warm and breezy, the bed called. I wrote notes in my diary and the day was done.
Day 2. Portugal. March the 20th 2018.
I woke up just as I expected, to the sound of dogs barking and men arguing within feet of my bed. The noise is amplified as it travels up the corrugate tin roof through the walls into my room. They must have known I was there. Nobody wants me to sleep. My shoulders ached as if I had slept with my arms splayed and had lost circulation, but I hadn’t. My hip hurt too and my shoulders felt as if they had been carrying a heavy weight for a long time they felt bruised as if I had been in a fight.
It took several attempts to get out of bed and I told myself I deserved a lie-in. I was overseas so fuck them, I can lie in now and I'll be more productive later. But that sentiment wouldn't last. When I did get up I was groggy, I mistakenly thought I was heavy from a good night's sleep. Perhaps I had caught up on the previous week's angst-ridden insomnia and this discomfort was the relaxing of my limbs and muscles. No. it wasn't. I was ill. Or perhaps it was it the cannabis oil tablets I had taken the night before?
I've never taken that stuff before, maybe it was the mixture of cheap red wine and beer. No. No, I'm ill. I just don't know it yet. I cooked some breakfast, slowly. I made coffee and looked at bottles of wine. I did some yoga. I hate saying that out loud but I do like the practice. I mean I don’t know what I'm actually doing and I avoid anything I find frustrating, but it does seem to soften my increasingly aching body into the day ahead.
I shower, I think. I can't remember, then I pour coffee onto great dunes of sugar and sit at my laptop. And I'm productive. For an hour. The sugar crash kicks in and brings with it the realization that I'm neither well-rested nor residually high. I'm actually fucking sick. I lie on the couch and look at a picture book of Picasso's inspirations. I couldn't understand a single word of it. I walk around the flat aimlessly. I go out to the balcony and try to ignore the wind. The sun feels nice and if I lie on the hard concrete floor I can just about evade the ice-cold windy blasts and pretend I'm actually warm. I find a pillow. I sort of sleep, sort of. I wake up with what feels like arthritis in my hips, surely I'm dying now. It must be the cannabis oil. But I hate not being productive so I muster the strength for a walk.
And it's a bad walk. I'm too tired to make the effort but I take some small pleasure in the views I don’t see every day. But foot does not want to follow foot. I pick up more shells and some broken glass that I put in a bin in the hope of saving a surfer's foot. It's only once my walk near its natural conclusion that I begin to enjoy myself a little and so decide to string it out. the sun is going down and the make-shift Shanti town I'm in feels nice.
I recently learned this place is a little bit of a gypsy stronghold, a fuck you built by outcasts against all regulations and laws. It was allowed to stand because of its historic fishing contingency and because despite the illegal development, the relevant taxes are being paid. It makes sense then that the place is falling down. I feel I understand it now. It's characterful, or something. I like that the locals are all pleasant types who would probably rob me as soon as my back is turned. I take photos, the kind you delete a few moments later. I buy two beers and drink one as I watch the sunset. I genuinely feel like I'm overseas now.
The wind drops once the sun goes down. The bastard. It's no good getting warmer just as it gets fucking colder. I still haven’t written a single thing beyond my hour this morning. I return to the flat and get the laptop out. She's home for dinner, great ill just put the laptop away. I cook, she talks, the beer turns to wine. "Would you like some more cannabis tablets?" Yes, I mean, I don't ever want to take them again. I have been rehearsing my "No, thank you." to this question all day but "Yes I would love some." slips out instead. An hour later, "Can I have another?" I kid myself it will help me be more creative. We share a pleasant meal and she goes to bed. And I am more productive. I light candles and turn off all the lights. Piano music plays in the background and I begin to write and edit. I haven’t read the paper today. Progress.
Day 3 Portugal. March 21st, 2018.
At least the dogs have stopped barking for now. But it's the same bastard locals that will wake me up shouting. I know they're coming way before I hear them. I did actually wake up this morning, that is I rifted into consciousness without the sudden jolt of anxiety. Just about. But there was still an obtuse amount of weight in my limbs and the same two drunken fishermen were having the same argument a short distance away from my bed. It wasn’t any less annoying but I was at least more prepared for it. I was quicker out of bed today, some glimmer of a memory of promising to help someone move something. I got up, I felt chirpy.
The last couple of days were just an adjustment, I had been catching up on too many nights of lost sleep and by now I must be getting there. I wasn’t used to such a cheap red wine, and I never take cannabis tablets. I doubled my dose last night. Breakfast was another smear in my memory, I walked the beach, more positive, more energetic. I tried to finish A Catcher In The Rye. But I didn’t and returned down the beach to the house. If only the fucking wind would drop.
Lap top out. Writing, editing. Tired. Balcony, sun, book. Tired. Ok, let's go. I can make myself comfy enough to fall asleep if I try and I read hard enough that I do. Sleep that is. It's the same distant haze of rest that I had the day before. I'm never really asleep but I'm not really awake either, I dribble lifeless and weighty. There is always the sound of the wind. I'm sweating. I never sleep in the daytime. This is twice in a row. Something must be wrong.
I know I have to finish reading this book and I eventually do. Then I search for extra pages in the back that might explain what the fuck it all meant. There aren’t any. Still sweating, I decide on a second shower but I find the laptop instead.
I remember my promise to help move more furniture and start to wonder if her friendliness is a pretense? Have I been too comfortable, overstepped my welcome? Am I too stupid to have read the signs?
Somehow on returning to the house I finish the rewrite and edit of the chapter that has been puzzling me for weeks now. But I know I'll return to it tomorrow and start again. Two people come in and I feel vaguely uncomfortable in their presence, one person goes out, the one left behind suggests dinner, I suggest I'll cook. It's another hour gone. Dinner is pleasant, we talk more freely. I have admitted to myself I'm genuinely ill now, that the cannabis oils are out of my bloodstream and I maintain the strength to politely turn down any more. The daughter comes home so I cook again for her and her friend. It's an annoying distraction from the important work email that I have been writing for the last two hours. it's one of those important ones that only needs a few lines but each one has to be a perfect fucking haiku of succinct expression.
This email is my future, I can't take the piss, I need to be straight. I know what these people are earning but they don’t know what I'm earning. Surely that should put me in a position of strength not this crippling stuttering inability to piece five coherent sentences together. I'll finish it in the morning. We all share some wine and they take some more oil capsules. I'm uneasy. They become really quite high which shines a light on my illness and heaviness of the last two or three days. At least I'm not doing any tonight. Just one more glass of wine. "Can I see those tablets?" I just wanted to look at them. Just one more glass of wine. I'm going to bed now. The dogs won't stop barking. I'll watch a movie or something and tomorrow I'll feel energized. My arms are too heavy to write anymore.
© Me-Dias 2020
It had dumped another 4 inches of snow in the few hours I had managed to sleep. She was heavy and warm next to me, I hate that. I knew the drive would be far more arduous than I had allowed time for and that my patience and schedule would be stretched to the limit. Radio on, coffee down, I felt a shallow sort of excitement.
It was silently cold outside, as quiet as I have ever known, desolate and still. It took me a full 20 minutes to chisel the ice from the car windscreen as the radio blared obnoxiously into the night. Even by my own lackluster standards, the car was barely passable for an attempt at these roads but it would have to do.
I desperately needed petrol and the car had been screaming for oil for weeks but the first three garages were all closed as if just to add a little extra tension. But I made it slowly out of the countryside and on towards the airport. On arrival at the car park, I received a half-expected snub because why would anything go smoothly? "You're not booked here mate, wrong place you're with another firm." The two-hour cushion I had given myself had dwindled down to 40 minutes and I couldn't even see a fucking airport yet.
Eventually, I would find myself sat on the shuttle bus from the right car park sat in the kind of traffic jam that knew I was late. It was now 0620am and my stomach was in full-blown "I have missed my flight" mode. When I did alight the bus I thanked the bastard of a driver who took me by surprise when he called me brother. He said it with a real warmth that suggested he meant it and I somehow knew that as tense as the next 30 minutes would be, that I would catch that bastard flight. But it would be 30 minutes of bullying and hatred toward every pram and snowboard that came within ten feet of me. Two aborted toilet stops, one massive cue jump, no second coffee of the day later, I boarded the plane.
There's no buzz for me anymore in the cattle-herding of airports, but I do still like a takeoff, especially when I have managed a toilet break before taking my seat. I have even bagged a free copy of The Times and The Metro to kill an hour. Ahh, the review of the weekend's rugby which we lost handsomely. Not just the match, the whole fucking competition. Great.
But there is a relief as soon as we were off the tarmac and I can finally look down on the grey veneer that passes for an English sky. I allowed myself to fall asleep. Shame, the stewardess was smoking hot and my slack-jawed dribbling wouldn't do anyone any favors. I must have had a good hour and ten minutes but when I awoke my arms ached in that bloodless needles and pins way again.
A few shuffled feet and avoided gazes later I was in Lisbon. It was raining, my phone battery and sat nav had died and I had no way to find the restaurant I desperately wanted to treat myself to, the same restaurant I missed the last time I was in town. On my last visit, I had missed all the good bits of this city by about a street and a half. The good bits fitted into a matchbox, or a shoebox if your drunk which I had been. I pass up on convenient good smelling food walking past eatery after eatery. Eventually, I would walk back and join a cue after giving up to hunger and indecision.
Freshly stocked up on raw vegetable curry, one of the best nondairy cappuccinos I have ever had, and a small bottle of water I began the longest of walks. I hauled my increasingly heavy and extraordinarily uncomfortable rucksack down the estuary banks between the motorway and Railtrack. I decided to detour as I always do. I wouldn't take the train that runs directly to the ferry terminal, but instead, I would walk straight up the hill that is Lisbon into an executive no man's land of hospitals Embassies.
At the point of literal collapse, a taxi comes my way. It would only cost me five times as much as the train and ferry and would be void of any chance of cultural exchange. I take my seat and we hit the road. I realise I have spent all my cash, all of it. My bank card has no money on it, my phone battery was dead so there would be no simple transfer to pay my decreasingly friendly taxi driver with. But there is always a way, you just have to be uncomfortable for long enough to find it.
And then suddenly there I was, at her house, her beautiful mother let me in and let me know instantly that I was at home and I was welcome and able to be myself. I would do and be just that. So without hesitation, I stripped my bag of valuables, filled it with my book, a pen, a jumper, and a towel just in case the surf was right, and I headed to the beach. The surf was not right, not right at all. There were warning signs not to approach the sea all along the beach. The winter had devastated the cafes and beach bars that dotted the coastline.
It was warm in spurts, it was windy, it was cold. It was grey but blue in flashes. There were a few shells to pick up amongst the industrial plastics and dead sea birds. I instantly felt the weight of the previous three months of England fall from my shoulders. And as I walked one single line came to me, then another, and then another.
“Be selfish, take time to be yourself and to be by yourself. Take yourself on holiday just as everyone else would stick to with what they got.
Only take on work that interests you. Don't work for the glory and never work for the finance. Work for self-betterment and to further your intrigue and interest in a subject.
Charge the kind of money you want to earn but only ever charge what you know your work to be worth.
When you get paid give some of it away. Tip, buy someone else's dinner, pay for a stranger's train fare. Donate to whatever given cause takes your fancy, but don't tell anyone you did so.
Buy yourself things you will never own like coffee and time and use that time to throw stones loaded with deadweights and bad intentions into a foreign sea.”
It might be one of the truest and most honest things I ever write. The rest of the afternoon was a glorious smear of strange stray dogs, of moving someone's furniture back into their wave-beaten and barely standing house. I talked shit with some arrogant prick, and bought three beers and a litre and a half of wine for 3 euros and 95 cents. I cooked dinner for someone I was genuinely great full to share a space with whilst the arrogant prick poured scorn on my every word. I let him know just how little I cared for his attempts to upper hand me. And then came a deep and meaningful conversation with an elder woman that I fell in love with as we spoke. The balcony was warm and breezy, the bed called. I wrote notes in my diary and the day was done.
Day 2. Portugal. March the 20th 2018.
I woke up just as I expected, to the sound of dogs barking and men arguing within feet of my bed. The noise is amplified as it travels up the corrugate tin roof through the walls into my room. They must have known I was there. Nobody wants me to sleep. My shoulders ached as if I had slept with my arms splayed and had lost circulation, but I hadn’t. My hip hurt too and my shoulders felt as if they had been carrying a heavy weight for a long time they felt bruised as if I had been in a fight.
It took several attempts to get out of bed and I told myself I deserved a lie-in. I was overseas so fuck them, I can lie in now and I'll be more productive later. But that sentiment wouldn't last. When I did get up I was groggy, I mistakenly thought I was heavy from a good night's sleep. Perhaps I had caught up on the previous week's angst-ridden insomnia and this discomfort was the relaxing of my limbs and muscles. No. it wasn't. I was ill. Or perhaps it was it the cannabis oil tablets I had taken the night before?
I've never taken that stuff before, maybe it was the mixture of cheap red wine and beer. No. No, I'm ill. I just don't know it yet. I cooked some breakfast, slowly. I made coffee and looked at bottles of wine. I did some yoga. I hate saying that out loud but I do like the practice. I mean I don’t know what I'm actually doing and I avoid anything I find frustrating, but it does seem to soften my increasingly aching body into the day ahead.
I shower, I think. I can't remember, then I pour coffee onto great dunes of sugar and sit at my laptop. And I'm productive. For an hour. The sugar crash kicks in and brings with it the realization that I'm neither well-rested nor residually high. I'm actually fucking sick. I lie on the couch and look at a picture book of Picasso's inspirations. I couldn't understand a single word of it. I walk around the flat aimlessly. I go out to the balcony and try to ignore the wind. The sun feels nice and if I lie on the hard concrete floor I can just about evade the ice-cold windy blasts and pretend I'm actually warm. I find a pillow. I sort of sleep, sort of. I wake up with what feels like arthritis in my hips, surely I'm dying now. It must be the cannabis oil. But I hate not being productive so I muster the strength for a walk.
And it's a bad walk. I'm too tired to make the effort but I take some small pleasure in the views I don’t see every day. But foot does not want to follow foot. I pick up more shells and some broken glass that I put in a bin in the hope of saving a surfer's foot. It's only once my walk near its natural conclusion that I begin to enjoy myself a little and so decide to string it out. the sun is going down and the make-shift Shanti town I'm in feels nice.
I recently learned this place is a little bit of a gypsy stronghold, a fuck you built by outcasts against all regulations and laws. It was allowed to stand because of its historic fishing contingency and because despite the illegal development, the relevant taxes are being paid. It makes sense then that the place is falling down. I feel I understand it now. It's characterful, or something. I like that the locals are all pleasant types who would probably rob me as soon as my back is turned. I take photos, the kind you delete a few moments later. I buy two beers and drink one as I watch the sunset. I genuinely feel like I'm overseas now.
The wind drops once the sun goes down. The bastard. It's no good getting warmer just as it gets fucking colder. I still haven’t written a single thing beyond my hour this morning. I return to the flat and get the laptop out. She's home for dinner, great ill just put the laptop away. I cook, she talks, the beer turns to wine. "Would you like some more cannabis tablets?" Yes, I mean, I don't ever want to take them again. I have been rehearsing my "No, thank you." to this question all day but "Yes I would love some." slips out instead. An hour later, "Can I have another?" I kid myself it will help me be more creative. We share a pleasant meal and she goes to bed. And I am more productive. I light candles and turn off all the lights. Piano music plays in the background and I begin to write and edit. I haven’t read the paper today. Progress.
Day 3 Portugal. March 21st, 2018.
At least the dogs have stopped barking for now. But it's the same bastard locals that will wake me up shouting. I know they're coming way before I hear them. I did actually wake up this morning, that is I rifted into consciousness without the sudden jolt of anxiety. Just about. But there was still an obtuse amount of weight in my limbs and the same two drunken fishermen were having the same argument a short distance away from my bed. It wasn’t any less annoying but I was at least more prepared for it. I was quicker out of bed today, some glimmer of a memory of promising to help someone move something. I got up, I felt chirpy.
The last couple of days were just an adjustment, I had been catching up on too many nights of lost sleep and by now I must be getting there. I wasn’t used to such a cheap red wine, and I never take cannabis tablets. I doubled my dose last night. Breakfast was another smear in my memory, I walked the beach, more positive, more energetic. I tried to finish A Catcher In The Rye. But I didn’t and returned down the beach to the house. If only the fucking wind would drop.
Lap top out. Writing, editing. Tired. Balcony, sun, book. Tired. Ok, let's go. I can make myself comfy enough to fall asleep if I try and I read hard enough that I do. Sleep that is. It's the same distant haze of rest that I had the day before. I'm never really asleep but I'm not really awake either, I dribble lifeless and weighty. There is always the sound of the wind. I'm sweating. I never sleep in the daytime. This is twice in a row. Something must be wrong.
I know I have to finish reading this book and I eventually do. Then I search for extra pages in the back that might explain what the fuck it all meant. There aren’t any. Still sweating, I decide on a second shower but I find the laptop instead.
I remember my promise to help move more furniture and start to wonder if her friendliness is a pretense? Have I been too comfortable, overstepped my welcome? Am I too stupid to have read the signs?
Somehow on returning to the house I finish the rewrite and edit of the chapter that has been puzzling me for weeks now. But I know I'll return to it tomorrow and start again. Two people come in and I feel vaguely uncomfortable in their presence, one person goes out, the one left behind suggests dinner, I suggest I'll cook. It's another hour gone. Dinner is pleasant, we talk more freely. I have admitted to myself I'm genuinely ill now, that the cannabis oils are out of my bloodstream and I maintain the strength to politely turn down any more. The daughter comes home so I cook again for her and her friend. It's an annoying distraction from the important work email that I have been writing for the last two hours. it's one of those important ones that only needs a few lines but each one has to be a perfect fucking haiku of succinct expression.
This email is my future, I can't take the piss, I need to be straight. I know what these people are earning but they don’t know what I'm earning. Surely that should put me in a position of strength not this crippling stuttering inability to piece five coherent sentences together. I'll finish it in the morning. We all share some wine and they take some more oil capsules. I'm uneasy. They become really quite high which shines a light on my illness and heaviness of the last two or three days. At least I'm not doing any tonight. Just one more glass of wine. "Can I see those tablets?" I just wanted to look at them. Just one more glass of wine. I'm going to bed now. The dogs won't stop barking. I'll watch a movie or something and tomorrow I'll feel energized. My arms are too heavy to write anymore.
© Me-Dias 2020
Support Paul Tomkins
