August 17 (Tuesday): Halloweenie. Weird dream last night, I’m walking up Butt Road near the police station and Colchester seems to be clamping down and having an amnesty on baseball bats. I find myself getting stopped and being ordered to surrender the little baseball bat I bought in Sacramento last year, as if it could do any damage…. When I wake up, I wonder where the bat is and where it has gone.

Regardless of that freaky mind trip warp, I wake up early as is the way for me currently with it being summer etc. I MSN with Sara some and it feels like an argument although she denies this. Basically she is giving me more grief over my anger management. What, does she think I’m fucking Ronnie Dobbs or something?

I walk into work maxing/macking on Chris Moyles who has Ben Stiller with him on his radio show. It is a nice leisurely stroll into work along Layer Road into Butt Road and all in all, it sees me arriving late to work. I am too laid back.

At work I put Gatehouse to semi-bed and put adjustments through on Viztopia and Louise is still very offish. Forgetting that though, I get a semi-panicked Mark on the phone asking me if I can download an email for him in Japanese script/font on Word for a translation job for him (turns out his version of Word is a little out of date). I run around the office, getting the document off the office internet and looking all over for an XP computer that will work it. None do and I have to telephone Mark back with failure. Fortunately however Mark chooses to take it to the library where they are equipped to the hills (apparently).

I text Azmei once more asking how things are, mainly with her mum. Once more she does not respond.

I go back upstairs to the office where Louise and Janine are and they remain frosty and very offish. Janine makes a few smart comments aimed in my direction, not least the arrogant one “you have a lot to learn about treating women/ladies�. I ask “have you got a cob on?� and she goes “yes, in the future you ought to keep your mouth shut and you should keep your hands to yourself�. What the fuck? Oh my, it sounds like I tried it on with her Friday which is really freaky because she next to repulses me by her general phoniness. By this I am very embarrassed and soon make myself scarce and basically hide in Chernobyl for the remainder of the day.

Back in Chernobyl the whole affair is greeted with hilarity by Stevo and Sandip while I go through a kind of personal crisis, feeling like I am being made to feel like Mike Tyson. Grief. Stevo calls for calm. I text Sara who replies with equal hilarity. The world is a vampire.

At lunchtime, Stevo, Sandip and myself all lunch in Richard’s while outside the weather turns on a spin of a coin and pisses down a storm.

In the afternoon I text Azmei again, now that I feel even more guilty about things than ever and this time she actually replies and it seems things are now all better and there had been a general overreaction/drama to incidents over the past few days. It is disheartening to get a boring response from Azmei, I feel I go into texting her almost wanting fireworks and abuse, almost looking for an opportunity to sound off. While all this drama uncurls itself, Purple Haired Girl walks past the office. There is one reliable lady who would/will never let me down.

Another bad day ends and I am relieved to the max to be out of there and on my way home to see the olds. Tonight is England U-21 vs Ukraine U-21 on Sky Sports followed by episode 2 of season 5 of the Sopranos on E4. This is pretty much (wrongly) the extent of my visit to my parents, to watch some Sky. The evening is a bit of a downer, Dad goes to bed early seeming to be in a hump/mood over something. And just as the Sopranos begins on E4 mum starts telling me how she thinks dad is ill again as he is showing similar signs to those he did when he first got cancer last year. I really do not want to hear this, I do not want to go through all this shit again (yeah right, as if I went through anything compared to them last year). We talk our way through most of the episode of the Sopranos, mum doing most of the talking.

When I leave, I drive home listening to Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2 and I return home in time to watch Haunted Honeymoon on late BBC1. Its so weird to think that when we first got Sky back in 1989, this movie was one of the big selling points/promotional pushes to get the movie channel over. Why? Phoebe Toronto comes online and we talk until past 1AM, with my trying to explain the brilliance of Tortoise to her. She has problems of her own though, a big operation on its way. Staying up last is such a bad move considering how early I was up this morning and now I will only awaken completely shattered tomorrow, tomorrow for my third job interview in London.

np: Manic Street Preachers – Archives Of Pain