Ramblings Of A Pessimistic Mind

I’d say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. But that would neither be an accurate representation of the facts, nor of the mood I am in. I didn’t sleep last night. I got sick of clutching for the peace of sleep that would not avail me, and so, I stayed up through the night – carrying out menial tasks to pass the hours until I had to venture out to the one place I did not want to go.

7:30 a.m. Coffee circulates my veins and the taste of cigarettes hangs on my every breath: reminding me of another night of my youth spent wasted away on something less productive than slumber. It’s my preparation for today. I open the door to the house in which I am living, it’s not even mine - merely a friend’s where I now reside with him and his mother. My foot plants the floor and as I step outside, the dull morning greets me like a lost friend. A cold layer of fine rain graces the contours of my face. I pull my trousers up as they have slipped slightly. My belt is broken. It seems to serve very little purpose anymore aside from making me look scruffy and just hangs limply, coiled around my waist. I walk. Sure, it feels good to be outside in the fresh air, but I am not travelling to a destination I crave. I guess you would call it my current place of education. Besides, if I wanted fresh air I could just have a cigarette in the garden at any time of day. Irony. I walk to the end of the road, look left, look right. Over the withered trees I see the first rays of sunlight illuminate surrounding sky, adding a warm pink glow to the dull and lifeless canvas stretched overhead. It is quite a sight and I stop to look for a few seconds. Naturally, my route takes me in the opposite direction to the first beauty of the day. I start to trudge down the road and end up advancing with pace, every step firm and decided as my foot collides with the floor. My teen angst reflected back at me from the music projected by my headphones which are firmly wedged in my ears.

I see the early signs of morning life silhouetted from inside houses against their neat, vertical, neutral blinds. I wonder about their story. Kids getting ready for school, I feel their pain. A middle-aged man pulls his car out of his garage and onto his drive. I wonder about his story. Off to his nine to five job to be able to provide food for his family and meaningless material possessions to submerge himself in. I see replica houses stretching down my left and right and all I can do is imagine the replica lives lived within each of them through different people. Sure, obvious differences would be evident, but I assume great similarities would present themselves if I knew the life of each and every person “living” in these houses right now. Married or divorced. Children. Stable job, but not what the breadwinner of the household really wants to do or really wanted to do before he covered up his dreams in pursuit of a more realistic option. A garage used primarily to store now unwanted possessions and DIY tools. One, maybe two cars on the drive. A garden that does not have a great deal of effort put into maintaining it’s upkeep, but at least sports carefully regulated grass length and a flower bed or two: because it’s nice to have a little big of colour injected into a mundane life, and what better way than aesthetically pleasing plant life. All I can see is grey; it’s not working on me. I keep walking, almost getting into a rhythm with the cathartic music being driven through my ears. Music, one of the finer things in life: fitting for any occasion and non-judgemental of neither your situation, nor your personality. I soldier on, trying not to question why I am pissed off and being so pre-assuming of all the people I haven’t even seen and don’t even know. Like I say, bad day from the start.

I reach the place where I now await the arrival of transport for the poor man, the student, the environmentalist and the people who enjoy the chance for social interaction. I hope I never get like that. I light up a cigarette. A girl, no older than me, stands in the bus shelter next to me with her hair scraped so tightly back from her forehead into a ponytail that I fear for her health. A plane of transparency separates us; visually, we might as well be standing next to each other. I find this oddly uncomfortable and edge away. My hands are cold, standing in the bus shelter with the discarded lager bottles and faint smell of urine would be welcome right now. However, society has deemed it not acceptable to smoke in such a place, even though half the length of the front and back wall is not there as it is merely a shelter, not a room. Pondering this and realising that it is no longer raining, I don’t see much benefit of being in there anyway. I see my bus trundling towards me; I am now torn between what to feel. The initial joy of my bus arriving, and therefore putting a halt to my battle with the elements, is soon taken away from me with the realisation that I am getting closer to the place I do not want to go today. The place where no face I see evokes any emotion in me. The place where I smoke twice as much so I have something to do whilst people mundane to me converse about uninteresting topics and ask questions in which they do not care what the answer is. Talking for the sake of talking. I hate that. The place where I feel like I am not only wasting my time: but killing and butchering it. It’s a travesty because one day I won’t have any left.

I step onto the bus, a lady who arrived after me at the bus stop lets me get on first, how nice of her. I saw her process in her mind which one of us rightfully deserves to board first, she came to the right conclusion. I step up to the driver, the 45 year old woman who has nothing better to do with her life, she doesn’t seem too happy to see me. After exchanging formalities such as my destination I hand her my money. Money: that thing that makes the world go round. Well I can assure you my world has not fully grinded to a standstill just yet even through lack of this elusive, sought after thing. I part with my money, pretty much the last of it, to get to college and back. I get the grunt of approval from the driver, the same grunt I know I will belligerently return to her upon my departure from the vehicle. I choose my seat, so much choice, so much choice of who to stay farthest away from. I sit. I scrunch the paper ticket up in my dry palm and feel no difference in texture before I drop it to the floor. This is the ticket that also guarantees me the privilege of returning me home from my destination later on today. I realise this and bend down to pick it up, I feel the elderly man just behind me on the opposite side of the aisle wonder to himself “why would he throw away his ticket when he knows he needs it?” I’m not playing some kind of game my man, it was a simple mistake. Please stop looking in my direction now.

Now, despite all this I enjoy bus journeys. I enjoy travelling, I can sink into music and be on my own with nothing else and it amuses me watching the unsatisfying world pass me by on the other side of the glass. It is probably my favourite part of one of these days. I sit and watch the un-tantalizing landscapes and drab architecture rush by me, and not a moment too soon. When I get close to arriving at the bus station at the other end I roll myself a cigarette. The teen wearing his college sports uniform who has occupied the seat across the aisle from me looks over in some form of disgust. I feel like telling him not to be kept up at night worrying for my health and also that I hope his sports course gets him nowhere in life. The bus pulls around the circular bus station and comes to a standstill. I depart, not forgetting to deliver the same grunt of disapproval to the driver that I received after handing her my money. She’s just doing her job. Admittedly with no people skills and in a profession that requires constant interaction with the public. But she is just doing her job.

When I step off the vehicle, with the same distain I did this morning when leaving the house, I notice the building right in front of me. A café. I see this building every time I make this journey and never take any notice of the sign so shoddily placed above it’s entrance, but today I stopped for a second look. It reads: “Probably the best café in Kings Lynn”. Even the establishments are unsure of themselves in this town. It may as well say: “Probably the best café in Kings Lynn – but don’t hold us to it, there’s a chance there is a lot better.” I have never been in there, and today is no exception to that rule, especially now I realise the place itself has doubts about it’s own standards. For all I know it probably is the best café in the area. For all I know I could go in there, sit down at a table, order a coffee and probably have the best coffee of my life. But, I’m human, how could I take that risk over such a huge thing? Definitely not, not now I have been told of the possibility of better prospects. Maybe the coffee shop around the corner that fell off a string of franchises and landed here could offer me a hotter, tastier cup of coffee – they certainly charge a higher price, which means better quality, right? I want to tell the owner of this place how they put me off before I even considered going in there and that my first impression was a negative one. I put the end of my cigarette over the flame being issued from my lighter and see a fairly overweight boy, not much older than me walk out from this café with a bacon roll. This man obviously knows his food fairly well and I want to ask him if it is in fact the best bacon roll he has purchased from any establishment in this town. It probably is. I let it slide.

I ring my friend to see what time his bus gets in and decide to wait for him. I finish my cigarette and make my way round to the other side of the bus station with no haste, right now I have time to kill. At this time the bus station is occupied by students travelling to and from college and school, as well as the people that would rather be milling about, doing nothing in particular at half past eight in the morning just to say they ventured out. Some people are making their way to work: an unbalanced mix of fresh, eager faces attached to bodies that are seemingly all too eager and energetic at the prospect of work, overruled by sullen, grey faces attached to a barely functioning body that looks like it is being dragged by an invisible man. In the midst of this I see a blank spot of wall, seemingly made for me to lean against in a haphazard manner. Here I can just stand with my headphones in and watch the living dead wander with no real direction. A man approaches me; this is news to me, I thought I was out of the way enough to not be approached by anybody. I have my music on loud and the white headphone leads running from my ears and down my T-shirt is evidence enough I can not hear the ongoing drone of the modern world right now. I see the man’s lips move. I reluctantly muster the energy to remove one of my earpieces and instantly lose lead guitar. This man looks to be in his late 40s, he is wearing a baseball cap, a warm-looking coat, jeans and a fairly smart pair of trainers. The fact that this man did not look ‘poor’ in the slightest (obviously he is not a rich man) left me baffled when he uttered the words “Do you have 60p mate, I want to get a cup of tea, 60p mate?” From his appearance I had gathered he is far from homeless, so I wonder why he is asking me this. I fob him off: “I don’t mate, sorry. I just spent all my money on a ticket to get to college and then home again” He looks sullen. The truth is I could stretch to that 60p if I felt a great need, but with my current financial situation I had to leave half of my money at home on my desk today so that when I get hungry later on, I have already pre-empted myself into not being able to buy food which would waste money. The man continues conversation by enquiring as to what college I am attending. In my head it’s quite blatant that I go to Kings Lynn College (as unlucky on my part as that may be) but I give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t want this conversation to last any longer than it already has. He tells me “it’s alright, I’ll try and get 60p off somebody else.” In my head I wish him sarcastic luck. To me, this looked like a man who was waiting for a bus, evidently not. However, I do not see it as my duty to budget my poor funds to accommodate for this particular person. A cup of tea is not even a necessity. Maybe he was feeling lucky. Maybe he’ll use his allotted luck up soon. He walks away and lights up a cigarette. I wonder to myself “how hard up for money can this man be? He can’t afford a cup of tea but I bet his cigarettes never run low.” I start to roll a cigarette. I almost want to tell this man that if he had caught me on a different day, when I was in a more uplifted mood, I would have gone to the royal mint, created a 60p coin and showered him in them. I’m not going to do that. If I could have, no, if at the time I wanted to give that man enough for a cup of tea: I probably would have sent him to the café across the bus station where he could get what would probably the best cup of tea he could buy in the vicinity.

Not long after this an elderly lady in good health walks close to me pushing her trolley full to the brim of early morning supermarket shopping. She stares at me a few seconds too long to be classified as a passing glance. I am eagerly rolling my cigarette and in my head she is thinking behind her upturned nose: “Smoking, at your age?” in my mind I retort with “When is a good age to begin killing yourself?”