Bonce

Yoghurt is too simple to eat on its own. I know you can get it in different flavours and with little chocolatey bits in the corner that can be dipped or tipped in. But when you get to that stage — the stage where you’re stood gob-eyed under harsh neon lights in a supermarket like an escaping convict under a spotlight, knowing that you haven’t got long before they get you — there are way too many choices.

Way too many escape routes, to the point that you take longer picking a yoghurt than you will eating it later while Roman Kemp loses three grand for Lesbians with Shingles on Celebrity Tipping Point. You take so long that they get you: you’re trapped in a cage walled by dairy with one (or more!) of those creatures that show up in your nightmares and make you wake up screaming and sweating and wishing sleep was banned nationally. Ben Shephard has a face even a mother would punch.

To avoid faff, I’ve started putting a condom over my tongue before eating boring food. That way I don’t have to tolerate the dullness; by much the same principle, now I also close my eyes tight the instant I step through the front door on my way to work. I’ve walked that route more than I’ve told Dad I love him: out of the estate, across the road, left down the alley beside the cemetery then right down the street with all the wanky named houses (such as “Crofton House" and “Tudor House" and “The Family Manor") which have automatic gates and see-through bedrooms, then over the junction with 7 intersecting roads that come from nowhere and lead to nowhere — Bob’s your uncle, Fannie’s your aunt and you’re there. Very rarely do I trip on pavements or bump into mums pushing prams or get beeped at by cars as I’m flying over the bonnet.

It’s a trickier affair evading such brain-crippling, soul-rending monotony at work:

“It’s a push door, not pull… you push it! Forward!

Hello Madam, how can I… well if you let me have a look then I might be able to… you’re right, I’m sorry. Not ‘might’; I’ll certainly be able to fix it for you…

Ah, see here, the light is blinking yellow… no, I don’t take you for an idiot and I know you know that it isn’t supposed to be blinking yellow — I was just about to explain… I’m not taking a tone with you Madam… I’m not… I’m only trying to help, I’m no-…”

On and on and on until you either give up and offer a refund or tell her that it’s out of warranty so she can stick her new printer up her arse and shit the family photos from “Mah-jaw-cuh" for all the tosses you give (depending on the mood you’re in and how likely you reckon it is she’ll lodge a complaint after sizing her up). And that’s merely the first customer of the day, who happens to have four dozen döppelgangers with four dozen models of the same god-awful printer that they want mending.

When all’s finally said and done, the glorious privilege of being able to flip the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’, right in the soured face of a last sodding chancer, is divinely bestowed upon you as though you’re the King Arthur of Curry’s or Tech Support Moses sealing the Red-Green-Blue Sea in your wake. You step outside, shut the shop down and slam the shutters firmly so that none of the bad juju from the spirits of fifty Xeroxes can follow you home, then close your eyes and walk.

All they had to do was buy some cunting toner. You take the creamy condom off your tongue and press power on the TV before Jimmy Carr’s godforsaken plastic-bag of a fizzog can appear to contaminate the pixels. Are you hugging the duvet or is the duvet hugging you? The Sun rises before you get chance to figure it out.

Days like that are finite, in spite of everything: there have been 2,237 of them thus far, and there are 10,406 to come (provided that the retirement age doesn’t get fucked with, which it will, and that I maintain a responsible budget, which I won’t). And to be fair, they stay in their lane; they don’t dare encroach on my turf. The weekends are mine.

48 hours, which I suppose actually works out as 32 hours minus sleeping, or 26 hours minus being at the nursing home talking to Nan and pretending she has a clue what I’m saying or why she has a Kenyan ex-soldier wiping her bum, or 24 hours minus the weekly clean, or 22.5 hours minus toilet time. Yeah, you best believe that the weekends are mine.

The weekends are mine, much akin to how the dishwasher I’m paying for on credit and the uniform Curry’s force me to wear emblazoned with “Hardware Hero" on it are ‘mine’. Much akin to how the money that manages to trickle into my savings account (after tax and National Insurance and bills and rent and nursing home costs) — which the bank lends to other people paying for other dishwashers on other credit, in the surety that their clients would never want to make withdrawals en masse because that’s NEVER happened before — much akin to how that money is ‘mine’.

The other day I rang Mum for the first time in ages. I didn’t want to, because I was anticipating the worry and the ‘advice’ and the disappointment and the offered money and the tears and the “Uncle Bill (who is not my uncle) has died, will you be at the funeral? Sandra (who I have never met) would really appreciate it" which predictably and inevitably was poured down my neck. She always loved pouring stuff down my neck, ever since she wet herself laughing at the video of Gina Yashere doing the ice bucket challenge. The video of my ice bucket challenge posted to her Facebook has 2 likes and a comment from Nan (when she could still look at a phone without trying to eat it) saying “Wow what a cool dude!”. Mum never liked that comment. It’s too late now anyway, but I guarantee she’ll respond with a LOL emoji for posterity seconds after the nursing home gives us the ‘bad news’.

I didn’t want to ring, but I needed to. The five broken hours of sleep I normally get was being whittled down to a measly two because, aside from the sounds of gross bodily harm and date rape and bin lorries which give this town its character, there was a noise rumbling in my brain each night too. Persistent wee bugger, it was a question that came as if from Ben Shephard’s smarmy lips:

“Alright, for three counters this next question is about: YOUR BONCE!

Is this fucking normal?

A.) No way, it can’t be

B.) Of course it is, you just can’t hack it

C.) I don’t want to know

If you get this one correct you’ll be in with a chance to get over the Tipping Point and win, but get it wrong and you’ll be licking scum from the bottom of a trough for the rest of your life like the pathetic mutt you are.”

“But Ben,” I plead with the B-list ITV presenter who makes middle-aged secretaries in unhappy domestic situations slime their knickers all across the country: “what do I win if I make it over the Tipping Point?”

“Don’t call me Ben, you worm. It’s Mr. Shephard or ‘sir' to you.

If you get over the Tipping Point, you win the right to be a person just like everybody else. I’m sure you’d like that wouldn’t you, you little freak? You wasted space in the womb for 9 whole months and sent your poor mother to Hell and back, then you still plopped out half-finished!

Now answer the bastard question before I shit out of rage from even having to share the air in this studio with a speccy, knobbly-kneed overlarge homunculus twat like you.”

Although I did think that Ben Shephard had an inflated sense of self-importance (for someone whose biggest achievement is being one of those rare morning TV hosts that hasn’t been exposed sexting underage rentboys — yet) accompanied by a rather cruel temperament, his question threw me for six. Was this normal? Was everyone else living the same bullshit, tortuous life in the same filthy, overpriced flat with the same countdown to the same short weekend? How were they able to cope without chewing on live wires or playing bleach pong? Why were they even bothering?

Was there something wrong with me? Had I just been particularly unlucky, happening to be born on a blue spot under God’s game of naked Twister right as he was plonking his holy hairy bollocks down, slotting them into my gaping mouth? Or was it a personal problem: was I too weak, too stupid, too cowardly to handle basic human existence? Was I overreacting when helping a bricklayer who’d spilt Bovril on his Xbox or getting bedbugs or finding out my wheel of Brie had gone mouldy all made me feel as though I ought to steal a rifle and go batshit, Raoul Moat style?

“Mum?”

“Yes my love?”

“Did you drop me on my head as a baby?”

“Hmmm… No, not on purpose anyway. What’s making you ask that?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately -"

“Come on, you know you’re no good at that.”

“Yeah well, I’ve been thinking a lot and it would make a lot of things make a lot of sense if it turned out I’d been plonked on the bonce at an early stage of my development.”

“Huh… we did have to tell your cousin Andy not to press the soft spot at the back of your head once or twice — although, he’s a Scientologist now and as a kid he used to shave the cat’s hair and glue it back on too so it wouldn’t surprise me if he took a knock to the aul bonce, especially with a mother like her— oooh, did I mention that Auntie Paula’s back in bloody rehab again? More like re-rehab. Or re-re-re-re-rehab -"

“Mum, I seriously need you to think. If my bonce is fine then — I don’t know… was I fatally touched on or something and you covered it up? Plenty of Dad’s friends who make strong contenders ; don’t worry, I’m not bothered I just need to know.”

“My gosh, no! Never! How could you even suggest — hang on… saying that, there was our holiday to Cannock when we left you with that old couple who ran the military museum while we went to watch Heat in the cinema. You definitely looked a bit haunted when we picked you up and we never really got why.”

“I have no memory of this. Why the hell did you leave me with some random creepy military couple?”

“Well your father suggested we drop you at the nearest church for a few hours but I wouldn’t have it what with the things priests get up to behind closed doors. Anna from the office said that the bloke who baptised her would go on to ask years later if she’d throw thumbtacks at his bare chest; when she said no he forced her to huff moggy with him! I don’t even know what that means! I’m telling you: these paedophiles are disturbed, deeply…”

“Quite. So are military veterans and people enduring long marriages, I might add — never hear of Fred and Rose West?”

“Erm, rings a bell… Aren’t they from Bucks Fizz? Or are they the two that host The Hit List together?”

“No…. look, it doesn’t matter. You’re my phone-a-friend here: I’m trying to rule out option B, I’m trying to find out if this is normal Mum.”

“OK, you’ve finally lost me. What does this have to do with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And is what normal?”

“Tipping Point, actually… is it normal to live wanting to die?”

“Oh… oh cherub… Are you taking your medication still? Do you want us to book some more therapy? Are you -"

“Please don’t cry Mum, I’m fine. As fine as I ever am. Like I said, I’m living; I’d just rather not, honestly. And I’m not sure how anyone could feel any differently. I’m not sure how anyone else copes. I can’t square that circle and it’s driving me a bit nuts.”

“… I want to live for you. For your Dad. For your Nan, as long as she’s still here.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love you all so much and everything, and I would never put you through… that. But I can’t stop wishing I could. I’m not living for you exactly, I’m just not dying for you. And that’s pretty crap. I won’t have you around forever, and there must be reams of people who’ve never had anyone and never will… there must be.”

“Nobody is alone. Absolutely nobody. The people who feel like they’re alone are the ones who act on thoughts like you’re having, they don’t cope— but they’re never truly by themselves. Remember Gay Gary who lived next to us in the old house? Husband, kids, good job, lovely house; they still found him all spazzed up sucking on the exhaust of his ice cream van.

Remember Chewie, that homeless woman who had a monobrow and hung around town growling at passersby? Sure, she probably didn’t have any family or friends to speak of but those highschoolers who discovered her, fried and frazzled under a pylon, must have been traumatised, must have felt some sort of loss.

Oooh, and remember — remember Pete the Farmer, who went mulchy in his own woodchipper because he thought his sister Shelly was going to die from a brain tumour? She pulled through and had to identify his blobs for the police.

I realise I’m supposed to be cheering you up: the point is, every life affects every other life. The people who keep on chugging are the ones who understand that they have something to lose. The people who give up are the ones who forget that they had or have or will have something to lose. They forget that, for someone else, they are something to lose. They forget that life itself is enough reason to live.”

“… having reason to live isn’t the same as not having reason to die. I can tell myself that dying would hurt people, or would throw away my future, or wreak any number of annoying consequences. The problem is that living hurts me, constantly. And I guess I’m wondering how normal people prevent the cons from outweighing the pros. Do I simply have a low pain threshold?”

“You took a frying pan to the nose that time you were sneaking in late and I thought you were a burglar; you didn’t scream, but I don’t know if that was because you were sloshed or stoned or otherwise sedated. Either way, no: I don’t think you have a low pain threshold. I think you’re impatient. You’re enduring this pain, but you’re less and less willing to wait for it to end. It will end my darling. I promise you. Hang in there.”

“Thanks Mum. I love you.”

“I love you too. So, should I tell Sandra I’m bringing a plus one to Bill’s funeral or not? God knows I won’t be bringing your father because he’ll only end up a snotty ball of tears...”

“Oi, dickhead, do you have an answer yet? I’ve got a limo with a barely legal Media Studies student off her tits on crank in the backseat waiting for me.”

“Fuck you Ben Shephard, yes I have an answer. C: I don’t want to know if this is normal or if I’m normal because it doesn’t change how to deal with it. I can’t un-bungle my bonce. I won’t de-loathe my job or my hometown or coleslaw or Amanda Holden. But I will dis-fuckup my life. Eventually. I will. Give me those shitting counters, I’m going over the Tipping Point.”

I no longer like the taste of rubber prophylactic. In sincerity, I reckon I probably never did. I go in raw now, and I’ve tried every corner of the Müller polyhedron. Changed over to The Chase as well: Bradders is a riot (his son Barney that he hosts the Gladiators reboot with is a snivelling toerag, however) and they have the opportunity to win the megabucks on that show — especially if the Dark Destroyer or Ennis the Menace are on, pair of hopeless bellends. Frustratingly, I haven’t actually seen a team go home with more than ten grand, but that’s the jackpot on Tipping Point. Bradley Walsh likes to poke fun at the morons too; Shephard was always gutless, a total softie. He never went hard enough.