C'mon: Stick 'Em Up!

I've had one crazy week since I returned from Switzerland. The plan was to get home, stop drinking, and spend time re-organizing my wretched life into something that would (for once) actually work; something that would deliver the results I've been trying to achieve for the last one hundred and fifty years; something that would provide me with the fulfilment that I always crave. Not so.

I have been drunk every evening since then – in fact, on one occasion I was actually drunk in the daytime (shock horror). I have to point out that there have been excuses – friends keep calling round and forcing me (at gunpoint) to open the vessels of alcohol. At one point, a friend of mine became so drunk that he fell over onto a table and split his head open. There was blood everywhere, I can tell you. Ever the opportunist, my friend decided that his injuries should provide a few days off work and asserted that he could easily claim that he'd been mugged. To corroborate his claim, he thought it might be a good idea for me to punch him in the face, thus augmenting the bruising and scarring he had already suffered.

Can you imagine that? Me, the perfect softie, punching anyone in the face? I refused, of course - only to incur the wrath of my friend, whose conclusion that my failure to secure him a few days blagged off sick rendered me liable for a punching myself. Luckily, my lovely face was spared a beating, as he forgot all about it when he passed out. Passed out, yes - but not before upsetting a full pint glass of Coca-Cola all over my coffee table and thereby destroying all books and magazines in his path. This sounds like a rock-and-roll life, but I assure you that it is not. This is small-town life; this is Hockley life; this is not life.

So, I have decided to have a quiet night in this evening, alone. My plan is to formulate a plan. What I feel I could do with is a timetable. You know, the sort of timetable we used to have at school. I could divide up each day into period-size chunks and allocated an activity to each period – something like this:

Week 1
Period One: Finish unfinished novel about rent boys
Period Two: Do something about getting a job
Period Three: Stare meaninglessly into space
Period Four: Attend to paperwork and sort out my mother's estate
Period Five: Italian Lesson

You get the kind of thing. I feel that a more structured approach to the day might reap some benefits. It would certainly be better than my current agenda, which appears to be:

Week 1
Period One: Get up and check email and Facebook
Period Two: Stare meaninglessly into space
Period Three: Continue to check email and Facebook
Period Four: Stare meaninglessly into space
Period Five: Pour drink

Well, at least I'm listening to the radio right now, instead of watching the X-Factor. That has to be a good start, don't you think? Watch this space.