Strangest Thing

"Sometimes when I go to exertin' myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back" – McMurphy.

After a back splittingly painful week there's a sign of remission. Is it the effect of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? I doubt it – this week's session did away with the therapy and we talked about getting a job. Perhaps a little cognitive manoeuvring was thrown in under the radar, but basically it was a practical process. Somewhere, psychiatrist RD Lang explained how he chatted convivially with a patient for a whole session, only to call time for the patient to say, "Hey doc! We never talked about my problems!" "Well, have a think about that before next session, hey," he replied. Perhaps living is a decent enough management technique, when such a thing can be done. Alas for me, the next CBT session will have us back to simplified cause-effect analysis, and how to interpret supposed irrational thoughts.

But over our pleasant chat I realised that going to China for a year isn't going to ruin my life, that I can't sign up to a course this September anyway, so leaving it another year is no biggy... things like that. My therapist gave me career advice, such as answering my question – "Is it OK for someone with mental health problems to work in mental health?"

"It's the wood hiding among the trees," she said with a laugh. "Join the club."

Today, a few insurmountables reached conquering distance. A CRB check is in the mail, the TEFL qualification is almost done.

But the real shift is noticeable because of a certain kind of consumption. For about 6 months or longer I've been on a diet of minimal everything. I shuffle around the house like a hedgehog, somewhat scared to open a cupboard to get a glass lest one not be there, fearful of turning on the TV lest I can't find the remote, panicking when I have more than two windows open on the computer, blaming an cruel world when I realise I've run out of cornflakes. 

I generally drink endless water, partly to avoid caffeine and partly because the appetite for tasty drinks has vanished. But today, whilst reading One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, I fancied a coffee. I got out the grinder, opened up a pack of Zapatista grown coffee beans from Chiapas, Mexico, and ground them down into a fine dust. Then I threw that into the cafetiere and drank it down in the sunny garden. One whole coffee. After that I played an Aphex Twin record on the record player and wrote this. 

Why grind coffee when there's instant nearby? Because it's better. Why play a record when YouTube is right there? Because it's better. Caring about that stuff is new. Apart from YouTube being a terrible service, with irritating adverts and intermittent buffering, and shithead twats writing crap underneath the videos which become more compelling than the videos themselves, music lost all of its charm of late, as if my head can only take so much sound before it starts to overspill, taking floating parts of porous brain with it. Today, no telling why, the peril of information was distilled into a soothing whiskey, and for the first time in a long time, I felt the groove.

Diary of a Reclusive Antisocial Introvert – 12 june 2014

I pen this alone in a cheap hotel room in South Kensington, having ejected my travelling companion from not only the room, not just the hotel, but the entire city. She's gone to Chichester – a neat coincidence of visiting a friend and leaving me alone. But it's no "woe is me" moment, because I couldn't be more relieved.

Since she arrived for a UK trip for which I was happy to tag along, I got progressively worse. That is – anxiety, irritability, frustration, an inability to converse, and IBS. It peaked on Wednesday when we visited the Harry Potter studios in Watford. I know what you're thinking – Harry Potter, if not causing the problem, at least exacerbated it ho ho. But on the day in question I was indifferent to everything, thereby barring the potentially nausea-inducing Potterness. Instead, I was emotionally drained, and the victim of intense stabbing pains in unmentionable areas.

Sadly though, my lack of fun rubbed off on my poor friend, who got increasingly upset with me, all the while apologising for something, for being somehow responsible for my predicament. All I could do was quietly attempt to console her, to feign interest at magic wands and Dickensian potion shops, and try not to squirm so much from the agony.

Whilst my problem has a physical dimension, there is no "cause". I've been probed and tested and examined and sent on my way with a slap on the back and some pills. The effectiveness of them comes and goes arbitrarily and it's incredibly hard to conclude that medication is working – put me in another location, with other people, and the whole constitution changes. Hence, anxiety is deemed to be the villain.

As was the case when my visiting friend and I went to a barbecue at my father's house. This was the weekend before we went to London. Eating events leave me lacking appetite and small-talk. I slowly nibble on burnt ribs and precariously balance a corn on the cob on a weakening paper plate, all the while some well-meaning neighbour is piling burgers on me and discussing the weather. They talk about jobs and relationships and houses and holidays, none of which I have. I finish barbecues hungry, tired and hopeless, and bewildered at how such an event can be so emotionally unsettling. 

During this particular barbecue I was able to sneak off for a nap under the pretext of an early trip to the airport. The next day, back at my mother's house, I was able to steer clear of the family because of a recent bust-up with them due to my perceived laziness. (I'm often in bed, and hence not working or doing housework, which has led to resentment). Following this strange weekend and the rather morbid Harry Potter experience, I was not surprised when my friend decided to escape for a day.

And it's been a pleasant day spent alone – only mild-to-minimum pain. Has the relative calm been because I'm alone or despite it? I don't know. I had the chance to visit other London friends, but didn't risk it. Instead, I went to the Royal Academy of Arts, got bemused and disgusted by the ugly wealth exhibited in Mayfair, and drank tea by the side of the road. I wanted to share experience with an unknown someone, but that someone ends up being an inner voice. Being alone is like Stockholm Syndrome: you depend on it once it's caught you. Nowadays socialising is almost unbearable, or at best a chore. Humans have become like another species, and talking to them requires careful micro-management, deep breaths, the need to express things accurately and concisely to avoid the panic of my interlocutor not understanding. Even social networks make me sick. Few people stick by you when you can't handle being around them; those that do get tired. It's a bummer because I like people in theory. As Bill Hicks said, "I'm a misanthropic humanist." 

We live in a world of awakening voices. The voices of LGBT(QIA+), of women, of various minorities which have experienced some form of oppression or suppression. The voice of mental health is getting louder, as it has been since Freud ruptured Victorian notions of psychological normality, and the trend has continued with people like Stephen Fry, Davina McCall and Alastair Campbell coming out of the depression closet. If this makes for a more understanding and less judgemental society, then all for the better, but I can't help thinking that rampant "celebritism" and all the twisted values it promotes is one of the factors driving people towards a gloomy sense of inadequacy.

In this age of personal brand identities, introversion and even depression is sometimes sold as a Unique Selling Point. Myers-Briggs initials are thrown about on dating websites like OBEs or PhDs. Depressed Twitter users share their plight with followers using the hashtag #depression. The Introvert seems to offer something more than your everyday citizen – a quiet, brooding intelligence, something unspoken, subversive and mysterious. But not everyone is a Nietzsche or a Kurt Cobain or a Romantic poet, with hidden brilliance trapped far below like an illuminated pool in a dark cave. Not everyone is a protagonist in a slow-burning success story.

Of course I'm only referring to myself at the end there. If writing poetry, tweeting about depression or reading about Davina McCall's hard times has any  positive effect for anyone, then it's worth it. It's good to talk, so they say. As for my own rather invisible brand of mental illness, I've said just about all I can. 

Temporarily in Oxford

We woke up painfully early to get the cheap bus, which we missed. A train and a taxi stood in our way, and while the first was devilishly challenging, the second was insurmountable. Who'd have thought that Southampton has no taxis at 6AM?

Having already paid 12£ for the bus which we missed, another 70£ was needed for the train. By 9am, penniless and tired, we were in Oxford, where the sun shines bright and watches down on the streets like the overeducated gargoyles strolling across the college rooftops. 

TEMPORARILY IN OXFORD
By Anne Stevenson

Where they will bury me

I don't know.

Many places might not be

sorry to store me.

The Midwest has right of origin.

Already it has welcomed my mother

to its flat sheets.

The English fens that bore me

have been close curiously often.

It seems I can't get away from

dampness and learning.

If I stay where I am

I could sleep in this educated earth.

But if they are kind, they'll burn me

and send me to Vermont.

I'd be an education for the trees

and would relish, really,

flaring into maple each October—

my scarlet letter to you.

Your stormy north is possible.

You will be there, engrossed in its peat. 

It would be handy not

to have to cross the whole Atlantic

each time I wanted to

lift up the turf and slip in beside you.

The Movies of 'Tomorrow'

Edge of Tomorrow is a new film with Tom Cruise, and such an 'edgy' and 'tomorrowy' title got me thinking about other 'tomorrow' movies. Is Edge of Tomorrow's title just some cliché collection of evocative words intended to give another piece of 2 hour crap some punchy weight at the box office? Surely not! They couldn't call it All You Need is Kill, as the original Japanese novel was named in English, for fear of attracting only teenage boys and upsetting the Paranoid Mom's Brigade. Why, the creators must have had at the forefront of their minds the anxious human preoccupation of the unknown future, and the transient and fleeting nature of the 'edge' or indeed, the present, the ungraspable now. Indeed, are we not always on the 'edge of tomorrow'? Well, from about 11pm today we are.

Enter Cruise, and the story practically writes itself, but in case the name 'Edge of Tomorrow' didn't give anything away after all (on account of it being meaningless) here's a roundup gleamed from the trailer. Tom has the uncanny ability to start days again in the way that no one has since Bill Murray. All he needs to do is die. (If I could bring someone back from the dead, I'm not sure I would've picked Tom Cruise, but there we go.) 

There are also lots of guns, big guns with lots of chrome bullets that make all sorts of cool noises, and exoskeleton body armour, and a ruthless boss (Emily Blunt) who bluntly puts Tom though countless bloody executions to train him up to win the war until, inevitably, he becomes some kind of Übermensch. The trailer doesn't give away the ending but I'll bet that zombie Cruise overcomes the onslaught of perpetual dying and eventually wins the day, probably single-handedly. But then what? Do the credits roll? Or does this new Frankenstein's Monster want payback? Maybe that's one for Edge of Tomorrow II – Now Who's Dying? 

The world has moved on since Groundhog Day, and with the viewing public constantly pausing, skipping and repeating their telly box, the theme couldn't be more prescient. Add that to the eternal quandary of making endless mistakes – something I know more about that anything – and increasingly affordable and higher quality CGI, and you have yourself a movie my friend.

Before we move on to some more 'tomorrow' movies, an honourable mention goes to Jake Gyllenhaal in his own terribly-named(-but-good) movie, Source Code, which has a similar premise to Edge of Tomorrow. In it Jake keeps waking up on a train to complete a military-backed sting operation to stop an impending terrorist attack. From Moon director Duncan Jones, this was a decent effort, darkly tragic and claustrophobic, sensitive and with more than a little comment on the mighty military and its ethics. Perhaps Cruise's flick will be just as good, but until then, here are my other favourite 'tomorrow' movies which will keep you on the 'edge' of your seats.

The Day After Tomorrow 

Another clever title this one, because insofar as the day after tomorrow is always two days from now, it never arrives in real life, meaning that this is putty in the hands of climate change deniers. Of course what Roland Emmerich was trying to suggest is the just-around-the-corner creeping doom of global warming. The movie itself is fantastically over-exaggerated, and if Dennis Quaid's brow wasn't so sincerely furrowed, then it would have been hard to have taken the movie as anything but an ironic jab at the presumed scare-mongering of Green lobby (something which South Park put into practise with their episode, Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow).

Tomorrow Never Dies 

What with crackers like You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, The Living Daylights, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day and Quantum – would you believe it – of Solace, the James Bond franchise must have its own department for coming up with movie titles which give nothing away except for the fact that the movie will be exactly the same as the last one, save for a different hairstyle and a re-imagined Martini quip. But that's why Bonders like Bond – the reliable, uncomplicated and explosive sameness. If you took all the Bond movie names, jiggled them around in a hat and randomly assigned them to different Bond movies, no one would notice. (Let me grant the small exception of Skyfall, which is taking a small risk by exposing dedicated Bonders to something bordering complexity.) 

But back to Tomorrow Never Dies, which is a great title because it invites us to ask in what way does tomorrow live, considering that tomorrow is an abstract concept, and a concept which signifies something that never exists now, being as tomorrow is always in the future. Maybe tomorrow dies if the world ends today? That must be it, because Pierce Bond Brosnan is trying to save the world from an impending Anglo-Chinese war provoked by a profiteering media baron. Of course if tomorrow did die, then there would be no viewers for his media enterprise, which would put something of a hitch on his post-war plans. 

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? 

One wonders if this movie was a spin off from Dirty Dancing, in which the famous Shirelles song was used, with Patrick Swayze now putting his new young wife ('Baby') in the corner while he drinks and dances and practices walking on that log across the river. But actually it's a Taiwanese romcom from 2013, about the struggle between romance and security, and if I know anything about Taiwanese politics, it's that tomorrow's tortured romances are indeed the question – I'm looking at you China.

Escape from Tomorrow

An ingenious title, this one, because it's as if tomorrow is a place that you have to escape. A place like a theme park – Disney World, for example. In this creepy fantasy the main character loses his job and then embarks on a Freudian crisis of masculinity as he trips his way through America's Magic Kingdom, hallucinating on rides, spellbound by two horrifically thin French cuties and other intoxicating ladies, and generally being a bad dad. Eventually it all unravels into a Disney-Siemens mind-control cat-flu conspiracy that eventually has dad crapping himself to death.

With Disney's corporate tentacles branching out into real-life make believe, having developed a picture perfect town in Florida called Celebration, who knows what tomorrow will bring? I know it's a terrifyingly steam-cleaned hyper-privatised smiling dystopia from which I'd also be keen to escape.

Tomorrow We Live 

Tomorrow We Live has an alternative title which is, rather confusingly, At Dawn We Die. Well, which is it, director George King? You'd have to watch to find out, and if you did you'd realise that Tomorrow We Live makes sense for half the movie when the French Resistance (oh, it's a WW2 film, by the way) are making gains, but At Dawn We Die becomes a more appropriate name once the Nazis start executing people.

Tomorrow When the War Began

This paradoxically titled Australian flick is not only remarkable in that the 'war' is claimed to start tomorrow, raising that interesting question – so what of today? – but also it began tomorrow, suggesting the titillating possibility of time travel. Also, the war begins or began in Australia, which is a nice change to countless worlds ending in America. That's where the similarities end though, because apart from accents and the token ethnic minority being a buff Asian guy instead of a buff black guy, this is indistinguishable from an endless list of US movies about horny wayward teens with better-than-average looks getting in over their heads.

This time, over their heads means going on a trip and coming back to total war waged by unspecified Asians. The kids have to go guerilla to save the day. If you were to notice the corny acting and charmingly bumbling dialogue you might suspects that, despite the profundity, the curious title might just be a typo. This would be plausible if it wasn't that same in the original novel, and it is.

So the title's suggestion of time travel was scuppered in favour of something far more powerful – paranoia about China, fed neatly to an impressionable 12A audience. The war begins 'tomorrow', when they are due to come back from camping, but as we see from the start this story is being narrated retrospectively, so the world began, not begins or will begin. It's clever!

Lawson or Dawson?

Yesterday I spotted the Mail on Sunday with another predatory hackjob on a couple of rich people at dinner. Saatchi had taken aim at a new woman called Trinny, according to selected photos, which painfully brought back the whole Nigella throat saga. But no one's asking the real question in everyone's throats – Nigella Lawson or Les Dawson?

Lawson 0 – 0 Dawson

For afternoon tea in a classy restaurant.

This is prime hack-snooping time, so for maximum publicity the choice is a simple Lawson.

Lawson 1 – 0 Dawson

Best at cooking dinner.

You'd want someone whose cooking skills are represented by their vitality, who exudes the energy of their cuisine, and revels is a certain sumptuousness as they taste a spoonful of bubbling cabbage. It's got to be Les Dawson.

Lawson 1 – 1 Dawson

Who to sleep with?

As a heterosexual male with a thing for classy ladies, I'd choose Les.

Lawson 1 – 2 Dawson

The one to be stranded at sea with.

For long stretches of hopeless loneliness, you'd want someone who can provide some comical relief and eventually plenty of meat. Nigella wins hands down.

Lawson 2 – 2 Dawson

Most willing to take an egg.

As we all know, Les Dawson is also John Prescott and he's already taken an egg, so now it must be Nigella's turn.

Lawson 3 – 2 Dawson

Best one to score drugs.

Nigella's not one to shy way from sniffle or two, but for flat out partying, based on Les's gurning, Dawson's the man with the baggie of choice.

Lawson 3 – 3 Dawson

After 6 questions we're in a tie, which means a fight to the death is needed to decide. Of course I'd hedge my bets on Nigella. With her powerful wrists, trained up though years of stirring, and valuable weapons like the Stainless Steel Rotary Whisk, she'd be a formidable opponent. But Les has got an advantage in that, being already dead, he can't be killed. So Les wins!

Lawson 3 – 4 Dawson

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With love and respect to both 'Awsons. X