Lousy

Christ, what a lousy-ass weekend! Must have been something in the stars ‘cos no way so many things could’ve gone wrong otherwise. And something weird going on in my head – dizzy absent-mindedness, like some clichéd movie blonde (and objects keep moving around of their own accord too) – which is probably the root cause of it all.

I lost my phone Saturday afternoon, on my way to referee a game out near Garforth. I was on a train and a wee bit hurried ‘cos a guy was meeting me at the station: meeting me there ‘cos my bike had broke and I was running late. The derailleur had snapped in half earlier, on my way back into town from my morning game. It happened literally thirty seconds after I was thinking I needed to see to it but would wait till I got a couple of minutes down the road. Everything stemming from that one postponed intention…

The derailleur breaks and I have to push it the rest of the way, chain trailing on the sidewalk, poor sad bike’s fate hanging in the balance. To fix when there’s already so much wrong with its rusting frame? Or to let it go, wipe my hands clean and move on? Meanwhile, I’ve missed the train that I should have been getting – would have got if I’d had the smarts to check a timetable first – and now I’m struggling to get to my match in time. In fact, I can’t get there in time – the ground is miles from the station – and so I ring the contact number I have and luckily the guy can pick me up.

But when I exit the train, and have this sudden realisation that I’ve probably left my phone on there, it’s the thought of the guy sitting in his car and the time constraints that keeps me from rushing back on and looking for it. Ten percent chance it’s there in my bag. Probably okay.

Another sudden niggling thought ignored. And phone is gone, riding off to Yorkall on its lonesome, to fates anew.

I’ll get it back, I reason. There’s nothing I can do about it now. Got a game to do.

The game was good. A few weird moments – throwing my arm up in the wrong direction, right at the start (I usually only do that just after half-time) – but we got beyond that and the right team won. One red card but nobody argues with it. Sorted.

And then it’s to life without a phone – and much as I’ve dreamed of this and plotted it, thought it might be better…well, it’s really fuckin’ hard. First, there’s the withdrawal symptoms – the sudden feeling of being cut off; the phantom limb-like syndrome of feeling it there in my pocket, that mental draw, that reassuring vibration and beeping that says, “you’re wanted, someone knows you’re alive”; the not being able to reach out to the people that pop up in my brain; and, more than anything, the not being able to distract. The phone always offers some form of diversion, even when it’s not doing so actively, in the form of new messages or ongoing conversations or calls. I can scroll through old messages. I can text people I haven’t texted in a while. I can send fripperies and rubbish made-up jokes. I can scroll through my list of contacts and remove a few or think about contacting someone – and then think better of it – or merely just read their names. At the very least, there’s always some terrible game to play, to fill the time.

But now my pocket is empty. And my brain is struggling to deal with that.

It’s a terrible indictment on the state of modern life – and more so, on myself – that the loss of an infuriating little gadget should hold such powerful sway over my emotions and mental state. I mean, I know I’d get used to it – but, Christ! How quickly and almost totally I’ve come to rely on it.

Still, I can forgive myself a little. Pretty much all of my work, both paid and voluntary, is conducted through the phone. All the football teams get in touch with me that way and I wouldn’t have any income without it. All the squash players, too – I’ve about eighty squash contacts in my phone – for the league I organise and the people I play regularly. Basically, without the phone I’m fucked.

Plus, too, the emotional reliance I have on my ex – one of my last texts was inviting her over that night, which will then be answered, one way or the other – and, of course, subsequently ignored by my train-riding phone.

And the girl I went on that date with. Had not long since texted her too, saying how much I enjoyed it and that I’d love to see her again. What if she replies and is ignored? What if she’s writing awesome things? What if she’s not writing at all? I’ll just never know.

Ah, the date: happier times. I zoomed down to town Friday morning and for maybe two and a half hours we chatted and laughed and it was all pretty glorious. I had said pretty much right at the beginning, “so how long have we got?” – I knew she was dead busy what with being in the middle of moving and I like to know these things – and she apologetically said, “maybe an hour?” – so what great compliment and reassurance it was, having this get-out card, that she chose to stay all those minutes extra. Sure makes a man feel special…

It was good. All that stuff I’d said about my forward-thinking mind and the physical side of things pretty much went out the window: in the event it was more just a case of a guy and a girl who were interested in each other talking. I mean, the attraction was obvious, but it wasn’t like I was thinking about getting it on with her. She was just a cool person. I liked the things she said. And thoughts of all that silly sweaty stuff just seemed to sully all that. God knows what I was thinking.

Still, she is mighty young – twenty-four – and leaving Leeds in a week’s time, so that’s probably about as far as things are going to go. I’m down with that though. Nice to spend time with a new person, maybe make a new friend. Who needs to ruin it by crossing that divide called “kisses”? Kisses is the doorway to a whole ‘nother world – and the death of pure, platonic friendship.

Killing your friends is actually kind of sad.

And so that was Friday – and from there all high and giddy to my dad’s non-smelling shop for a few hours of internet work and mad chatter; and then right on from that to another two hours of crazy high octane squash and then via Harry’s on into bed with a movie (John Dies At The End) and not enough sleep.

But back to Saturday, and lost phone day, hanging around once more after the match for a lift back to the station – a whole extra hour, when I’d normally be zooming away on my bike – and then more time frittered away traipsing from one Lost Property guy to another, waiting for phone calls and buzzing loud radio messages, and no joy whatsoever.

I need to get online. I need to call the damn thing and hope someone’s picked it up. Whenever I’ve found a phone I’ve always got it back to the person ‘cos I just call someone on the contacts list and find out who it belongs to. Hopefully someone’ll be that smart. Certainly, there’s no one’d want to nick the ancient useless thing (it’s the numbers and messages I want). And so a couple of hours then at Harry’s, doing the necessaries, trying to work out how to manage Sunday’s university refs’ appointments – a hundred or so people relying on my correctly-functioning digits – and also my two games for Sunday, wherein…

Yup: when I said “lousy weekend” I guess what I really meant was yesterday. What a frickin’ travesty! Out the house early to go check online stuff at uni – still no word on the phone, and nobody’s used it – and then race to my first game over at Soldier’s Field in Roundhay Park. Except there’s no one there – well, there are lots of people there, and lots of footballers, but after some frantic searching I realise there aren’t the teams I’m supposed to have and I’ve no way to find where they are. Kickoff time passes: the pitch we’re supposed to be on is empty. I bike on over to their headquarters and someone tells me they’re actually playing four miles away, that the website has got the wrong pitch. Fuck me! And all the while I’m sweating and stressing and – well, then at least I can relax, knowing that it’s too late. Except not for long.

I go over to my ex’s – I need someone with a phone, someone with internet – but she’s out, probably boning some other guy. I leave hers with those thoughts in my head, now added to the general confusion, and head on into town, to Carphone Warehouse, to suck it up and buy a new phone. Can’t live without one. Can’t bear that emptiness in my pocket. Need some buttons to push and people to tenuously connect with. A screen to look at. Distraction.

Plus, of course, a means of earning a living and managing the whole rest of my life.

Silly, perhaps, to have come to rely so much on that daft little gizmo.

So: town. And Carphone Warehouse. And some cheap little Samsung – ‘bout four quid plus a ten-pound top-up – that’ll probably tide me over. The girl gets it and I’m all set to pay – but then I realise I’ve got no money. Shit! Of course: I didn’t bring any ‘cos I was supposed to be earning twenty-odd quid from the reffing. I usually want to buy something afterwards but never before. And in another weird little absentminded thing I’d lost my bankcards a few days before. So that was useless.

Back down in the opposite direction to the train station, just in case. Getting really hungry and thirsty now. Not feeling good.

Exit the station to find the front tyre on my bike – this is my reserve bike, by the way, the hybrid – flat as the proverbial pancake.

I laugh. What else would you do?

And in my head: rapid calculations. It’s twelve fifteen now. I need to go home – ‘bout a thirty-five minute walk – probably via uni for a quick check online and send a few messages from there and then fix the puncture and have a bite and a drink and find some info for the afternoon game – a niggling feeling that the website’s got the venue for that one wrong too – and then be back on the road ideally by one.

A walk up through town, pushing the bike. A found fiver in my backpack. A Sainsbury’s sandwich and a packet of half-priced crisps from Tesco’s. A stop at uni to send a text to ex and check up on the phone and contact the lost property and then, inexplicably, to look at yesterday’s football, ‘cos I can’t just do what needs to be done, I have to find something useless to do as well, irrespective of pressing demands, and then home.

In the door. Change wheel for one off my racer. Scribble down info and out the door again. It’s getting on for one fifteen.

I tear on over to Moortown. Sweating my ass off. Get a little bit lost and swear and even shout a bit as I’m streaking down streets – this life, this fuckin’ life! – and when I get to the ground, there’s no one there.

Now it’s all perfectly clear: I’m actually supposed to be at Soldier’s Field, right on the exact same pitch I was on this morning. It seems too impossible to be true – that after maybe eighty games’ worth of correct information the website has stuffed me twice in one day – but that’s exactly what’s happened. And all of it would’ve been avoided if I hadn’t lost my phone.

Time is ticking. I was already a bit later than I would have liked to be had I been at the right place – like to arrive thirty minutes before kick-off, and this was more like fifteen – and now I’m some fair distance away.

Back on bike to pump legs furiously and dodge reckless amongst cars and shout and swear and grimace at the whole fuckin’ world and have those thoughts I have when things get the better of me, like wanting to escape the whole stupid thing, what’s the point and where’s it all lead and what the hell am I doing here amongst this concrete mess and the mess of my head, I just want it over and –

I get there – right back at that Soldier’s Field Pitch #3, right where I was three hours and many, many madnesses and miles before – and…

And the away team’s not even there. It’s one minute to two and my planned-on mad change right by the pitch and scramble into the middle is suddenly relaxed and apparently they’re like fifteen minutes away. The home manager’s not bothered one jot about my late arrival. Listens smilingly as I feel compelled to tell him something of my crazy journey. Fuck! I’ve been all over that damn city this day: what a use of time! Just cycling in circles and sweating and swearing and not a single thing of note achieved. It’s a bizarre fuckin’ life.

But, oh well, put aside all questions of existential torment and these grand constant desires to Tracy Jacks the whole thing and get on with the game.

Whistle blows and boys go running around kicking a ball and everything’s right with the world. The referee must concentrate. No time for his own mad problems.

…

I write all that and suddenly I don’t feel particularly bothered about my torrid weekend. I mean, certainly when I got home last night I felt like I’d been through twelve rounds but now, having typed it all up, it just seems kind of amusing. Ah, the glory of expression! To push out one’s experiences and past and give them unto someone else. This is my gift to You – and Thy gift to me is the freedom of moving on and being clear and enlightened once more. But –

Like I say, I was beat last night. I’d popped back down Carphone Warehouse and done the cheap Samsung thing – an improvement on my last phone, anyways – and then on the way home called Virgin and told them I needed a replacement SIM card. I’d thought they could just transfer my old number over onto the number I’d just bought but apparently they don’t do that. Instead the guy tells me they’ll send out a new one but that there’ll be a five-pound charge. I must have been in a good mood ‘cos I just started blurting out and chatting with him all wild and free, like he was my fun old buddy, and said –

Come on, man, what you talking about? Everybody knows SIM cards are free. I could go online now and have a hundred SIMs delivered to my house.

But but but, he says, and something about how it’s a replacement and how they always charge a fiver and never ever give them for free.

Well how’s about this, I says: either you send me a replacement SIM for free or I close my account right here and now?

I meant it in a nice way. I didn’t mean to be mean to the fellow – nor was I; nothing’s their fault; they’re merely representatives – but, boy, was I being forthright in my frazzled state.

He put me on hold for a minute while he talked to his boss. He came back and told me on this occasion they could do it. And the free SIM replacement is on its way.

A small triumph in an otherwise disastrous weekend. All because the derailleur on my bike broke. The lost phone and the second-bike puncture and the missed wages and the hours and hours of racing around like an idiot achieving nothing. All the shouting and swearing and the steam coming out my ears. Probably seven extra wrinkles and a couple of days off my life.

A better man than me would have said something annoying like, “it’s all a test” and sought to maintain his calm – and probably I did maintain my calm pretty well too. But, man, did I enjoy the swearing.

Throughout it all – and this is probably what put me over the edge – my head became swamped once more with thoughts of my ex. The previous week had been a nice respite: she’d been in Ireland all that time, so I was freed from wanting to contact or see her, and freed from thoughts of her being with the guy one street over; and also I’d had the twin distractions of the last, ridiculously hot night we’d spent together just so very recently and the thoughts of the girl I went on my date with.

Pretty much the whole of that week I thought that I was cured. But with the knowledge of her return on Saturday I was plunged right back into it. A headful of thoughts I didn’t particularly want to listen to. And a heartful of ache and torture and pain.

Nearly everything I say in my head is petty and irrational and unfair. Most of it’s projection and more of a reflection on myself than anyone else. And yet it comes and comes in streams and ever-crashing waves and the only solution I can think of to stop it is to leave this city and put some distance between the two of us. There are too many reminders here, too many triggers. To know she’s within such close proximity and to know so many of the ways she spends her time. A glance of a girl with her arm around a boy and thinking for that millisecond that it’s her. The sad walk/cycle up the hill to my house, on the left, and then the road that leads to the right and to the house of...

[2920 words on this and that]

...or is that just this idiot bee I have lodged in my brain? Maybe a demon?

The voice of honesty? A man knowing what he comes down to?

Or a psychological imbalance? A system gone wrong?

All I know is: I type what I have in my head. Whatever criticism I may open myself up to, no one could ever argue with that.