Noah

3.45 am, GMT, I’m on the sofa, the lights are out and I’m watching some 24 hour news channel, I forget which the only difference between them anymore are the accents, all the same stories, same silence propaganda, same human interest story about some kitten who’s learnt to flip pancakes. The only sense of any positive factor I get from this, is that even though I’m crashing on a second hand sofa in some kind of slum flat that I share with a coke-head and can’t afford rent on. Even though I have to be awake in three hours to be awake for a job that is slowly eating my soul. Even though I’m running out of things to say here, at least I don’t look as haggard as the poor cow in front of my screen, her face is an odd round shape and someone has put her hair in a topknot, then put her in some kind of acid yellow suit, she’s the mutton who’s forgotten what the lamb looks like. I’d think someone has it in for her at that place, but it’s a conspiracy all News presenters look like someone who’s half manic half whacked out on drugs has dressed them.



Its not that I’m insomniac, far from it. I adore sleep, I love sleep, I’d sleep 16 hours of the day if it was socially acceptable to anyone. Its just my sleep pattern, it doesn’t suit any social hour, I’ve always been like this really. I don’t sleep until about five a.m, it must be something about that sunrise I guess. A couple of months back I was fired from my job as the graveyard-shift worker at the 24 hour pharmacy in Soho. I loved that job, It was fantastic. The only customers were underdressed girls who wore too much makeup, or  greasy looking guys coming in to get condoms, occasionally, like once a year we’d get a worry faced parent coming in looking for calpol, or one or two night owls like me coming in to get prescriptions. If there was ever anyone else on a shift with me, it was George he was a very nice, peaceful middle aged man with lots of fluffy white hair. I loved the white jacket too, it made me look vaguely intelligent. I started work at 10pm and left at 6am, the hours were perfect, the work was easy, sorting out medicine bottles, eating sugar free lollipops, talking to Nigel about whatever political struggle was currently occupying the headlines. He was a communist. I absolutely adored it. Then the company went bankcrupt, administration etc, me and Nigel both got kicked out of our wonderful jobs.



I just stayed in for a long time after that, watching prime time television and letting it engulf me, over drinking on my redundancy money with James, I didn’t read, I didn’t really watch films, I never wanted to go out, I didn’t even bathe much, I stopped calling my parents. I stopped noticing the weather.



Then Tania the landlady said “Oi Rent, soon” and I said “Since when?” and she said “shut up and give me rent within the next two weeks fat ass” and left. That hurt slightly as I do not have a fat ass. I told this to James, who was watching keeping up appearances and drinking warm beer. I told him I could develop some kind of eating disorder from this remark, such as anorexia or bulimia. He told me to shut up too, and that dude, seriously, you want to think about that new job.



I was shocked. This was coming from coke-head James who before he was taken over by that mother-of-all-relationships addiction used to be a good pal. He’s still a good pal, kind of, just not the one I knew. He was right and I knew it, but I felt like I was still grieving for my old job. Only when I became redundant I realised, I had spent the last three years of my life, working there at night, sleeping in the day and in the middle part I drank beer, cooked pasta and watched deal or no deal. I hadn’t really had a girlfriend (of course there had been times, but not many, and not ones that really wanted anything more from me) in those years, I hadn’t painted or read or even gone out as much as I should of. For those three years of work all I had to show for it was a an o.k. television, a television license, a wardrobe of clothes, a holiday for a week in New York, and a half paid for moped.



James, I asked, have I become a waster? Knowing that he would be honest and neither of us would have to feel bad because his own life was so wasteful that it was spiralling out of anyone’s control. “Kinda, I mean you’re not to bad, but you haven’t washed for like two weeks” I had to admit, the guy had a point. I had two options, carry on doing this in my parents house, or snap out of it and get a job. The last thing on earth I wanted was to go back to my folks. Ever. I called them twice a week to make sure they were there and kept it like that. My mother is over fussy and I am my fathers greatest disappointment, even worse then the Harry Potter films were for him.



That’s how I ended up working as a 118-118 call centre bloke. Every time I cross the street on my break to hand money over to star bucks for pretentious sounding coffee I feel like a crazy amount of guilt, what would George say?.