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I swipe my card and unleash hell

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Detaching my sensibilities, I approach the office compound, dig out my access card and press it to the sensor to release the door. It’s time to do battle in the gladiatorial arena I call work. Until I can free myself at the day’s end, I’m forced to confront an array of sensory trials and cognitive fuckduggery in return for a decent career and a regular wage. The assault begins with a walk through a cavernous antechamber to the lift; an oppressive, dangling metallic cubicle, forcing you closer to strangers than you’d choose to be with family or friends. At this point I’m still transitioning from ‘me’ time, so it’s easy to be caught off guard by a work colleague eager to mention the weather or some such banality. Clumsily responding to their attempts at conversation, I move into the office. Like many the world over, the office is a vast, candescent open expanse, filled with row-upon-row of heads, imprisoned between desks and computer screens. Though the concept often escap...
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Oh, I do hate to be beside the seaside

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‘Let’s all go to the beach’, friends and family jubilantly cry at the first hint of summer. ‘Fuck off’, I less-than-jubilantly reply. Well, at least that’s what I say in my mind. But to appear normal, I swallow it in and reluctantly pitch in to the agonising sensory waterfront terror that awaits. But it’s nice to be beside the seaside, right? Wrong. It’s a theatre of misery, with sand as public enemy number one. Sand is glorified grit, working its way insidiously into every orifice and anything it comes into contact with. Try as hard as you like to stop it, but it will get on you, sticking to your epidermis like napalmed shrapnel. Pebble and shingle beaches are no better, with their stony edges pressing painfully into delicate feet and bottoms. And people willingly choose to relax on this surface! They even take time off work for it, some laying on it for hours at a time. What kind of madness is this? Even with a towel separating me from the surface, I’m reminded of those anci...
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The party’s over, thank god!

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When a friend forlornly remarked what a shame it is that we no longer go out much, the honesty of my reply surprised us both. The truth is, I couldn’t be happier with the fact! Going out into town once, sometimes twice per week was hell. It’s only now, with age on my side, I have the confidence to turn down the offers. It’s not that I don’t like socialising with friends. OK, maybe sometimes. But I certainly don’t hate it. I’ve had some of the best moments with my long-term mates. Though, these good times rarely occur in noisy, twat-filled pubs. Normally friends say it’s old age, young children, or a hectic work life that spoiled things for them. Not for me. I never enjoyed it. But it felt back then like I didn’t have a choice. It was what teens and twentysomethings did each weekend. What kind of social pariah would I have become (more than I am already)? Not only did I loathe the multiverse of chatter and pissed-up, pint-wielding patrons, I hated the nauseating lighting, the i...
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