Writing my latest book is a little weird for me, because I am essentially reliving my life from two years ago. I've lived through the angst of approaching 40, the hedonism that I indulged in as part of my plan to deny any of it was happening, my realisation that my life was a bit shallow, my decision to carry on with that for a bit anyway, then meeting my girlfriend and deciding to clean up my act.
I've just got to new year 2008 where the act cleaning up begins, which after a weekend of drinking and eating too much and a few months where I've gradually undone all the good work that I did a year before, was quite inspirational. I can't believe I gave up drinking for 100 days, but it certainly had many positive effects. Not least of which is that I lost 10kg in the matter of a few months. That's pretty cool. Maybe I should do it again. Well I managed one day of not drinking today anyway, so let's hope it pays off in a new level of fitness and productivity. It'll be hard to top last week, but if I can do it then the first draft of the book might be done by the end of the week. Let's see.
I got a bit stymied today though when I was trying to sort out my resident parking permit. Usually this is quite a simple task, but they've beefed up the system to stop people who don't actually live in the area cheating their way into getting a permit. Because a lot of people want to park around here, where kids love stabbing their tyres and stealing their hood ornaments and where careless, thoughtless drivers reverse hard into their bumpers when they're pulling away.
Anyway I needed my car registration certificate, which proves I own the car I am getting a permit for. It's quite an important document. The kind of thing you'd want to keep safe. You need it, for example, if you're ever going to sell your car to someone else.
My house is a bit of a mess and I suppose always will be, just as I will always be dieting and then gorging and being teetotal and then a drunken fool. I will never, ever change.
But I am not stupid- I keep all my important documents in folders and all the ones to do with my car are in a red folder.
Except my Registration Certificate wasn't in there.
And I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it.
And in any case was pretty sure it didn't have my present address on it, so even if I could find it I would have to send it off to be changed so that I could then send it to the council to get my permit. My old permit runs out at the end of the month and it takes two weeks to get a new one by post. I was pretty sure that it was going to be a major inconvenience at best.
I thought maybe that I had left the certificate in a previous folder in the attic - I was at least confident that I wouldn't have thrown it away. I'm not that stupid. Am I?
There is a lot of junk and crap up in my attic. And lots of old bags of receipts and documents. I do at least keep everything and never throw anything away, which is positive in a way, because the certificate would be here, but negative in the fact that I had an awful lot of shit to look through. This could take all day.
I looked through one pile of stuff that was mainly my mobile phone bills from 2003. I could look back and see who I had called six years ago and if I wished ring them up again to say hi (if they had the same number). I didn't do that though. Amongst this particular pile were a long dead wasp, which was dry and practically mummified and a ladybird. My old accounts seem to be a kind of Noah's Ark for the insect population. Or a reverse one, where they all go to die. A Noah's hearse.
It was interesting to find insects from the early 2000s, but it was not what I wanted to find. Maybe it was time to throw some of this crap away and have some insect funerals. But I didn't feel I could. What if I needed to ring up some people from 2003? What if by taking the number from those old records and ringing it now I was somehow magically connected to my friends and family as they were six years ago? Wouldn't that be cool? What things I would be able to tell them. Um.... I couldn't think of anything. I could tell them that Jade Goody was going to die. And they'd say, "What the woman who gave a blow job under a blanket in Big Brother?" And I'd say, "Yes!" Even though I wouldn't have been sure until they'd said that that that had even happened yet. And they'd say "Why's that such a big deal? Surely she couldn't have captured the nation's hearts and would have been forgotten within weeks." And I'd say, "I can't tell you any more, I've said too much already. I might end up changing the past and thus the future."
And they might say, "Is that all you can think of? Tell us something that might be useful to us."
And I'd say, "Can you ring me up now in 2003 and tell me to put my Registration Certificate somewhere where I can find it?"
And they'd say, "No, you've been totally useless. Tell us the lottery numbers or something."
And I'd say, "Stop thinking of yourselves. Go to my flat and go through my phone records. There's a ladybird and a wasp in there and they're about to die."
And they'd probably hang up.
As it was I finally found the last folder I'd kept my car records in and though it was crammed with insurance documents and speeding fine letters and it looked like my search would be fruitless, I finally came across a promising looking document that proved to be the one I needed.
And kudos to the 2003 me. He'd been organised enough to get the address on it changed, so I was good to go. I tried to ring him to let him know that he had done good and that I wish I was as in control of my life as he was, but he was engaged. Probably because loads of his friends were ringing him to ask him why he'd been ringing them up and pretending to be from the future.
Ah well. There's little I could tell him that would be any help. And I wouldn't want him to sort himself out just yet. I am making a living from writing about the ridiculous antics he'd get up to in 2007.
We need to make all our mistakes to become the people we will be.
But I wish I could have saved that ladybird. Not so bothered about the wasp to be honest. I love the peaceful insects rather than the warmongers.
Thanks to all those of you who have donated to
the Just Giving Page. Lots of familiar names though. I know there are thousands of you out there and you've had six and a half years of this shit for nowt. If you all donated this time then we'd make at least 20,000 pounds. Though on the other hand the programme would be about 500 pages long and prohibitively expensive. It's worth the risk. Keep on donating you lovely people. You have the ability to make me very happy with just a tiny bit of plastic.
I mean your credit card. You are obsessed.
