Mother threw me out of the house on Tuesday night.

I’ve stopped and stared at that sentence for at least a minute now. It still doesn’t make any sense. She woke me up at about 10pm, screaming at me - demanding to know what my problem was before telling me that I should leave. Earlier that day she’d left me a packet of cigarettes and told me to make sure I had something to eat from the fridge.

I grabbed the items most important to me - my laptop and my diary - and threw them into a bag with some clothes and a toothbrush. Five minutes later I was closing the front door, not looking back. I was still half asleep. My head was racing, trying to understand what was happening. My heart was still pounding from being woken up by someone shouting at me. I called three of my friends in London with places to stay in varying states of emotion - logical and calm; confused and increasingly in shock; on the verge of tears.

My former flatmates let me stay with them at their flat in Northwest London, which is easy enough to get to from Chiswick. It was about half eleven when I got here. I passed a homeless man under Kilburn station bridge on the way up the hill. I gave him 50p. I would have given him more but didn’t know if I’d now be needing every penny left on me.

It’s now Thursday morning, and hasn’t been a full two days since it happened. I have heard nothing from her since and been back to the house only once, yesterday morning, when I knew she wouldn’t be in. I packed a suitcase, tidied my room (I should say her room - it was never mine) of my things and stripped the bed, leaving quickly before she came home from work in the mood for another argument. I still don’t understand. This is something I never thought could happen to me. This is something I didn’t think my mother would do to her son. Am I a drug addict? Have I murdered someone? Has she become devoutly, psychotically religious overnight? What exactly was it I’ve done that made her a spontaneously different person - one who wants to throw me out of the house?

Since it happened, and I’ve been living off the charity of friends (oh yet again), I’ve realised two important aspects of being suddenly of No Fixed Abode, one bad, one good: you can’t get a job without an address, anymore than you can get an address without a job; and there is no greater luxury than clean clothes on a hot summer day.

Having proven myself completely incapable of getting a job in the past few months, I’m not sure how my current situation will help matters. I will also need to find a bedsit (rather than a flatshare again) longterm, which means more money going out that I was supposed to be saving rather than spending. So much for being able to afford to go to Canada next year. Looks like I’m stuck here, sleeping on friends’ sofas and living off their generosity until I’m able to get myself back into the rat race - desperately kicking my legs just to keep my head above water.

I’ve just remembered my toaster - a Russell Hobbs two decker. It was a present from my mum after I moved into my first flat in Highgate, now five years ago. My mum currently has a four decker here. I think such decadence has not been seen since Marie Antoinette.

The last time I saw it was as we were packing up our last flat. I loved that little toaster. It knew its place in the world and took joy in fulfilling it. Not only would it make excellent toast on any setting, but delivered it with a joy that was undeniable - hurling it into the air as if to say “Wheeeeeeeeeee! I love my liiiiiiiiiiife!” I need anthropomorphosized kitchenware like that in my life.

What did I do with it? I can’t remember if I gave it to my ex-flatmates, or left it there for a new owner to find a similar joy in its contentment. Either way, I hope it’s being used. A little toaster like that with such a capacity for love should be used, and as often as possible.

I’m not sure if it was intentional, but it is the first thing that greets you as you enter Bonkersfest. That and one of those stalls where if you lob enough bricks at a clown’s face you win a cuddly toy. I don’t need the incentive of a cuddly toy to hurl things at clowns.

I have never seen “normality” more perfectly defined than here. Normality really is a horrible concept, as anyone who’s ever been called “weird” by someone proud being just like everyone else will know. It’s a polite and consolatory way of saying “boring”. Kay Redfield Jamison once said that you have to be very certain of your own sanity before you can call someone else insane. Einstein meanwhile observed that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Be very afraid of anyone who considers themselves “normal”.

I was thus quite happy with my result, particularly after a few recent events, though this could have been due to my answer to what I would do with a spoon.

Woke up this morning (at bang on 11:11 believe it or not) from a dream about being in my actor friend’s current play. It was a variation of one of those “everyone knows the lines except you” anxiety dreams, except everyone knew I didn’t know the lines at all - I was standing in at the last minute and ad-libbing as I went. All I had to do was respond to what was said to me as best I could and everyone would improvise around me to keep the script on track. No pressure, huh?

Anyone who knows me will know I have huge stage-fright issues (seriously - when I went to the Fringe in 2002 I recorded all my off-stage dialogue onto a CD and pressed play at the relevant bits. Evidently I even have off-stage-fright). But this wasn’t where this became a garden-variety anxiety dream for me.

That came when the play spontaneously became a musical halfway through.

The stuff of nightmares

I seemed to be the only person there who had a problem with singing ad-lib. I seemed to be the only person there who had a problem singing. I am incapable of singing, especially recently. Recently I’ve been smoking more than a middle-aged Parisian widow café owner who’s just returned from holiday with a duty free supply of Gauloises to find she’s lost her café. I am incapable of being sung at. It’s curious, I know, but something about it makes me want to leave the room or burst into schoolgirlish laughter. Or smack them.

I was desperate not to be sitting there having someone sing their character’s undying love for mine and have to keep a straight face. So, rather like Rimmer in Better Than Life, I must have signed a silent deal with my subconscious to get me out of the situation by completely ruining it. Suddenly, seconds before it was My Perfect Martine McCutcheon moment, hordes of Cybermen stormed the room, shooting everyone in the cast and audience alike with their own chorus of “Delete! Delete!”. Satisfied that my work here was done, I was then able to escape to reality with little to show for my selfishness and murderous intent than a sore forearm that I’d apparently slept on.

Only I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. My email inbox this morning looks more beautiful than it has done in a long time. In fact, for a writer looking for a job who rarely hears from some of his best friends anymore, it was pretty much a panacea. Nothing certain, but not the usual wet-haddock-in-the-face sort of instant ‘NO’ either.

Think nice thoughts for me. And if you happen to see this at the Edinburgh Fringe next month, bring something gold. Just in case.

I don’t want to catch a falling star because nuclear fusion burns my skin.
I don’t want to share my life with you. Get your own life.
I don’t want my wildest dreams to come true because the other night I dreamt about clowns.
I don’t want to find myself because I’d just lose myself again.
I don’t want to choose life because I can’t even choose from a menu.
I don’t want a dream job. I want a dream pile of cash.
I don’t want to have films made about me. Jim Carrey would inevitably get into the cast.
I don’t want to be different. I just want to not be the same.

But mostly I just want a TARDIS, a kitten and manageable hair.

BEN is seated on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery smoking a cigarette. He is exhausted, having been walking the city all day and is still trying to ignore his body’s insistence that it really shouldn’t be so bright at the moment for what should be just gone midnight. A HOODIE suddenly approaches him…

HOODIE: Youlikeipopraptall?

BEN: What’s that?

HOODIE: You like hiphop or rap at all?

BEN: Not really, no.

HOODIE: ‘kay.

BEN: Sorry, it’s not really my thing.

HOODIE: ‘kay. You want to buy my CD? (extends hand to offer several CD-Rs scrawled upon in illegible red and green marker pen)

BEN: Well, I would, but it’s not really my thing, thanks.

HOODIE walks off in disgust. BEN stubs out cigarette and continues upon his merry exhausted way to buy something cheap to eat from the Pacific Shopping Centre.

goes to Bark Cat Bark. Have a listen.

Or a read.

It’s good.

1.10am The room just literally shook. Very gently, but very definitely. At first, with my quaint little history of petit mal and red wine, I thought it was just me, but a few other people say they felt something too.

Was that an Earthquake in England just now?

 
1.23am The BBC is now reporting this

The cynic in me can’t help but think that the recent fire will conveniently pave the way for a total redevelopment of the existing market as a whole.