This is a story (with pictures) about a typical day in my life...

Here's where I slept last night. This is the spare room. The chair and the red thing are my crap attempt to block out some daylight - the windows are floor-to-ceiling, but the glass is frosted on the bottom half, and the blind only comes down halfway. I get woken up by the morning sun if I sleep in here on non-cloudy days.

As you can see, I always keep a range of electronic gadgetry within grabbing distance of the bed. I get woken up so early, that if I'm browsing Facebook on my phone (I'm so addicted to that) I keep nodding off and pressing buttons - very often that means a video will start playing and the sound will wake me up.

You might notice two pairs of studio-grade headphones. I have quite a collection of high-end headphones. It's retail therapy for me, to buy headphones.

This is my drug shrine. I come here to worship, mostly at night. I swallow a cocktail of everything from opiates to benzos to sleeping pills to stimulants to mood stabilisers to antipsychotics... you name it, I've got it. The only ones I really like are the Xanax.

This is my real bed. It was pristine, but then I stabbed it with a knife, stole two bedslats and bled all over it. Oh, yeah, and I stole a metal bar from it too, that was a handle to allow you to lift it up and get to the storgage underneath. Rather quite a lot of insanity has gone down in this bedroom. I tried to lift up the mattress and get under it, with my ex on the other side. Remarkably, she didn't say a thing or budge an inch. I guess people have just gotten used to my erratic behaviour.

This is my desk of depression. You might notice a set of intrays (collapsed) and a couple of shoeboxes. Those were my early attempts to get more organised. As you can see, I've given up and this desk has become a kind of no-mans land. My passport and €500 are buried here, somewhere.

There's my missing duvet and pillows. I put them there so they didn't get messed up when I was messed up. Hiding under that pile are two laundry baskets, which are full of dirty washing.

In the washing basket are a couple of clean pillowcases and my leg splint. Also in this general area are things that I have thrown from a distance at the pile. There isn't really a system, per se.

This is the world-famous Nick Grant patent Floordrobe™. Socks and pants go in the rightmost box, but every other box is a lucky dip. I can't say that it works very well for finding specific items of clothing, but it works really well for putting away clean washing - you just tip it onto the boxes and then spread it around until it's roughly level. You should try it.

There's a couple of dents I punched in the bathroom door when I was drunk. I don't know why I did it. I regret it now. The other marks are from where I was trying to stop bad people from getting me, when I was in my bedroom. They were going to come in the bathroom window. Or at least, that's what my totally sane and logical brain said.

I always take a shower... except when I'm depressed. Then I take a shower if I'm going on public transport or meeting the Queen or something. I do have some 'canned shower' which is also known as body spray. Enough of that will mask the smell of my rotting flesh.

My ensuite also has a bath. I only take baths if I'm having a stimulant overdose. Cold baths. REALLY cold baths. I could probably go into shock and die, but I'd also rather avoid the organ damage caused by malignant hyperthermia. I could not take dangerous drugs instead, or be more careful with my measurements, but those sound like ridiculous suggestions.

There must be something here that can cure me. Probably the bleach. Most of the bottles are amino acids and vitamins. There are also dressings and antiseptic wipes, in case I decide to slash my arms to pieces again.

If I was going to work, I would get a crisply laundered shirt out of here, and a smart suit, which I would pair with a nice pair of formal leather shoes. The other side of the wardrobe is full of boxes of stuff from my house, which was sold as part of my divorce. I do not look in the boxes. Not because I'm upset that I had to divorce that evil b*tch, but because the stuff in them was in storage for so long, it's clearly surplus to requirements.

WTF is this at the bottom of the wardrobe? A mixture of tools, a tent, a squash racquet, bits from a crutch, a bent fork. I can spend hours playing with these toys, when I'm loopy and I've decided that bad men are going to break into my flat and get me in my bedroom.

The coast is clear. No bad men today. Or at least, not yet. A few days without sleep and I'm sure they'll be back. They always are. How do they know that I've not been sleeping so I'm vulnerable? They must have bugged my room.

I should go out on my bike. It's a nice sunny day. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. I like the blue bike the best, but the rear wheel is buckled. Riding the black bike is joyless experience, like fucking your ugly wife.

Ah the kitchen. Not looking too bad. Probably because I live on pot noodles and pot porridge. I'm about to have some pot porridge now. Do you want to see me make it? You do? Ok then.

There you go: pot porridge. You take off the superfluous plastic lid, tear off the foil and pour boiling water in, up to a line that you can hardly see. Then you have to stir it. The stirring is what makes it cooking. I do cooking, me.

Pot noodles have exactly the same process, except there's no plastic lid, which makes the pot noodle the most efficient of all the pot meals.

I could eat at the dining table. That way, I would get less shit all over myself. I never eat at the dining table. I was using the dining table as a dumping ground for post, but it depressed me. I would eat at the dining table if I had cooked a meal to woo a girl. Not a lot of wooing going on at the moment, or cooking.

Here's where I'm going to eat my breakfast. In fact, here's where I'm going to eat all my meals. I even slept here the other day, because I'd managed to mess up BOTH of my bedrooms. It's an awesome sofa, because it has a reclining view of the TV and a reclining view of the river, and you only have to turn through 90 degrees to enjoy both.

There's the guitar I never play, with a Vox valve amp that cost a bomb. Sounds cool even if you're just plucking individiual notes though - let the effects do the work. I can play Star Spangled Banner and sound like Hendrix, just because the amp is so good.

There are also plants which I don't water. I struggle to feed, clothe, wash and hydrate myself. What the fuck am I going to do with plants?

Another toy I never play with. It's got Oculus Rift virtual reality. It feels like you're actually inside a racing car. It's awesome, but I've got the attention span of a goldfish, thanks to what I presume must be the consumption of copious amounts of hard drugs.

I suppose I should open the blinds. I've been hiding from the builders, but there's only ever two of them and the project is two months late. Still, they do enough hammering at 8am to remind the whole block that they're completely useless fuckwits.

Yeah, this sign has been up for months.

There we go. Some of my view, with some scaffolding, which slightly spoils things.

I'm on the balcony. Shhh! Don't tell the builders or I'll be killed to death. Actually, you might struggle to find them.

The London Eye is on the left, then The Shard is fairly obvious. There's a new skyscraper springing up to the right of that. The tops of Tower Bridge are visible. There's the bloody walkie talkie. To the left of it is the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and to the left of that is the BT tower. Over in the City, you've got the Cheesegrater, Tower 42, Gherkin and Heron Tower. There's probably some other landmarks I missed, but you get the general idea.

There's the 'beach' as well as the communal garden for the flat... and some more scaffolding of course. If you were to look the other way, you'd see my nearest Pokemon gym. Yes, I was so bored at work that summer, that I started playing Pokemon.

Being a West-facing apartment, the garden is sunniest in the afternoon.

Looks like it's going to be a nice day. Better close the curtains again so I don't feel guilty about wasting it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life today.

Tags: #depression