This is a story about keeping busy...

At first glance, it appears that I'm neither cash poor nor time poor. This year, my life has been revolutionised: all the wasted commuting time is now mine, to do with whatever I want, and I will definitely end the year with a small financial buffer, to shield me from any economic certainty. In theory, I might even find myself in the Spring time, with some 'disposable' income.

Of course, I have time and money at the moment, but I would rather use my 'leisure' time to make more money, and I want to hoard as much money as possible, because I'm always on the edge of suicide, or at least a nervous breakdown; I can feel no certainty about my future: it contains only death and/or serious illness, both of which will eliminate my income, wrecking my fragile finances.

Looking back at extravagant purchases over the past few years, I've furnished a large house, been on some very luxurious holidays, bought a couple of highly sought-after pedigree cats, eaten in a lot of restaurants, travelled around by taxi, bought a car, bought the latest iPhone and otherwise spent money, without really worrying about it. However, it's not that money that anybody should worry about. That money is just normal stuff that you buy over the course of a few years, working very hard full-time. In fact, I would say that I've spent far, far less than anybody else in my income bracket, who works the same number of hours per week as I do. The lion's share of my money has gone towards debt, taxes and savings... the latter of which I have precious little, when my health is so fragile.

On the matter of fragile health, it seems wrong to write about it, when I don't - to my knowledge - have a life-limiting illness... that is, unless you accept that my depression is so severe that it is life-limiting. I suppose it's grossly unfair to compare myself with a person suffering from cystic fibrosis, who is battling to be alive and has very few choices, versus me who doesn't battle at all, and has an infinite number of choices, right?

That's right, isn't it? My choices are infinite?

Let's just double check this: I can do anything I want, right?

Wrong.

Spectacularly wrong.

Yes, I am fortunate not to have cystic fibrosis, but that doesn't mean I have infinite freedom. Imagine if you met somebody with cystic fibrosis who was depressed about having the condition, and resigned to an early death. Now, imagine you are meeting me, with depression so severe that I have also resigned myself to the early death, which will result from the condition. You will say that I am choosing, but the person with cystic fibrosis cannot choose. You're just plain wrong. If it was a matter of choosing, then I would obviously choose not to have a mental illness.

It seems inconsiderate of me to make this comparison; it seems distasteful, taboo, and somehow intrinsically wrong; incorrect. However, I assure you, that whether it is an auto-immune condition where the body attacks itself, or a mental health condition where the body attacks itself, there is an underlying pathology, which is ultimately prematurely fatal. The situations are, for the purpose of this thought experiment, identical.

The fact that I would continue to do what I'm doing at the moment for 'free' if I was financially secure and independent, suggests that I'm not complaining about a lack of 'spare time' at all. I need my leisure time, with very little to occupy it, because I am so single-mindedly fixated on the outcome of the project I'm involved in. If I tried to do anything extra, I would definitely have a nervous breakdown. Hence, being single and not dating at the moment, for example.

The fact that I do and say whatever I want, whenever I want, also suggests that I'm not complaining about lack of money either. Of course, if my contract was terminated early, or not extended, then I will very quickly find myself evicted onto the streets, penniless and destitute. The question is how quickly? I expect that I can support myself for 4 or 5 months, without any lifestyle alteration. Of course, I also know what it's like to spend the best part of two years homeless, sleeping rough for considerable periods... so it's not something I'm anxious about.

What I fear more than anything is boredom. I like being busy.

I do also fear the loss of my home, and more importantly, the stress that would be placed on me, having to downsize from a 3/4 bedroom house with two reception rooms, a garden and a driveway, to a hostel bed or a tent... or worse still, just a hastily improvised bivouac.

However, more than the fear of the loss of my home, and the associated stress, I fear being trapped as a wage slave; I fear being forced to do a salaried job which I hate more than anything in the world, just to pay the rent or mortgage... locked into a miserable monotonous life, with no option to cut and run from that drudgery.

Perhaps the day will never come - indeed it never has - where I will be able to finally take a year off work, go travelling, write a novel or two, without having a constant anxiety gnawing at the pit of my stomach, telling me that I'd better get back to work as quick as possible, to replenish my rapidly dwindling meagre pot of life savings.

I have, now, considerably simplified the whole thing though: I will work hard, now, while there is the opportunity. Then, I will see if I have the chance, for the first time in my life, to pursue a path just for fun and excitement, as more than just a one or two week holiday, as recompense for a miserable boring job, which doesn't really count. I've never had money, health, and freedom from commitments, ever before in my life. I'm not one of the privileged bunch who got to go on gap years and doss about at uni, because there was a magic money tree which meant they could just drift around, reading a few books and chatting to interesting people... all I've ever done is work.

I'm far too old and far too poor to really be thinking about 'travelling' in a youthful sense... this is more akin to 'early retirement'... except my early retirement, through financial necessity, must end with premature death, which is fine by me, because I am very, very, very tired.

Tags: #suicide #career #work #money #debt #homeless

This is a story about time as an enemy...

I suppose almost all of us live for the weekend, or the equivalent: the working week can't pass quick enough, and our precious leisure time doesn't last long enough. "Is it Monday morning already?" we ask ourselves rhetorically, with disappointment in our voices.

Not me.

Although Friday does hold a special significance for me, it is only that I have successfully completed another billable week, earning myself a chunk of cash, which takes me a step closer to financial security. Given the choice, I would work 7 days a week, in order to achieve financial security 40% quicker. I do not look forward to the weekend, at all.

Of course, it doesn't help that my social isolation has increased, from one extreme to another: I never see another soul, at evenings and at weekends. The only people I see are strangers at the supermarket. The only words I exchange - in person - are with the cashier at the checkout. Given that I shop for food roughly every three weeks, that's an existence which is more extreme than almost anybody on the planet. A goddam Tuareg in the Sahara sees more people than me; has more social contact. A goddam monk who's sworn an oath of silence has vastly more social contact than me.

I could theoretically do something about it. For sure, I could join a book club; I could become a train spotter; I could develop an interest in ornithology; I could dress up as a superhero and go to comic conventions: the world is my oyster, but - so it would seem - I'm not seizing any of the infinite opportunities open to me, to build a real-world social network.

Why not?

Why am I not out there in the big wide world, making friends and meeting people?

I have, for example, deliberately decided to be single for a while. All of the COVID-19 stuff seemed to be making dating very complicated, what with various lockdowns and restrictions on the lives of single people, and besides, I wanted to lose some weight: restaurant meals and alcohol were never going to allow me to lose weight. Also, there's nothing quite as crazy-making as people. Recently, I was the victim of a tirade of abuse, for example, which was completely unprovoked; unjustified. I haven't got the time or the energy to be abused by nasty crazies. I really don't need my inbox brimming with hateful abuse, which bears no relation to anything I've ever said or done in my life. I'm quite glad to be able to ignore that kind of unjustified abuse, because I'm not looking for a girlfriend, or indeed trying to make any kind of connection with anybody: I'm just trying to survive the winter.

The hours pass painfully slowly. It would seem like any sensible person would do something, if they were suffering as badly as I claim to be, but it's not true: in my circumstances, you'd do the same thing... eyes on the prize. You too, would suffer in the short-term, even if it seemed unbearable, because you would also know that there's only one route ahead; only once choice, although it appears to completely ignorant idiots as if there are more choices. There are not. There are no other choices.

I look around at the options, and all I see is futility. I don't want to pretend that I believe in a sky monster. I don't want to pretend that I like Salsa dancing. I don't want to pretend that I'm interested in trains. I don't want to pretend that I'm interested in birds. I don't even want to pretend that I'm interesting in boring and unintelligent, unambitious provincial hicks, who've never travelled and experienced other cultures, with no aptitude for free thought and certainly no capacity to entertain the notion that life should be lived in a way which is dissimilar to that of slugs, wasps and other simple beasts, like the pram-faced breeders spewing out an endless stream of pink screaming flesh into a life of misery and disappointment.

Eyes on the prize: I'll never have enough money to live out my natural life at an acceptable standard of living, but mercifully I can choose the precise day of my death, to co-incide with both what is bearable, and what is affordable.

Tags: #suicide #work #career

This is a story about school bullies...

Whatever happened to the people who I went to school with? My peer group - those friends who were academic high-achievers like myself - obviously went to university and became six-figure salary earning captains of industry, venture capitalists, tech startup founders, renowned scientists and academics, and all-round paragons of success.

What about all the thickos?

Well, firstly, I don't really count the thickos as peers. They were there in the same school as me at the same time, sure, but they weren't part of my peer group. They were languishing in the lower-set classes, resentful that they were legally mandated to attend school, just waiting to leave and go to prison and/or get pregnant.

Of course, some of the thickos didn't go to prison. They are stacking the shelves in supermarkets or sweeping the streets. Those jobs are very useful to society, so I'm grateful to them for their contribution... except on social media.

Yes, social media is the problem, which is the basis of this essay.

The thickos previously had no platform on which to express their retarded opinions, except to their mates down the pub, or to their girlie mates in the baby circle. Their opinions - mercifully - didn't enter public discourse. Their opinions were not dignified with a platform for them to be shared.

In the early days of the internet, when it came in down the phone with a sound like robots screaming, it was the sole preserve of geeks; a paradise. In fact pre-dating the internet were dial-up bulletin boards, which you had to phone up and some of them only had one or two phone lines, so if somebody else was using it then the number was engaged. You might dial up a bulletin board, leave a message, then not go back for a few days to check for replies - a far cry from the current era of instant notifications from a million different apps, the moment somebody replies or 'likes' what you posted.

The technical complexity of getting online "back in the day" was sufficient to keep the thickos offline. As such, most people you might encounter were highly intelligent and highly educated. Opinions lacked the diversity we see today, given that they were mostly white men of a geeky persuasion, but there was a refreshing lack of morons. Having suffered 13 years of full-time education with a vast horde of intellectually challenged thickos, the internet was paradise.

Technologists have been trying to make tech as "frictionless" as possible, which is to say that the thickos can now press the big child-friendly buttons on their Fisher-Price toy phones and share their racist, homophobic, transphobic, regressive and retarded worldview... which unfortunately is presented on social media as equal to the refined erudite educated considered musings of highly intelligent and respectable individuals.

Another thing is happening.

Given that the paradise world of cyberspace has been lost to the moronic hordes, we have reverted to playground rules: bullies are getting a toe-hold.

Donald Trump succeeded because he speaks idiot; he says the things that idiots say. Trump and his alt-right sycophants - who also include Nigel Farage and all the Brexiteers - are all cut from the same cloth; they all have the same moronic worldview. The thing in particular that I wanted to write about is how childish playground techniques employed by thickos, are being employed in the former paradise of cyberspace.

Gone is rational and reasonable debate. Gone is any attempt to discuss the difficult areas of politcal philosophy, such as attempting to wrestle with the meaning of life. In its place, barbaric morons simply repeat verbatim, various things said by Trump, Farage and other influential figures in their orbit. "Build a wall" and "Britain first" they blurt out, without the faintest comprehension of the deeper meaning and consequences of what they're saying... unable to comprehend the crimes against humanity that they are implicitly demanding, in order to serve their unspoken demand for a white ethnostate.

What I fear most, is that liberal outrage is fuel for the 51.9% of society who are racist cunts. That shower of shits failed abysmally academically and in life - now in prison and/or living on benefits - and like the bullying children who hated the clever kids, the only way for them to exact their revenge is to attack those who are smarter than them. The Trump supporters and Brexiteers love it when the liberal metropolitan intelligentsia squeal with frustration. The alt-right will feel triumphant as society crumbles and burns. "We really stuck it to you there, nerds!" they will yell as human civilisation descends into a barbaric dark age.

For my part, I will never stop taking the bait and fighting the moronic fuckers - wherever I find them - because even though I spent 13 traumatic years of my life, legally trapped in an education system which forced me to be proximate with abusive, bullying thicko moronic cunts who made every day of my life a living hell, I succeeded and they failed.

Tags: #bullying

This is a story about worst-case scenarios...

I've brought you here under somewhat false pretences. Possibly you have read what I wrote on suicide methods and have decided to continue reading. Perhaps you haven't read anything I've written before, and an internet search has brought you here. Either way, I kinda lied: this is much more about why to kill yourself than how.

Why kill yourself?

Good question.

If you're reading this, then I'm sure you have your reasons. Perhaps you don't need me to explore the many reasons why, but I'm going to anyway, because you didn't need me to write about all the suicide methods in detail either, but I did and thousands of people read it every day.

It's because so many thousands are reading what I wrote about suicide methods that I felt I should follow up with something about why to kill yourself. I hope you will forgive me if you feel I have brought you here under false pretences, but anyhoo, let's begin.

Why Should You Kill Yourself?

You shouldn't.

The end.

Just kidding.

Unless we acknowledge that there are very real and valid reasons why people kill themselves, then we are gaslighting. We can't pretend that people don't commit suicide, and that those people didn't have good reasons for doing it. People don't just do stuff for no reason. To pretend like there weren't reasons - and there isn't justification - is disingenuous and unkind to those who have died, and unkind to those who are suffering suicidal thoughts.

So, excuse my jocularity. I'm quite serious. We need to talk about why you would kill yourself.

Breakup/Divorce

We've got to start somewhere, so why not with a relationship ending; a broken heart? There's little more gut-wrenchingly sad than losing the love of our lives. Many suicides will be prompted by a breakup, so we need to discuss this. I needed to start somewhere, so this is what I've chosen.

First, we need to acknowledge what love is: a combination of serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine that's released in the brain in order to foster human bonding, sex and produce children; it's a biochemical trick created by our genes, in order to get us to make more copies of the genes.

Is it sad when we get our hearts broken? Yes. Incredibly.

Is it the end of the world? Will we be sad forever? No. Get another girlfriend/boyfriend/significant-other and your heart will soon mend.

Of course, we need to acknowledge that it's absolutely terrifying - as well as a massive inconvenience - to be thrust back into the world of dating. As we get older and fatter, we feel increasingly insecure, and we fear dying alone. Of course, nobody wants to feel fat, old and desperate, fearful of dying alone. I can totally relate to the feeling that I'd rather die than suffer the agony of dating, and the knock-backs; to be thrust back into the crappy world of adolescence with all its accompanying awkwardness, uncertainty and insecurity. "Does he/she like me?" we wonder to ourselves, in seemingly eternal torment.

In my opinion, a breakup is no reason to commit suicide, because - although inconvenient and awful - it's possible to mend your heart by meeting somebody new.

Bereavement

Okay, so I didn't really cover the death of a loved one in the breakup/divorce section, so I'll cover the death of a partner in this section. The answer is pretty much the same, but I do make an exception for childhood sweethearts who've lived into old age. I'm not suggesting that everyone who's been in a super long-term relationship should be in a suicide pact, but it's understandable that after a certain age and many decades of happy marriage/civil-partnership, that life could continue with somebody new is almost unthinkable. Where to draw the line is not up to me, but I feel certain that being a geriatric widower is not how I plan on spending the last years of my life.

Am I advocating for suicide for bereaved older people? Absolutely not. I'm just saying that I can totally understand why heartbroken seniors might decide that their reason for living expired when they lost the love of their lives.

Death of a pet. Sad but no.

Death of a friend. Sad but no.

Death of a parent. Sad (most of the time) but no.

Death of a child... oh damn. Where to begin? Well, we must acknowledge that the grief would be exceptional, and the guilt no doubt. The thing which would never be uttered, but must be discussed, would be the feeling that time's run out to make another kid, mixed up with all the same fears about fertility, carrying the baby to full term, giving birth, having a healthy child etc. All those horrible emotions would have to be re-lived, with the accompanying magnifying effect of knowing how devastating it was to actually lose a child, or - god forbid - children.

It seems quite understandable to me that some horrendous combination of bereavement, such as losing your whole family in some kind of accident, would be far too much to bear. Sure, plenty of people have had tragedies in their lives, and gone on to rebuild their lives with somebody else. That's not to say that everyone can or should. I can totally understand why bereavement(s) would be a reason to commit suicide, and although I can see that many people have been able to get over the tragedy, I don't think it's right to say that suicide should never be considered.

Usual caveats apply: I don't condone or encourage suicide, but I do understand why people kill themselves, although I desperately want a zero suicide world.

Debt, Financial Ruin; Destitution etc

It feels a bit wrong to put debt on a par with the death of a child, but it's also right - debt can destroy lives just as effectively as a road traffic accident. We need to acknowledge how life-destroying debt is, because it can wreck so much more than a person's credit rating.

First, let's talk about the very real, and very devastating consequences of financial difficulties: loss of status, loss of home, loss of relationships... loss of freedom; agency. To have a bad credit rating is to become a leper - unable to buy or rent a house, buy a car, get a job. "Get a job?" you ask... yes, that's right - many jobs will check a person's credit rating and/or ask if they've ever declared bankruptcy. Bankrupts are shunned from almost all parts of society, such that they're ruined for life; unable to get a decent job and therefore shut out of every aspect of ordinary life. That's a bad deal. That's a rough gig.

Without your house, your car, your job and the other accompanying status symbols, how are you going to provide for your family? It follows that you'll be ditched by your partner and your kids; labelled as a loser. This is how people lose everything, not just their credit rating.

Debt is life-destroying.

Okay, so I'm probably laying it on a bit thick. However, this is all the stuff that is on the mind of the poor suffering individual who is struggling with debt, and has decided to commit suicide. Having been hounded by debt collectors, bailiffs and other parasites/vultures, people are driven to end their own lives rather than suffer any more stress, loss, ruin and distress. I empathise.

Although bankruptcy and financial ruin are devastating, the process of being financially destroyed is worse than being destitute. Being destitute is quite liberating. Having struggled with debts for years, being hounded by creditors and other leeches, once the bankruptcy process - or some other kind of insolvency procedure - is in motion, the creditors can't harass you anymore. You'll get an opportunity to rebuild yourself, albeit with the impediment of the black mark on your records. Plenty of people function without credit cards, car loans, mortgages and other financial instruments, and many of them are very successful. In fact, many entrepreneurs talk about their bankruptcies as badges of honour; they're proud of their failures.

I think loss of status is not to be underestimated. If you're used to having a nice house, car, and being a provider for your family, there is an incalculable amount of shame, bitterness and regret, which is almost impossible to deal with. Losing everything is not easy, and we should acknowledge how fatal it can be; how it can be the worst thing in the world to have your life fall apart. Saying stuff like "it's only money" is profoundly unhelpful, because money is such an intrinsic inseparable part of modern life. We shouldn't forget that wealth and status are the things which allow us to get an attractive partner, as well as to feel good about ourselves.

Killing yourself because of bad debt or financial problems seems like the most ridiculous thing to do, but in fact it's one of the hardest things to deal with, because it's such a taboo to talk about financial difficulties and debt. Debts are so toxic to our mental health, keeping us awake at night, and causing us untold anxiety, as we fear the domino-like collapse of our entire lives - job loss leads to defaulting on our mortgage, leads to our house being repossessed, leads to bankruptcy and destitution, as sure as night follows day.

Yes. Debt and financial difficulties cause suicides, in vast numbers. We need to acknowledge that's true. I wish it weren't true, but it is.

The solution? Be prepared to be destitute. Treat it as an adventure. Be a tramp. Enjoy the freedom of it.

Injury, Sickness and Disability

Chronic illness, chronic pain and other lifelong conditions - such as diabetes and kidney failure - have a devastatingly detrimental effect on our quality of life, and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest. However, we are notoriously bad at estimating how bad it's going to be. For example, people with type one diabetes, who are insulin dependent and who must closely monitor their blood sugar, are able to adapt and report far higher quality of life than their initially pessimistic outlook. However, people who require dialysis because of kidney failure, often vastly underestimate how badly their quality of life is going to be affected.

Many people would say that they would want their life support to be switched off if they were paralysed - quadriplegic - but there are well documented cases of people reversing the decision in their advanced directive such that they have indicated that they wanted to be kept alive by machines, most famously by a man who was only able to blink in order to communicate.

However, we must be realistic. In the vast majority of cases, people who are suffering incredibly awful lives, because of chronic pain and other suffering, who've had their reasons to live snatched away by some cruel twist of fate, which has rendered them incapable of ever enjoying a minimum quality of life, are absolutely entitled to reserve their right to die. I must make it absolutely clear: I am pro-euthanasia.

Another thing I must make clear is that I'm well aware that there are very many people who live full and happy lives, despite sickness and/or disability. I am absolutely not an ableist who believes that only the able bodied have a reason to live, and everybody else is somehow less worthy of life and happiness. I am absolutely not saying that - for example - being unable to walk is always a reason to commit suicide.

Nothing could be more personal than weighing up the pros and cons of our own unique situation, and arriving at a decision of whether it is better to be dead or alive. I can't make that decision for anybody, but we should definitely consider that it is very difficult to face a life which promises nothing other than pain and suffering, and regret, sadness and resentment, that we are no longer able to enjoy the things which we used to, in the past.

Everything Else

There are an infinite number of reasons why we might kill ourselves, which might include things such as martyrdom, infamy, to hurt people and other motivations. Suicide can be weaponised, and it often is, especially by marginalised, oppressed and otherwise powerless people.

A completely exhaustive exploration of all the reasons why we might commit suicide is beyond the scope of this essay, although I feel as though I have made a decent attempt.

* * *

As always, I must remind readers that my personal stance is that suicide is understandable but absolutely undesirable in all but the compassionate circumstances, where it is intended to give relief to a person whose life is unbearable; unliveable; intolerable.

We must distinguish the temporary - the acute - from the permanent; the chronic. We must avoid permanent solutions to temporary problems, although I am aware that agony can feel eternal when we are in the grips of it. I am very sorry that people are suffering and I wish they weren't.

This essay is intended as something thought-provoking, and as an open and honest discussion-starter, so that people who feel that they can't talk about their anguish and pain - that suicide is the only option available to them - might feel as though it's OK to talk about the things which are bothering them.

If you choose suicide, I won't judge you or tell you that you're wrong, but I hope that you think about everything, and choose to live in the end... although of course you might decide - based on your personal pros and cons - that life will never be tolerable and pleasant ever again, which is very sad but I understand that people need relief from their torment.

I do not encourage, endorse or recommend suicide.

Tags: #suicide

Blogger's Digest: a Novel

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Ten

I knew that I would find my old schoolfriend, Tim, at the London Boat Show in January. He had stayed in Hampshire his whole life, to be close to the sea, attempting to scrape a living in the marine industry. Undoubtedly the most talented sailor in the sailing club when I joined, as a child, he came from a long line of men who had worked at sea and on rivers. His father, who had taught him to sail when he was a very little boy, was a member of the London Fire Brigade working aboard one of their two fire boats. On his father's four off-duty days, he was a volunteer crew member for the RNLI, on the local lifeboat. Salt water ran in his veins.

I had several ulterior motives for attending the London Boat Show.

I had planted the idea in my friend Ian's head, that we should pay a second visit to see a particularly fast racing yacht, built with classic lines, which he had taken a great deal of interest in at the Southampton Boat Show back in September, when we had been granted a much-coveted viewing appointment. The yacht he had taken an interest in had recently featured in a James Bond movie, and there were very many members of the public who wanted to have a tour, but who were not serious buyers. Ian had the money and had always wanted to buy his way into the prestigious invitation-only racing, which happened in the South of France every summer: the price of entry was to own a yacht which was either an authentic classic, or a modern classic, judged by the race organisers to be just so, which rather nebulously meant that you had excellent taste and the decency not to be vulgar with your wealth.

I wanted, at the appropriate moment, to convince Ian to help me sail from Brighton to Corfu, over the course of the summer. I knew that he would not, and could not commit to doing the entire voyage all at once, so I hoped to persuade him to help me for a week or two at a time: the South Coast of England to the South Coast of Portugal, then onwards to Sardinia or maybe Sicily if the wind was kind to us, before finally completing the final segment of the trip. I knew that the prospect of doing a seriously long sea journey would be appealing, and he owed me a favour or two after having crewed for him on many occasions, but he would have regattas and other racing events over the summer which he wouldn't want to miss. I would have to convince him that he could fit my trip in, around his other commitments.

I had asked a number of other great sailors I knew, who I imagined would have been very happy to spend several weeks with me, moving my yacht from Brighton to Corfu. However, none had been forthcoming with any help whatsoever. Besides a cordial catch-up on how our lives had been progressing since I had originally left the bank and subsequently left London, post-divorce, our friendships had dissipated and I could tell that they had no interest in any serious ongoing friendship. My old London friends were too consumed by their demanding city lives, trying to placate their demanding trophy wives who had insatiable designer handbag buying habits, wanted increasingly large houses in Kensington and Chelsea, nannies, au pairs, and other hired help, and wanted the children to go to the best private schools: long gone were the days when we used to enjoy countless after-work drinking sessions.

Resistant to the idea of hiring a professional skipper to help me, or taking a gamble on an amateur who I might hope to stumble upon, I racked my brains and came upon a possible solution: my old school-friends who had continued to sail. Tim was the obvious first choice. I knew from social media that he was still an incredibly active sailor, and we had the pretence that we had stayed in touch, when in fact we hadn't seen each other for almost two decades.

London has a strange habit of dividing us. To those who abhor the concrete jungle - the big smoke - the M25 motorway ring-road is a kind of force field, which kept them out; they never went near the place and specifically avoided it, wherever possible. Meanwhile, for those whose career ambitions could only be pursued in a place like London or New York - in the Square Mile or on Wall Street - everything outside London suddenly seemed backwards and twee; provincial. It was difficult to avoid a certain amount of snobbery, which prejudiced those of us who felt we were at the centre of the universe, against those who had chosen a more ordinary family life, at a sedate pace. Like oil and water, London folk and the rest of the British didn't really mix: wealthy Londoners couldn't understand that most restaurants and bars served terrible quality food and drink, and didn't accept card payments, while non-Londoners couldn't understand why anybody would live somewhere which cost £10 for a pint of beer and a modest-sized family home some distance from the centre would cost upwards of £1 million.

From social media stalking, I knew the name of the company which Tim had been working for, at least at some point fairly recently - it was always possible that he had moved on since he had updated his profile. The marine industry is fairly small, and I knew that it was probable that even if Tim no longer worked for that company, somebody would know which company he'd moved to, who would also most likely have an exhibitor's stand here at the London Boat Show.

As luck would have it, I spotted Tim quite easily, lingering near a rack of glossy brochures full of stainless-steel yacht rigging parts, which the company he worked for manufactured and sold.

"Tim! Fancy seeing you here" I joked, knowing that his career in the marine industry meant that he'd spent the last couple of decades attending boat shows.

Rather cynically, I had prepared a game plan for us to become fast friends again. My background research - social media stalking - told me that he had married his girlfriend who he'd been dating the whole time we'd known each other, and he had two children, one of whom had recently started secondary school and the other I estimated to be 2 or 3 years younger, still at primary school. I also knew that he and his wife had won a number of dinghy races during the previous season, and I knew what class of dinghy he was sailing in. From my many dismal, boring, depressing years working in offices, I knew that a surefire topic of conversation, guaranteed to create a bond with a colleague, would be to show an interest in their kids, first and foremost: extra points for remembering names, ages, and whether they were into ponies or whatever particular things their doting parents were encouraging them to do.

I knew that it would be very hard for Tim to get time off work, as well as leaving his wife looking after their kids, but that he was always a sucker for any seagoing adventure: at school he often played truant when a local fisherman offered to take him out on their trawler.

Having spent a long while catching up on Tim's life events, since we'd parted company so many years ago, I then said enthusiastically that I would love to come and visit; that we should rekindle our friendship. We had been very good friends at school, but our lives had gone in very different directions since I had gone away to university, and Tim had never left our home town in Hampshire.

With a great deal of happy excitement and promises to stay in regular contact, and make definite arrangements to see each other again soon, I was about to make my departure; we began saying our goodbyes.

"Oh, er. I'm moving my boat from Brighton to somewhere a bit further south for the summer. Cross-channel sort of thing. Been asking around to see if I can find another qualified skipper but haven't had any luck. You don't know any trustworthy chaps who'd be up for a few days at sea, do you?" I asked, casually.

"No not really, but I might be able to swing a few nights away from home - boys' trip - if I play my cards right with the wife. I'm owed some nights off after she went away on a hen do last year" Tim replied.

"Well, chat it over with her and let me know what dates might work for you - I'm pretty flexible" I said.

We shook hands and then, exchanging a simultaneous grin, we gave each other a spontaneous hug. I think we really had missed each others' company, over the many years, and we were glad about the prospect of re-entering each others' lives. Making and keeping friends had proven to be so difficult, in adult life.

Ian had been ridiculously easy to convince to join me on my trip. The only sticking point for him was that I paid for his flights, which I naturally agreed to. It seemed a little ridiculous that he was seriously considering purchasing a yacht which would cost him the best part of £1 million, yet he wanted to make sure I would cover his travel expenses. I wondered if the reason why Ian was so much more wealthy than me was not because my career had been disrupted by my depression, but because he was a notorious tightwad.

Next chapter...

Blogger's Digest: a Novel

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Seven

How does one set about making new friends in a new city, when you reach an age where everybody has coupled off and settled into their cliques? This was the question which weighed heavily on my mind, acutely aware as I was that my Brighton colleagues' life priorities were completely different from most of those who I'd worked with in London. Maybe I was just getting older, but it seemed like everybody was married with at least a couple of children. Trying to arrange a night out required a lot of notice and pre-planning - childcare arrangements and what little remained of parents' social lives became a logistical nightmare, and the a well-attended social function could not be held on an ad-hoc basis.

There was a thriving sports and social club, which catered for 5-a-side football, squash and badminton, and a smattering of other sports. As part of my efforts to calm the hyper-competitive side of my personality, I decided to avoid sports, which left me with few other social opportunities which were workplace-related. There was a company Christmas party, a department Christmas party and a a team Christmas party, but for the other 11 months of the year, there was nothing. From 'getting to know you' casual conversations with my colleagues, I understood that their entire lives were spent ferrying their children from party to party: an endless procession of parties and social functions for kids, but an adult night out was something which parents only enjoyed a handful of times each year.

I gravitated towards a group of alcoholics, who had either been quietly relocated from London to Brighton, having spent a month drying out at The Priory rehab, paid for by the company, or some of those whose behaviour was slightly more disgraceful were now kept on a tight leash: short employment contracts and zero tolerance for their prior antics, which had often involved going AWOL for days or even a whole week, and returning to work in a very bedraggled state.

The tolerance of workplace alcoholism was ubiquitous in investment banking. At a certain level of management seniority and age, I couldn't think of a single individual who wasn't excessively partial to their particular drink of choice: red wine, whiskey or vodka. Physical features of these senior colleagues told the whole story: red noses, liver spots, bags under their eyes, beer guts and a haggard look which added ten or fifteen years onto their appearance. They were some of the most brilliant, entertaining and hyper-intelligent people I ever had the pleasure of working with. It was a crying shame that none of them seemed to live beyond their mid fifties, and many were dead by their mid-forties. Given that I had known so many of my former colleagues die from alcohol-related illness, I was certain that investment banking must have a problem far in excess of the national average - alcoholism was practically institutionalised.

During the summer, I had a brilliant time. My new group of friends knew lots of wonderful beer gardens and other sun-traps where we could enjoy several pints of beer or cider, before staggering back to the office. After work, there were delightful terraces to sit on, drinking, while the sun went down. Looking out at the holidaymakers enjoying the beach and the sea, we vicariously partook of their wholesome activities - we felt like we were part of their healthy lifestyle, when in fact we were drinking vast amounts and going home incredibly intoxicated every night.

I suppose that wearing the so-called "beer jacket" meant that when late September arrived and there was a chilly morning, I was a little shocked. I hadn't put a lot of thought into what life would be like aboard my yacht, during the winter.

With a fan heater on a timer switch, I was able to make the bathroom warm enough to make showering bearable. With thick quilts, blankets and warm clothes, I could keep myself cosy enough throughout October. However, as the temperature dropped lower and lower, it was clear that I needed to make a drastic change - my ability to heat the yacht, and its insulation, were woefully inadequate for the UK winter.

One of the reasons for purchasing the yacht had been that I knew I would be able to live aboard it very comfortably in the Mediterranean, or other more southerly and pleasant climates, if my job didn't work out - I owned a truly mobile home. But, the voyage would now be unbearably unpleasant and quite dangerous, with winter almost upon us - gale-force winds regularly swept eastwards from the Atlantic, along with gigantic waves and an immense amount of rain.

Sailing during the late Spring to early Autumn period was amazing in the English Channel, which is one of the windiest places on the planet. Force 4 wind with gusts of force 5 can be very enjoyable for an experienced sailor - exciting - but wet-weather gear is still required even at the peak of summer, because the spray, rain and wind-chill can quickly turn life at sea into a very cold and hostile environment. With the autumn bringing monster waves and storm-force winds, along with biting cold wind and water which feels like ice, there is nothing at all enjoyable about sailing after the end of October.

The prospect of being hit by repeated storms as I battled my way south, attempting to reach the Gibraltar Straits and the warmth of the Med, or perhaps the Canary Islands, was nigh-on suicidal. If I didn't break my mast and have to be rescued, perhaps I would be seriously injured, killed, or at the very least spend a very long time freezing cold and regretting ever having left port. Any crew member who agreed to help with the passage would either be mad or inexperienced and incompetent - it wouldn't be responsible of me to even ask anybody to undertake such a dangerous trip with me.

Meanwhile, I had met a girl - Sian - using a dating app, and I had been spending an increasing amount of time at her house, motivated in no small part by the fact that she had central heating and double glazing. We were an odd couple, given that she was a Gender Studies lecturer at the University of Sussex, and everybody had assumed that she was gay, including her parents. She was also extremely left wing and a regular participant at protest marches: particularly anti-capitalist marches. I thought that my investment banking background would mean that we'd be entirely incompatible, but she was well read, well travelled and had some fascinating opinions which she expertly articulated, so she was incredibly entertaining company. She also enjoyed frequent sex, which was unusual for somebody who'd had so few partners that her nearest and dearest assumed she was deep in the closet.

I suppose the guilt I had carried my whole career, particularly around my direct involvement in investment banking during the financial crisis of 2007/8, meant that I had become more left-leaning and somewhat of a skeptic, regarding capitalism. I knew that people had lost their homes, businesses and vast numbers of people had become dependent on food banks, as a result of the irresponsible actions of people like me. I had suffered no hardship - ever - in my adult life, and I was never going to be forced into a zero hours contract job at McDonalds or to become part of the 'gig economy' delivering takeaway food on a bicycle. I had profited handsomely during the boom years, and I had continued to enjoy an exceptionally high standard of living, without interruption. Guilt had driven me to educate myself about the hardships faced by ordinary British people, and I now read The Guardian as well as The Financial Times; I read the New Statesman as well as The Economist magazine. Having been surrounded by Conservative voters throughout my life, I had lately become more open-minded about Labour policies. I had begun to read books which were harshly critical of the many failings attributable to Neoliberalism, and made a convincing case for socialism, social enterprises and sustainability; the green agenda.

Sian also really liked wine and movies, which was great. It was an ideal way to spend the winter: snuggled up watching challenging award-winning subtitled films which had achieved much critical acclaim in liberal arts circles, getting drunk, having a debate about how to fix the world's problems, and then having great sex.

While she was naturally reluctant to introduce her investment banker boyfriend to her friends, many of whom were right-on feminists, activists and viewed every act of coitus with a man as a victory for the patriarchy, and a terrible defeat for the oppressed minorities, we were - in a strange way - quite compatible. Perhaps it was a relationship of convenience, and it certainly allowed me to defer the problem of how to heat my yacht.

Sian had sudden bursts of uncontrollable excitement. "You MUST take me out on your boat!" she would say. At other times, she remembered that my yacht and my luxury-brand car were emblematic symbols of everything that was wrong and unjust about the world. She asked me to park around the corner from her house, lest one of her friends notice that she was dating a wealthy man, and worse still, an investment banker.

I had the sense that our fundamentally different paths we had taken through life - her through academia and me through an investment banking career - meant that we were never destined to have a long-lasting relationship. I liked her a lot and I certainly never thought or acted as if what we had was casual but there wasn't the same pressure that I was used to, when I had been looking for the right woman to marry and have children with. We were content, snuggling under our blanket, sipping wine and watching subtitled movies; we weren't grasping and reaching... constantly struggling to achieve more and more. It felt nice. It felt healthy and normal.

Equally, I wondered how Sian would be received if I received an inevitable invite for dinner with my boss and his wife, once word got around that I had a girlfriend. My drinking buddies had been seeing less and less of me, until the point where they no longer bothered to ask me if I was going to join them for after-work drinks. They were sure to tip off our gossip-hungry colleagues, and I wouldn't be able to brush off their questions by saying "it's nothing serious" or "it's early days" for very much longer.

If Sian was appalled by my two obvious vulgar displays of wealth and status - my car and my yacht - then she was going to struggle when we went for dinner with my boss and his wife, at their home, which might as well have been wallpapered with £50 notes and built with gold bullion bars, because it screamed "I'M RICH!" at the top of its nouveau-riche voice. I dearly wanted to spare poor Sian an evening of biting her lip, while my boss' wife no doubt wanted to complain about the difficulties of selecting a good private school, and the expense of stabling their horses, with the tactlessness of a woman who's never encountered an ordinary person in their entire life.

I was content, however; content to see out the winter in this fashion. Life was good; life was treating me very well.

Next chapter...

Blogger's Digest: a Novel

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Two

My girlfriend, but perhaps more her family than her, made me feel very insecure and inadequate. Caroline was a brilliant girlfriend - one of the kindest, nicest people you could ever hope to meet, and surprisingly humble considering her privileged background. However, her family had wealth and status, the likes of which I had never encountered in my life. Her father was a partner at an international law firm and her mother was a doctor in general practice, which meant they were very well-off already, but Caroline's mother's family were exceptionally rich. Her grandfather had owned a paper manufacturing company, specialising in tissue paper and toilet rolls, which was the UK's number one brand and had floated on the London Stock Exchange in the 1970s. Caroline's two uncles were board members and her grandmother had become the biggest shareholder of the company, after the death of her husband.

The family lived in Surrey, close to the estates of the De Beers family - famous for their South African diamond mines - and the billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Caroline's two brothers had attended boarding school at Christ's Hospital, while Caroline had boarded at Marlborough College. Caroline's parents - her mother in particular - had fought the family very hard to resist the pressure for the children to be sent to public school. Caroline's grandfather had been a Harrow boy, as had her two uncles. Caroline's mother had attended Cheltenham Ladies' College. She always suspected that she had been able to achieve the necessary exam grades and study medicine at Cambridge, not because of academic merit, but because of nepotism - Cambridge had made her a generously low offer, meaning she did not need top grades. Her time spent in hospital and in general practice had brought her into contact with many ordinary members of the public, as well as doctors who hadn't enjoyed the benefit of an expensive private education, which left her feeling a little guilty that her own path through life had been beset by very few of the difficulties in the lives of the people with whom she dealt with on a daily basis.

Caroline's family owned a sizeable luxury yacht, designed and built by the renowned and revered Camper & Nicholsons, which Caroline and her family referred to simply as "the boat" which caused me considerable annoyance.

* * *

My own nautical background began when I was eleven years old, at a school in Hampshire, near the Solent. One of my favourite teachers was an enthusiastic dinghy sailor and offered to introduce 4 of her pupils - the maximum she could fit in her car - the opportunity to learn to sail, under her tutelage. Why I was chosen, I do not know, but perhaps she took pity on me that I was one of the misfits. My birthday was the 2nd of September, making me the third youngest child in my school year, and the youngest boy. Throughout my school years I had been one of the smaller boys - not small for my age, but small because, all the other boys were older than me. Little legs cannot run as fast as longer legs, so I was largely excluded from sports, and an easy target for bullies.

The dinghies I learned to sail in were made of plastic and practically indestructible. They were designed to be sailed single-handed, and they were very simple to rig and operate. They were, however, surprisingly easy to capsize. Other dinghies had been designed with the intention of being used to teach sailing, and these were much harder to capsize, but they were bigger, slower and required a crew member as well as a helmsman. I was very glad to learn in the more exciting single-handed dinghies, because they were more exciting to sail and the occasional capsize and cold water dunking provided the incentive to learn very quickly how to control the sails, and how to deal with a capsized dinghy. Soon, I was able to react quickly enough to my dinghy capsizing, that I would dive over the side of the dinghy, stand on the centerboard fin, and then dive back into the dinghy when she came back upright again - a so-called dry capsize because it avoided being dunked into the cold water.

I joined the youth section of a prestigious sailing club a few years later, having begged another teacher who liked me if he would propose me as a member - the sailing club was quite snobby and membership was usually by invitation only. My prior dinghy sailing experience meant that I was immediately allowed to be a helmsman and to represent the club at regattas. Although I had no experience sailing two-handed dinghies, the club gave me their best dinghy and best crewman, and we won third place - I can claim no credit for the achievement, because my crew, who was just a young boy of 9 years old, told me exactly what to do for the entire race. My third place finish at the regatta brought me a great deal of unexpected congratulations and a couple of the girls at the sailing club took an interest in me, which was novel and most welcome, as I was extremely unpopular at school, and dismally unsuccessful with girls - I'd never had a girlfriend.

* * *

My inadequacies and insecurities, bred during my difficult school years, where I was ignored by the girls and bullied by the boys, led me to my decision to try to earn as much money as possible. I wanted to be rich and I wanted to have status symbols, as a prop for my fragile self-esteem. I decided that investment banking would be my ideal career choice.

Having graduated with a 2:1 in Maths from Sheffield, having failed to achieve the grades to get into any of the red-brick universities I had applied to, I managed to get onto the graduate training program of a small investment bank in the City of London, thanks in no small part to the hiring manager being a keen sailor - he was more keen to have another valuable member of the company sailing club, than he was to hire a better candidate. I had achieved a major objective: I was now an investment banker, working in the Square Mile. I immediately purchased a red 2-seater sports car.

I remained profoundly unsuccessful with women, despite my burgeoning wealth and the boost that my ego and self-esteem received from becoming a City banker, albeit a graduate trainee.

I met Caroline at a speed dating event. Vicki, one of my department's administrators, had press-ganged a group of the shy single men in our department into attending the speed dating event. I never had a speed date with Caroline, who was one of Vicki's single female friends. Vicki decided to play matchmaker at the end of the night. The following day, I asked Vicki for Caroline's number, having been too shy and insecure - and afraid of rejection - to ask her myself.

Sailing was the main thing that Caroline and I had in common, except she had only sailed yachts and I had only sailed dinghies. I felt very confident about my dinghy sailing abilities, knowledge and experience, but the world of yachting was entirely alien to me.

"The boat" which Caroline talked about all the time used to give me an unpleasant jolt every time she said it. I knew her family were fabulously rich, and I felt as though she was using the term "boat" in place of "yacht" in order to pretend that she was less privileged and wealthy. I accused her of attempting to down-play how affluent her family was, using an ambiguous term "boat" which could conjure up an image of a rowing boat, or an inflatable boat, or any number of quite ordinary and affordable watercraft, when we both knew that this particular "boat" was worth as much as a well-appointed 4 or 5 bedroom house in a desirable location. Given that my salary, as a recent graduate, was barely adequate to purchase a tiny ex-authority flat in an ugly concrete block of flats, in some highly undesirable part of London's Zone 3, I was a little outraged that Caroline and her family referred to their yacht as some mere "boat".

In fact, my insecurities ran far deeper. My ignorance about the world of yachting was a source of great unhappiness - I was extremely sensitive about any suggestion that I knew very little about yachts, navigation, sea crossings and suchlike. My sailing knowledge was confined to tiny dinghies, racing around small courses, close to shore. I hated that one of the few things I felt self-confident about was of no use to me - when Caroline and her family shared stories from their time on "the boat" I was baffled by a lot of the terminology, and I was unable to relate it at all to my own sailing experiences.

* * *

In secret, I enrolled in night school to learn about navigation at sea. I learned how to read nautical charts, how to plot a course and account for tidal flows. I learned how to identify what different buoys were for, and what their purpose was. I learned how to use a sighting compass to triangulate my position. I learned the "rules of the road" and how to avoid collisions. I learned what different lights meant, and how to navigate at night, in theory. I learned a heap of things which I had been completely ignorant of, as a dinghy sailor.

Then, I booked a week of holiday off work and enrolled on a Royal Yachting Association training course which would qualify me as a yacht skipper. I lived aboard a yacht - night and day - for a whole week, putting all the theory into practice, as well as learning how to manovre a yacht in a marina: something no dinghy sailor would ever do, given the lack of an engine. The sailing parts were mostly straightforward as a dinghy sailor, but the idea of setting out to sea without having quite literally set sail was a very strange concept. I had to learn how to put the sails up at sea, and the sails on a yacht are much, much larger than those on a dinghy.

The instructor had the lower part of his leg missing as well as three fingers one one hand, which were both caused by yachting accidents. A substantial portion of his leg was stripped to the bone when a coil of rope was wrapped around it, and the sail which it was attached to suddenly filled with wind, causing the rope to tug with tremendous force, flinging him overboard. He was lucky to survive, as it's very difficult to pick up a man overboard, when the waves are large and the wind is blowing strong. His fingers were lost when he wrapped a rope around a winch, trapping them, and then the sail filled with wind. You might have thought he'd have learned his lesson the first time, but he was the perfect instructor to demonstrate how dangerous yacht sailing can be, even for an experienced dinghy sailor who wouldn't realise the power that huge sails have, and how much force there is in the ropes when the wind fills the sails.

Having qualified as a skipper, I then immediately bought a yacht. Of course, my comparatively meagre wealth wouldn't allow me to purchase a large luxurious yacht, like the one owned by Caroline's family, but given the expense of mooring and maintaining a yacht, it's somewhat of a buyer's market and a relatively large second-hand yacht can be purchased for roughly the price of a new car. I bought a small racing yacht, which had a frugal interior, but with enough space to sleep 4 people in relative comfort. I was now a yacht owner and qualified skipper, which greatly relieved the crushing insecurities I had been carrying around since the start of my relationship with Caroline.

* * *

All of my dinghy sailing and my week-long training course had left me over-confident and ill-prepared for yacht ownership. My first attempt to leave the yacht broker's mooring, where I had purchased her, nearly ended in disaster when the engine cut out and I was unable to raise anything but the main sail, in order to limp to the nearest pontoon. I was at first berated by a yacht club member for tying up where I should not have done, but he took pity on me and pointed out that I had failed to open some critical valves, which had starved the engine of fuel and air. He also asked why I had not installed the headsail, to which I replied I thought I would do that at sea. "Did you learn to sail on a racing yacht?" he asked. I confirmed that I did, and he patiently explained that the yacht I had just bought had a convenient labour-saving mechanism, which allowed the headsail to be set with incredible ease - I just needed to set it up properly before setting out to sea.

Swallowing my pride, my second attempt to go to sea aboard my new yacht, I invited Caroline aboard for the first time. She quickly took charge and it was a humbling experience, to be taking instruction from my girlfriend, who was an absolutely brilliant patient teacher. I hadn't invited her out for the maiden voyage, because I was afraid that I would react badly if my own incompetence was exposed and I was embarrassed. I thoroughly enjoyed that first voyage with Caroline, and I felt as if I had achieved what I always wanted: a girlfriend who shared my passion for sailing.

Life was good. I had my well paid job as a City investment banker, with a glittering future career ahead of me, a red 2-seater sports car, a yacht, and a girlfriend who loved sailing. At 22 years old, I felt incredibly proud of what I'd achieved at a young age. I had vanquished the miserable bullied school years, and dealt with my unhappy and insecure single years, when I had been so hopelessly incompetent and abysmally unsuccessful at getting a girlfriend.

I imagined that we would buy a house, have kids and live happily ever after, enjoying all the luxuries of wealthy people: multiple holidays to exotic locations, skiing in the winter, a second home in the countryside, a nanny and a housekeeper, and beautiful children who we would send to good schools to receive a quality education, to become whatever they wanted to be in life and reach their full potential.

What could possibly go wrong?

Next chapter...

This is a story about basic human needs...

For a very long time I've been complaining about how slowly life has been progressing. It has been a source of immense boredom, frustration, annoyance, irritation, loneliness, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, exasperation, exhaustion and a general waste of my limited mortal lifespan, to have to sit around waiting for the hands of the clock to move; for the grains of sand in the hourglass to fall one-by-one through the narrow opening, at an agonisingly slow rate.

I've viewed life's core problems as fourfold: work, money, love and home. I can survive without a job, but I'm on borrowed time - eventually my savings and credit will be exhausted and I'll become destitute. I can survive without money, provided some good Samaritan is kind enough to offer food and lodgings for free. I can survive without love, but without it life seems pointless and unpleasant; not worth living for. I can survive with quite primitive shelter, but it's immensely damaging for my sense of wellbeing and self-esteem to be sleeping rough in Kensington Palace Gardens, for example.

Getting a job is probably the easiest of all the problems to solve. I've always been very employable and I command a high rate of remuneration wherever I am. My skills can be put to good use almost anywhere, mercifully.

Getting money follows as a natural consequence of getting a job. So long as I'm well enough to work, money will quickly follow. Mercifully, money flows in at a rapid rate, which can relatively quickly replenish my depleted savings and enable me to spend money on other things which are very cash-hungry, such as housing.

Getting a nice house is a little bit trickier sometimes as I'm occasionally classified as "self employed" and expected to prove to an unreasonable degree that my earning potential is far in excess of my financial obligations. I've previously been asked to pay an entire year's rent in advance, which is particularly unreasonable. To tie-up an entire year's rent in a single lump-sum payment poses significant cashflow problem, even for a high earner, especially if there is furniture to purchase and other moving-related expenses. To furnish my house with just the basics has been expensive and exhausting, and my bedroom still lacks a wardrobe and a chest-of-drawers. There is a long way still to go with furnishing my house.

Getting love seems like the final hurdle. I have very low self-esteem if I'm not working, earning, able to spend money and living somewhere lovely. So many people will ask "what have [I] got to offer anybody?" and tell me that I should be single, but those people are wrong. Sure, it might be a mistake to be in a bad relationship purely because of being too afraid of being alone, but it's so often those who have been happily married for years, who have forgotten how truly awful it is to be lonely, who offer the unsolicited advice that being single must be brilliant fun. It's not. I hate dating.

There are two important things I need to write about.

Firstly, I can settle for temporary relationships of convenience and turn a blind eye to red flags. I can make things work with a person who ultimately I can see I have no long-term future with. However, I never take my eyes off the prize. I know when I meet somebody very special - an incredibly rare event - and I know the difference between love, lust, temporary infatuation, and comfortable relationships which are only marginally better than being single. I'm quite capable of having a lovely time with somebody - something casual - but I have always maintained the hope of meeting somebody I'm really well matched with, who hopefully I can have a much more serious, loving relationship with. I have only been in love twice in my life, with a third time which was very promising but was never able to come to fruition - we'll never know what might have been. I use the word "love" very carefully and sparingly. When I say "I love you" or suchlike, a lot of thought has gone into what I'm saying, and there are deep feelings behind those words; those words are not said cheaply or easily, without a great deal of thought and scrutiny of my emotions.

Secondly, breakups do cause me a lot of distress, but I am not the kind of person who's unable to handle a breakup without it threatening my safety. Indeed, I very actively avoid the situation where I feel as though my world would be destroyed, leaving me suicidal, if I lost the love of my life. It's extremely unwise to over-invest in something so fragile as a human relationship, even if it appears to be fully reciprocated. I've been through divorce, so I know that even the most solemn of vows and binding of legal contracts, with the lengthy preceding relationship, is not enough to give any guarantees of security. I don't like unpleasant sudden surprises which will cause my life quality to be massively adversely affected, hence why I was so shaken by the events of last week, but even somebody who I'm totally in love with is not duty-bound to stay with me, for fear of me committing suicide. I would never say "if you leave me I'll kill myself" or commit suicide in direct response to a breakup.

Last week, my job was going incredibly well, my finances were in great shape, my house was looking amazing and my romantic relationship was awesome. I had a long weekend planned, which was going to begin with getting a kitten, and be spent in a state of domestic bliss, with the girl of my dreams, in an amazing home, loads of money in the bank, brilliant job and with a cute little fur baby scampering around.

Then, things looked like they were going to get ruined.

It's not that I was going to lose the relationship which was the sole reason why I went from on-top-of-the-world to suicidally depressed, but that the accompanying awfulness was too much to bear, as a sudden shock. Of course, I wouldn't have lost my money, my house or my job, but the approaching weekend - which I had been looking forward to so much - had a completely different complexion, as a suddenly single man.

What actually happened was that my girlfriend and I drove to pick up my little kitten, full of excitement and anticipation, drove the delightful little furball back to my amazing house, had delicious wine and Chinese takeaway and spend an amazing evening with my playful affectionate new pet. We woke up with a purring fur baby in bed with us. We spent the weekend on the sofa, eating delectable food, sharing our passion for similar cultural entertainment, and making a fuss over the cute little kitten... the most perfect weekend imaginable.

The difference between what actually happened and what could have happened might not seem great enough to have prompted the decision to not get a kitten and to hang myself, but we must be aware that it has been a very long hard journey from sleeping in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens - utterly destitute - to get to this point.

Breakups have caused me a great deal of trauma in the past, with my divorce being the most extreme example, which tore through my life destroying nearly everything, myself included. However, I know what love is and I know what kind of life I want. I know the core elements that will make my life pleasant, liveable, sustainable and full of joy. I'm no fool: I know what I've got to do, and I've been patiently rebuilding my life, choosing very carefully.

As I write this, I have my little kitten peacefully napping on my chest, as I'm lying on my chaise-longue in a parquet-floored period home, with huge high ceilings and massive bay windows. I've had a great day at work and I've earned a lot of money. I have a beautiful girlfriend who I think is amazing, who will be coming to see me later. My life is exceptionally awesome.

How will I react if the relationship ends? Who can say? What I can say with certainty though, is that I've dealt with exceptional adversity in my life and survived, and of course I am incredibly unlikely to hurt myself while I still have the energy to keep fighting and patiently battling to achieve a decent quality of life.

Given some medical emergencies which have nearly claimed my life, and becoming totally destroyed by my divorce, perhaps I should be happy to live in a dumpster, in rags, with no love at all; perhaps I should just be happy that I'm not dead. No. I'm not content to merely be alive. I want it all: love, money, job and house... and a little kitten.

I hope that things work out with my girlfriend and I. I think she's amazing and I think we're really well matched, but who knows how things are going to pan out in future. Of course, I hope that she's "the one" but it's early days. If things don't work out, that's life - I still get to keep my great job, my great house and I still have the love of my little kitten.

This might sound quite different from how I sounded last week, but you have to understand the massive disappointment that I was facing. I would be disappointed if things didn't pan out with my girlfriend, but it doesn't have to be so devastating and shocking and sudden. Life is usually a little more stable and predictable.

Anyway, I had a great weekend of domestic bliss.

Tags: #relationships #suicide #kitten #cat #house #moving #career #money #capitalism

This is a story about broken dreams...

Here on the former site of Mount Cardboard are some of the various kitten-wrangling devices which I've purchased this week. I had been planning on collecting my gorgeous little bengal kitten tomorrow... perhaps at lunchtime. I've been wanting to get another cat for years and years. I've missed having a house and a cat. I've missed normal domestic life.

The only thing I'm missing is kitten food.

I need to go to the supermarket to buy kitten food.

In the small hours of this morning I decided I was going to buy rope instead.

Here's where I was going to tie the rope. I checked the height - there's enough.

Whether I bought kitten food or rope hinged on whether my life was "ruined" or not.

I've been through some ridiculously rough patches of my life. I've solved some ludicrously hard problems. I've overcome some incredible obstacles. How on earth could my life be "ruined" when there are so many good things which have been happening lately? How can my life be "ruined" when I've been talking so positively and with such excitement about the future? How can my life be "ruined" when I've gone to such extreme lengths to get myself into a secure position, financially, in the esteem of my work colleagues and in terms of settling in a great house in a great city?

I was so excited about getting a little bengal kitten and I knew that they love to play with water, so I bought this ridiculously expensive water fountain thing. I enjoyed assembling it. I took great pleasure from having such a nice thing for my kitten, hopefully making her life a little better. I want my cat's life to be as happy as it can possibly be.

I cannot have a kitten and kill myself. If I get a kitten, I'm staying alive to look after the cat; I'll be staying alive for my pet.

In the small hours of the morning, I decided I wasn't going to get the kitten anymore. I was going to buy rope, not kitten food.

How can this be? How can I be so unstable, when I seem to settled and secure?

To get to this point, where I was in an exclusive relationship with a girl who I'm absolutely crazy about, in a beautiful house, doing a job which I'm really good at, working on a flagship project for a massive organisation, with plenty of money flowing in... to get here was really f**king hard.

I cannot over-emphasise how hard it was to get to this point. I cannot stress enough just how difficult it has been to put all the pieces of a brand new life together. I cannot be excessively hyperbolic when I say that the journey to this point has exhausted every ounce of cunning, patience, perseverance and various other things, that I possess. I'm spent.

When I should have been thinking about buying kitten food, I switched to thinking about buying rope.

My life could collapse like falling dominoes. The plan to go and collect my kitten with the girl of my dreams, and bring the kitten home to the house of my dreams, all paid for with the job of my dreams... it would collapse so easily. The relationship has been damaged by events outside of my control, which threatens to ruin what had been an absolutely amazing thing up until last night. Losing the relationship means I can no longer keep myself safe, so I would have to hospitalise myself, which in turn jeopardises my job, which in turn jeopardises my house... and everything crumbles to dust.

I'm not being melodramatic. "The world's longest suicide note" exists because my life has been in danger for so long. I thought I was getting to a safe, secure, stable, sustainable place, but I suddenly realised that I had used up all my emotional reserves and I had no capacity to absorb a catastrophic event, such as losing this girl I'm crazy about. Yes, I'm scarily over-invested. Yes, it's dumb to make myself so vulnerable to events beyond my control, but I had allowed myself to believe I was going to get everything I want.

Then, suddenly, I was going to lose everything.

Of course, to you, the outside observer, you can't imagine losing everything but I really can because I've had to rebuild my life from scratch. Like, I've had to start from zero, zilch, zip, nada. I literally don't have any salt in my house, for example - I haven't run out... it's just one of a million items that I haven't yet replaced, because I had to start my life all over again, from nothing.

I know how it goes. I know how one thing leads to another. I know how a health problem - for example - can snowball into a catastrophe that destroys an entire life.

That's why I was going to buy rope, not kitten food.

I'm not prepared to lose everything again, and unfortunately I didn't feel like I had the reserves to be able to deal with a major setback. I really f**king like this girl, and it's unfair that the relationship got messed up by some outside actors. It was completely ridiculously crazily awful that this s**t got rained down on my head, just as my life was starting to come together.

It might seem crazy to throw away so much because of losing one "small" part - something which could be replaced - but I think you're failing to understand how vulnerable it's made me, working so hard for so long, in order to restore myself to health, wealth, love and prosperity. I've had enough of endlessly battling and struggling and striving. Time for the rope.

I'm not going to buy the rope. I'm never going to buy the rope. I know that it'll be incredibly hard if the relationship which was totally amazing is irreparably damaged, and I'm lonely and single, and my beautiful bengal kitten is almost a reminder of what might have been but I know that if I collect the kitten tomorrow, I'm going to look after her for the rest of her life. Yes, it'll f**king suck that a couple of dicks maliciously f**ked up my relationship, but I'll have to take things philosophically: if my relationship was so fragile that it couldn't withstand those malicious dicks, then how long could it have lasted anyway? Yes, I genuinely believe I'll never find another girl who's as perfect as this one, but then that's a lot of unhelpful pressure, isn't it? Better to try to get my feelings back under control and stop getting carried away.

You can forgive me getting carried away, can't you?

Literally the last thing I had to buy to make my life complete was some kitten food (oh, and maybe some salt) and then my life was ready to welcome a little kitten into it. All the pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place. My life was seriously awesome, and getting more and more awesome all the time.

Then how on earth could I have seriously contemplated hanging myself in my hallway then?

I might look tough, I might have survived against incredible odds and I might have achieved unbelievable things, but it all takes its toll. I didn't even realise how close to the wind I've been sailing until I burst into tears in the office car park, despite the fact that I was planning on buying rope, not kitten food after work.

I know what I'm like. I know how calmly I would have just gone about the business of hanging myself. I know that I wouldn't have hesitated for a second.

I'm sick and tired of working so hard, and having my life ruined by things which are beyond my control. I'm sick and tired of getting so close, only to have some major shit which didn't need to happen - shouldn't have happened - spoil everything.

Perhaps it's ludicrously frightening to think that I would have gone and bought rope - instead of kitten food - and hanged myself, seemingly over something relatively inconsequential and solvable, versus almost every other major problem I've overcome in my life.

Does this mean I'm dangerously unstable; at risk of suicide all the time? No.

I'm under incredible pressure at work. Dating has been exhausting. Moving house and furnishing the place has been excessively demanding. There's been a perfect storm in my life, and yet I came so close to having everything work out, that it was an intolerable cruelty to have a malicious vindictive act perpetrated against me, causing so much damage. But, hey, s**t happens.

I need to go buy kitten food and other things now. You probably shouldn't worry about me. I'd be dead by now and I'd never have warned anybody if I was going to do it. You definitely won't get any warning if I'm going to kill myself, but you should be reassured that the plan is to get the kitten at lunchtime tomorrow, and then I'm damn well staying alive for that cat's whole life.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being protective...

I read something the other day that said "imagine that you have a daughter and she's dating somebody like you". The suggestion was that if you wouldn't be happy with your own daughter being treated the way that you treat women, then you need to think long and hard about your behaviour and attitudes, and change.

The short answer to the question of whether I should be dating anyone's daughter or not is a pretty easy one: I try to be kind, considerate, respectful and honest; I try to bring joy to the life of the object of my affections, doing fun stuff and generally acting with a great deal of enthusiasm and passion for the things they love.

What's the catch?

If you're looking to find something wrong with me - a reason to reject me - then there's ample ammunition here, provided in exquisite gory detail on the pages of this website, which unflinchingly documents every aspect of my life and the contents of my brain, throughout a 4-year period, in an incredibly candid manner which is not usually found outside of a private journal/diary.

For those who seek to reject, they will find what they're looking for. My past is my past, and although I have the option of expunging my digital identity from the internet - erasing history - it would run contrary to a very meticulous and exhaustive exploration of a substantial period of my life, which was deliberate. We need to remember this: I deliberately wrote down things which were unflattering about myself, because my mission has always been to document things with as little self-censorship as possible.

Of course, I don't want to be harshly criticised or ridiculed, so sometimes I have tentatively written about the so-called "bad stuff" with caution, at first. We've all lived lives where we've made mistakes. We all have regrets. Nobody is perfect. We all have insecurities. We all respond badly under particularly adverse conditions. Whether it's something we said which was needlessly hurtful and/or caused upset/offence, whether it was an act of poor judgement, or whether it was something like a silly mistake which was quite embarrassing, we all carry these things around, and we never talk about them, let alone write them all down and publicly publish them.

I'm half-tempted to signpost people to the periods of my life which were most difficult, so that they can judge me and reject me based on something from the past which I have no power to alter. If you wish to reject a person, you're going to be able to find something, if you meticulously examine their entire history in search of something which ordinarily would be inaccessible to you - very few people have written and published so much about themselves, which leaves them so exposed to prejudice.

This is deliberate.

I ask the reader to follow the story, not to dig for dirt. The story is interesting because it has a beginning, a middle and an end. If you simply want to skim-read and find 'whodunnit' then you've missed the point: I'm a living, breathing person who is continuously telling my story, which has not yet ended. To know who I am and the nature of my character is best done by travelling along with me for a little while, here in the present, where you will find that I make my very best efforts to write every single day, and to do so with brutal honesty.

To study my past is cynical. It might tell you why my character is the way that it is, but it will not tell you what my character is, because we live in the present, not in the past; things are constantly changing.

If you're interested enough in me to go back through the archives, which stretch to over 1.2 million words, then I'm flattered that you would take such an interest in me, but I really don't wish to be held accountable for a version of myself that no longer exists. The very nature of this project has been to hold myself publicly accountable, and I'm very grateful to my readers, who are often kind enough to give me feedback that is relevent in the present.

I'm in an exclusive relationship with a very beautiful young woman, who I'm absolutely crazy about. We've deleted our dating profiles. We're cautiously but optimistically exploring the future, together. This website is incredibly tempting for not only her, but also those who care about her, in order to find things out about me.

In the ordinary world, we share relatively few details: we know where somebody works, what their highest academic qualification is and which institution awarded the diploma, and we perhaps know some details about whether they have siblings and if their parents are still alive. We attempt to distill a person down to a curriculum vitæ because it's more convenient shorthand than 1.2 million words, plus the messy complexity of a human being, who invariably refuses to be neatly pigeon-holed.

"What do you do?" is the classic middle-class question which attempts to get directly to the point: are you one of us?

I have a respectable job, a respectable house. I dress quite conservatively and I like to think of myself as well-mannered. Clearly, I can speak and write to confer the impression of possessing a modest intellect. I'm not addicted to illegal drugs, in financial distress and I haven't fathered a string of abandoned children. I haven't killed anybody or otherwise been convicted of a crime. What's not to like?

I'm undergoing very thorough security vetting - a process taking several months - and I work on an extremely high-profile project for an organisation which is a household name. One would have thought that I'm a good chap.

However, perhaps it's only those who are truly fearful for themselves and those who they feel protective about - for example daughters and any living parent - who would bother to do the due diligence of putting "Nick Grant" into Google. My colleagues see me confidently and competently doing good work every day, so why would they ever suspect that I would do something so unusual as to publish a vast trove of unflattering information about myself?

We are usually content that if a person has had a great career spanning a long period of time, working for illustrious organisations, then they are a trustworthy individual of fine character. However, I invite you to dig through the archives if you feel that you must... but I ask you to question why you are doing that: what you are hoping to find? I promise you that if you are seeking to expose me as a sham, then you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for any mistake I've ever made, in my entire life, you will find plenty and you will have the thing you wanted - a reason to reject me - or in fact a single tiny piece of information that tells you a minuscule amount about the history which has shaped the man I am today.

I caution you against making a judgement based on the chapter of a book which you opened at random, but I have nothing to hide: I'm one of the most thoroughly documented individuals who you're ever likely to be able to study, with the exception of course of those who are noteworthy and notorious enough to have had an archivist preserve their journals for academics to fetishise.

Is this an ego project? No. This is a coping mechanism and a form of therapy. This is something that brings structure and routine to my life. This is something that has brought me new friends, as well as allowing old friends to keep up-to-date with my life; a life which has been atypical.

Happy hunting.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #privacy #relationships