Tag: frankie

I’m Impatient

This is a story about being in a hurry…

Wanting a girlfriend, a kitten and a house could hardly be said to be whimsical decisions that have I suddenly made with little thought put into them. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, a cat and a house for my whole adult life, and probably a lot of my adolescence too. My wants and needs are pretty basic; fundamental.

The amount of elapsed time it’s taken me to get a house, furnish it, start dating, meet some prospective love interests and find a kitten, has not taken me very long at all… by most normal people’s standards. According to my perceptions, time has been almost at a standstill: like watching a 3 hour long movie in ultra slow-motion, or perhaps having each of the 24 frames per second shown by a slide projector, one every minute. The last three months of my life have lasted 72 months, according to my warped perception of time.

I by no means want to make a hurried decision about important things such as embarking upon a serious relationship, but equally I am not a person who wishes to spend a vast amount of time, effort and money, eternally dating and never thinking about making a more earnest commitment.

My life feels quite incomplete without a feline friend. I find it improves my life immeasurably to have a furry face to greet me when I come home, and I never seem to get bored of playing with cats, and stroking them when they’re in the mood for human company – the sensation of a cat’s fur is instantly calming, soothing and stress relieving.

UK house prices are insanely overvalued, so I must temporarily console myself with a house owned by a bank – with a mortgage – or beholden to some other form of landlord who gets rich at my expense. However, at least I have some say over how I furnish and decorate my home, and I have the right to reasonably refuse entrance to anybody I want and feel safe behind my front door.

I might seem like a very impatient person, but you have to understand that I thought I had my life sorted at a surprisingly young age, but there were bumps in the road and I’m finding myself starting over – clean slate – in a new city and without much to show for all the struggle and effort I put in up until now. That’s why I’m so impatient: I very much know what I want and I know how to get it, because I already got what I wanted once already.

I have to wait a while to pick up my kitten because bengal breeders are pretty strict about when people are allowed to have them. The waiting is agonising. I have loads of photos and I get to go back for visits, but I hate waiting. I want to start bonding with my kitten right away.

I have my future life pictured very clearly and I can easily see the steps of how to get where I want to be. I never thought “I wish I didn’t get a kitten” or “I wish I didn’t buy a house” previously. I’m usually pretty good at knowing what’s going to make me feel like a happy, fulfilled, contented person. I’m usually pretty good at knowing what’s missing from my life.

It takes time to get everything we want and need, and the waiting is horrible, but I suppose I’ll get there in the end.

Tags: #kitten #moving #relationships #house #frankie #homeless

7 May 2019
Distractions

This is a story about feline friends…

The two best things about owning a house were getting a kitten and having a nice garden. The garden was not in a good state when I bought the house: the lawn was in a dreadful state, the borders were full of unattractive things which had self-seeded, the path was shoddy and the small shed was falling down.

Getting a kitten was amazing. Having a precious little fluffball to nurture was one of the best things I ever did in my life.

Working on the garden, planting an attractive deep herbaceous border in neat mulched flowerbeds, laying a straight path with nice pebbles and later building a summer house in the style of a giant beach hut, was enormously rewarding.

Today, my back garden is full of weeds and my house is empty except for me.

I miss having a cat.

The photo above is of a neighbour’s cat who strayed into my garden. I went outside to say hello but the cat ran away before I even stepped out of my back door. I suppose I should leave other people’s pets alone, but I see no harm in being kind to the neighbourhood cats, provided I’m not feeding them or letting them come in my house.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist getting a cat for very long. I lasted 2 months.

I’m hoping to pick up a beautiful little bengal kitten in a couple of weeks. She has the same name as my niece, which seemed like fate: it was meant to be. If you’re unfamiliar with the bengal breed, they’re like little tiny leopards – their fur markings or ‘spots’ are quite unlike any other domestic cat’s. I never pictured myself as an owner of a particular breed, but I had been interested in a few breeds: Maine Coons and Savannahs. Everything I heard about bengals made me want to own one, and soon hopefully I will.

I have lots of nice distractions in my life at the moment. Everything seems to be going according to plan.

I’m a strange fellow. Of course I want to chase girls. Of course I want sex. However, I also have a pretty strong nurturing instinct, which seems to take the guise of being a bit of a gardener and cat ‘parent’. I’m mad about cats.

I’m sure I can give a little kitty a really nice life. I’m sure no grown cat, having lived in a warm house and had a steady supply of cat food for its entire life, is ever going to tell me that it’s depressed and wishes it’d never been born. I can be pretty certain that I’m not going to have chosen the world’s first cat to be afflicted with existential angst.

It might seem pretty selfish wanting a cat; another mouth to feed on an overcrowded planet. The amount of meat that my carnivorous kitty is going to need to consume in her lifetime is certainly going to have an environmental impact. There are ethical questions about whether it’s right to domesticate wild animals like we do: for food and for harder to define reasons, such as having a feline companion.

I worry about whether my life is stable and secure enough to guarantee that this little kitten – collected in a few weeks – can have a very happy life, where she can be loved, cared for and live in a stimulating environment where her every feline need is met.

I feel like a pretty responsible adult, having taken reproductive precautions seriously enough to reach the age of 39 without having fathered any children who by now would be asking “why was I born into this terrible world?”. I’m not ruling out meeting somebody who I fall so utterly in love with that I might be convinced to start a family, but at the moment I’m glad that my nurturing instincts have been mostly curtailed with gardening and kittens.

Call it May Madness, if you like… I’m a little swept up in the joys of spring. I certainly worry that I’m making rash decisions, but I find it hard to be anything other than excited about soon collecting a little bundle of furry joy and bringing her home. You should expect a lot of cat pictures to be shared imminently, hence why I haven’t shared one of the cute little kitten today… there’s gonna be a lot coming soon!

Tags: #kitten #frankie

6 May 2019
Not My Finest Work

This is a story about doing a rushed job…

Here is a picture of my cat flap. I’ve been thinking about getting a cat because I miss having a furry friend and I think it would improve my life to have a pet in my life. Undoubtedly, having contact with pets is something which is beneficial to my mental health – I find it really stress relieving to stroke a cat, and I enjoy sharing my life with other living creatures. I think I would find it greatly comforting to have an animal to nurture.

I’m working very hard and my colleagues are super pleased with what I’m doing, but I can’t let my job totally define and consume me.

I’m trying very hard to find a girlfriend, but such things can’t be rushed. I have very limited control over when and where fate is going to match me up with somebody who’s got mutual feelings for me, worth embarking upon a relationship.

I’m trying somewhat less hard to make friends outside of work, because I’m simply flat-out.

My house is filled with mountains of boxes of unassembled flat-pack Ikea furniture and all of my stuff which still remains mostly in the cardboard boxes I used when moving. Some of the boxes have been opened and rummaged through for long-forgotten treasures, but some boxes are still sealed up with tape.

My clothes are mostly organised using the floordrobe system, where dirty clothes are piled up in one part of my bedroom, and clean ones in another.

I have more Ikea furniture arriving soon and I need to at least assemble a guest bed before I have my first visitor.

I’m hurriedly writing this, well aware that my sleep patterns have gotten out of sync with the corporate demands of capitalist society. It’s late. I’m tired.

I’m not saying a whole lot that’s very interesting or insightful, but these are my thoughts after a pretty punishing – although productive – week at the office. I veer violently from suicidal despair to arrogant delusions of grandeur, depending on whether I’m doing some really cool piece of work at the office, or whether I’m struggling to secure myself a romantic companion via the local dating scene.

I’m spending money like crazy, but it seems unavoidable given my need for a furnished home, plus I need to phone all the utility companies and tell them that it’s just me living here in this giant house all on my own, so they stop charging me zillions of pounds for supplying energy, water and other services which I barely use. I’m spending money on dating. I’m spending money on replacing some of my threadbare worn-out clothes.

It seems crazy to get a kitten, but it also seems like something which would bring a flood of much-needed oxytocin, given my rather isolated existence. It seems like something I could be in control of: I just need to find a kitten for sale locally and adopt it, and then I can immediately enjoy my new pet. Having a little kitten to lavish attention on, and to brighten my day, sounds so lovely. I think I would be really overjoyed to come home from work every day and be greeted by a tiny furry friend. I think my life is sorely missing an outlet for my nurturing side.

I’m producing great work at the office and I’m not doing too badly in the dating game, but both things are unhealthy to do obsessively, and neither can be rushed.

Sometimes the sun shines, like it did this evening, and I feel like life is going really well. Most of the time I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of meeting new friends and getting a girlfriend, which are going to be essential pieces of the puzzle if I’m going to have a happy life here in this new city.

My writing is suffering, but I’m trying my best to juggle everything. It’s pretty impressive that I’ve done so much in such a short space of time, but it’s still unfortunately not quite enough to have yielded a life which meets my basic ordinary and realistic needs, such as secure relationships, financial security, stability and suchlike.

It’s well past my bedtime. I’m struggling to catch up. The extra demands placed upon me have tipped the balance unfortunately to the point where I’m not quite managing to stay on top of everything. I’m balancing on a knife edge.

Tags: #pet #cat #kitten #frankie #moving #friends

11 April 2019
Human Lives are Cheap

This is a story about pets…

I love cats. Cats love me. My cat, Frankie, is so comfortable with me that I can zip him inside my jumper to keep him warm and he just happily snuggles up.

I read the other day that it took less than an hour to raise thousands of pounds for a cat that needed an operation at the vet. I’ve always taken the precaution of having pet insurance, because I would never want to have to make a cold hard financial decision about an animal that I kept as a pet, because I’m very emotionally attached – bonded – to Frankie.

A friend of mine has cycled thousands of miles across Europe to raise money to buy bicycles for impoverished families in Africa. These are not bicycles for leisure. They are an essential mode of transport for rural dwelling people, in order to be able to access education, employment and markets, without having to walk for hours and hours in blistering heat. Each bicycle can literally transform the prospects of an entire family overnight.

My friend who has so far covered about 2,000 miles, in over a month, has raised less than 25% of what the needy moggy managed to raise in less than an hour. I’m sure you’ll agree, that cycling thousands of miles in some of the steepest parts of the Alps, surely shows that it is not through lack of effort that his fundraising attempt has not been more fruitful so far.

It’s certainly not my intention to criticise or take anything away from his incredible feat, working so hard for such a good cause, to raise money for World Bicycle Relief by cycling across Europe. I’m totally in awe of what my friend is doing.

However, what saddens and disappoints me is how readily people will reach for their wallets when they think of a poor suffering furball, rather than a fellow human being.

Both my friend and I have been homeless. There seems to be an assumption that human beings are architects of their own demise, and animals are innocent creatures that need our protection. There seems to be an assumption that charity and governments are somehow working, to redistribute wealth and protect the needy and vulnerable. That simply isn’t the case.

Why do people wait, until their friends and relatives are in hospital or dead, before they say “I wish we knew what to do, before it was too late” and “if we knew things were that bad, we would have done something“?

Frankly though, this is horse shit.

We have a culture where we believe we are engaged in a desperate struggle just to “look after our own“. It’s simply not true.

It might feel like a desperate struggle, to prepare the kids packed lunches and hang the laundry out. It might feel like a desperate struggle to think that you might not get to take 3 foreign holidays this year if you or your partner loses your job, which you’re not going to. Things might feel like a desperate struggle because you’ve been reading too much damn tabloid journalism.

Until you’ve slept rough, barely been able to keep yourself clean, except with the occasional public shower, and barely been able to keep the clothes on your back from turning to dusty rags, you know fuck all about desperate struggle. However, even when you’re homeless in the UK, you still don’t tend to go without at least one hot meal a day: there are always soup kitchens and the Hare Krishna.

I don’t know what it takes to trigger some empathy, and the goddamn impulse to get up and do something but I’m fairly outraged by the pocket change that gets stuffed into a charity collection bucket, simply to salve a middle-class conscience.

You’ve probably completely misread my own situation. I live in a flat that costs me twice as much as a hostel bed, which is totally excellent value. I work a job that brings in enough money to pay down the debt that I ran up supporting myself when I was sick. Yes, that’s right. Instead of claiming incapacity benefit, housing benefit, council tax deductions and every other kind of government handout that I’m totally entitled to because I have major mental health issues instead I’ve funded it all out of my own pocket, and impoverished myself in the process.

Why would I do that? Well, because it’s easier to get the money you need to survive when you have fur, whiskers and paws.

I mean, for fucks sake, Syrian children are having to print out pictures of themselves with Pokémon so that we give a shit about them.

Sorry for the condescending tone. I’m just a bit pissed off that our idea of “helping our own” is a few likes and shares on Facebook.

The end.

Tags: #charity #frankie #homeless

30 July 2016
What Do I Tell My Kitten?

This is a story about bad news…

First and foremost, I’m a member of the human race, living on planet Earth. We all have the same needs: oxygen, food, water, warmth. The needs of our species are no different, depending on where you were born. We are virtually genetically identical, no matter what your passport says, and what colour your skin is.

Secondarily, I belong to the continent of Europe. I could probably swim across the English Channel to get to the mainland, and I’m certainly considering it in light of recent events. I don’t know if you remember this, but we even built a tunnel under the sea, so that we could be connected with our nearest national neighbour.

What even is a nation anyway? What are these fake divisions that we create? What are these lines on maps?

Do you think I can tell Frankie – my kitten – that he needs to stay within some kind of imaginary zone, whenever I let him out into the garden? Do you think he’ll understand that he’s allowed to play with cats who were born on a certain patch of dirt, and not others? Do you think Frankie feels proud when he sees a Union Jack flag?

How do I explain recent political events to my cat?

Frankie was rather fond of the French and German cat treats, but now that we have to import them and the value of the pound has plummeted, he may have to settle for bland English cat snacks. How do I make him understand that somehow this is because a bunch of people voted to cut themselves off from our neighbouring nations? How do I deal with his sad eyes, when he sees that he’s not getting his favourite food anymore? Do you think he’s pleased that I’m “buying British” and feels proud when he sees the little Union Jack on the can or packet of food?

Also, people are starting to be mean to poor Frankie, because he’s half black. Just because of the colour of his fur, people are shouting angry abuse at him. He doesn’t know why. He poops on everybody’s garden equally – he doesn’t discriminate based on fur colour. In fact, he’s kinda colour blind because he’s a cat.

How am I supposed to console poor Frankie, when he comes home meowing with sadness, because he feels less welcome in his own home than he used to? It’s not fair that he lives in a world of black & white, when he is neither pure black, or pure white… he straddles a border that has been invented by people who want to divide us all.

Shouldn’t kittens everywhere be free to roam, as if there were no borders between one garden and the next? Isn’t it better for a kitten to be able to play with whichever cats he wants to, without having to check their pet passport, and ask to see their family tree?

Where do we draw the line? I’m not even sure of Frankie’s ancestry, because he’s a cat, and we don’t keep a record of the births, deaths and marriages of cats. For all I know, his parents were Pakistani stowaways and here in the country ‘illegally‘. He doesn’t look like an alien, he looks like a cat, but perhaps he’s not welcome, because of which particular bit of dirt he happened to be born on at any one time.

How do I explain to him, that because of his fur colour, people assume that he’s not British, and he’s therefore unwelcome in the place of his birth? How do I explain to him, that a bunch of people want to “send him home” when he’s already home? Where the hell is his home, anyway? Where do you want to send him, you beastly idiots?

As the parent of a kitten, how am I supposed to explain any of this to such an innocent creature? He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He just wants to eat cat food, sleep in the sunshine and shit in your flower bed. He doesn’t even want to hurt a mouse – he just likes playing with them and leaving them as little presents outside the back door.

Chucking Frankie out of ‘your‘ country, because he’s got a bit of black fur won’t help you. Discriminating against my cat is not going to get you a job, it’s not going to get you a council house, it’s not going to reduce the queue at the doctors or reduce the class size at your school.

I have a cat because he improves my life. All those fluffy cuddle times. The relaxation I get from stroking his lovely soft fur. My life is better with a black & white cat in my life. I’m glad he’s here.

Yes, sure, I’m scared about my job security, and whether any human children I might have will have everything their heart desires. But, I know that being mean to a bunch of innocent kittens isn’t going to solve the problems in this country.

Cats enrich our lives, wherever they were born. Cats come over here, eat our food, take up space in our favourite seat, don’t even work. But, I’m certainly grateful for what cats bring to my life. I’m happy to see their little whiskery faces, no matter what colour their fur is and where they were born.

Yes, OK, maybe it’s not you who is being mean to cats, but your actions certainly legitimised the abuse of poor kittens. Because you sided with the bunch who want to discriminate against cats of a certain fur colour, you ended up supporting their cause. Because of your selfishness, cats like Frankie don’t feel welcome in their own home, just because he’s got some black fur.

You might think that you voted in the interests of your own kittens, but all kittens are equally fluffy, cute and loveable. Why do you think it’s OK to be mean to my kitten, by trying to put the needs of your kitten ahead of the whole of the rest of kittendom?

All cats should be treated equally, and dividing them along lines that they can’t even understand is barbaric. Cats can’t read the nationality on their pet passport. Cats can’t read maps and understand the concept of national borders. Cats can’t sing national anthems or salute the flag. Cats are scared by the sound of guns. Cats aren’t able to stupidly glorify war and killing.

Can’t we all just celebrate the joy that cats bring to our lives?

Think of the kittens.

Look at the sadness in those eyes. Heartbreaking

Tags: #frankie

27 June 2016
Race to the Bottom

This is a story about selling eyeballs…

You ever wonder why your email is free, Facebook is free, YouTube is free, most of the stuff you can find on the internet is free?

Most companies need to have either a freemium or an ad-supported business model now. Most businesses must endure an army of freetards, who demand the highest possible product standards, but aren’t prepared to pay a penny. They will spend their precious time criticising you and your product, but they won’t spend a single cent.

In the fierce race to capitalise a market, to monopolise, to acquire the biggest number of users, companies must invest so much in their products, and not hamper growth by introducing advertising too intrusively, or by making people pay.

There’s really only one place that things can end up: the biggest players dominate everything, and have to fight over a finite amount of ad revenue and market insight data. Eventually, one tech company can do it all, own it all, dominate the entire market.

At the moment Facebook is the clear favourite for me. I spend far more time looking at curated content on Facebook, than I do searching for new content via Google or on YouTube. I’m interested in what my friends are interested in. My Facebook feed contains far more things that I’m interested in than I can possibly read and watch during my waking hours. There simply isn’t enough time left for me to do my own content discovery.

Facebook has also started to take over from my use of email and instant messaging services. It’s a kinda convenient one-stop-shop for staying in touch with my network of friends and family. It’s all nicely bundled together in one place. You can cancel your account any time you want, but you can never leave.

Google’s arse is being well and truly kicked at the moment, in terms of growth. Facebook knows so much about us, the advertising can be super targeted. Facebook knows where I’ve been, who I’ve been there with, when I went there, how often I go there. It knows where I went to school, what I studied. It knows who my family are. It knows who I stay most in contact with. It knows what I ‘like‘ and what links I click on. It knows what videos I watch, and what content I scroll right past.

Ok, so I’m an early adopter. I sometimes queue up to get Apple products on the day they launch. Apple are presently the world’s biggest company, by market capitalisation (number of shares in issue, multiplied by the share price) but they’re far more anti-competitive than Microsoft ever were. Safari comes pre-installed on my Macbook and I never get asked if I would like a different browser.

Apple are trying to dominate the ad space by forcing app developers to go through their iAds platform and blocking any other advertising. They’re trying to leverage their strong position as a software and hardware platform, to gain the biggest share of the lucrative advertising revenue. Eventually, they’re going to land up in legal hot water.

Facebook is far better placed to become the dominant platform for advertisers and companies looking to gain market insight. It’s entirely fair that when I use a free website, that the terms and conditions state that they can show me adverts and use my data. It’s not fair that when I buy a £600 smartphone, it somehow limits what I can see on the internet. It’s not fair if Apple start selling my private location data, my phone usage habits etc.

In the bizarre world of the battles between the world’s largest tech companies, you might be surprised to learn that for every Google Android phone sold, Microsoft make the most profit. That’s because Google have to pay patent royalties to Microsoft. The important silicon chips inside your smartphone, make a healthy profit for a company that didn’t even manufacture them. That company is ARM, who license the chip designs to manufacturers, and take a royalty payment for every chip that gets made.

The legal battles that are brewing will eclipse everything ever seen before. The amount of money that is at stake is unprecedented.

But what happens if you extrapolate? Well, basically, you will probably get given a free phone, the whole concept of paying for software or subscription services will completely disappear, but your privacy, your data will be completely up for grabs to the highest bidder, along with your eyeballs, which will be continually bombarded by targeted ads.

Ancillary industries, like music and film production, and writing, will be consumed into this dominant giant, and high quality content will only exist as the bait for your eyeballs. You won’t be able to read another book without there being some kind of product placement having been woven into the plot. Authors have to eat too.

The fact is, that the era of the busker or the indie musician is over. People think that the number of Facebook fans that you have or the number of Twitter followers is somehow directly monetisable, so the idea of chucking 50 pence into a hat or paying for music is unthinkable to the freetard army.

Naturally, with all the advertising money washing around, people who are creating content, simply because they are creative individuals with time and talent on their hands, are simply drowned out in a sea of noise created by the paid content creators. You have no money to market your content, so nobody will even find it or consume it. There’s no reason for it to exist, if it’s not pushing some product or service.

In fact, traditional goods & services are having their revenues squeezed. Why would you buy a travel guidebook when you have TripAdvisor and a load of ad-supported websites that you can browse on your smartphone, virtually anywhere in the world? The fact that the travel guidebook at least maintains a degree of commercial impartiality is missed by many people, who will end up eating in restaurants or staying in hotels that have paid to be written about.

We don’t tend to pay at all, or pay very little, for our news sources. That means that those news outlets are getting the lions share of their revenue from advertising, which exercises at least a kind of censorship over unfavourable news coverage, if not outright direction over how real life events are reported. How can you trust news sources with such commercial interests behind them?

You might think that because I’ve hacked away at some bit of software, making an app or a website, in some trendy co-working space in the heart of Tech City, that’s the reason why it’s trending on Twitter, that’s the reason it’s ‘going viral‘. Actually, most social media campaigns – even the viral ones – are planned and executed by a sophisticated service industry that caters to those who wish to market themselves using the modern mediums.

I often wonder what the point of Twitter is. I have a bot that follows somebody, and their bot messages me back to say thanks for following them. Are there any real people on Twitter, or is it all bots, releasing content at strategically timed intervals, and doing their robotic interactions in a way that’s been designed to appear humanlike?

We have loads of stats & data that tell us about content engagement. How much do we mould ourselves, and how we act, in order to increase that engagement? How often do we think about how many ‘likes‘ we’re going to get on a Facebook comment, just before we hit the ‘post‘ button.

Frankly, I’ve tried to detach myself. I’m just writing relatively blindly. I can see how many Facebook likes I get and I can see how many link clicks I get on Twitter, but broadly speaking, I have no idea how many people read what I write, when they read it, where they’re based in the world. If I did have those stats, that data, it could start to corrupt the integrity of what I’m trying to do.

That’s the most interesting thing of all to me. That I’ve been able to write the equivalent of two novels of content, and publish it into the public domain, with barely anybody noticing. That shows just how much noise there is out there. That shows just how much content everybody is churning out, into the ether. I could have whispered all my secrets into the hollow of an ancient tree that was about to be felled, for all the difference it would have made to the world.

It felt daring at first, churning this stuff out. But now there’s just this dawning realisation that everybody’s doing the same thing. There’s so many “me too!” folks and wannabe authors, musicians and filmmakers out there in the big wide world, that you can really say or do anything you want, safe in the anonymity of noise.

Welcome to the global silent disco. Headphones on, zoned out

Tags: #computing #privacy #frankie #socialmedia

15 January 2016
Advent Calendar (Day Twenty-Three)

This is a story about the eve of Christmas Eve…

Frankie has done all his Christmas shopping and wrapped all his presents. He also knows what he’s going to do on Christmas Day: eat cat food and sleep. Much like every other day then.

Cats don’t wear clothes, have pockets, wallets, understand the concept of a job, or money, or presents or giftwrapping, or the Gregorian calendar, or the significance of certain days on the Gregorian calendar. Consumer society completely baffles them.

Here’s a little message to keep you going until Christmas Day

Tags: #frankie

24 December 2015
Advent Calendar (Day Four)

This is a story about life support…

I was in a metaphorical coma for 4 years. I was virtually on life support for the first 2 years, and then I woke up to find my wife and parents trying to turn off the ‘machines‘ that were keeping me alive. Shame on them. I gave up on life and spent the next 2 years at death’s door, in and out of hospital.

The first 2 years, there was nothing anybody could do. Having suffered 6 years at the hands of somebody so unfaithful, cruel and abusive, my body & mind finally gave out on me. I cracked, collapsed, capitulated. The crash was inevitable. You just can’t abuse somebody for so long and expect them to just suck it up.

Two years might sound like a long amount of time to ‘care‘ for somebody, but if all you’re doing is going on dating websites and taking holidays using my money then it’s not all bad. I don’t even care about the money. I’m open hearted. I pay it forwards. If you take and you don’t give back, then I know that you pay a debt of guilt. I know that if you have a moral bone in your body, you know what the true balance of karma is.

Actually, not a lot of caring went on. During my first hospital admission, my ex-wife didn’t even ask about visiting hours, the phone number to contact me or bother making any plans to come visit. The moment I was admitted to hospital, she jumped right on those websites and started arranging to meet people. What a c**t.

Oh, sorry… I’m not supposed to be bitter about stuff. Yes, I’m supposed to be the punchbag. I’m not supposed to have feelings. I’m supposed to be a pincushion. If you prick me, I’m not supposed to bleed. I’m supposed to be inhuman. But insofar as I can tell, I’m very much human. Sorry about that.

I suppose she’s human too, although it’s hard to imagine when she treated me so inhumanely. I suppose she was probably a sex addict or something. Definitely some psychological problems, but who am I to judge? I’m just the guy who was nearly killed by her narcissism and selfishness.

I wonder how you can move on like that. Destroying somebody, putting them in hospital, and then just immediately thinking about the next victim. I wonder what kind of callousness, lack of empathy, psychopathy, allows you to expend a human life and move on as if it was nothing.

I suppose if you’ve decided that you want another boyfriend or husband because you don’t like the one you’ve got, the best thing to do is probably abuse them until they kill themself. It’s a lot quicker and easier than just breaking up with them. I guess she had moved on, which is why she thought it was OK to go on dating websites while I was fighting for my life.

What difference does having a supportive partner make anyway? What difference does having supportive parents make? It can’t be very much. The parents should just support the partner who’s going to be bereaved and help to finish off the sick and weakened person. Yup the sick person is a lost cause, so it’s a good idea to hurry death along a bit.

My parents initially refused to help at all. They refused to help either of us. Then they started abusing me too, but I can see that it was probably an ill-advised attempt at ‘tough love‘. Well guess what? I’d had my fill of tough love having my face smashed in by my partner.

Then my parents did what she wanted, which was to get me out of the way so she could go on dating websites as if she was single and had managed to buy a house on her pathetic salary. Yes, she quite liked the house that I paid for. She did let me have the deposit back when we divorced, but only because my solicitor fought for it. I just wanted my life. I told her to take as much as she wanted, and horrifyingly she wanted it all, including my life!

Perhaps this horrible treatment had something to do with prolonging the first terrible 2 years. I was a bit like a car running on 3 cylinders, spluttering and coughing, kangarooing down the road. There were opportunities for recovery. There were periods of improvement. However, the toxic atmosphere still persisted. You just can’t recover when your partner wants you dead and your parents are co-operating with them.

I’m pretty canny. I know how to choose my battles wisely. I knew that it would drive me insane if I tried to battle the abusive shits head-on. You just can’t win a battle where you’re outnumbered and weakened. If you want to live, you need to curl up in a ball and protect your vital organs, and wait for the blows to stop being rained down on your head. You need to play dead.

So my ex-wife took her loot and ran for the hills, leaving me bruised and bloody in the gutter. I don’t begrudge her taking her share. She paid into our joint finances, and took far more than that, but it’s not her fault that she’s so sick that she can’t do the basic maths. She felt entitled, to damages perhaps? But it was me who was damaged. It was me who was left fighting for my life. It was me who was nearly dead.

I just wanted her out of my life after she said she’d rather I was dead and marked my suicide note in red pen, with loads of abuse all over it (she’s a teacher, you see… so that’s OK, right?). She was homocidal. I’m not saying she’s a murderer (that I know about) but it’s pretty worrying behaviour. Certainly a breach of the “in sickness and in health” marriage vows we made to each other. What a c**t.

Oh sorry, almost a bit of bitterness there. Except it’s passing now. Now that I know that I’m free, and I’m alive, and I’m somewhat recovered from where I was 2 years ago, when we finally separated. It was a very close call. Apparently probate is a lot easier than divorce. That was her preference anyway, to be widowed rather than divorced. That’s what she said to me. What a c… oh, hang on, I’m now starting to feel pity for her, rather than bitterness.

Yes, I’m wondering what could drive a person to have such careless disregard for a human life. It’s rather worrying. She must have had some pretty horrible stuff happen to her as a kid. Yes, I really pity her. What a sad messed up person. What a shame. She is very smart and I found her very attractive, although a lot of people wouldn’t fancy her. I was totally in love with her, even though she was very hard to love.

I really hope she learnt some stuff from our relationship. I know that I did. When a recent ex-girlfriend started throwing abuse and plates and knives at my head, I dumped her immediately. She was a feisty Italian lovable little thing, but there’s no future for me with somebody who thinks that kind of abuse is acceptable. When another girlfriend started using abusive language towards me, I told her I didn’t like it and asked her politely to stop, and she did. That seems more normal to me, more healthy.

I think alcohol and drugs can be dangerously disinhibiting. I don’t think my Italian ex was drunk at the time but she was probably high on drugs or on a comedown. I have no idea. It’s just an excuse anyway. Those things are not changing your character, they are just revealing what lurks beneath the surface. They are showing you what that person is really like, under the surface.

When you get drunk or you get high, you are testing yourself to the limits. You are effectively putting yourself into an extreme situation that would never occur in normal life, except during exceptional circumstances. You are switching the mode in your brain to a state that it would normally only enter because of a response to something very unusual.

By taking drink or drugs, you are going to trigger fight or flight responses in yourself. When I got very upset with my ex-wife, I used to get in a taxi, or drive to an airport. I’m a lover not a fighter, so it’s the flight response, not the fight response, that gets triggered in me. I left our joint birthday party in 2006 because she was having a tantrum and saying she was having a horrible time.

I called the cab for both of us, but she was having such a horrible time that she wanted to stay, so that everybody could see how horrible it was for her, having a massive party. What was horrible for me was seeing the girl I loved very upset. I was trying to take her away from a situation that she was telling me was horrible for her.

Another time, she was having such a horrible time, sitting on a sofa with my friends, with me excluded for some reason. It was so horrible for her, having all these friends around her, caring about her. It must be so horrible to be loved by somebody who cares and wants to make you happy and protect you from horrible things. That must be horrible. I drove to Gatwick Airport, because I didn’t know what to do. The flight response.

Yes, I fly, I don’t fight. I can fight, but I won’t. I will take flight. Fighting doesn’t achieve anything. Flying gets you out of the situation of conflict and stops anybody from getting injured. It’s the more evolved response to a stressful situation.

I flew us around the world many times. That was my solution. I paid for tens of thousands of pounds worth of flights, to keep her happy, to keep us happy. She was very hard work, and had very expensive tastes, but she was worth it and I don’t regret it. I loved her to bits.

It kind of works, having 5 star holidays all over the globe. I remember her having an absolute meltdown every time something would go wrong with our travel arrangements, and I would just have to quietly move her a safe distance away, and then go and use a charm offensive to repair the damage caused by her sour face and tantrum, before negotiating what she wanted.

Holidays were very stressful. She wanted a camper van when we went to Hawaii. The poor people who ran the camper van company just wanted to have a relaxed Christmas break, and when their camper van broke down, there wasn’t a mechanic on the island of Oahu who fancied fixing it during the holiday season. I had to bust my balls, and theirs, just to keep her from throwing her toys out of the pram. It was hard work.

That’s just one example. Every holiday, she was very demanding, and I was her personal tourguide, smoothing things over with the locals. Yes, she was very organised, officious, but that’s not the way the world works. Things go wrong, and things don’t run like clockwork. I remember getting wound up when taxi drivers would stop in the middle of the road and talk to each other in remote windswept locations that hardly any Europeans ever visit, but then I realised that it’s important to embrace local culture. It’s important to go with the flow. I learnt some patience, some humility.

Yes, you can go to a place and splurge your cash and expect to be chauffeur driven around by a man-servant. However, when I asked her, she said she wanted the authentic experience. As her personal tour guide, I delivered what my client asked for, always. I think she really liked the local bus we caught in Egypt, packed full of farmyard animals and cargo, with the passengers who just wanted to discuss English Premier League football with us.

Travelling is hard work, and it’s stressful, when you’re the one who has to figure stuff out on the ground and actually deal with the language and cultural barriers. Getting stroppy and telling people that you’re disappointed and “it’s not good enough” really doesn’t get you anywhere. Tact and diplomacy are the order of the day.

I hope my exes enjoyed their holidays. I really poured my heart & soul into making sure they had a lovely lovely time.

13,796ft high, at the summit of Mauna Kea. Trip of a lifetime. Was she grateful? The fact she wanted me dead would suggest not (December 2012)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #frankie

4 December 2015
Hipster Flu

This is a story about chronic fatigue…

Smart bosses have figured out that happy employees are more productive. If you don’t have the right culture in your organisation, you will make people very sick. You will be burning people out in order to achieve your unrealistic targets.

Forward thinking organisations are letting people have dogs at work. They are promoting more flexible working arrangements. They are seeing their employees as people and not just numbers in a spreadsheet.

I wrote an IT Roadmap for a company which had just been spun off by its parent company, and sold. I took one look around the little company, and I knew immediately that they had got the culture spot on. I wrote my roadmap with this culture as the guiding principle.

I urged the new CEO of the spin-off company to preserve the culture, in order to maintain the high productivity and excellent morale of the staff. I tried my best to pursuade him of the benefits of investing in technology that would support the staff, that would preserve the brilliant working environment. He ignored my advice.

I quit that job, because my opinion wasn’t valued. You can’t pay me enough to rubberstamp the wrong decisions. If you’re looking for a “yes” man, a sycophant, then you’ve got the wrong guy.

So, after I left, the culture was destroyed, money was burnt on stupid vanity projects, all the good people left. The profits dropped 90% and naturally, the CEO was fired. I take no pride, only sadness, in saying “I told you so“.

But one cool thing happened. At a conference a little over a year later, the CEO of the parent company presented my ideas. They had implemented them. Ideas are worthless, and the implementation must have been very hard – although I had done a proof of concept with my team – so I can take no credit. But it was so nice to be vindicated that I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

I’ve been bumping along like this for quite a few years now. The problem is, that I’m exhausted. I’ve got enough energy to do the job, but not enough energy to endure the idiots. I tend to get the important stuff done, and then I have to bow out and allow the sacking of the egotistical dead wood to happen.

Fundamentally, I burnt out in 2008, working on JPMorgan‘s #1 project. Instead of going off work sick, I decided that I needed to change jobs and as soon as I did the wall of exhaustion that I had been holding back hit me like a steamroller.

I was so flattened by it, that my doctors thought I might have AIDS. We tried every test under the sun, but fundamentally, I now believe that I was simply overworked. I had worked hard and played hard for far too long. My body & brain just couldn’t cope anymore.

I was a bit of ‘swan‘… looked very serene and calm on the surface, but my legs were going like crazy beneath the surface of the water. During some ‘time out’ I remember playing golf, trying to putt with my phone jammed to my ear while I attempted to resolve some issue a team member was having.

I am so passionate about my work that I tend to dream about it. I even have ‘eureka‘ moments sometimes and wake up and start writing code or an email. There is no switching off when I’m in the ‘on‘ position.

My commute to the office (September 2007)

It’s not very healthy, but my parents, school, partners, lazy friends, bosses, society and the surrounding culture has driven me to this unsustainable level. People say ‘take it easy, slow down‘ but as soon as I do back off the gas, they soon start complaining. People get used to a certain level of contribution. They start taking you for granted.

What am I living for, if it’s not for work? Nothing is ever good enough for my parents. I haven’t had a nice caring kind girlfriend for far too long. I haven’t got any kids. What’s the point of life if it’s not to make some kind of epic contribution?

It’s not about heroics, and I really don’t expect anybody to get the violins out and say “ooh, poor you“. It’s literally that work fills an otherwise empty void in my existence. Without work to dedicate myself to, do I really exist? My day to experiences would suggest not.

Yes, I know that work is a dangerous addiction that is damaging my health, but it’s the only place that I ever hear “well done” or “thank you“. My parents and ex-girlfriend/ex-wife would never sink so low as to actually show me any respect. It’s expensive, apparently, to show somebody some appreciation.

During seemingly interminable periods of fatigue, depression, you can obviously reflect and see that you are repeating the same vicious cycle. It doesn’t mean that you can beat it though. Nobody stops the world so that you can get off the rollercoaster.

So, everybody will be very relieved when I’m ‘recovered‘ from a crash, but the fact of the matter is that recovery actually only starts when the exhaustion and depression have passed. All that time in bed is not recovery… it’s staying alive. It’s surviving, not thriving.

Yes, I’m surviving, but I’m not thriving. Nobody will let me get that far. When I have an opportunity to thrive, everybody says “Oh, you’re fine now. We don’t need to help you, we can go back to taking from you” not that I really receive help anyway.

My friend Klaus brought me a bag of stuff in hospital. That was one of the kindest things that anybody has ever done for me in a couple of years. Does that mean I owe him a favour? Well, he was already living rent free on my couch so I guess we can call it quits!

I do keep a very careful eye on my karma balance. I have paid it forward big time, and I always want to run a net karma surplus. If you do your accounting with some surpluses, with contingency, then you don’t have to sweat the small stuff.

There are some people who feel hard done by at my hands. My friend John who thought it was OK to use me for free rent, spending money and as a personal life coach to help him over his gambling addiction and general idleness, for example. When life became unmanageable, I chucked him off my back to save myself. Am I supposed to be sorry about that? Why was I carrying him in the first place?

I don’t really understand why I attract klingons. I guess it’s because I’m a kind and generous person who gives off an aura of success and I make what I do look quite easy, so other people think there’s not much effort required to achieve the same things. That’s the thing about being good at what you do. You make it look easy.

I certainly have suffered from the “I could do your job” mistake. When CxOs and managers have been fired because they didn’t listen to my expert advice, I certainly wouldn’t want to take their place. I’m not trying to steal anybody’s job. When I was younger, for sure I thought I could do my manager’s job, and do it better. The fact that I have proved it, does not actually mean anything… I hated doing those managerial jobs!

Yes, management really is not for me. Somebody else can have the pressure and stress and responsibility. I think it’s a vocation, not a job title. I think it’s a demotion not a promotion. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, must depend on others to do for them, and must be more organised themselves to compensate for the fact that they can’t both be both organised and productive.

So, I’m exhausted by having to design, build, lead, argue with idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about and make dead wood losers look good.

I’m laid low with depression, fatigue.

Sorry about that, klingons.

That is all.

Frankie loves being tucked up warm in bed. We all do during winter. Fatigue and depression are much more serious. I’m suicidal and I can barely get out of bed (November 2007)

Tags: #career #banking #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie

23 November 2015
Positive Discrimination #InternationalMensDay

This is a story about the shoe being on the other foot…

There’s a Madonna song called “What it Feels Like for a Girl” which talks about men secretly wondering what it’s like, being a girl. Here are my raw, candid, thoughts and experiences.

Men can be domestic abuse victims too. I’ve had to go to work with black eyes and a broken nose and make up some story to try and cover up for my partner’s aggression and violence. I’ve had to lie to friends and family members about my battered & bruised face.

You know that as a man you can’t hit back, because then you’re the bad guy. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You can’t turn the other cheek forever though.

When it comes to dating, men have got it fairly hard. I’d much rather that loads of women just chatted me up… gave me complements and massaged my ego, and then I just picked the best of the bunch. Yes, that’d definitely be better than being one of the horde of horny guys fighting over the passive females.

Yes, being passive is nice. I’ve been to gay clubs, and it’s super nice being eyed up and having people ask you for you phone number. It’s nice to feel wanted. It’s nice to know where you stand. It’s nice to have choice, to have options and just pick the person who you’re most attracted to. Sadly, I’m not attracted to men.

Being objectified, mentally undressed, groped and otherwise felt up, ass slapping and pinching… I’m sure that can be draining. I’m sure it’s often unwelcome. I’m sure it’s pretty horrible, as a girl just trying to travel on public transport. However, I’ll admit that personally, when those things have happened to me, I’ve enjoyed it to some extent. I guess that could be novelty though.

I did have one guy being really forceful with me, right in front of his boyfriend. It did become annoying after a while. I also felt sorry for his boyfriend. Mostly, it made me feel pressured into doing something I didn’t want to do (which I didn’t do… that time) but it still inflated my fragile ego a bit. There is security, self-confidence, to be found in feeling sexually attractive.

Girls are expected to maintain an immaculate home, be a supernanny to the children, masterchef in the kitchen, powerdressing businesswoman and a whore in the bedroom. Sure there used to be a high expectation placed on women. However, men are modernising too. If you picked a knuckle-dragging caveman, more fool you: you can’t really complain, can you?

Actually, I’m extremely neat and tidy and clean. I can cook a 7 course dinner and wash up as I go along. I can’t imagine doing it while trying to round up children, of course, but I’ve always seen child rearing as a teamwork exercise. I’ve certainly always dreamt of working part-time when I have kids, so I can play an active role in their upbringing.

When it comes to bedroom antics, I’ve written before about my dislike of blow jobs. One of the big reasons is that it’s hardly mutual gratification. Sure, women can derive satisfaction from knowing that they have pleased their partner, but it’s still hardly the most pleasant of acts, is it? With a bit of practice, sex can be a thoroughly satisfying affair for both guy & girl.

I’m sure there are still neandertal men out there who haven’t taken the time to practice their skills. They can’t be bothered to satisfy their partner, because frankly, they’re getting what they want. Again, it’s down to choice: why did you pick such a selfish partner who doesn’t get you off?

I’m a thoroughly modern man. In touch with my feelings and able to express myself and generally communicate very effectively. I don’t really believe in traditional gender roles, and I have strong views about men’s responsibility for contraception, household chores and childcare. However, that’s not really gotten me anywhere so far.

I guess the battle of the sexes still rages, and the nice guys still finish last. Women believe that equal rights will be their salvation, but they still pick totally chauvinistic pigs as partners. They are still choosing DNA material donors based on animal instincts, despite the argument that women are equal.

Sadly, equality will never be achieved when we are breeding lazy, selfish, ignorant and sexist boys. You picked the man, and I’ll show you the boy.

So, it’s kind of up to you, ladies. Stop dating d1ckheads. Stop rewarding selfish chauvinists with the sex and easy life that they don’t deserve, and then maybe we’ll have a better world.

The alternative, which is to date kind and caring soft modern men, but then beat them up and abuse them… that’s not really working.

As a metrosexual man, life was very hard at school. It’s not that I wasn’t fancied at school, but it would have been popularity suicide for a girl to date an outcast. The occasional tryst with a girl from another school, was all I had to keep me going through those years of puberty and early teens, along with the occasional secret note that was given to me saying “would you like to date… when we leave school?“.

So, I skipped any childhood sweethearts. Getting girlfriends in later life when you’re a bit of a late starter is very strange. I was cynical and mature enough not to declare undying love for anybody. I held off using the “L” word until the age of about 26. That’s not to say that I didn’t have crazy feelings for any girls though. I was just aware that it was probably lust and loneliness conspiring against me.

When things start getting serious, that’s when you get seriously screwed. Because I always open my heart, take the chance… I laid myself wide open to be destroyed by a spiteful ex. I’ve actually managed to come out of it without being horribly twisted. I still insist on wearing my heart on my sleeve and acting with some common decency, and taking some risks.

So, on International Men’s Day, I urge guys to remain honest & open, and keep on the trajectory of modernising themselves. I know that many women view men who talk about their feelings as “soft mummies boys” and potentially not good partner material. Well, if you don’t like equality then that view is probably correct.

Personally, I’m still dreaming of being a house husband some of the time. I’d like to discuss my feelings openly and without fear of ridicule, with my partner. Partnership is about equality, mutual respect. That’s what I want to see on this day, and every day going forward.

That is all.

I got custody of Frankie the cat, but my ex thought she should have it all, even though he was the reason why I kept myself alive when I was starving myself to death (May 2008)

Tags: #divorce #frankie

19 November 2015