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[ 9 minute read ]
Title and content inspired by 'In My Room' by Yazoo on their debut studio album, 'Upstairs at Eric's' released in 1982 by Mute Records. 
Mental Health warning. DO NOT listen to this album if you suffer from even mild psychosis (specifically the song 'I before e except after c'). 'In My Room' is mildly okay though.
Can't quite make it out. Can you hear me?
In 1970, 'Your Song', written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, was released. The first two lines are:
It's a little bit funny
This feeling inside
That is what comes to mind when I make the routine morning checks on myself today. They are quite automatic and perfunctory and no-one has to suit up in a haz-chem or space suit. I also run a program that checks mental acuity as well. You know, a bit like in one of those films where there is a bored someone in an observatory who suddenly notices an anomaly in the sky and they sit up and intently look or listen.
Of course, Elton John was singing about someone else from his perspective, and I, today, am making mental and physical checks on myself. The reason why the first two lines of his fine song are prominent in my mind is because I am not unwell in the immediate sense; more as an overall curtailing of 'me'.
I live in a village with a Post Office and shop and, lucky me, there is another village one and a half miles away with a Post Office and shop. My village shop is run by a very kind Sri Lankan man, who took over the lease quite recently. He is a Tamil. The next village Post Office and shop, one and a half miles away, is also run by a very friendly Sri Lankan man. Actually, he is just friendly now. He used to be waggy-tail friendly.
The differences between these two men and how they run their shops is legion. I have some qualifications in marketing and customer service and so have at least one eye open on how things are going. My local shop is run like there is a frenzied attempt to see what works at the cost of neatness. We have all seen them, and many of us have them as their local shop; hand-written prices, half empty boxes in the aisle that is least used, a broken down fridge, Asian foods in the freezer, and here is where my focus is; unsold stock. We'll come back to that.
The village shop run by, I suppose, his Sri Lankan competitor, one and a half miles away, actually has a canny wife's influence attached to it. I have never noticed any trip hazards and there have never been any hand-written prices (there ARE no published prices). it has recently expanded from a tiny, and exceedingly cramped, well, just a Post Office, into a snaking convenience store. There are high-end frozen meals (COOK) and all the usual commodities one might find in a rather small, but local, English convenience store. They are vegetarian Buddhists.
Quite understandably, these two shop-keepers do not see eye to eye. Older people might immediately associate the word 'Tamil' with 'Tiger'. Let's just say, In the 1980's, some Ceylon Tamil militants hoping to create a separate Tamil state in the north and north east, conducted a guerilla war against the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka. My nearest shopkeeper is Tamil, an omnivore, and the next nearest shopkeeper, one and half miles away, is Sinhalese. Fun! I will explore! Yeah, I know, I am snacking on other people's tension and strife. I don't have a television, so I can't watch soaps, and the tension is already there any way. I am fascinated by how moods change and how faces tell what words belie. I now feel like a little boy pulling legs off spiders and cooking ants with a magnifying glass. Maybe I should break the stick with which I poke wasp nests.
With the contrasts in place:
Recently, I have consolidated a good relationship with my local shop-keeper in that he doesn't suspiciously watch me wander through the shop. Yes, the stereotypical suspicious Asian shop-keeper. Why would he watch me? As I said, he is kind. The previous shopkeepers would just throw away the out of date stuff. This chap lets customers take it for free. He directly competes for custom with a standard convenience store for, you know, British stuff.
Here lies a slight problem. The quality of the food in my local shop is pretty low. It seems that my shopkeeper thinks we will buy cheap products at the expense of our health. That attitude is so last 1980s. Oh, how does one say something without being derogatory? Think housing estates wherein one might expect to run into pregnant teenage single mothers holding bottles of cider, who buy cakes that cost less than two quid, and cars that need their exhausts fixed, driven by uninsured drivers. A lot of Britain was like that in the 1980s. Perhaps, I could say my shopkeeper is nostalgic for the 1980s, instead of blinkered to the affluence of my local area.
The reason my shopkeeper does not watch me on his CCTV monitor is because I always offer to pay for the out of date stuff if I feel like eating some. I feel sorry for him; my marketing knowledge recognises how difficult it is to gain and retain customers. It is, of course, illegal for him to sell out of date stuff so he can never, never accept payment. In any case, since one can tell that I am educated, I could be an undercover Trading Standards spy. Sometimes, though, I try to slip one of the 'free' cakes through the till. Yesterday, there was a small box full of trashy cakes, so I made it clear to him that I was taking two really rubbish cakish muffiny whatevers, and then rightfully held them back at the counter as I 'wrongfully' placed another different cakey shape on the counter to go through the till with my genuine in-date products. He cottoned it and smiled at me. He doesn't watch me because he kind of trusts me to try to give him money when I don't need to. I had better check to see whether I am setting an illegal trap for him. There might be a requirement for me to report him if he does indeed sell me out of date stuff, otherwise I might be complicit somehow. Best stop doing it.
Two weeks ago, I thought it would be a good time to conduct an experiment. I am vegetarian; have been since my early twenties. Someone told me that red meat makes you violent. I don't think it does. However, I do feel cleaner and am certain I think clearer if I don't eat meat. I often surprise myself with random experiments. So, I stopped writing two weeks ago and started to eat the free, out of date stuff. Wait, what? Well, these cakey things cost less than two British pounds, some are only one pound. Having watched YouTube videos on the difference between U.S. American food and British food, I looked at the the ingredients. It is not natural for me to do that, because I make all my food from scratch. One of the things that is evidently different between likewise U.S. American food and British food is the length of the list of ingredients. These 'free' products I started to eat had huge lists of 'E's and a bunch of other stuff in them. Now, I could have run the experiment from that, but my intake wasn't enough to really contribute to any meaningful idea of the effect this rubbish might have on my mental acuity and general health, so I gave up being vegetarian AND bought processed food. The intent was to NOT eat healthily for two weeks and than go back to writing, to see how I had changed. I still have some bacon left and gorged on plastic cake yesterday.
We have to understand that by not focusing on writing, my brain muscle would weaken anyway.
This morning, I asked my private panel how I am: Harrari, the young alien, and Hakim, my spirit avatar. Harrari, kindly agreed to come, and I summoned Hakim.
'You have made my job a lot easier', said Hakim. 'My job to protect you, and wake you if there is a threat to you while you sleep, has been much easier because you are sleeping so lightly, fitfully even.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, not putting two and two together.
'You are not sleeping deeply. When spirits are passing or when your neighbour's spirit looms over you, to whom you have given a free pass, you wake. In fact, you don't sleep much because you are alarmed.'
'Oh, I know I am not sleeping well. But I also know that red meat gives me nightmares. In any case, I have been drinking a lot of tea and coffee lately.'
Harrari joined in. I hoped she would. I can't make her do anything and really wouldn't want to present as hostile towards the most ruthless being I have ever met. "Cake, sugar, caffeine, meat, processed food. They have all combined to make you foolish and lazy. You can't even work out the formulas you need for your spreadsheets."
I always feel as though Harrari is contemptuous of me. Indeed, she should be. Compared to her, I am stupid, stupid, stupid. She kind of likes me though, so I prefer to think she is being helpful. I can't expect her to soften truth. that would be senseless.
'I go to bed at the same time and get up when I can't sleep any longer.'
'No, you wait until it is past 4am, then you get up.' said Hakim from the corner of my living room. Just lately, he HAD seemed more distant. In fact, I hadn't seen much of him or Harrari for a while. Normally, when I am out, I notice things in two aspects, the real world with a tinge of spiritual forewarning or prescience. I experience sonder and feel shade. Normally, wherever I am I notice it is crowded. Lately, it has been quiet.
Lately, it has just been me chugging along, dull and unobservant, struggling to see more than what is right before me.
Hello....Can't quite make it out. can you hear me?
