Walking home
and other diaries
I am chronically broke at the moment. I don’t say this rattling a tin, or as a soft launch for a link to my Gofundme page, although feel free to reach out if there’s a market out there wanting this, I say it to offer you an explanation as to why I opt for an off-peak gym membership in London. A city not exactly ranked the safest for its night culture. It’s cheaper by an entire £18 a month. That’s the price of a cocktail from the bar I work at but would never be able to afford to drink in as a customer. I love when capitalism turns around and shows me its irony-coloured underwear. Additionally, I rotate between shifts there and at a cafe, which means the only window available to me, consistently, is somewhere in between the territory of late evening, bleeding into technically tomorrow.
Which, shock, lands outside of peak hours.
I don’t mind it really. Nobody is wearing a matching set or rattling their beige Stanley past midnight, so the stair-masters are always free. Just a collective of us with insomnia, irregular working hours or an unresolved psychological situation.
The walk home, however, I do mind.
I was racing back this *morning* when I realised I was in the middle of the road. Not very sensible of me but I was engulfed in my podcast episode. I looked either side to conduct a brief audit on my surrounding as all women do, and saw hooded figures lingering by corner shop doorways and hovering under bus shelters. My instinct told me that I was less likely to get struck down by the N12 bus than hurt by a man, so I remained where I was.
The data would unfortunately support my gut feeling.
I think one of the top ten worst human experiences is seeing somebody you vaguely know early on in your grocery shop.
Every time I enter Sainsbury’s, I look like I have never encountered a supermarket before. It’s usually because I am mentally trying to reiterate the 46 items that I need but have not jotted down. Or I don’t know what I’m eating for the next, well, forever, so am contemplating the best approach here.
Then there they spawn, directly in your path, groping different sized legumes. It’s never a close friend either. It’s a neighbour, or a friend of a friend. Or your mum’s ex boyfriend’s eldest daughter. Some niche acquaintance that exists on the cusp of your social orbit, therefore, you will be villainised if you walk ahead and ignore them.
“Hello Shaun. Looking well. Weather’s nice! How are you?”
One sounds like they’re learning the English language, spraying every variation of greeting in their face like a phrase-book garden hose. It’s how I communicate in Spain, having never gone further than the first module on DuoLingo.
Shaun responds at the exact moment that a staff member rolls past with a stock cage, so you hear about 20% of whatever he has said, but he’s smiling expectantly, waiting for a response.
You laugh in his face and say ‘yeah totally’ at a moment that probably was not appropriate and hope this assassinates the conversation.
Whilst momentarily cringe, the initial encounter is survivable.
However, because of the fundamental design flaw of modern supermarkets known as aisles, you continue to see Shaun at every turn since much to your inconvenience, he also needs things.
Do you acknowledge their existence each time? With a smile? Or, would a nod suffice? Should I make a joke about the adult diapers in his trolley, or the ribbed condoms in mine?
You can’t hide behind an open trolley.
Truly exhausting.
Those who know me well, know I loathe eye contact. I suppose it’s a bit of the spectrum in me. For this reason alone, the increase of AI interviews is quite relieving. No looking at the window mid-answer and watching the interviewer scribble a small note. No burning my gaze into the their forehead trying to picture what their bone structure looks like and then snapping back into the present and panicking that my face is mirroring my thoughts. Employers don’t realise the neurological tic until I’m too far deep in the recruitment process and have coerced them into liking me. Or so I thought. I received some feedback yesterday after a first-stage interview, not from a person manning their inbox but a pixilated robot with a ginger bob, telling me in her automated voice, that I appeared disengaged, and this was because I wasn’t looking at the interviewer.
There wasn’t one??
Not that I should have to justify myself to an algorithm, but here we are.
When you only get two attempts, which I genuinely believe is a humiliation ritual and somebody is cracking up behind the veil, watching me mispronounce ‘asset’ once again, to deliver a flawless, A-grade monologue, you develop a method to avoid the least fuck ups. I usually look at myself in the little preview window instead of the camera or else I go all cross-eyed. Or, alternatively, at the questions on the screen. So for a non-human, with no face, no eyes, no concept of the emotional toll it takes on a girl to sit in their bedroom, for the third time that week, talking to a laptop at ten in the morning, dressed professionally only from the waist up, to tell me my opticals is why I am not progressing to the next stage, is a sign of the times and Christ, we are doooomed. The intelligence part of A.I is violently lacking. But this, we know.
Next interview I am staring so unblinkingly hard into that webcam that robo-boss is going to flag me as a potential sociopath and I will have come full circle by, once again, wasting time and achieving absolutely nothing.
I tend to judge how a man will treat me by observing them peel a boiled egg. I appreciate this sounds like something a protagonist played by Katherine Hiegl or Kate Hudson would say at the beginning of a rom-com and her love life is henceforth catastrophic because she abides by this singular rule. But the reason I believe it is a legitimate litmus test is because you achieve a clean peel with patience. I think a lot of people claim that they do not like boiled eggs because they dislike the intense labour of de-shelling of them. I love a boiled egg, soft, seven minutes to ensure the yolk still has some give to it, but if I had to imagine hell, it would be working in those factories where they peel them by the thousand for those protein pots that they sell in Pret for £7.99. I think it’s one of the most extraneous activities of adulthood. At university, the only time I hope I ever have to live simultaneously under the same roof as seven men, I used to watch my housemates display such violence towards its casing. You have to be gentle and consistent, if you rush or are heavy handed, the egg collapses in your hand.
Red flag.
Getting my lashes done this morning. It’s been far too long and I am knee-deep in the winter uglies. I had two urgent thoughts as I laid my head down. My first was that, I know I previously said I wanted to be cremated, but recently I have been entertaining thoughts of being buried, but only if it’s with my Garmin on. I think it could offer us valuable posthumous data. Like surely, finally, my REM sleep will be off-the-charts.
The second, as I started to drift off, was that God must have been a lash tech. My lady, Joanna, is so light-handed and precise. I thought to create the world in less than 7 days and not break a thing, you need the level of skill and delicacy only a lash tech possesses. Or, a key-hole surgeon. And we all know what they say about doctors playing God.
I think the consequence of everybody eating tedious amounts of protein these days is that the club floor stinks. People can not stop farting. This is a genuine, measurable deterioration in London’s nightlife experience that nobody is discussing. Well, I will. And, because it’s loud and crowded, they think they get away with it. The reason I am so riled up is because when you’re scraping the five foot mark, you are at an arse-level altitude with these huge 6ft+ gym guys that have twelve eggs for breakfast. Probably, pre-peeled. I have nothing against those committed to the gains but their digestive systems are now, in the heat and the dark and the vibration of a Friday night, processing all of it directly in my face.
I was eating a rice pudding this evening. In bed. Sue me. I am also an unapologetic hypocrite because it was a protein one. Müller light. Nothing light about it, I’m sure. Twenty-one grams of protein per pot, it said on the side, very pleased with itself. As I was funnelling it down, I became increasingly upset at my childhood self for hating it. What a waste of years. Decades even. All that time spent being immature and refusing to touch such a delicacy. Same with sundried tomatoes and sardines. Capers. Blue cheese. 70% dark chocolate. I feel like taste buds should be gifted to us like breasts are. Something in puberty you only get when the universe feels you are ready. A little note from the body to say it’s time, here is your appreciation of something fermented or aged. I will pitch this to Joanna at my infill appointment in a couple of weeks on the off chance she is God, or knows someone who can forward on the message.
I went to the bank on my lunch break. Very retro of me, I know. It’s been eight months now since I saw my debit card. I have been largely fine since Apple pay was designed specifically so that people like me, people who treat their wallets as a conceptual, rather than a practical object, can continue to participate in the economy without ever needing to locate the piece of plastic. However, slight flaw in that my phone is almost always dead, so I find myself stuck in some situations asking if I can pay in kindness or goodwill and the answer is always no and increased security on the door.
At the bank, they had to do a few security checks. Understandable, with the amount of cards I have gone through, my account was probably flagged. They were likely confused as to why I wanted a card delivering to Hanoi Mad Monkey when my last transaction revealed I was residing in Colombo.
One of the questions was actually, what other country have you used this card in the last ten months? I thought simple question, except I had not realised she had a specific answer she was looking for, one country she wanted me to land on, but I had just wrapped up my gap year so been absolutely everywhere their overdraft could take me.
I began with where I was the longest: Thailand. No. Vietnam? No. Cambodia? No. Sri Lanka? No. Malaysia? No. Singapore? No. Laos? No. I had gone to Spain in May- No. Amsterdam in Jan- No. Then I hesitantly say, France? And her eyes light up as she nods yes. I was in Paris for two days over my birthday but to be fair think I spent more in those forty-eight hours than I had in the combined economic output of six Southeast Asian countries across several months, which says something about Paris specifically but also about the financial choices I make when I’m somewhere that sells good wine and has nice cheese and fancy clothes.
Not sure how far round the globe I’d have to have gotten until I failed, but she asks me a second security question about whether there was a recent bank transaction that got declined. I thought, well yes, several. She has my transaction history up, can she not tell I live well and truly beyond my means.
Aware I was on thin ice from the last round of roulette, I arranged my face into an expression of puzzled concentration. She explains that I had attempted to pay £40 at a cafe franchise and wanted me to name it. I felt like one fat fuck lining up every institution I had ever ordered deli items from. I was convinced it was Gails or Blank Street and prayed I was spending £40 on an order for more than one. Turns out it was Joe and The Juice. I don’t even want to reconstruct what forty pounds at Joe and the Juice looks like. Two juices and a Spicy Tunacado, and that’s being generous.
I applaud the woman’s excellent customer service skills for suppressing the bubbling laughter throughout. Although, I am slightly concerned that if anybody did want to commit fraud, they have substantial leg room for error.
The card is on it’s way.
I think I will go to a gallery opening tonight. I live in London, a supposed capital of culture, yet I am behaving like somebody held captive in witness protection. To give myself some grace, the weather has not peaked over 3 degrees since my return, but I must stop using this as an excuse to be a hermit. Plus, the brochure said free wine.
Me and my father were watching The Winter Olympics on telly this miserable Sunday afternoon. He mindlessly said, “We really must get the younger cousins into the skiing.”
Now, I have been wanting to get into skiing since I’d watched Eddie the Eagle. But at 12, I couldn’t pull together the grand needed for a trip to Val Thorens and my parents were getting re-married, so the money was budgeted elsewhere. However, I was in the mind that skiing was still available. That perhaps I could win Gold at the French Alps, the next time the Olympics come around, regardless of never touching fresh powder before. The cousins, my dad continued, could probably start with dry slope lessons. Work their way up. You want to get them young, that’s the thing. Before they’re too old to learn without thinking about it-
Message had been received: I was ancient.
Geriatric in the world of snow sports.
I am a late bloomer but I have made peace with this. Sort of. I learnt to drive only a year or so ago and I let out nervous laughter if somebody younger than me says they’ve had their licence for over half a decade. I didn’t learn to swim properly until I was thirteen and that was because I didn’t want to get kicked out of the pool at the under 16s teen disco that the leisure centre would hold every Friday night, when the wave machine would get turned on. I still can’t ride a bicycle for more than a mile without it resulting in serious injury.
Olympian skiing is just another skill to add to the list.
Had to replace my implant today. I put it off for six months because I am a modern women aware of her free agency (couldn’t be arsed and I was near-enough a practicing celibate anyway) so have had some void device bobbing up and down my arm like a tiny, useless buoy. I was only motivated to come here because my own body is a traitor and decided to stage an intervention. Almost three blissful, laundry-saving, existentially-clarifying years I had gone without one, then last Sunday, my period returned again. It was like a crimson Heathcliff and my knickers were the Moors. A delayed reaction on my behalf but I suppose if my brain is crap at maths, I can’t expect my uterus to be any better. Plus I was quietly thankful to see it, as being pregnant right now would plunge me over the edge.
So here I hunch, on a Tuesday afternoon, in Archway Sexual Health Clinic. The most aesthetically abhorrent building I have been inside in a while. The receptionist is annoyed that I am two minutes late even though she knows the minimum wait time here is over an hour. But contempt is free and she pierces her lip as she holds up a pinky-sized tube and thrusts it into my hands. I pull her a confused look and in only slightly more delicate words, she tells me to piss in it, as I can’t get a new implant if I am with child. I tell her I am not since I just got my period. I can show her the faint mark refusing to come out of the pelvis of my Diesel white capris if she’d like. The receptionist barely acknowledges my mouth moving, and merely nods as if I am the most naive being she’s ever encountered and continues to insist I pee in the lip-balm-sized container. I hold my warm valve of urine in the waiting room huffing and puffing away. There’s three other men around me, all minding their own business in a way that feels deeply provocative. I don’t see them gripping any samples, typical - they have the mechanics for better aim. Or so you’d think.
I had my headphones in so did not hear the white-haired man call TYLER three times. When I did, I waited for one of the gents to stand up. He then stops in front of me, the only woman in the room, and says, Nexplanon replacement? I profusely apologise and then mutter under my breath that he forgot the hyphen (-) Jayne. I assumed this elderly guy was just there to escort me through the ropey corridors of the ugly, ugly building and drop me off to my actual nurse Carla, and that’s not me being sexist, I have had the same lady jabbing at various parts of me since I was eighteen. But alas, he sits down on the blue wheely chair and informs me that Dr. Canmore is on maternity leave, so he’ll have to do for my next few appointments. I would have worn another top had I known, because now I have to perform acrobatics to avoid flashing him my bra that doesn’t quite fit me.
He is an eccentric, this random man. Makes constant jokes as he asks all the mandatory questions about my current sex life and I laugh out of politeness but think him not having a vagina takes the hilarity out of the menstruation ones. He tells me that he does not need my wee and points to a medical waste bin in the corner when he sees me dangling it awkwardly. Then instructs me to lie in the chair so he can ‘freeze my arm’. I think okay, Jack Frost, Elsa, Emma from H20, whatever that means. Then he blasts my arm with the coldest substance. I am facing him to watch, and he said most people turn away and can’t resist another joke about how if I blinked, my eyes could have been frozen shut. He warns, are you sure you want to watch? I am nothing if not an inquisitive so hastily nod.
‘Small scratch,’ he says wiggling a needle the size of a structural beam through the air. I think this phrase should be banned from leaving the mouth of all medical professionals. It is their most brazen lie. I visibly cringe as he stabs me, but am too busy suppressing the pain to call Dr. Fibber out. He then starts to orchestrate some small talk, aware I need to busy my other muscles whilst my arm is being dissected.
“So, what do you do?”
This amuses me as he has already learnt the ethnicity of my boyfriend and that our sex life is pretty vanilla in the eyes of the NHS. That we’d be back-pedalling by discussing my profession, or lack of one. I like to avoid this question considering I’m a recent graduate so, instead, opt to pretend I’m wincing so hard that I didn’t hear him.
I watch him pull out the little toothpick responsible for me not being full term and he neatly slips in a new one and tells me to not exceed the expiry date this time. I replied, “Sure, if I’m still alive in 2029.” It was meant to come out in a light-hearted, will-any-of-us-be? type of way but was delivered more dark and suicidal than I had intended.
As I leave I say, Bye Carla! out of habit and he smiles. New Carla isn’t all bad but I hope OG Carla has returned by the time my smear test is due. I get on the tube and a kid accidentally smacks his face into my throbbing arm which Fake Carla assured was ‘normal’ swelling and his mother snatches him up in her arms and tells him to sit the fuck still, this isn’t a playground. I flash her a sympathetic smile and thank the stars above that this painful device has prevented me from that current life.
Guarantee that every barista that does the closing shift and unscrews and cleans the portafilter shower screen on the espresso machine knows where the clitoris is. The precision to unscrew one without scalding your hand on the knob collars requires engineer-level exactitude. I’ve taken to adding ‘fine motor skills’ to my CV.
I went home this weekend. Home, home that is. Outside London by an hour into the graveyard of Kent. I come from the part of Kent that Dickens was born in, which tells you how bleak and rundown it is to have inspired an anthology of work all about poverty and social neglect. Turns out it had been bordering sixteen months since I last went down to see my mother which makes me the Worst Daughter Ever.™ In my defence (the defence I prepared on the train) she had been up to see me post-travel and we FaceTime every time she can’t work the printer, which is a lot. So I haven’t been entirely absent.
There’s something about returning back to where you grew up that immediately reverts you back to the teenage mutant bitch you were at fifteen. I feel the transition as soon as I step off the train. This is an anti-Southeastern page by the way.
The station I’ve been deposited at has a singular platform and is a thirty minute drive from any residential area because it does not get enough visitors to validate public transport infrastructure any closer.
My stepfather picked me up. I stood in front of the car for a good ten minutes before I realised it was him because I didn’t recognise the vehicle. It’s a seven seater for one. Him and my mother are empty-nesters so I’m not sure who’s occupying the other five seats but I haul my enormous suitcase into the back three without making a remark. I’ll give credit where credit is due, because fifteen-year-old me could never get the hang of biting her tongue.
The population here still dresses like it’s 2011. This isn’t meant as an insult but an observation. My outfit was far too cosmopolitan and I wanted to burn it immediately. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m Black and Kent is notoriously white, it would have made me stick out like a sore thumb. I spot a girl from my GCSE English Lit class pushing a twin pram. She used to spit gum into the back of various girl’s ponytails. Many of the girls I went to school with now have a mortgage and a marriage and a pink Smeg fridge. How time flies.
We read Gossipboards more than newspapers here - local Facebook groups are where you can find out who’s divorcing, who’s got planning permission rejected, and what everyone thinks about the new roundabout. There’s a new housing estate on the fields that my friends and I used to drink Glens on. The tuck shop is now a Bubble tea cafe.
My mother is waiting in the doorway for me. She tells me my hair looks dry as she pulls me into an embrace. Critical observation is the way African mothers love. For dinner, we eat Tilapia fish with our hands and my mother updates me on the downfall of all the old school teachers who hated me. Just like that sixteen months dissolves into nothing and I sleep peacefully on my rickety single bed in a room that made me, me, before I had any say on the matter.
Back to London and off to the gym at 1:17am to do a freedom run. I am predicting that the country’s going to start drafting us involuntarily (to massage the feet of American soldiers) in these upcoming months, so can’t afford to skip a cardio day. If you see a small woman in the middle of the road, conducting traffic like she’s in a low-budget musical, do beep before you mow me down.