Monday 19 December 2011

chapter 12

If this is the first time you are visiting, please do your self a favour and start from chapter one. If you are mentally challenged and don't understand how, find the list of posts and from there go to the oldest one.

charter !@(12): the days of the week

Mr BooHoo decided that the weekend was too short. Thus he took another decision, to add a second Saturday to each week and a special extra Sunday whenever he thought he needed one. He was not a bourgeois, to be able to do this. Just...problematic and since he worked mostly from home it was no biggy  to rearrange time. You see during the weekends public services and most shops were closed and this gave him a sense of freedom as if there were no obligations or consequencies. To name a weekday Saturday meant that he could go shopping etc in the morning but that he would go nowhere unpleasant and on his spare Sundays he would not leave the house at all. This way he could afford a three-day weekend every week and a day-in every now and then. Saturdays were to be on Mondays or Thursdays because he was working at a school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays were usually tranquil enough as they were.

We can picture Mr BooHoo on a nice gloomy Monday morning, that he had just renamed Saturday, thinking of a past Thursday that had been transformed from a silly fourth into a lovely sixth day of the week.

He had opened his eyes at half past eleven. Outside a bright, sunny day was taking place, exactly a month before Christmas. He felt glad to have survived another week and that it was only two more days to the weekend truce.

In Mr BooHoo's perception to wake up after ten o'clock was late. He felt clearer during the day-time and therefor he tried to prolong it as much as possible. He liked sleep as much, though, and there was a conflict.

The previous day, Wednesday it was, he had decided that he would postpone every disagreeable errand until the following week. Specifically, he had to go to a public health institute for the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the junkies and the artists, with two photographs (eventually they only needed one), his i.d. and a photocopy of a protocol form that was given to him the first time he went there, three months earlier, to collect his health benefits booklet. He did not really want that because he did not really plan to use it. He was terrified of public hospitals, despised queues and furthermore, when ever he went to one he was worried he would catch some new strange and maybe even lethal disease. In addition to the above he would have to go to a massive, ugly public building, wait in line for hours among the previously mentioned miserable social groups, get into a dingy room crowded with desks and talk to a despondent public servant that would hate his or her job along with the rest of the humanity and be in a constant search of an opportunity to spit his or her moodiness to the face of an innocent by-stander. The last time he was there a large, deranged blond woman who looked and acted like a pimp and might have been a prostitute had been blocking his way in for almost half an hour, until one of the people that worked there took pity of him and invited him in to get his last stamp and leave. The whole experience was rather unpleasant and he was not looking forward to repeating it.

Avoiding pain, both physical and mental, was instinctive for all living organisms. Mr BooHoo could tolerate physical pain but was very sensitive when it came to insults. As some would say, he tended to take everything way too personally. For example he would repeat random dialogues with total strangers that had been rude to him (and apparently had forgotten of him the very next second) for days on end, as if they had slapped him in the face and he had done nothing to avoid it, but in the meantime he was boiling inside. Not only he felt helpless and stunned at the moment when the incident took place but it haunted him for the rest of his life, like a misplaced scar. ( Well-placed physical scars can be sexy). He was also unlucky enough to live in a city where people were edgy and loud. This situation made his life difficult. An acquaintance had suggested that he managed his errands by doing one obligatory unpleasant thing every week. On that particular week he had gone to the bank to pay the rent and had made two unpleasant phone-calls. Enough is enough, he thought, and took the decision in question. He had been good enough to go to work, take care of the house, walk the dog two to three times per day (the night-walk was his partner's responsibility), so on that ex-Thursday, now Saturday, he could do nice stuff.

He combined the dog's walk with a cup of coffee by him self. He had found a nice cafe on a nice location, under a record-store. From his table he could see the passers-by and a dirty old building. The coffee was all right and cheap. The radio was playing"Heroes" by David Bowie. Then he went back home to make Christmas ornaments and experimented on a chicken-pie recipe (eventually it came out too dry but his next attempt was a success) Somedays, life could be all-right for anyone.    

No comments:

Post a Comment