Paul Schiernecker

Author: Paul

An excerpt from AFK.

As people started to move from their seats despite the fact we had been specifically told not to undo our seatbelts until the sign had been turned off I grabbed the US Customs form we were supposed to have filled in during the flight. I had been too engrossed in my mammoth film session to even consider the red tape and bureaucracy of it all. I managed to get the first couple right, I knew my name and date of birth, but beyond that I started to struggle. They wanted to know the specific address we were heading to and when we would leave. I thought to myself calm down mate, we just got here. Harvey gave me his form to copy so as long as I didn’t accidentally copy his passport details down I was sorted. We were due to spend our first night at a lodge in Grand Canyon National Park and that was what Harvey had put down on his form. I copied his details word-for-word before realising we didn’t have the same date of birth, he was five years younger than me and also infinitely cooler. I managed to remember that America, for reasons unknown, put all their dates in the format month, day, year and checked everything I had put down. I wanted to make sure it was right. Despite the fact we had taken off at eleven in the morning and flown for over ten hours it was only two pm local time. I struggled with the maths of it all in my head as Harvey handed me my bag from the overhead shelf and I carefully piled everything back into it.

We arched our way out into the aisle and I slowly managed to shake off the dead feeling in the bottom half of my body. I’d only got up once in the course of the flight and felt twinges like it had gone to sleep. I felt rested but confused and disorientated, like waking with a hangover. Maybe this was the jetlag.

Nobody had anything to say to each other as we followed the row of heads through white corridors and out into a hall covered in a snake of rope to help us non-American citizens queue more effectively. Overhead were a lot of warnings about having your passport ready for inspection and not taking photographs in the hall. Every two minutes a video would flash up featuring Carrot Topp detailing how it wasn’t a good idea to decide to “have a laugh” when it came to entering these United States. I took heed of the ad, I was going to be a good boy.

As if the videos weren’t enough, a stern looking guard in uniform patrolled the front of the queue and yelled at anyone who had taken their phone out prematurely.
‘Sir, no pictures in here.’
‘You, in the sunglasses, cell phones away until you’re through security.’
‘Have your passports ready for inspection.’
This meant taking them out of protective cases. Security hate protective cases which is funny because they literally sit in one, behind glass, judging. I watched as Melanie and Harvey were asked to step forward into a queue for a particular desk. There were outlines of footprints painted on the floor to indicate exactly where they were allowed to stand while waiting to be invited up to the desk. Customs didn’t want them to stand too close together apparently in cas e that was the moment they chose to launch an attack on US soil. Behind me, Dr James and Teni were worrying about where Dr Amy had got to. They were sure she had been right behind them as they were coming off the plane but now she was nowhere to be seen. Teni was trying to count everyone through to make sure there were no stragglers.
‘Sir, you can join queue 17.’
As they had said sir, I assumed they were addressing someone else. Someone who must have somehow been ahead of me in the queue. Maybe an adult. It turned out they were talking to me.
‘Sir, number seventeen, hablo English?!’

I stepped into a queue and started to sweat. I tried to look like I hadn’t done anything wrong because I hadn’t. The bloated couples in front of me, clearly on their way to Vegas in their clichéd trilby and sunglasses, their too high heels and palm tree shirts were having their fingerprints scanned. It seemed a bit unnecessary. From what I had seen on the news, Americans had been committing crimes against fellow Americans with no mention of us non-US citizens being involved. Regardless of all the gun crime and the rape they may have committed against each other I was certainly not going to make a joke or try to be funny or give them any reason to take me to a tiny room and test the capabilities of my frame with a cavity search.

I looked up and the solemn man with the wonky moustache but straight glasses signalled to me with two fingers. I hoped he was at least going to buy me a drink first.
‘Ello’ I said, attempting to be more English than ever before and coming out somewhere along the way to Van Dyke cockney.
‘Passport please… sir.’
I put my passport down on the desk between the pair of us. Everything around him was square to the desk itself. It had a place. The pens were in a row at the side of the keyboard. The monitor was facing the back wall. His hands were poised on the edge, perfectly manicured fingers ready to judge me. In the midst of all the depraved and purposeful contours of his universe was my misaligned and grubby passport, eight years into its ten year life, stamped in Africa, South America and soon, the United States of America. He swung it around and looked hard at the picture. A young, shaggy-headed version of me looked up at him with stoned, puffy eyes.
‘Hmmmm’ he said. The sweat on my brow stopped rolling like his vision was based on movement. ‘You’ve had a haircut.’
‘That was 2008 mate, I’ve had a few.’

The hallway was windowless. I could have been anywhere. All I knew is I was alone and if I didn’t do something about it I was going to be stuck there for a long time. People walking in the opposite direction glared at me. I felt scrutinised and studied the floor. At the end of the long hallway there was a glint of light like a door had briefly been opened into another world before being shut again.
I wasn’t about to feel the long arm of the law. I had simply lost the rest of the group.

What happened after I made the terrible blunder of attempting to be funny on my way into America is the man with the wonky moustache and straight sunglasses looked me dead in the eyes before glaring hard at my passport picture.

‘Place your thumb on the panel.’ Shocked, I did so. ‘Spread the fingers of your right hand on the grid’ he added. I did as I was told, placing my four fingers across a Logan’s Run looking pad attached to the front of his desk. ‘Repeat the same with your other hand.’ I repeated the same with the other hand. ‘Look into the camera. I tried to look distant and aloof with a wry grin, like I knew I was going to be trouble. When they flashed that mug shot up in the Fox News update showing in my mind I wanted Americans sat around their television sets to declare me a nasty piece of work with adorable dimples just based on that know-it-all smugness.

‘Welcome to the United States’ he said and banged his stamp in and around my passport a bit to make it look official. I fought the law and I won. I hurried through to baggage claim and waited while everyone else in the group managed to find their bags. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and freshen up. My mouth felt dry and gummy, again like waking with a hangover. I checked my reflection over and pulled at the sleepy black circles underneath my eyes. I tried not to think about the time back home but knew it had to be bedtime. I wanted a Horlicks. I needed to keep on trucking and assimilate the new time zone as quickly as possible to get full enjoyment from the trip. When I came back out, everyone except Dr James had gone through. He had his bag but was still waiting for Dr Amy who hadn’t come through security. She seemed to have disappeared. He was understandably concerned for her for two obvious reasons. The first is that anyone who is whisked away upon landing from a flight is either a celebrity or in trouble. The second is that he didn’t want to deal with our whining and first world problems on his own for a week, which was understandable. My bag finally came through. I was able to recognise it from the rainbow tag that remained tied to the top from the group flight to Peru a year before. Aside from that it was a non-descript black backpack. I took it down from the conveyer belt and slowly tried to wheel it through. The problem is, and always has been, that the bag is shorter than my legs. It doesn’t have an extendable handle so I’m constantly having to slouch to pull it and it is constantly having to flip over and embarrass me. We’re like C3PO and R2D2 but not in a galaxy far, far away.

‘Sir, can I see your passport?’ asked a guard at the side of the walkway. He had a gun and a walkie-talkie so I respected his request. He looked it over and I managed to hold my tongue.
‘You got anything on you?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry.’
Oh shit, here we go again.
‘You got any on you?’
He raised his head indicating towards me. I couldn’t work out what I was supposed to do.
‘You got any coffee, like on your shirt.’
I looked down at the stupid upside-down logo on my t-shirt. I JUST WANT TO DRINK COFFEE, CREATE STUFF AND SLEEP.
‘Oh, haha, no. I don’t, sorry.’
‘There’s a lot of you coming through here for that Grand Canyon Lodge. Where are y’all going?’
Y’all, y’all, he actually said y’all. I was in America after all.
‘We, good sir, are off to trek the Canyon for charity.’ Again, the sentence was jumbled together with chimneysweep cockney thrown in for good measure.
‘Well, have a great day.
Have a great day, have a great day. He actually said have a great day. That confirmed it.
I gave a bit of a curtsy and broke on through to the other side.

February 12, 2016
Following it up.

This week saw me having a number of frank and beautiful conversations with people about mental health. Their mental health, my mental health, what they were taking, what I was taking, who they recommend I speak to, who I recommend they speak to. It’s so nice to have kick-started something for myself and others which means this subject gets the openness and respect it deserves.

A lot of people have told me that what I did last week, what I wrote, was brave. It isn’t brave. It’s something we should be able to talk about in the same way I will tell you now that I’ve had some wicked migraines in the last couple of days which I have taken as being a foretelling of the coming of the end of my days. It shouldn’t be brave to talk about mental health. It’s like any other kind of health. The amount of time I spend listening to people complain about having man flu could instead be filled up with people just as naturally talking about their mental health.

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read my blog, everyone who commented, everyone who spoke to me privately about their own concerns. It’s meant the stats have gone through the roof. On the day I posted Citalopramstagram my blog had more hits than on any other day in the four years I’ve been writing. We are all brave. We are all amazing. I am not defined by my mental health but it certainly is a part of me.

February 12, 2016
Citalopramstagram

Hey.
It’s okay. It’s just me. Don’t mind me.
I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be alright. There’s a lot of bloody awful stuff going on in the world but you’re doing really well.

When I was younger I got sad. I was hella young and I was hella sad (I’m going to call that my “hella” quota for this blog post). Nobody knew what to do with me. I hadn’t seen an awful lot of hardship aside from the fact I never got Hungry, Hungry Hippos for Christmas in 1993. I had never been beaten (other than with a spatula which was all the rage at the time) and I was never molested. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t explain it. I sat with that sadness for an awfully long time. I suppose you’ve reached a point where you are wondering why I’m telling you this. It’s for me. It’s for you too but it’s mostly for me. Whenever I tell people that I suffer from anxiety, that I suffer from depression, that sometimes I see a train pulling in and wonder how long it would hurt for, they ask how. I am outwardly happy. I’ve had to learn to be. These are perfectly normal thoughts, unless you’re being quizzed by a healthcare professional in which case they draw a sad face next to that question on their little survey and carry on. I’m writing this as someone who has been in and out of some kind of therapy for more than five years, more than fifteen if you count the sugar pill homeopathy sessions I underwent when I first got the sads. I’m currently on citalopram. I’m on the waiting list for therapy again. I just wanted to write this to let you know that it’s okay. I can’t talk for people who have undergone horrible circumstances. I can’t speak on behalf of battered spouses or soldiers returning with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have never really been victimised (beyond generic school bullying (my name came under some scrutiny for not being quite English enough)). I’ve never really had a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a box of Kleenex and a cup of tea. Take that however you wish. I just wanted to let you know that even if you haven’t experienced something horrible, if you feel you are not allowed to show any kind of emotion at Million Dollar Baby in case people realise that you’re human, that it’s okay to need help and its okay to sometimes feel like you are a bit broken. It’s alright to want to do terrible things, to destroy yourself and the world around you. I don’t think that’s something that is taught. Like I said, I can’t speak for people in a lot of circumstances. I’m trying to completely understand my own privilege as I type this. Just because I have that privilege. As a man. As a white man. As a straight white man. As a straight white man living in England. As a straight white man living in my own place in England. Even with all that going on, it’s alright to be sad. It’s alright to feel emotion. It’s alright to feel like you want to shut yourself away from the world. We are taught from the earliest ages that we aren’t allowed to do certain things because they are gendered. We, as boys, got DIY and not being able to dance, girls got a lot of accessories and all the best colours. It was also taught women were allowed to have emotions that men weren’t. Isn’t that twee and quaint and adorable? For the longest time I felt guilty about the way I felt about things. It didn’t matter if it was social injustice (flies on the faces of kids in Sudan) or Aslan dying and rising up like a glossy yellow Jesus. That guilt runs pretty deep and I don’t understand why. What’s the problem with showing emotion? I cried when David Bowie died and I cried at Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s nice to be able to cry. It’s also nice to be able to talk openly about depression. Why do people have such an issue with it? What’s the big problem there?

As it turns out, once you become the person who mentions it, you’re actually like some kind of soothsayer for anyone else you come into contact with. As soon as I was comfortable enough with my own mental health to start talking about it, I discovered other people had thoughts and feelings and had been waiting for someone to talk to. Why don’t we all just talk about it? Wouldn’t that be a lot healthier than sitting in the dark and rocking? When I was a kid I genuinely thought I was going to be dragged off to a padded cell in a straitjacket. If I could travel through time, one of the first things I would do, after investing in Apple when they were working out of a garage and telling George Lucas not to put eyelids on the Ewoks, is tell my younger self it’s going to be alright, that it is okay to be sad and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s something I needed to hear at the time and as incredible as my parents were when I got that way, it didn’t help to settle the fear there was something wrong with me.

I read something recently that said “in the forties, eighteen-year-olds went off to fight and die for their country and now they just want to talk about their feelings”. I hope the source realises they are talking about a generation who returned home from that war, if they were lucky enough to return at all, and a lot of them suffered for the rest of their days. My grandfather was born in Holland. He was in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. He saw piles of bodies at roadsides. He had to hide under floorboards from the Nazis when he was a teenage boy. You don’t think he wanted someone to talk to about that? He couldn’t. He was never the same again. There wasn’t a term for it then. He, like many men in wartime, had to suffer in silence. I know someone who toured Afghanistan just a couple of years ago and the boy who came back was not the same boy we sent off. Fortunately he’s now getting the help he needs.

That’s why I’m offering this advice ultimately. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, or what you’ve got going on, just know that the thoughts that keep you up at night, the fears you have and the concerns you carry are entirely okay and you’re going to be alright. Look after yourself, get in touch with me if you are worried about anything and I will speak to you soon.

Thank you.

February 7, 2016
P.S. I Love You

February 2, 2016
Free January

I have an odd relationship with social media. It’s sort of like eating fast food. You know there’s absolutely nothing beneficial in it but for a little while it’s fulfilling. It gives you something to do with your hands. It’s something to look at. It’s usually pretty bright and shiny and will get something spilt on your trousers. In the end it will kill you and everyone you love. Alright, I didn’t completely think that comparison through. The important thing is that in January 2016 I decided to cut myself off in the name of my sanity.

For over a decade I’ve been addicted to social media. I was on Bebo and then I was on Faceparty. I was on MySpace and then I was on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. Not a day goes by when I don’t write something pithy and mildly irritating to the masses (approx 700 friends on Facebook, 500 followers on Twitter, 400 followers on Instagram, 250 followers on Tumblr). It’s not a massive amount, I’m not Katanga Jenner (my knowledge of pop culture “icons” is slipping as I approach 30 and this might not even be the vacuous person I intend it to be). I sometimes feel like I owe them something, that if they don’t know what I’m eating then they’re going to struggle to sleep at night. “Sure I have a roof over my head, a wardrobe full of clothes I don’t wear and a fiancé who wants me dead but what does Paul Schiernecker think about the Cuban Missile Crisis?” I hear them crying out as they toss and turn on their pillows. It was this narcissistic tendency that made me decide I should probably give the whole thing a rest. It’s effing dangerous and it’s toxic. It was either give up social media or give up caffeine and you know how I get without my morning coffee enema.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a healthy relationship with social media and I’m not saying it doesn’t offer a great deal of prospects and opportunity to do good, it’s just that it was quite nice to take a break from it.

The first thing I had to get over was “the twitch” – the desire to reach for my phone like the heroes and villains of the old west would reach for their pistols. Any time I’m on my own, vulnerable or anxious, which to be fair is a fairly constant state of play in my life, I reach for my phone and busy myself in the world of Minion-based mum gags and photos of meal preps and protein shakes. Again, I’m not gym-shaming although I am possibly Minion-shaming. They’re about as funny as finding a lump while scrubbing the key areas in the shower. I found myself still reaching for my phone despite the fact I wasn’t about to shoot down anyone in the town of Red Rock and knowing I had deleted all social media applications from my phone on the evening of January 1^st. To combat this, I took a tip from one of my favourite blogs, The Minimalists, and replaced the Facebook app with the Kindle app. I already have an account with Amazon and a Kindle but the app gives access to all the books you have in “the cloud” – that mysterious land above our heads which is slightly better than heaven because someone stole celebrity nudes from it. I also started utilising the podcasts app and am now addicted to The Nerdist, The Minimalists, Stuff You Should Know, Infinite Monkey Cage, Serial and Desert Island Discs. I’ve finally started reading War & Peace properly (currently at 12%) and I’m learning a lot more about the world around me.

I have however found a new addiction. I’ve started eBaying. I love the thrill of the countdown, the way the digits tick over, the fact that it doesn’t feel like real money for real things until they turn up and smell like other people. I’ve realised I’m going to have to have a clear out of my wardrobe in favour of all my fancy used things from other people. I’ve got far too many jumpers (when I’ve realised I don’t really wear them) and have so many coats that I could warm a netball team (I initially said football team but doubt I could stretch to eleven unless some of them were very small and could fit in a pocket).

I’ve been able to spend time with the people who matter to me and actually make it count. It doesn’t matter if it’s digging out dinosaur fossils with my girlfriend in the lounge, dancing to The Beatles with my godsons or running around an abandoned shopping centre from a horde of East 15 zombies, I’ve taken a lot of stuff on this month and won at it. There’s something about me that wonders if I will ever return to social media again. I know I’ve missed out on a couple of social occasions as a result of not being on Facebook and if I don’t make some kind of contact I could soon miss my own birthday but I feel like I’m actually connecting with people and enjoying things a lot more and without the desire to prove something to the outside world. I’ve had a number of conversations with a close friend about the nature of our social media selves – the version we promote – and that’s just as toxic. The second it takes to smile for a picture is bookended by the absolute sorrow that is life in the twenty-first century. Is anyone actually happy anymore? Does that happen for anyone? Answers on a postcard of your favourite Beatnik writer please.

This month I managed to finish a manuscript about depression, plan my next book, start the Insanity workout, help film a promo video, learn to make Huevos Rancheros, read seven books, get addicted to eBay, complete GTA V, run further than ever, remain reasonably sober, book a holiday and enjoy everything presented to me. I’m not saying my life is perfect and I don’t know how much of this is just the positive outlook I try to bring to the first month of the year but the fact remains, this month, without social media, has been a holiday.

January 28, 2016
Chateau Lobby

If you’re not familiar with Father John Misty then you should be, this is Chateau Lobby from I Love You, Honeybear.

January 25, 2016
Kooks

When I was a kid we used to go on holidays that involved dangerously long road trips through Europe. One of the best things about them was being able to listen to a league of incredible music that my parents chose to expose us to. The best of this mix was David Bowie’s Hunky Dory. An album that has come to mean a great deal to me. In tribute to the great man and because I know it’s one of my dear mother’s favourites, here’s my cover of Kooks.

January 14, 2016
An open letter to your next transition.

Dear David Robert Jones,
The Man Who Sold The World,
The Man Who Stole My Heart,
The artist, the musician, the icon, the hero, the mime, the alien, the heathen,
I didn’t know you. I would like to think I did but how well can two people who never knew each other know each other? All I knew was the image. What you allowed me to see and I wanted to thank you for that. From the earliest age I remember you, like an extra parent. I would stare at your mismatching eyes and the globule on your shoulder and wonder what it all meant and where you had come from. Then there was that voice. Those sounds. That instrumentation. The way you cut and pasted words until the sentences made more sense than anything else I had heard.

I can’t imagine a time without you and that’s why it feels like there is a rock in my guts. I’ve never been in a world without you before. No matter how quiet and tentative you kept, I knew you were there and now you aren’t. A fascinating man and an incredible artist, this world will never see anyone like you again. Your characters and your reinvention were so important to so many people.
You can assess people on their favourite Bowie. Your terrifyingly handsome face on the cover of Hunky Dory will always be my favourite Bowie but like we are all taught, it’s what is inside that counts. The eleven tracks on that album take me somewhere else. I get lost in your words. I cry for you. Thank you for that.

I don’t know where you have gone but as you said yourself, it won’t be boring. You have not just influenced but changed the world we live in and that debt can never be repaid. From the first to the last you were your own man and you were so incredibly cool about it. I hope that whatever transformation you have taken on is worth leaving us for. There’s no way you could have gone in the way they are reporting. Something so plain and human. No. You have been abducted. You’ve dissipated. You’re gone. You’re never going to be forgotten. You’re right though. It would probably blow our minds.

Enjoy the great beyond.

January 11, 2016
Where is Paul Schiernecker?

Hello. It’s me. From the outside or something. That’s what she says isn’t it? In the song.

In January 2016 (now) I decided I was going to give up social media for the month. This is a big deal. I chuffing love social media. It has all those bits you can drag down and release to update and it jingles and woops for you. What is not to love? I’m just worried it’s a bit dangerous. I spend so long on there that it gets fucking depressing. I’m supposed to be a writer. I’m supposed to produce things. How can I do that if I am locked into this infernal battle of baby photos and engagement announcements. That’s why I’m giving it up.

Those of you with me last year will remember the struggle of Dry January 2015. I didn’t drink. Apparently I don’t drink a lot now, and last night I downed three cans of San P Limota in a move that left me slightly nauseous for the rest of the evening but I assure you, I still drink. I wanted to give up something this year that had the same level of overlap with my life. It was either going to be social media or caffeine and I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to my grandes.

I’ll do a nice big wrap-up of what has gone on this month at the end but I just wanted to drop you all a message to say I am ok. I’m focusing on the things I actually enjoy. I’m writing a lot. I’m making plans that I hope to see through. Everything is awesome. I’ll see you when I’ll see you. Alternatively, there are other ways of getting in contact with me and you can use any of them. Don’t be a stranger or at least, don’t be any stranger than you usually are.

Peace.

January 10, 2016
2015: In Review

There we go, like narcissistic thieves returning to the scene of the crime we find ourselves back at another January. The chance to give everything a lovely little wipe clean and an opportunity to take stock of our life choices, or the chance to mock anyone who would consider changing anything they’ve ever done just because of the date. Either is good. It’s been a funny old year. I often wonder which it’ll be that the entire world gets destroyed because of bad decisions but here we are in another new one, blinking slowly through our hangovers and willing our genitals to return to normal size after knocking back half an E with a glass of bubbly because “fuck it”. Many things happened in 2015, politics and stuff, but what you are really wondering is what I made of the weird stuff that happened to me. Well, I’m going to tell you, breaking it down month by bloody emboldened month.

January: The year began much like others before it, by following on from the year that had been. I spent most of the month accidentally writing 2014 on documents and having to correct myself and dreaming of the day I would have to make a 5 look like a 6 rather than making a 4 look like a 5. I was also swiping right with a fiendish speed I first established playing Track And Field as a kid. It was an experimental time for me as a man although one which, as good fortune would have it, stopped me from being on the Channel 4 show, First Dates. I will forever be in debt to the replacement bus service I refused to get all the way to London on the promise of a background TV date and a dinner (which I have in my head would have definitely been a battered sausage and chips). Elsewhere, my glasses got trodden on in a sex kerfuffle and were never the same again.

February: As with every year before it, February was celebrated nationwide as being my birthday month. While the House of Lords still veto the suggestion we all get the whole month off and call it a Pauliday I did get a lovely four Saturdays and Sundays off in a month as well as a mixed grill to celebrate the day itself. In a move that shocked many (me), a number of my friends forgot the date and spent weeks afterwards trying to make amends. I pigheadedly refused to lower myself to their level and instead floated around my flat in a pair of mop slippers. I went to my first ever Drive-in movie where I saw ab-flashing gay romp Top Gun for the first time. I went to a very nice hotel in London and upset the establishment by drinking a lot of vodka martinis while dressed like I was in Mad Men.

March: Two incredible things happened in March 2015. The first was that The Strokes announced they would be playing Hyde Park in the summer. I booked tickets. The second was that Secret Cinema announced they would be showing The Empire Strikes Back in the summer. I booked tickets. The third was that I started talking to an incredible woman via my blog who utterly compelled me. The only problem was that she was in Manchester and I was in Essex. With the near-Vulcan levels of logic I possess I got on the National Express website and booked tickets. I was also asked to perform at Old Trunk’s Tales & Ales events. My best bit from the show was getting to say cunnilingus onstage, I’m like Shakespeare.
I also forgive my friends for forgetting my birthday when they surprised me five weeks late with a meal out. I almost cried hard salty man tears.

April: I spent most of April darting back and forth to Manchester and falling in love like an idiotic little schoolboy. I also got to visit Salford Lads Club and having been there and done that, got the t-shirt to prove it. Everything I had ever said in the throes of my relationship-hating mentality were served up to me on toast points. I was literally (not literally) eating my words (metaphor). After spending three days together Charlotte and I decided the best thing we could do about the two-hundred miles between us was reduce it to about fifteen feet at all times and she started packing up her life to come and be with me. As I am constantly reminded, the north remembers, I know nothing, winter is coming… except it wasn’t. Spring was. And I was full of the joys of it. I was reasonably youngish, I had a foxy lady and somehow I managed to get an interview for a job I had lovingly gazed across the room after for about six months.

May: In May everything went proper mental. I had to clear enough space in the wardrobe for another person to get their stuff in there and I found out I got the job I had been pining for. I could practically smell the impressive job title on subtle off-white business cards, It would even have its own watermark. I bought a number of suits because I was still watching too much Mad Men and tried to negotiate a start date. After a heavy 24 hours in which I drove back and forth to Manchester with a carload of stuff we got Charlotte moved in and began our domestic bliss of cold cups of tea, love and dolly grips fucking everywhere.

June: In a matter of days I got to see two of the most important things in my shared love of life with my hetero-life partner Antony. We watched The Strokes and then we watched Star Wars and it was a-maz-ing. I finally felt like I was at a point in my life where I could be the adult version of child me, allowing these incredible opportunities I had always hoped for to play out. More than anything I always wondered when I would get to a point where I was happy with my lot. I seemed to have found it. Charlotte and I also welcomed our ridiculous bundle of joy Rigamortis into our lives. The rescued halfling of a cat with bowed back legs became our fur baby and we started creeping other people out with the way we talked about her as if we had birthed her ourselves. I started my new job and was immediately overwhelmed.

July: For Charlotte’s birthday we went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour and geeked out for a number of hours. I discovered that regardless of what I may have thought I was never in Gryffindor House and have been flying the Ravenclaw flag ever since. We visited her family for a few days and traveled to Hay-on-Wire for all the bookshop feels.

August: I was reminded of just how cool all of my friends were as they simultaneously jumped ship for the Edinburgh festival. I submitted a new novel about a version of me with a different name to agents and publishers across the land and was told I had made the main character purposefully unlikable. It was a low point. I spent weeks trying to make myself purposefully likable again. Reading Festival allowed Antony and I another chance to geek off as we spent four hours circling the M25 before finding our turn off, drinking too much, thinking that some of the children at the festival should really locate their mums and dads because they’d had far too many disco biscuits for their faces to deal with unattended and then watched The Libertines locked arm-in-arm.

September: I started trying to fit six months worth of training ahead of my annual charity trek into just one month as it dawned on me I was going to actually be flying to the Grand Canyon. I spent my weekend walking across the very flat and un-Canyon-y Essex countryside, taking refuge in the sitting rooms of anyone who would have me and making Vines that I assumed were hilarious. My fourth book, The Stamp Brotherhood, was released upon the masses (my parents and possibly some people who got the free e-book) and once again I waited for Lady Fame to come knocking at my door. The book did incredibly well, getting into the Kindle Top 20 for its category and earning me even more of a smug demeanor. I got three new tattoos, finally reaching a point where I realised I don’t have to explain the relevance of them to everyone each time I get one done and it can simply be because I like something. It’s not like it is permanent anyway.

October: I flew to Las Vegas and was jettisoned out into the desert to trek the Grand Canyon. I met some lovely and incredible people who I will remain in touch with, as I did after the Sahara and Peru treks. I raised over a thousand pounds for the Guide Dogs charity and I added another country to my roster of blagging rights when I looked off wistfully and recalled the time I hurt my knee in a cave. I got drunk in a casino, was denied entry to a club, lost my underwear on a building site and was shown to an executive business suite in the course of one night out. I downplayed this element compared to all the great charity work.

Charlotte and I visited Bath, enjoying a relaxing day in the thermae spa, a trip around the Roman baths and a lot of good food. We both got tattooed on Halloween.

November: I decided I was going to write two novels instead of one in the National Novel Writing Month event held each year in November. I completed the first one, at sixty-one thousand words, in just twelve days, promptly had a breakdown and was offered counseling. The second book is still in development. I also took too many truffles and got weird on a houseboat on the canals of Amsterdam.

December: Then we got here. Lovely little month December is. The warmest since records began. I ran about everywhere in a t-shirt, sweating and trying to work out if I had bought enough stuff for everyone. We commandeered a Christmas tree and set it up with the fancy baubles and bangles we had collected on our recent travels. I got to perform with some of my friends in a weird quiz show held at The Alex where I was the sexy scorecard boy. It developed my desire to bring back crop tops for men. Star Wars brought absolute joy to my face. I watched it twice and wept quietly each time. I went to so many Christmas parties that I forgot what working without a hangover felt like. Then it was Christmas and we were packing up and off to the midlands again. It was the first Christmas I had spent away from home and Charlotte’s family made me feel very welcome.
I got to see in the new year with my shoe brother before heading round to see other friends and get weird into the wee hours.

Every year has its ups and downs, it has triumphs and it has disappointments. I’m trying my best to navigate through it all, to celebrate the things I have done and recognise the fact that I’m in a very good place and space. As a very wise man recently told me, you need to find success in the life you are living and enjoy those victories. Here’s to 2016. Cheers.

January 1, 2016