Memories that are stirred.

Just another day when I consider writing about my life. But there are a lot of distractions following me internally and externally... Lots of ideas appear, then they disappear almost as suddenly as I fail to cut out the background noises. I probably shouldn't have come to a small establishment to contemplate my fifty years of experience/existence/exasperation.

It's Leeds on Wednesday afternoon and it's very quiet except for the individuals, like me, with a few holes scattered throughout their minds.

God, it's just me on repeat. Listen to them, because I appear to have no choice: I was brought here and I am Witness.

So I drank that half, table beer, very hastily and now I am out the otherside of Whitelocks and contemplating a dead Wednesday afternoon.

***

When I worked at the Farmer Jack's I organised a robbery.

***

Which was the most ridiculous epoch of my existence? Probably from sixth form (September 1990) until I got on that jet plane to Perth, WA, in May 1999. The next 7 months in Australia made me see myself and the world quite differently and the person who left Yorkshire Electricity wasn't the same/sane one who lasted one morning back at Yorkshire Electricity in February 2000. The next few years, until the YHA in April 2007, were also carnage for a different reason... As I got fatter and fatter and less sane. By the time I gave Glenn back his keys for the flat I could never come back! But somehow this mental health pinnacle since 2013 has left me completely gone off my rocker... And back in West Yorkshire's least good Market Town.

***

Rollwrap and David Jones's Christmas temp. Passing by Ace Cards(is it still called that) in the Market Place memories are stirred.

For a month or so it was my job to replenish cards, decorations, tinsle, etc, for the seasonal stalls. And I think it, combined with being a Virgin Megastore Christmas temp, put me off anything remotely Christmassy for life!

But I graduated from the Christmas department to the book and music department when the guy in charge quit. This gave me the opportunity of finding a nice quiet place in which to live for the remainder of the Millennium seeing the year out at Bradley's Head.

A good friend of the lady who served the customers in the department gave me a room in Allambie Heights, over the Harbour Bridge, passed Mosman and almost at Warringah Mall. It got me out of Bondi and that awful Backpackers on Hall Street. The combination of workers and party-ers was never pleasant.

And I almost got laid a couple of times, both in Bondi and in Allambie, but it was never quite there: I was terrified of girls when I was 27. Not much has changed now I am 50!

The girl from Northern Ireland, I'd met on several occasions coming down from Darwin, Mission Beach and Magnetic Island, came and took me out and I failed again as we sat on Bondi Beach watching the late night goings on.

She was the first girl I'd seen in the buff as she had been sunbathing one day on Magnetic Island and I'd stumbled into her: I tried very hard to avert my eyes, but she was so lovely and really didn't mind me having a slight bulge below. In another world we'd have been partners if I hadn't blown her away one drunken night in an Irish Pub in Bondi Junction.

Magnetic Island had a fantastic Aussie pie shop along the beach from Coconuts on the Beach backpackers and her wonderful coconuts.