A rebel without a clue.

Lola took me up through Ainsty View to the back entrance to the allotment yesterday morning. We'd not been that way together in a while. She seemed uninterested in a long walk, and I wanted to spend some time at the allotment before meeting Ian and Andy at the Mews around 2pm, so I let her take me up through the ginnel between the Ainsty Co-op and Poplar Avenue. At the junction I gave her the option of going up Maple Drive or along Poplar Avenue towards Kings Meadow. It's been ages since we walked that way to where it's possible to join the Old Railway. After a little longer, heading towards the Bridge on Spofforth Hill, we were back at mum's little more than an hour later. After three pints with Ian and Andy, and a somewhat uncomfortable few moments not knowing if I'd offended Andy, I went and collected Merry Legs who brought me back to the Mews. After her being smothered in affection by all the people in the bar area I took her for a short walk up Hallfield Lane, ...

Wednesday was a physically demanding day. From walking Lola at 8:45 until 1615, when I returned with Finley from post-school adventure. Between 1 and 2:30 I drank two 3.6% beers while trying to hear what a friendly but very quiet man was saying. At 4:30 I was just in time for the X98 with its host of troublesome high school adolescents: savagely barbaric swarming on the top floor of the double decker. The times of the day when the bus has school kids on it should also have some form of 'monitor' just to reduce the chaos and disorder which follows the frantic teenagers. Hopping off the X98 at Oakwood I went for a couple of pinta to read South from Granada . Preston, part of the North Bar chain, always dims it's lights around 6 so I was stopped in my tracks. I decided to leave and get chips and curry sauce early. One pint was adequate: a healthy amount of beer! Back to the flat on the 13A, heading along Roundhay Road, Sheepscar interchange and North Street. Bed! Snoring until...

It's raining, but I don't care. I've a couple of sacks of early crop potatoes to sow on Wednesday - February for harvest July - and a sack of potting compost to make a real start with vegetables for planting come the spring, £8.50 from Wilkos at the bottom of Albion Street in Leeds. Begun to get the ball rolling with volunteering on weekends, and cutting back on nonsensical alcohol bingeing, I can help the Meanwood Valley Volunteer Rangers. Will see Andy at the Allotment on Wednesday too - I keep calling Jonathan Morton at Leeds City Council, but I've not got through to him yet, it's been months! *** Suddenly Wetherby is so boring. It's always felt like a one horse town, but I watched myself drinking a Belgian dark hot chocolate in BAE (£3) and thought 'banal'. There is only so much banality I can cope with and today, in the drizzle, was making suicide seem like a positive response! *** At 2pm I walked up Deighton Road to Mark Lane, passed Kirk Deighton ...

Lola had a poorly ear, £70. Mother has a poorly tooth, priceless, And I have an alcohol support session this afternoon, meaningless. Monday afternoon bus yo-yo The second bus since arriving back at my flat, very late, on Saturday night. Back to the same routine. The few days away in Andalucia were worthy, I suppose, but there is nothing permanent about it. Glenn turned on his laptop and groaned and I woke up at six and returned to podcast-land. 

A tearful morning. An image of a Vizsla crawling onto a bed and All I Need Is A Miracle playing alongside and I get the emotion engendered there ... When nothing fits, when nothing makes me smile, and am in the pits of despair, I can only return to Lola to help keep me going along the dark weary road I trudge. A proxy, but that image encapsulates why, without her, I would not be here. One careless whisper and months of positivity melt into the cracks of existence once more. People are cruel and I don't need any of them in my life; give me another moment with Lola and things will, just about, soldier on. ... Bored of war! Another conflict being created to keep us bickering and fighting amongst ourselves. Why can't they say enough is enough. There are more important things than conflict. Harmony and unity, brotherness and togetherness. *** For several months I have managed my mental health without SNRIs because I had been keeping certain things at arms length: COVID-19 does that ...

Sitting back in my morning place: by the bay window looking out into the darkness. Watching the gradual awakening of the street. The birds on the roof opposite, the children dropped off with Diane across the road, the cars which head east up the way to another destination. Monday morning. The weekend was a tough one. I didn't enjoy it one bit, but it's taught me a lesson: don't trust anyone because they are venomous snakes and will bite and devour at the first opportunity. Although it was an opinion of someone who doesn't matter to me it still cut me deep and, because someone I do value added salt to the wound, the soreness festered. No one likes me because I don't work. That word. Work. My mind doesn't work either, but they cannot see that for the reality it is. A man who has severe mental health issues - and has cut his own wrists as a cry for help - thinks he knows what the remedy to my problems are! But his problems are fathomless. They go so deep it's h...

Falling off the waggon coincided with falling foul of Adrian and Jason. It was followed by a crappy Saturday where, although I didn't hit the bottle, I felt hopeless against those who have negative attitudes towards me. People who really don't wish me well. But that was a couple of days. Minor days. Today is Sunday and, like Sisyphus, I must keep trying to get that boulder back to the top of the hill? First the first time in ages I walked via Wothersome, Thorner, Birkby Hill, Red Hall and Elmete Drive towards Leeds, but at no time did I feel peaceful, preoccupied by the voices in my head. It's a stiff lesson to learn that no one I loosely call 'friend' is compassionate about my mental health and wellbeing. There is one or two I feel are true friends who seem to understand more about what it is like to have these voices braying at me keeping me in this bad place? So start again. Pick up the heavy weight and carry it on my back. Carry on with my final year being this ...