A rebel without a clue.

Walking along Wade Lane I finally made it to Lovell Park without being worse for the intake of alcohol... But I feel in the pits again. Going to try to make a nice mushroom sauce to go with pasta, but I think the ones I bought, reduced, are at the end of their life? They smell too much of mushroom! *** With perseverance I turned those "passed their sell by date" fungi into a wonderful sauce. It was a creation. It took patience! I forced myself to slow down from the anxiety which has been rushing around inside my head all day... *** Where are you going and how do you know already? Birds... across the valley from my window a gull flies north above Aldi and Porcelanosa towards a destination it already knows. Birds have an incredible sense of smell or sight or they communicate on a level we are unaware of. They are busy busy all the morning and into the evening, if we provide a street lamp... They are heading for breakfast. They don't really stop looking for food, between squ...

Alongside the bus stop on Boar Lane there are three individuals actually sleeping rough in the doorways. Two by the fire exit for the Crown Plaza and another in the disused entrance to Cosmo Deluxe(closed prior to COVID). Is it a lifestyle choice? I don't know how anyone can manage to sleep surrounded by the detritus of city life: dropped McDonald's containers, the march of feet heading to work, or home from the nightshift, droppings: the grime of falling exhaust fumes. There are too many faux homeless, who are really vermin, but those who are forced to sleep against the wind, rain and tread of feet is on a level of will I cannot comprehend. And why are they in doorways when so many properties in Leeds are vacant? Everyone is entitled to a good night's sleep. It's a human right - it's an 'everything' right: no living being can function without a good night's rest, but to be sleep deprived is insane: I know from late night insomnia just how unsteady I am ...

And today I feel as flat as a fish skillet. Even though I had no hangover, sleeping well on Saturday night, and had a lovely walk alongside Crowcroft Bank, Watersole Lane, Flint Mill Lane, Spring Lane (to drop Lola at my sister's), mowed my mum's lawn(before it rained) and just returned a pair of Meindl Shoes for a (welcome: £134.30) refund because one of the metal lace holes had popped out. It's nothing to do with the weather. This morning Lola was brilliant as we snoozed on until 6:20am and waited until 6:55am for breakfast... And mother didn't descend until 8am. It couldn't be easier. Do I go and see the GP next week? This is a long curve downwards and maybe I need Venlafaxine to pick me up. The Jubilee hullabaloo doesn't help me either: celebrating our majesty who has sat in the web for far too long. I am not a Monarchist, but I am not a Republican... I am nothing: do I dare disturb the universe?

Friday morning: Just reached the porcelain bog for a secondary explosion brought on by a hasty second espresso. One too many: this day has started edgeways and balances on the brink. Maybe it's the weather: back to cold for the last week of Spring (official). Mum has Jean and Milton coming along soon to perpetuate the past as they reminisce of Rawmarsh, Kilnhurst, Parkgate, Rotherham and Sheffield from before the winter of discontent and decimalisation... *** Here I am again. In despair. It's come along in waves, until I am literally drowning in it. I had to get out of bed, I forced myself when I just didn't want to move: motivation is a momentum. Yesterday was a very crap day. From the minute mother and I had the row in the morning, until I went to bed eating a peanut butter and cheese sandwich. Dodging each other without having any more words: nothing felt good!  Well that's not entirely true the three wonderful hours with Lola walking to Collingham via Sweep Farm and...

Got to break out of this existence. Mother and her anger at everything, but mainly directed at me. It's my fault she slept so well, but was up at 6:50 as she could hear me closing doors - I should become incorporeal.  The normal pattern of my Wetherby existence was shattered as conversations about the usual Brexit, Ukraine anti Labour (everyone of them she despises personally) so I grabbed the bag of bottles accreting in the dining area of the extended kitchen. The things she's convinced of like  'self-sufficiency'... England hasn't been in that position since before the Industrial Revolution (if it ever really was as people starved much more often then too). There are too many people. There has always been too many people! One person is actually too many: look at the effect of us on everything we love or hate. So now I am spending £2.80 to listen to awful music in BAE for a few minutes before I run back and take Lola: the espresso was cold. How odd I didn't rea...

This is the first time since I was in Ronda with Glenn for my birthday that I can recall feel utterly exhausted from lack of sleep due to alcohol and bad cuisine. And part of me wanted to go for just one beer - hair of the dog! But I managed not to go anywhere near Bar Three or The Mews and instead had an espresso and a glass of iced water while a father and daughter practiced French. Just been up to Auntie Wendy's, to take her a birthday card, with Lola. It took some encouragement of Lola to go up Spofforth Hill twice in as many days, but we got there and had an hour there an back, via Wharfedale Lawn opposite The New Inn. On the road to recovery now as mum is asleep upstairs: she's tired from a busy day, hospital with Anne and shopping for herself. She's definitely on the way to self-sufficiency. September isn't too far away. Fingers crossed nothing comes along before then... Mum thinks I am getting taller, but I have been feeling fatter recently (beer goggles). Just ...

When I was in the first year of Wetherby High School there was a night when I saw a hopeless and lonely future. Without knowing it I created my reality out of the illusion encapsulated within a dream... In the morning, and for virtually the entire day, I was engulfed, bereft, in floods of tears. To the extent a girl thought something dreadful had happened in my family - a death or other trauma. I just couldn't tell them what emotions I was going through: I had killed myself so vivid was the dream. High School was a very bad place for me, from the moment I arrived, and was left alone in the hall, after everyone else had been summoned to their form group, and had to ask strangers why I hadn't been picked out and sent to a classroom to meet the teacher. There was no one registered at all by the name Daniel Sherburn. There was on the list a 'David Sherburn' but that couldn't be me? That wasn't me. It was a David. Being David destroyed my experience of that place fro...