Today is the day, and for many including him there is no other day…today is the day they will have recurring for the rest of their lives. Today this day… is their only day.

Before he goes to work he watches Television.

On breakfast TV today is a man who cannot eat normally, in fact he is physically afraid of most types of foods, he literally cannot bear to see or to touch his natural sustenance. This guy is called Peter, he’s twenty-one, he plays the drums in a rock band, he insists that he prepares all his own meals, which is a diet made up almost entirely of sausages, cheese and mash potato.

His mum with whom he lives is worried sick, ‘Peter is pallid and so thin, and no girlfriend wants stay with him.’ She says deeply concerned.

A wiry nervously excitable behaviour therapist appears, jauntily bounding onto the screen; he has an irritating grin, hair cropped to the skin and a phoney laugh. He smirks and then winks to camera and then holds up two leeks.

‘Peter WILL use these as drumsticks before the end of the show, I personally guarantee it,’ he says grinning in a slightly sinister way, there’s a freaky determination in that voice of his.

And everybody in the room laughs in that particularly false TV way. He as he watches wonders if Peter will use the stalk or the root end of the leek…it will all depend on which sound effect he wishes to emulate, he thinks to himself.

And when one does think, one does get the impression that if Peter doesn’t comply, this therapist might actually kill him…I mean after all this could potentially ruin his TV career.

For the rest of the week, we are going to see how Peter copes with the gradual process of interacting with food normally once again.

He turns off the TV, and shouts upstairs to his wife that he is leaving.

‘For good?’ She shouts back.

‘You wish,’ he says.

At 9:00am he arrives at work.

Through a maze of tin encased aisles in a warehouse colour scheme dirty dead metal grey, he walks, Wanders aimlessly for eight hours a day, and on each and every day he is picking the same items for the same customers into the same cartons.

To kill this scream compelling monotony, he shuts himself off to the world, bites his tongue usually when some hapless female interloper prods and stirs him from this dreamy malaise.

‘Good morning sweetheart.’ Comes a voice, not heard for so long he’d almost forgotten the sound.

He looks up and quickly stifles his usual per-functionary grunt…it’s her! The bright eyed bushy tailed girl, the one that looks like a female character out of a Japanese PS2 adventure game. But where has she been? And now… is she is different…has she been ill?

‘Morning babe, you ok?’ He replies, his mood lightened. He eyes her frame and makes no attempt to disguise the fact he is doing so.

‘I’m ok darling…and how’s you?’ Her cheeks are flushed with mild embarrassment at his eyes darting and flitting over her body.

‘All the better for seeing you honey, but its been so long I kind of forgot about you,’ he says startled that this uncharacteristic cheesy patter works, and elicits a shy sexy giggle from the girl.

‘Oh! Thank you darling,’ She smiles trying to suppress another flirty laugh.

She has always been attractive…striking in a tomboy way; jet-black hair skew-cut in a kind of oriental bobbed way… the slash of red through the fringe standing out like a branded mark. Deep black wide doe eyes set off from an elfin face. Today she is wearing baggy light brown combat trousers, battered trainers and a red tight playboy tee shirt that barely reaches her navel. A tattoo is etched on her stomach… perhaps some legendary animal from some mysterious fable? Today something has changed.

‘You look different.’ He says, but not quite knowing what it is about her that has changed.

‘MMMMHHH!!’ She now replies grinning cheekily, she folds her arms slowly and very deliberately in self-embrace.

‘You’ve been off ill?’

‘No…not ill, but I have been off.’ She continues to smirk.

She seems to have grown in stature and presence, more confident, taller…that favourite red tee shirt of his/hers is a seemingly tighter fit as she now stretches, her back arches as she places new stock in an adjacent bin. Her eyes never leave his, teasing him not giving away the answer. Her surname is Bujenevic…her husband a Serb allegedly knocks her about, for this there might be a reason but no excuse.

‘YOU are different,’ he almost exclaims.

At this she throws her head back and her wholehearted passionate laugh resounds around the picking aisles.

‘Yes darling…look,’ and she cups her breasts. ‘I’ve got brand new tits TADA!’

Again she giggles as she finally releases him from this mind torture, and then with the index finger and thumb of each hand she pushes her chest forward and air simulates the tweaking of each new nipple playfully.

‘God!! I am…I mean wow, can I really be so stupid, so dumb not to notice those?’ He says smiling.

Then he thinks of the boys in the warehouse who will be happy with this news, and indeed some of those boys will be happier that others*wink, wink* if you know what I mean.

1:00 pm

At lunch in the canteen the typical big mouthed, quick tempered, overt racist with a low wit has joined him and his other colleagues at the table, the jokes offensive come dull and fast. The laughter is nervous and tense so not real, they all huddle in, they’re all trying to suppress their own real feelings on this subvert taboo, while the moron whispers and then almost incoherently squeals out his punch lines.

In his eye line on another table, an Asian man whose family escaped the Amin regime sits smiling wryly. He is a gentle mild mannered man and would do anything, even go out of his way to help anyone, even the scumbag sitting at this table. And yet the Asian man’s smile tells him that he knows, has always known of his colleagues insecure betrayal and this reminds him of the lines from a famous song…

Everyone suffers in silence a burden.
The man who drives minicabs down in old Compton
The Asian man
with his love hate affair
with his racist clientele

One day the Asian man will stand up and ask this bully what it is he is so afraid of…one day.

As lunch break draws to an end, he drifts. The jokes and laughter now unheard, he wonders if he could marry, employ or want to live next to an Asian, he knows what the answer should be but in reality the answer is…well he’d like to say he doesn’t know.

But he does ponder on the fact that he might be a better person than the bigot, because unlike him these thoughts do cause him internal agony from time to time. He wishes he could stand up and voice his opinions…but he is a mumbling man and there is nothing worse than listening to the half hearted, half held convictions of a stumbling… directionless, inarticulate man.

And the tragedy is, he is aware just enough to know how stupid he really is.

At 5:25pm he arrives home and she is ready to go to work. His wife who is sitting looking vexed in a pale blue work overall, makes no attempt at greeting him.

‘You’re late,’ she says deadpan. ‘And if you’re late it means I’m going to be late.’

‘Then don’t go…stay.’ He says.

‘I never thought of that…yes when our combined wages give us nothing, yeah why not! Jack it all in and we could have even less than nothing…brilliant!’

‘OOOO! We are sarcastic tonight aren’t we? Please stay and taunt me, you know I love it when you humiliate me.’

‘Oh now, don’t you tempt me.’

‘It’s a long time since I tempted you sweetness.’

‘Yes…well perhaps another time eh?’

‘AWWWW!’

‘The girls are staying at Cherie’s tonight, I’m staying on at work until 2, fish fingers are in the fridge because that’s all there is. Don’t forget to tape Eastenders, don’t wait up…and don’t forget while I’m toiling in that shit hole… that you do enjoy your evening honey...bye now.’

‘Good. Really? Shame. Yummy. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t forget but I still won’t. Bye, bye dear.’

‘Oh! I nearly forgot something came through the letterbox with the mail, something that will really excite you.’ And she leaves with what could be the barest trace of a grin on her face…and was that tiny skip, a spring in her step?

As he sits and sifts through the mail looking for that bit of excitement his wife mentioned, he knows it will be a laugh and anticlimax, and indeed it is… it’s a menu for Chinese takeaway, a new establishment in town. He checks his pockets. It’s Wednesday and he has a fiver and shrapnel to last him until Friday. So fish fingers, beans and chips it is. But it is true a new takeaway is a major source for excitement in his town.

The TV is on and it seems nowadays breakfast daytime TV never ends. Now a well-known middle-aged talent less narcissist is doing what she enjoys best, self-promotion with zest.

Then within the confines of a cramped studio she mimes to tawdry teenage written song, gyrating, wobbling and pouting into the camera like an aging flabby red faced Aunt at a wedding who’s had one Vodka and coke too many. Her all girl identically clad dancing troupe are so buff, svelte and trim they do the moves with elegant ease and it is likely they the troupe will never be seen again.

The interviewers then fawn and fall all over her in congratulation.

‘That was great and I must say you, you do look absolutely fantastic,’ enthuses the host.

‘Thank UUUUUUUU,’ she gushes.

And oh God!! For the next ten minutes she extols the virtue of controlled diet, explains the need to challenge herself and to go for new musical direction and also to try other fields of artistic expression, she shares her banal philosophy on life and tells how grounded and chilled she now is, now that she’s found Buddhism.

And then the co-host asks about her alleged relationship with that other well-known self-publicising middle-aged male narcissist. The previously jolly warm atmosphere cools in the studio immediately; even-daytime TV can bring you these great moments occasionally. She crosses her legs with her hands on her knees, she pouts and purses her lips and her steely eyes smile death rays at the interviewer. And when finally this silent powerful point is made and understood.

‘You know that’s my personal life, I don’t think I want to discuss that…I don’t think it would be fair on him.’

She is a fourteen-year girl inside the body of an aging thirty five year old who deludes herself that she still looks twenty-five. She didn’t come here today to be tricked and placed under the celebrity microscope; no it’s still much too early in her career for that. She came to TV land today to be adored and to express me, me, and me, not to be analysed in front of the nation.

He knows and indeed perhaps we all know someone very much like this.

He sets the video and wanders upstairs and into the spare bedroom, turns on his computer, waits until everything is set up and then lays on his bed fully clothed and snoozes for an hour or so.

Later…

At 9:00 pm he’s been looking at his computer screen for about thirty minutes, deciding whether to browse or play. He then wanders downstairs to the kitchen.

He makes a cup of tea, then returns to his computer and looks at the white empty page on ‘Word,’ for a while he has taken to the fancy that he might be a writer of sorts, ideas seem shunt along like train carriages continuously in his mind, there one moment but then gone forever. Beginnings, middles and ends but not anything whole, and nothing at all has had the courage to leave his head and fill the page yet.

‘Write what you know,’ they say.

So with this advice in mind he gazes out of his bedroom window onto his street whilst sipping his tea, he thinks about what he knows that is unique and vital, something that would enthral someone else. And as if by magic, here in the twilight here he is walking up the street.

Jack Green is sixty-eight he’s been retired three years, tonight he’s nipping off to his local The Kingfisher for a quick half, but for eighteen years prior to his retirement you would see Jack Green walk up this street an hour before work regardless of what shift he might have been on. Without fail through wind, rain and shine Jack flat cap and workbag in hand would diligently stride the two-mile journey to work. Each day on this journey he would without looking or even pausing walk past his daughter’s house.

On a night like this, maybe in an earlier part of the year, thirteen or so years ago, he took the same walk with the same purpose past his daughter’s house without even that glance of recognition that someone close to him lived there. On the morning of this particular day however in this house his granddaughter less a year old burned to death in a cot left too near a gas fire.

‘C’mon Jack. Don’t be daft mate, Why are you here?’ His workmates all asked in distressed disbelief when he arrived.

‘Look life goes on,’ he said stoically, ‘you can all grieve your way in the way you wish, I will respect that…all I ask is that you respect mine, and what I do is get on with living instead of dying.’

And that is what he did … some might say heartless, others pragmatic but that is what he did. They say his daughter for months after cried and cradled, sung lullabies to an empty space where here own daughter should have lain, and Jack continued to walk past that house five days a week.

But is that something to be written on this page? No his page will not hold the private tragic story of Jack Green and his family. He knows of but not why Jack Green could behave in this way. Speculating on what goes on in the mind of a man like Jack would be too much, too terrifying. Delving into those dark recesses who knows what you might find. Jack found some rationale in there to do what he did, and who is he to say Jack was wrong.

So still the page remains empty. So what else does he know?

‘So what is all this about, what is the point of it all?’ He asks himself…he’s talking about life of course. ‘What am I, what are we all waiting around for to happen?’

10:30pm Darkness has enveloped the room, the cool air from an open window has soothed his frustration and now reflective he tries to be optimistic.

Tomorrow his daughters Chloe and Denise will have lost another day of their innocence. Their sense of wonder and excitement will be drained of yet another precious day.

But tomorrow maybe…

Peter might ram the leeks up the therapist’s bony arse.

The Playstaton2 girl called Bujenevic with new tits might drop kick her thug husband, and find a real man.

The Asian man might stand up and challenge the racist and knock the wanker off his feet.

He just might just stand up and say something that everyone wants to listen to.

His wife might stay home, and all the family might enjoy a Chinese meal together.

Pop narcissists might go out of fashion.

Jack Green might stop in his tracks on the way to the pub, breakdown, and cry and actually grieve over a distraught daughter and a grandchild he never knew.

And something, just something of worth might end up on this empty white page.

But the sad reality is that today this day…will begin again tomorrow.