“You realise of course that this complicates issues a little bit mate?”

As usual he just grinned at me. He was the definition of optimism and confidence, perhaps arrogance too - I had these too but this was a little too extreme, even for me, to allow a cheeky grin. We were best mates though, despite his shortcomings. Everyone has faults after all and optimism is no great fault - most of the time it’s a great thing.

“I’m not so sure this is a good idea you know, I don’t think we can pull it off. We can’t plan it can we?” I wasn’t in a grinning mood at all. I was solemn and he picked up on that straight away. He raised an eyebrow in intrigue but I wasn’t about to divulge the contents of my personal life problems on a packed carriage.

“Look, just trust me ok? We can plan it, to a certain extent. We can blag the rest, we could sell ice to the Eskimos if we applied ourselves properly. Hell, this should be a cinch!” he had the cheeky smile on his face again. This time I couldn’t help but join him. We had done some successful business recently and I did trust him. More than I trusted anyone, more even than me. I knew we’d come through if we put our all into it but it wouldn’t be easy.

Business was stretching me in ways I could never have imagined. Certainly the past months had been the most challenging of my life. I had worked harder than ever before, slaving away at weekends sometimes to finish for deadlines. Never leaving anything to chance was my new motto. It never worked in practice though, nothing does in reality. I was always going to be a bit lazy, a little casual about work. It was when work became casual on me that I would need to start worrying. I doubted this would ever happen.

Business wasn’t the only stretching part of my life recently. We, me and her, had a big argument again last night. Things went from great to tricky in one foul swoop. I knew I wanted her more than anything, I knew I loved her more than anything. I wasn’t convinced this was enough anymore though. People who say love is enough to keep any relationship together are wrong. Well, actually maybe not wrong. I’m sure you could keep the relationship together but it might not be a good relationship. I had discovered this the hard way with a long term ex-girlfriend. Love is not enough, I knew this now. I was more cautious now. If love is where everything’s shared then I suppose love can work above everything but this is never the case. Ideal world love isn’t something I was interested in anymore, it didn’t exist as far as I was concerned.

I’d lost my young views of the world. How things work perfectly, love is always perfect and war is always just - the opinions that most youngsters believe. I didn’t believe most of the crap I read in the paper, I believed even less in magazines. My only true source of reliable information was living life. Boy had I been living it. You may call me a cynic about the media but it all boils down to opinion and spin. I wanted neither. I had my own opinions on everything and I was determined to get these from my own visions of events. My own sightings and my own experiences had, in the past, fed my career and personality well. I was no longer living a fake life, following volatile fashion markets and reading commercial magazines to gloss up on popular culture. I did what I wanted, when I wanted.

Of course this is all to a point, some press can’t be avoided. I did watch TV, mostly comedy now though. I did read the newspaper but was constantly aware of spin. My only real childhood pastime that I had continued was watching films. I don’t think I could ever give up watching films. They were the driving force behind my very vision of artwork. What can be more artistic than a moving image, combined with music? What can be more powerful than a series of characters that are thrown through the hardest things life can throw? Nothing, well I thought so anyway. Film encapsulated popular culture in a slightly twisted way and didn’t pretend to be fact, most of the time. I loved the application of reality to unreal situations. The use of unreal characters in real locations, or real characters in unreal situations fascinated me. Plot was essential, always. Without a plot a film was soul-less, like a person with no personality. I was intense about my films. Always being a very opinionated character meant I divided films into good and bad at ease, sometimes a little unfairly but always clearly. Fortunately she liked films too.