Marbles

I am a bit worn down from too many events.

My uncle passed away recently, so it was off to Brighton. I'd forgotten how attractive the centre of Brighton is. It still has a pleasure gardens feel to it; as long as one doesn't think of the economic cleansing caused by the uncontrolled rents.

The relatives, some of whom are in steep decline, gathered in a brick-built crematorium whose harsh geometry had an air of the concentration camp about it. My mum didn't hear a word of the service, as she refuses to take her hearing aids out with her. In the pub afterwards her sister-in-law asked her who she was.

The flat has dried out now, but it wasn't Alpine dew seeping in from upstairs -- it was water filtered through the clothes and cigarette-strewn carpet of a Bulgarian alcoholic who walks up and down the street in his pyjamas drinking vodka -- but the housing association might be giving me vouchers with which I can get new fitted carpets. I still have no light in the bathroom: the workmen who said they were coming yesterday to fix it didn't turn up.

Then on Wednesday my bank informed me that my current account is frozen. Yesterday I spent an hour on the phone trying to find out why.

A friend, whom I think is bipolar but who reacted violently the only time I suggested that to him, has accused me of defrauding him. We used to have a commercial relationship, that worked fine until recently. I've got £150 of his which I am trying to return to him, having told him that I'm shutting up shop (for him, anyway -- I can't be dealing with his 4am rambling voicemails, endlessly changing orders and loony bin messages), but he's refusing to give me his bank details and his phone number doesn't work. I've told him, through Farce Book, that as soon as my account is unfrozen I'll make sure he'll get his money back. I'll deliver the cash by hand to his address next time I'm back home. And make sure I film or photograph myself doing it. In the meantime, I'm suspected of fraud and the bank is holding on to £490 of mine.

On Friday I was working in the first class carriage. I get flustered and forgetful. I served four or five meals, then, after everyone had decanted at Manchester, I realised that I'd not taken any payment for them (passengers in first class on Transport That Fails don't get meals for free any more). That evening, at Mel's, I got rather upset and and self-dramatising, to the extent of saying "I'm losing my mind Mel." As they usually do, things seemed a lot better in the morning. And it would appear that the error hasn't been discovered.

I very much want to find another job though: I have no interest in what I do; it's devoid of any meaning or purpose. My first aim every day, is to do the least work and if possible, get out of it altogether. Little things, like a colleague saying "amazing" as a customer paid for his coffee, rile me.

Mel's birthday: I got us tickets to the opera, and we sat through, and nodded off in, a dull modern work supposedly about the life of Lorca but which was eighty minutes of wailing and lamentation in the most banal Spanish, tepidly bathed in a modernism-lite soundtrack. The evening's highlight came before curtain up, with a couple nearby having one of those tight-lipped domestics in which the middle classes excel. It was a relief to get to the pub next door and watch the last third of England v Italy.