The Trough and The Dam Builders

It always happens eventually. That trough. In the past few weeks it has been successfully suffocated under the pillow, that rising serpent bearing its dripping fangs and threatening to sink them into your arm. There is no way to defeat it when it first comes though, the stranglehold grabs you and then you are lunged into a semi-catatonic state of immobility.

This happened to me halfway up Hope Street this evening and had been triggered by a combination of another fruitless day of street-pounding, a sinking sun, a random phase in that oscillatory cycle of good and bad that afflicts everyone, and a pointless hilly section of street which I knew I was only going to be herded back down by dear Father Gravity in a few footsteps time. Still, it happens to everyone, and it can strike at any time. One moment you’re going to sleep with a smile on your face, listening intently as your neighbours procreate to bring another sunshine-faced little bundle of joy into the world, and the next your rational thoughts are paralysed by your brain deciding that it will switch the autopilot on to handle those hidden bodily functions – presumably to stop all your innards from seeping out of your pores into a wicked witch of the West-style pool. It does this so it can lead itself under the duvet of despair which, by the way, is somewhere to the left of the tonsils, and can be reached by knocking on the door to the rhythm of a secret fatalistic mantra. Incidentally I am coming to the nature programme bit shortly, try not to fall asleep.

Once there, it will implant thoughts of totally irrational nature, starting with a poor and exaggerated assessment of the current situation. This could be something like slight emotion at the fact it is raining transforming into a feeling of desolation that you might get hit by some shrapnel from the bombs falling from that big black Stratofortress flying overhead. Or overhearing a small crowd of teenagers laughing innocently about their latest happy-slapping victim, who perished hilariously from a motorway footbridge, and thinking instead that it is the entire city tuning into a specially dedicated channel (I fancy, filling one of those gaps left by those fraudulent quiz channels most of which were recently vanquished) where they are able to view your every move and point and laugh in unison until you feel three inches high and likely to be torn apart by a hedgehog. Vicious bastards.

The point is, I took this thing home with me, hoping the damned brain would snap out of it, climb back up the stairs and take up control before I got hit by a bus or something. This is where living in London actually used to make things easier. Before my move up north, I was happily immersed in an immense ocean of people, most of whom were at any one time caught in a state of mind halfway between what I have just described, and a kind of insane rage that being immersed head-in-armpit, encased in a cage of hurtling metal and sunken into a rat tunnel hundreds of feet beneath the ground would drive any mammal to. Then, a point of lowliness could be disguised by thrusting it in with a heady dose of anger and bingo, you melded back into the mass. Never have I seen the “misery loves company” concept followed to such an extreme - the magic number appears to be seven million. Forgive me, I do love London, but this one trait needs to be concentrated on to illustrate this point.

Outside of that surrounding, it is harder to bury. You can’t be so easily immersed. Which is a shame when your now delusional mind, obsessed with self-pity and reminding you that your blood has now turned so cold and metallic that if someone were to tear your arm off, little beads of mercury would spill out as if from a broken thermometer, is intent on rampaging in a futile tantrum. It is no good huddling up and taking this irrational sentiment home with you either, because in the midst of it, you can see it as un-ending. It is at once intimate and infinite. And in any case you are as huddled up as you can be when it is minus two outside.

So at once you are out of place: like dropping a maggot into a bowl of caviar and asking it to get acquainted. If it spoke English. It might have learned it from an audio-guide, I’m sure the headphones would fit, after all they are adjustable. Of course you are not to know how many other people in the street have just fallen prey to that same type of episode, because although every single person gets them, it is not particularly contagious by proximity. More likely at any given time they are sporadically dotted all over the city, in a constantly changing pattern that will touch every citizen in their due turn. And it’s just that it gets harder to hide things like that when you are within a population with the noble habit of thanking people when paying for things, saying hello to the friendly people in the newsagent and have a general acceptance of pleasant discourse with strangers as the norm.

Anyway, a while ago I beat myself over the head with a lead pipe to clear my head of this kind of Californian analysis that is undoubtedly flawed and is the discursive equivalent of creating a delicate oil-painting with a roll-mop, but unfortunately the words all cascaded around in the air like a television signal and then landed on the page. And now when I push a button, whack, it will be on the internet. Almost too easy. I would hate to have to etch it into some rock face in some abandoned cave using symbols of galloping buffalo, spears and a close-up of the face of a strangely wide-eyed girl.

The snap-out trigger is an interesting stage. It rises and then all around is rainbows and unicorns and wildfires being extinguished by low-flying helicopters. Normally all it takes is a conversation about total rubbish with your flatmate or whoever. Sometimes it is a single pint of Guinness. In this case, it took a stoat and a combination of other animals, including Bill Oddie.

Now Bill Oddie is fantastic in a strangely irritating way. If there is a quota of words that can be spoken by the human race before a bearded bloke sitting on a cloud with a harp and a sniper rifle picks every last one of us one-by-one (the total semi-instant annihilation thing is too easy, and is no fun since we nearly demonstrated we could do it ourselves in 1962), then Mr Oddie is doing everything he can to hurry us towards this fate. The subtitler, shortly before she died from a strangely potent form of repetitive strain injury in her fingers, was said to often remark on the rising steam from the keyboard as she tapped away his prolific discourse. His co-host, bless her, is one accordingly of the mutest people I have seen on television, even more so than the extras playing pool in the background in Home and Away.

There was an entertaining stoat which appeared to be prancing around a field looking as if a chilli had been inserted in its rectum but nevertheless seemed joyously happy with all aspects of life. It even hopped about and swam in what looked like a drinking fountain. The camera cut away to the two presenters laughing jovially, presumably an instant before the stoat was whisked away by a bird of prey to be incarcerated in its treetop Gulag.

The beavers were busily gnawing down small trees to turn into material for building dams. They stopped for a quick chat and a fag break, occasionally had a bit of food and licked themselves, all things that I have also witnessed humans doing on their own building sites - but here is the difference. These little furry bastards were enjoying themselves. They were working with each other, listening to the foreman and generally getting the job done. You could see in their cheery faces as they swam to and from the rising dam that they revelled in the unity of purpose and mutual familial-like love prospering in that environment.

Therefore, I have decided to try a different tack towards engineering. It is called, the Beaver Builds Best imitative (or The 3B Initiative for short, because our 21st century brains only understand acronyms). I can practice this on my off days from my Alchemy plan, see “Security of Failure post below. Basically, I install a beaver in my bathtub in a non-cruel manner, using proper contractors and certified beaver-installers. Next, from a nearby park or wooded area, such as that small plot of land between the expressway and Exhibition Centre station, I pilfer a few young trees and feed them, assembly-line-style to said beaver. It is then allowed to build a dam in the bathtub, which I then disassemble into components, carefully consulting with the beaver at all times, and sell on as prefabricated parts for dams all around the world. I forgot to mention that the bath is 90,000 acres in size. Sort of. And in any down moments I can pinch its puffy little beaver cheeks for amusement before heading off with a skip in my step to Accident & Emergency to have my finger sewn back on.

I defy anyone not to lift themselves out of the trough after that.