Housebound

A change has come about. Don't get excited, I'm still whining about stuff no-one cares about. But I have made a decisive step. Before I started this job I had just taken 3 months off to 'find myself', for want of a better expression. I had quit a job of 4 years where I'd managed to go up the social ladder and down the pay-scale. The transition from light-fingered bartender to nattily-dressed manager on a salary is not an easy one. But it makes you infinitely more attractive to the waitresses. So if you're reading this and your girlfriend ever worked at my bar, I've probably rubbed your rhubarb. wha-wha.

Anyhoo, when I left that job, a paranoid, tired mess, I became a bar-slag; flitting from poncey cocktail bar to drug-dive with ease. But I was never happy at any of them. Posh hotels, strip-clubs, 'the place to be (on coke)', none of them held my interest. So I quit, left the city, bummed around. It was great. I even hired myself and my motorbike to a film crew and got a dodgy Hitler-do.

Then just as my money ran out I fell into this touring job. I didn't see the point in renting an apartment, as looking at my schedule I would only be there 20 days out of the next 90 or so, and then I'd be going to America. Rather than pay for a hotel I opted to stay on one of the tourbuses during the days off, showering in the storage shed. I could go to the supermarket for a few micro-meals and drink the gallons of beer and wine left on the bus from the previous tour. Perfect, no? Well, obviously not. As a result my days off were miserable, lonely affairs. I trudged the streets for hours, trying to resist the coffeeshops. It didnt last long. What to do when you're on your own in a foreign country with a fridge-full of beer and 200 movies stored on the bus hard-drive?

As the tour schedule eased off, I started rushing back to England and working from there. Almost all communication in this company is done by email- literally across the same office sometimes. At the moment we have very little to do- a TV special and two outdoor shows, then nothing until we go to Japan in September. So I envisaged a long, easy summer.

Alas, Im on a salary, so my boss insists I'm here. I cancelled a trip to Norway last week so I could make it back for the TV-special. I was there to help throw out leftover food and load the truck at the end of the night, that's all.

So Ive been forced to rent an apartment here for the summer. Bye-bye lazy 10-week holiday; bye-bye expensive camera; hello dingy basement apartment; hello spiralling weed habit. It's nice to have a place of my own though, even if it has virtually cleared me out of everything Ive been hoarding Silas Marner-style for the past 4 months. Ive always shared until now, whereas this is entirely my own place.