Entry for April 22, 2007

Here is something I found in the dim recesses of my Word folders. It's from when I was developing the script for Match Play I think, and I was trying a bit of prose to get some ideas. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. Here you go...
There is nothing wrong with my life.
I have a flat in the West End of town, a BMW Z3 in the garage, and a job that I love. I have a surround sound stereo, good friends and an unparalleled CD collection.
I’m thirty five years old and there is nothing wrong with my life.
It’s just that, occasionally, like tonight, I occasionally wonder if there’s something missing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy. I’m not crying into my can of imported lager on a Sunday night. I don’t lack for company. I have friends, I have girlfriends, I still call my mum on a regular basis.
It’s just that I realised that, to all intents and purposes, my life now is exactly the same as it was when I was eighteen. I play five-asides on a Monday night, I go to the quiz night at The Barleycorn on a Thursday, and, at the weekend, I go out with Bob, get drunk and, more often than not, try to pick up women.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m young, free and single. Well, free and single at any event. And right now the doorbell is ringing, and someone is shouting “Get your trousers on Shagger” through the letterbox. Which can mean only one thing.
Bob.
To describe my best pal Bob as unreconstructed doesn’t really do him justice. I have a suspicion that Benny Hill might have regarded Bob as unreconstructed. Some Neanderthals might have considered him a bit beyond the pale .
That is not to say he’s unintelligent. Far from it. Bob is a corporate lawyer with Boyd Kane; a partner, and, as far as I can tell, a good one. He commands a six figure profit share and, as he never tires of telling me, he is frequently head-hunted.
It’s just that when it comes to women, Bob has no scruples. Not one.
“Hey hey Gary boy. Are you ready for some totty?” he ventures as he breezes into the flat.
He’s dressed for pulling. An expensive suit and a black v-neck t-shirt. Casual chic for the man who doesn’t have to try to hard; provided that he’s got a few hundred quid to spend on an Armani.
I offer him a beer as he settles on the sofa.
Bob and I go all the way back to our unexciting childhoods in suburbia. The type of place where all the streets are named after Scottish Islands in a vain attempt to romanticise the drab nineteen sixties developments. I stayed in Arran Place and Bob hailed from the wilder end of Skye Wynd.
I think Bob occasionally resents the fact that I know where he comes from. I remind him that he didn’t emerge from the womb with a degree and a sharp suit. I could blow his cover at any moment.
We are off clubbing. I’m not actually sure when the word clubbing entered my vocabulary. However, at some point in the early nineties it was no longer acceptable to say that you were going to the disco. As far as I can tell it’s the same thing though.
It’s just the people seem to be younger now.