If you don't know what to do, do what you ought to do.

I think I’ve made my mind up to go back to full-time work.  I’ll be honest though, I’m still struggling with the decision.  I hadn’t realised until this week how much of my sense of self is built around the fact that I have afternoons free whilst no-one else does.  I might drive a shoddy old car (sorry Bella!) and can’t afford to eat out, but every afternoon spent on the beach makes me feel like a millionaire.  Am I crazy giving all this up?

‘You know my theory?’ says Andrea when I tell her about my quandry.  ‘If you can’t decide what to do, always do what you ought to do.  Because, frankly, when you can’t decide what to do, whatever you end up doing you’ll slightly regret not doing the other thing.  But at least if you do what you ought to do, that way it’s a lesser regret.  Also, it’s just an easier decision.  Like tidying up.  If you don’t know where to start, always start on the left’

Andrea is giving me this advice in the local supermarket slash methadone-clinic-waiting-room where I’ve bumped into her shopping with poor little Tom.  As methadonians in various states of dementia stumble around us, we stand chatting whilst poor little Tom, carefully out of his mother’s line of sight, stands unwrapping one of the cheeses.

‘But what if you don’t know what you ought to do?’ I say.  I’m whingeing, I can hear it, but I really can’t help it.  Poor little me, shall I increase my income by 30% or not?  Andrea, single-mother, single income, is patient with me.

‘You always know.  You might be pretending you don’t, which is why you’re in a quandry, but if you’re honest with yourself you do know.  And if you don’t, then ask a friend.’

So I ask her but before she can respond she spots poor little Tommy with half a wheel of brie in his mouth.  ‘Tommy!’ she screams, loud enough to scare the poor innocent methodonians around us, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!’  I make my excuses and hurry along to canned vegetables.

On the subject of our local supermarket I have to repeat a story which Zen told me the other day.  He was in there once, a couple of months ago, when two of the methodonians started arguing at the checkout.  By the way, Zen’s allowed to tell this story because he works with metho’s, and indeed addicts and the homeless of all shapes and sizes, and is generally so right on that he’s allowed to laugh at them sometimes.  Has to laugh at them sometimes, I suspect.  Anyway,  two of them are arguing at the checkout, a man and a woman, each uglier than the other, getting loud in public and proactively Not Caring.  

You know that whiney, nasal voice they get when they shout and swear?  Ng ng ng, na na na.  So these two are screaming and spitting at each other and everyone else in the supermarket is trying to pretend it’s not happening when the male of the two, to close the argument before stomping off, yells at the top of his voice:  ‘Ah, shat yar facking face.  I buys you pies and fucks you don’t I?’  

Isn’t that sweet?  Who says there are no gentlemen left in the world?

Zen is less patient with my quandry than Andrea.  He thinks I'm a lazy slacker who doesn't know the meaning of hard-work and could do with a year down the mines to teach me.  More about Zen's stories of life in the mines another time (think rows of hard men with morning-semi's in the shower), for the moment I think maybe he's right.  He says I'm a hedonist, but I say who wouldn't be if they could afford it?

'Maybe that's the issue' says Zen.  'Maybe you've just realised that you can't yet afford it (you lazy git).'

I start interviews on Thursday.