DRUGS

Drugs are like women - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. It's one o'clock in the morning here and my chest is wheezing like an asthmatic that's just run the Marathon. Who knows how many kilos of gunk are accumulating in my lungs right now?The brief pleasure that comes with ejecting clumps of it is scant consolation for the pain it's causing me. Combined with sleep deprivation, it's any wonder I feel like an enfeebled geriatric.

And so, like any sane individual, I've been consuming vast quantities of paracetamol, sudafed, anything I can get my hands on. It doesn't seem to have helped much. But then I have no idea how much shittier I'd be feeling if I wasn't taking anything at all.

My get-out-of-jail-free card is my doctor's prescription for penicillin. I think I'll cash it in later today. I have an important interview on Tuesday and I don't think my spluttering over the interviewer would go down well.

If I get this job..Ah. How wonderful it would be. Away from the daily shit of friends that never phone, a job that saps your will to live and feeling of slow, unstoppable decline.

When I was away last time I made the mistake of actually missing this place. But distance has a way of deluding you into thinking that because you might not be happy where you are, you'd be happier somewhere else.

Maybe I'm falling into this trap again? But at least when you're thousands of miles from home you have a readily available reason for feeling lonely. What's my excuse here? Everyone has their own lives; people move on? It's all bollocks.

PHLEGM FLAMMERY

No giblets, no chicken soup. I could really do with some hot, steamy broth right now. But I haven't got any. It's too cold to nip down to the supermarket. And Tracy has run out of bones.

As it happens, I am feeling better than yesterday, largely thanks to a cocktail of painkillers and decongestants that puts me almost on a par with my pa's pill-popping. If they fail to do the trick, I can always cash in the antibiotic prescription the doctor gave me yesterday.

The night, however, is not looking promising. In two hours, I head to work. And at 3am I head to Birmingham for the morning. I won't be back here till gone 10.30, no doubt spluttering like a Paddington Station tramp.

It would be nice, one day, to fill these pages with joy, tales of my daring-do achievements and the odd bit of happiness. But when your days are taken up with Olympic Curling and coughing, and your nights are spent doing work worthy of a 16-year old school-leaver, then it's hard to feel inspired.

My one hope right now is an internal job I've applied for. It's high-profile, challenging and might just make me feel like somebody - myself perhaps - again. If I don't get it, then it might well be time to shake off the shackles of a staff job at a big firm and let my lance swing free once more.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

All my life I've prided myself on being a trouper. Not at school, not at university and never at work, have I taken a day's sick leave. Today, my 100% record lies in tatters.

In my defense, I haven't felt this shit since I woke up with gastroentiritis and thought that I was going to die. I was in so much pain that even to crawl into a taxi to take me to hospital felt like a Herculean achievement.

This time, I just have a cold, headache, cough, sore throat and everything else you could possibly ask from a virus. And yet I was still too proud to tell my boss that I wouldn't be in tomorrow either.

So this time Wednesday I shall be back in the office; forced into the soft-labour of the damned that is a night shift. I'm seriously thinking about packing it all in and starting up a business.

Lady-wise, Lisa made a surprise reappearance in my life this evening. I was taking out the trash when I spotted a jiffy bag on the floor. On its cover was a child-like, messy scrawl addressed to me. Inside, together with a note from Lisa, was the soundtrack to Garden State. How sweet is that?

"I ordered this a few weeks ago (when we were still together)," she wrote, "so I thought I'd drop it in anyway. Thought it might make you smile." It did. She continued: "Give me a shout if you're up for a re-match. Lisa." Is that re-match at Scrabble? Or a re-match at "us". I guess there's only one way to find out.

CROAKY

I feel like I've swallowed a pint of porcupine followed by a cactus-chaser while lying, throat first, on a bed of nails.

Nothing I've taken seems to work. It's affecting my sleep, my state of mind and my social life: one friend didn't want me to pop over this evening in case I was contagious.

I wouldn't mind so much except for the fact that I seem to have been given just two day's breathing space in between ridding myself of one cold and succumbing to a second. Surely that's not fair?

At least I didn't have to go to work today. Not that I have much to show for it - a few calls here, blinds delivered there, a few dollars lost at online poker there. I failed to add a single sentence to my work-in-progress. And I didn't get round to reading a single chapter of the Hemingway novel I've started (in a doomed attempt to improve my own writing).

I did, however, manage to raise the temperature in my living room by successfully bleeding my bleeding radiator, with which I have a testy relationship.

The first time I tried to tame the metallic beast I came off worse. In a bid to smooth the passage of the super-heated water within, I inserted the radiator key into the side and loosened the screw. The reassuring gurgle of hot air escaping was followed by an altogether more alarming jet of aforementioned water. The screw fell onto the floor, and water began trickling down my side wall and into the flat below. With one toweled hand attempting to stymie the flow of water and the other on the phone, I called my plumber.

"Tighten the nipple," he told me.
"The what?"
"The nipple - the screw you undid on the side of the radiator."
"It's not there," I replied, the panic in my voice growing.
"So turn off the water supply."

I left the nipple-less hole, took out a pair of pliers and turned off the water. Disaster averted.

Never before in my flat had one nipple caused so much mayhem. Nor would it ever do so again. At the age of 30, I'm now too experienced in the devious ways of the radiator nipple to allow myself to come unstuck again.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Four days ago, I did something I hadn't done in years; something so detrimental to one's street cred, that I vowed I would never do it again. That's right: I went away with my parents.

Why did I do it? Well, it certainly wasn't for the company. Nor, for once, was it for the sake of a freeby (though my parents did pay). I did it out, for want of a better word, out of duty. I sacrificed four days of my life because I knew that the happiness my four-day sufferthon would arouse in my parents can't be measured in pounds, nights out or five-knuckle-shuffles in economy class.

So I went, I came and now I'm going back. It doesn't feel like I've had a holiday. In fact, i feel sleepier now than I did when I left a mild, sun-kissed London on Wednesday just in time for a once-in-a-lifetime Jerusalem snow-storm (which, sadly, failed to materialise).

Much to my surprise, I hardly argued with my parents. Not because I'm too old for that kind of thing. Mum and dad are still the only people on the planet who I'll routinely lose my temper with. I think I just detached myself from the whole experience. It wasn't actually me that was here, enjoying the white-washed charms of Bet Shemesh (on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv); it wasn't me that was embraced heartily by his nephew, ignored by his other niece and barely noticed by his newest relation; and it wasn't me that struggled to contain his horn while being served lentil soup by 21-year old, freckle-faced nymph as his father broke puerile jokes together with his bread.

I haven't quite worked out if this is a good thing. I suppose this must be how the likes of Terry Waite endured being locked up for all those years without losing their marbles. If you're not there, then it can't be happening to you. I think the guy at the end of Orwell's 1984 did the same when he was bout to have his eyes torn out by a ravenous rat. Solipsism, is the word he used: nothing exists except me and my mental self. And if you know what that means, then you're far brighter than me.

VALETINE'S SHMALENTINES

Who the hell invented Valentine's Day? In my humble opinion, it was a smug, selfish arsehole who had no regard for his fellow man.

I mean, if you're in love, met the woman-of-your-dreams, your soulmate, your half orange (as they say in Argentina) then you've got the whole year to profess your undying love. You have anniversaries, birthdays, two-for-one giveaways.

If, like me, you don't, then inventing a day when you have everyone else's happiness rammed in your lonely face is not a something to celebrate. Yet being the curmudgeonly 30-year old that I now am, I've actually stopped caring. And staying in, on my own, on this venerated Valentine's was in no way something to be ashamed of.

It's a little like the epiphany I had earlier this year about going to the cinema on my own. What's the problem? I had a great time - ate some good food, watched Sin City on TV. Why do I need to spend it with someone?

Besides, I could have spent it with someone if I had wanted to. Only on Saturday I finished with Lisa, partly because she wasn't for me and partly because I couldn't bear having to make all lovey-dovey with her. Oh, and of course the prospect of having to fork out for cards, meals or some other perishable that would quickly have been eaten, smelled, drunk and forgotten.

Anyway, I have some packing today. I'm off to Israel for a few days to meet my brother's latest progeny, his third. I've got a lot of catching up to do.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TREES

What a waste of a day. My sole achievements after 12-hours spent sheltering from the rain are to have finished reading a Uruguayan novel I began six months ago (at 150 pages long, that works out at less than a page a day); and to win around $100 playing online poker.

Actually, now I think about it this is far more productive than most of my Sundays. Even so, it would have been nice to have met up with friends, seen a film or done something to drag me away from my fetal position on the couch.

But then, when none of your friends bother to call you - they're either busy, ill, moving house, looking after their kids or out with their other half - and you face the prospect of another night-shift, making social arrangements is easier said than done.

I tried writing a little - keeping myself busy is, I find, the best way to forget about life and to stop dwelling on things I shouldn't be dwelling on. But I'm completely uninspired right now: so far I've managed one whole page of my South American memoirs. And I don't think it's a particularly good page, either.

Bird-wise, things are little better. The dive I went to last night was full of the usual aesthetically-challenged, wide-arsed women. Many of them were drunk, as if to prove that it is, after all, possible for them to appear less attractive than they usually do.

It was all so utterly depressing and not just because of the people. The average age must have been around 25; so what is everyone my age doing? Well, they're either loved-up, married or have better things to do with their lives. I suppose they could also be moping at home, frolicking with their cats, watching Pride & Prejudice on DVD while they stuff themselves silly with Pringles. If they're of a particular religious persuasion, they could be celebrating Tu Bishvat - the Jewish New Year for Trees, feasting on pomegranates and dates and alike. Maybe life isn't so bad after all?

FREE

It's been more than eight hours since I ate, yet I still feel more bloated than a Kenyan civil servant's coffers. I blame the fruit salad. Apparently, fruit digests faster than everything else, so if you eat it for dessert it sits in your stomach fermenting, bubbling away, producing, er, gas. So now you know!

On the upside, I'm rid of Lisa. I was supposed to go with her to a party this evening; a friend of hers called Michelle - the same Michelle that other friends of mine had tried to set me up with (I spoke to Michelle on the phone, no chemistry, no return call).

To make matters more confusing I had lunch with Michelle's friends today. Very sweet couple: James, lawyer, setting up his own practice makes his own chopped liver; Dina, marketing at posh London store, slim, well-dressed but doesn't like my Argentine leather gloves (they look scaly, she said). James and Dina, it turns out, know Lisa as well.

It all pointed to an inauspicious evening this evening, one which I really couldn't be arsed with. So in order to spare my blushes, I called Lisa and told her my heart wasn't in it. It helped that I have developed a small cough and that I was still a little zonked from night-shifts. It was the most painless dump I've ever carried out; she ended up feeling sorry for me!

So with Lisa out the way, I called Veronica2, the primary school love I'd bumped into a few weeks ago. So bubbly, vibrant and all-round bonkers. True, she does have a rather worrying amount of love for her pet rabbit. She takes it to work every day, straps it into her specially-designed bunny-seat in her car, and then puts it under her desk.

"My friends tell me I'm single because I always talk about my bunny on dates," she confessed. I replied that I used to have gerbils and understood the dynamics of man-rodent relationships. She suggested I might be a fan of Richard Gere. I asked her if Fatal Attraction was banned from her home. She's busy all week and I'm going away for a few days. So we're going to hook up when I get back. Should be wild.

7-LETTERS!

Evil comes in many guises. Dictators, cartoon-mongers and the creators of Big Brother, to name but three. But the other day I looked evil straight in the eye as it pummelled my sorry arse into Scrabble-submission.

The eye in question belonged to Lisa, the girl I'm still seeing, though I'm not sure why. We were at home drinking hot lemon and honey and playing with words. My opening salvo was woeful - I picked up four "I"s, allowing me to put down nothing but the noise a creaky door makes when it opens. As the proceedings proceeded it became clear that the night wouldn't belong to me. In the space of five minutes, Lisa put down two seven-letter jackpots: "epithets" and "courtiers". So I dumped her.

Okay, so I didn't. I would, after all, be a sad, sad man if I ditched a girl purely on the grounds that she killed me at Scrabble. Ironically, I was planning to dump her anyway. But after she gave me a lift to my football match, and then sat in the viewing gallery for an hour, it would have been like shagging someone and then telling them to piss-off.

So for now, I'm stuck with Lisa. Interestingly, she's invited me to a party on Saturday hosted by Michelle, a girl some friends of mine had tried to set me up with the other week. I spoke to her on the phone briefly, but she sounded too Jewish. So I never called back. Now I have to think of a way to get me out of Saturday's party without arousing suspicion.

TABLES TURNED

So it's over with Veronica2 before it's even begun. I hadn't heard from her since I left her a message on Tuesday. On Saturday, she texted me:

"Thanks for ur message. Sorry not got back to u. manic week! Hope nights went well. Good to meet u. hope job hunting works out. All the best. Veronica."

And that was it: short, pleasant, ambiguous, yet at the same time, crystal clear. Just to be sure, I showed it to my friend Tracy. Her dumping-style was less subtle, something along the lines of: "Sorry. No chemistry, Bye.

Tracy was awe-struck at Veronica's mastery of the textual dump - she even asked me for a copy. How is it possible, she wondered, to tell a guy you're not interested and leave him feeling like he's still the man?

I decided to reply to Veronica, just to ensure that I hadn't gotten the wrong end of the stick. "No worries," I said. "Look after yourself. DC xx"

Although I barely know her, I still feel hurt. Me, the performing monkey performed, but the organ grinder didn't want me. Which means I did something wrong; I wasn't good enough. I failed. And I liked her; she was stunning.

Later on Saturday I went to see Stuart Lee at the Hackney Empire. The warm-up was bizarre, subtle and humourless. Mr Lee - the guy who co-wrote Jerry Springer the Opera, was excellent.

Sadly, the evening was spoilt by the twats sitting behind me. These retarded student runts guffawed at anything and everything that was said, whether it was funny or not. I tried sitting forward for some aural relief. But it was no use. The hyenas had a grip on my hearing that was impossible to shake. I felt like smacking them, but being the wimp that I am, I didn't.

So now, with Veronica2 seemingly uninterested, I'm just left with Lisa. I find it all so unsatisfying. When am I going to meet someone who blows me away?

BACK WHERE I STARTED

Things weren't supposed to turn out this way. This time last week I was sizing up five potentials; now I'm in the process of eliminating one; another has probably done the same to me; a third hasn't called back and I've yet to follow up; a fourth has really let herself go since I saw her last; and a fifth didn't even make it past the initial phone conversation.

So where does that leave me now? The simple answer is bored. But a simple answer rarely does my tortuous love-life justice.

For one, I can't dump Lisa yet. I took her out last night to an Italian in Westbourne Grove. This was the second time I'd been there. The food was average, the service - when the waitress said something in intelligible English - was poor; and, bar a loud-mouthed Ozzie sitting behind me, the place was empty.

conversation with Lisa was more stilted than usual, largely by virtue of my buffoonery earlier on in the evening. She'd picked me up in her car, but there was no leg-room for me in the passenger seat. I got out the car to try to fix the seat, which wouldn't budge. Along the way, I inadvertently hit the ejector-seat button - it flew forward faster than an inflating airbag and connected with my right temple with the force of a Frank Bruno right-hook. I felt marginally concussed for the rest of the evening.

Anyway, we finished dinner, came back to mine, and then "fooled around" in my bedroom. What did we get up to? "Something but nothing," as I like to say, though the whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth, literally. I swear something came out of her nipple while I was sucking it. I tasted like liquid ear-wax. Euw.

So Lisa's on her way out, though I have to see her one more time in order not to appear an arsehole.

Veronica, meanwhile, has yet to return my call. And even assuming she does, there's no guarantee it'll be to arrange a second date. Still, with no Lisa or Veronica, I'll have more time to pursue Veronica2 (she hasn't called me back either, but she texted me to apologise for not having done so).

Can I be arsed, though? That is the question.