I drink tea, quite a lot of tea in fact. I also am partial to a portion of cheese at least once a day, sometimes I even go back for more especially if its brie. Ah brie, how I love your warm, inviting embrace.
Small addictions that make a mid-life man, wearing a pair of slightly too comfortable slippers, smile.
My mind drifts off and creates that image. Is this what I have become? Safe, respectable, boring. Boring? I can’t be boring I say to myself. Only last week I claimed that some post had gone missing so that I could get two for the actual price of one. Living on the edge. Theft by stealth.
I’ve felt quite nervous since, imagining how the story could break in the newspapers ‘Postman Brings Down Internet Fraudster’. Maybe I should just switch off my broadband until things blow over?
What was I thinking? Why did I need that little kick of excitement that fooling a multi-national corporation brought? Why are my only addictions cheese and tea? Surely by now I should be at least addicted to coffee and joining swinging clubs for the over forties?
Actually I do have one other addiction but like most actual addictions it’s one I shy away from and try not to talk about. And besides everyone likes ‘I’m A Celebrity’. Yes I’m ashamed but I know I’m not alone in having that dirty secret.
I take another sip of my tea and push deeper into my slippers. As I try and reflect on my life it becomes apparent that I have had to live by a set of rules dictated by a set of doctors. ‘Don’t eat this’, ‘don’t drink alcohol’, ‘you cant go there’ and you ‘certainly shouldn't insert that there Mr Watson.’
I want to rebel. I want to do all that I shouldn’t. Yes! I will ignore the asthma clinic’s advice about using my brown inhaler more than my blue one. Screw you!
It’s not enough though. I need heroin and hookers and I’m not leaving this world until I get them!
My respectable self knows that jumping feet first and going straight from tea to heroin could be a bit of a gamble. It’s not that I think I need heroin and hookers now, just sometime in my life. My thoughts of death are so frightening I think it’s only fair that my final curtain call should be made a little more fun, my last few moments a blur of drug induced haze and loose women. Bliss.
That’s decided then. That will show the world I’m not boring and without zest for life. The only questions remaining are knowing when I will die and how to secure an arrangement with the right people to provide the service at short notice.
Of course I can solve one of these questions by choosing the timing of my own death yet even Dignitas, the assisted suicide service, use the tagline ‘to live with dignity’ which is the very opposite of what I want.
Maybe they have a ‘death without dignity’ section? Looking through their advice though it seems unlikely that they will cater for my needs ‘Frequently, members want to die in the company of those closest to them. Dignitas emphasises the importance of involving friends and relatives in the process'
Friends and relatives?
They also mention that the barbiturate is added to water and once drunk ‘the patient falls asleep within a few minutes, after which sleep passes peacefully and completely painlessly into death.’
Painless it might be but I would imagine I’m going to be paying by the hour and a few minutes is not going to be enough, although I’m sure some past girlfriends may say I will adequately achieve my goals in that time.
I’m not sure I’m ready for the one-way checkout of the Dignitas clinic just yet but I do need to take their advice and that ‘assisted dying requires careful preparation.’ So where to find my heroin and hookers?
A quick search on google reveals that two ladies have produced a smartphone app where customers can ‘order’ them for anything up to £500 a time. I think of my phone signal whilst in hospital and imagine my final, frustrating attempts to get wi-fi as my barbiturate gets mixed. Ah well at least its promising.
Heroin proves more difficult and I know google isn't going to provide the answer. Somehow I need to find my local dealer and the closest I have come to a dealer was a lad in work who was doing a good line in panini football sticker swaps.
There is only one thing for it, I’m going to have to make my way out of my flat and search for a ‘score’. I’m not even sure if that’s the correct terminology, but what I do know from watching ‘The Wire’ is that I need to wear a hoody and I should look for kids hanging round corners.
I make my way to a dimly lit park that acts as a thoroughfare to a number of small streets. I sit down on a damp bench and pull my hood up and put on a pair of dark glasses. I imagine I look pretty ‘street’ although my flask might be giving the game away. I tuck it in my pocket.
Nothing. It’s just cold and damp. Maybe I should be giving some kind of signal?
I try coughing. Short sharp coughs. I choke on myself and actually start coughing more than I intended. Far from being a face in the shadows I’m now looking like someone in urgent need of the heimlich manoeuvre.
I see someone! A thin dishevelled figure appears through the fog. Could this be my dealer? As he moves closer I see he has an even more dishevelled greyhound with him. Heroin chic of the doggy kind. He moves closer to where I am sitting. The greyhound hunches over and does a poo. They leave.
No drugs and he didn't even pick up his dogs excrement. I head home feeling I have had enough excitement for one day. It’s cold and I’m really looking forward to my slippers.
Maybe heroin and hookers isn’t all that.
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