An Exercise in Self-Deprecation

I am depressed, self-centred, unmotivated and underhanded. I make snide comments at respectable people to gage reactions which I in turn can not deal with.

I am an alcoholic, and despite knowing this I feel no need to make an effort to tackle this.

I am extremely arrogant and cynical to the point of hubris, and hold the natural assumption that everyone should be party to my opinions, yet I will simultaneously chide opinions I do not agree with while lambasting those that state opinion as fact, a habit I'm guilty of more than most.

I feel anger and resent at those who are professionally more successful than me, and try to internally justify my own lack of success with self-righteous, stock ideologies that, if I am honest with myself, I only profess to believe in.

I scold myself for not progressing professionally, yet I make no effort to set the ball in motion for this progression.

In my free time, whilst boasting to others that I am a writer, I seldom participate in anything productive. I would sooner watch television for hours on end than pursue my claims.

I get murky and angry at my friends when they appear to not show me any support, yet in truth I know that if this is the case, it is most likely due to my chronic inability to make any kind of effort on their behalf. Despite knowledge of this irony, I remain too self righteous to relent and pity my friends.

I rarely visit my family, even those that live close to me.

I am extremely vocal about my heroes, be they living, dead, fictional or factual, yet I never attempt to emulate their ideals and deeds, with the exception of Charles Dickens, who I most arrogantly consider myself to be his literary successor despite having nothing remotely credible to my name.

I seek undeserved sympathy for my misery that is derived from my selfishness and rash actions.

I feel self-deprecation is a form of entertainment and that my own cynicism should be enjoyed by my blog readers.

I start far too many sentences with 'I', a much frowned-upon grammatical flaw.

Whenever things don't go my way, or when the good people in my life criticise my actions or opinions, I run away and descend into anger and jealousy that lasts for days.

My bad feelings are often internal and I seldom vent healthily, which makes matters worse.

Although I do make a pretty awesome cappuccino.

Every cloud has a silver lining, Merry Christmas! xxxx

Coppervid Dafield (abridged)

I'm a quarter of a century old today. This is that quarter. Although some events may be out of sequence.

Whether or not I am being the hero of my own life, I should have paid more attention. When I was twenty-five my novel, 'The Life and Loves of Jet Tea', was more or less finished. I became prolific in writing almost at the cost of my own well being. My typed-up tantrums and rants were the product of constant alcohol abuse as I would drink constantly and turn to Facebook or my blog to vent what would be my bottled-up sober thoughts in libellous, spiteful yet somewhat comical outbursts. These were always at either the amusement or annoyance of my friends.

I took residence in what is essentially the attic of a Soho pub after eventually leaving and becoming a successful writer, and I preceded to use what little free time I had to try and become a writer. My days (and nights) were spent dispensing beer to tourists, actors, perverts and businessmen and whenever I could fit it in, I would write my blog. This would continue unchanged until I eventually opened the blog.

Having acquired the job in the Soho pub, I eventually moved out of the flat in Finchley, North London, where I lived with my girlfriend and her chum from university. It was a lovely place, newly built only some years before and sitting pleasantly in one of those rare pockets of suburban London that can be walked around in at all hours without need to feel fear. Here I lived for two years, strolling the alleys and woodlands of Highgate and Barnet in my free time and keeping track of my thoughts in a little notebook I always kept on my person.

During this time, I found myself not yet having started the job in Soho and on the dole. This was a most depressing time for me and, despite always having been supportive of the work-shy (I was myself more creative when unemployed so I always assumed the benefit classes are prolific purveyors of fine art and literature), I did everything in my power to end it.

The inevitability of being on the dole came from my ill-advised decision to leave my job in Uxbridge, West London due to the painfully-long daily commute I had to put up with to get back to Finchley. Daily I would travel upwards of two hours on the Metropolitan and Northern lines just to get to and from work. Although as the old adage attests, every cloud has a silver lining and during these journeys I found myself able to read more than ever before. I worked in Uxbridge for almost three long, dull years and in the second of those years I moved into the flat in Finchley with my girlfriend and started working on a novel, tentatively titled 'The Life and Loves of Jet Tea'. It was to be about my best friend, who has a tendency to fall in love with every girl he meets.

My welcome home party, upon my return from New York, was cut short when an airborne, drunk teenager accidentally kicked my girlfriend in the face. She lost the feeling in her head and received a scar above her eye. I accompanied her to the hospital, during which time the attending doctor shot me funny look after funny look, silently accusing me of domestic violence.

Before long, I graduated from university with a 2:1 in English literature and film studies. By now my girlfriend was, for all intents and purposes, living with me in my parents' house in Hayes. Shortly before that, I met my girlfriend while playing guitar in a friend's band. We spent many evenings drinking various spirits from my parents' cupboard and watching obscure sci fi programmes and films until the small hours of the morning. She was brought in as a session violinist and we found the two of us had myriad common interests in uncommon things. The band, being the roster of musicians it was during my involvement, existed for, I suppose, a year and a half. We played lots of fun gigs all around London, many of which had hilarious drunken consequences, and I joined shortly after moving out of my house in Reading due to a nasty falling out with my friend and housemate.

University was a strange time for me. Shortly before the commencement of my third year, I broke up with my girlfriend of four years and towards the end of the second year we were spending less and less time together, despite living in the same town and both being students. Once upon a time, when I was older and worked full time, I used to realise how lucky I would have it when I was a student, complaining about having to be at school from 9am until 11am and spending the remainder of the afternoon in bed watching illegally-downloaded 'Robot Chicken' episodes until the evening when I would go into town with my friends and make short work of a bottle of After-Shock.

In my second year I moved into a house in Reading with eight other students. I wasn't there long, and before that I spent my first summer back home in Hayes crawling around London with my friends Maurice, Jet Tea and Wilhelm Neuf. It was a blurry affair, and both the passage of time and consumption of alcohol have left me with only snippets of recollection. We would trawl across London, attending gigs and open mic nights and watching each other get into various kinds of trouble with promoters, members of the audience and occasionally the police.

Eventually I began university. I moved away from Hayes, West London, for the first time in my life at the age of twenty and settled quickly into a grotty halls of residence in a rather remote part of Reading, Berkshire. I began studying English and soon decided that I'd like to be a writer of fiction. The nights out in Reading were, at that time of my life, the most incredible and intense I had ever experienced. We drank like good and true students and danced like charlatans with no self awareness.

University was preceded by a gap year, part of which I spent travelling by myself around Western Europe and gradually beginning to shape the person I was when I lived in Soho at the age of twenty-five. The reflective, mood-swinging alcoholic scribbler who enjoys his own company. I finished my travels in Paris, and prior to that travelled through Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Holland, Belgium and eventually started in France, full circle.

Before leaving for Europe I began a relationship my first girlfriend in sixth form. I had known her for seven years before this. My school years were more-or-less par for the course of any teenage English boy. My small group of friends existed outside of school social circles and we would roam the school grounds looking for ghosts, getting into mild trouble with teachers and musing upon and observing our experiences with attitudes far beyond our years. I no longer wished to be a writer, instead I wanted to be an illustrator and I missed out on many a better grade for the multitude of cartoons and comics I would draw of my teachers and friends, safe in the modest knowledge that they weren't lifelike enough for them to notice.

We played gigs after school at a local youth centre to a crowd of alternative teenagers who hated us and threw chairs at us. In their defence we were terrible. I joined my first band. I began learning guitar. My mum bought me my first guitar for my fifteenth birthday.

I began feeling a funny change during my early teens in which I would feel awkward around the opposite sex and think about them more and more. This didn't last much longer and eventually I didn't really care and was just happy playing with toys and computer games.

I grew smaller and began wanting everything and being unwilling to contribute or realise how fortunate I was. I could care less about how hard my parents would have to work to give me the comfortable childhood I had. Even so, I still wrote. I would spend all my time sitting at the dining table with piles of blank paper, writing stories and comics until my hand was sore.

One summer afternoon I was climbing a tree outside my house when suddenly the branch I clung to snapped off and I fell hard onto the concrete, breaking my nose and tearing my upper lip apart. The scar would be there forevermore.

Eventually I lost the ability to write and draw. Before long I could no longer even spell my own name. All I had were vague traces of what would be my voice, and then that was gone.

I found myself invalided, scared of the world and completely unaware of what was going on. I cried all the time and lost control of my bodily functions entirely. I couldn't move, I couldn't tell anyone what I needed. Everything seemed so big, so scary and yet still it intrigued me. I wanted to learn about everything. Despite the despair I was constantly enduring, I knew this cold, bright place was a place to be explored and I'm sure I will have a lot of great adventures here.

Today I was born.

"When Can You Start?"

'And this is the office.'
Derrick peered through the door window. It was most definitely the smallest office he'd seen. Not that pub offices were particularly renowned for being roomy. He nodded meekly.
'If you want to have a look inside I'll just run back upstairs and grab your paperwork' said Derrick's new manager, before bounding back down the corridor and up the stairs.
Derrick sat down. He hated being shown round a new place of work. He never really knew what to say or what questions to ask, if any. Although the job was in the bag, Derrick still felt as though he was in the interview stage until he properly began work.
Staring at nothing in particular, Derrick slowly swivveled and turned on the office chair waiting for his new manager to return. He turned over appropriate questions and comments in his mind, and decided against all of them. It didn't matter.
Then Derrick noticed the screen on his right. The CCTV screen that showed all possible angles in the pub. He stood up out of his chair and looked at it.
Boredom and curiosity curdled in Derrick's idle brain as he decided to grab the mouse and select a single screen for closer view. He selected the small, jittery image of the main bar and clicked. The image enlarged and filled the screen instantly. Then Derrick noticed the first odd thing he'd notice that evening.
The pub was empty.
How strange, he thought. It was more than plausible that the solitary bartender who greeted him when he arrived had just nipped out the back for a moment (as a long time bar manager Derrick was all too familiar with that most irritating habit), but there were at least thirty customers in the space that this CCTV camera was covering before he left. There was no way that they'd all leave at the same moment.
Then Derrick felt silly. Of course, he thought, it must be old footage. The time and date begged to differ. The footage of the deserted pub was completely live. He wondered where his manager had gotten to.
Then the second odd thing happened.
He didn't immediately notice what it was about the footage that was wrong, but after a moment of scrutiny Derrick saw it. The empty pint glass that stood on the bar had moved. No, was moving. As clear as these words are to you, Derrick would swear, that glass moved. It slid unsettlingly slowly across the bar. Painfully slowly, almost like it knew it shouldn't be allowed to do that. The jumpy, jittery pixelated footage occasionally distorted its journey and at times the glass appeared to jump suddenly upon its route. Then it reached the edge of the bar. And it kept going.
Derrick was rigid with morbid amazement as he watched the animated glass tumble over the edge of the bar and off the screen. The next odd thing made him jump.
With unbelievable coincidence, a loud smash startled Derrick into a chill and broke his gaze. He darted over to the office door and opened it.
There was a broken pint glass at his feet.
All manner of dread and foreboding lined Derrick's stomach as he considered the impossible. He slammed the door shut and went back to the CCTV screen, his heart pounding.
'Christ' he failed not to say aloud.
He wished he could see the whereabouts of the wayward glass on screen, just to put his mind at ease. The screen was no barer of relief.
The fourth odd thing happened. A door swung open, and nobody emerged. The fifth. Another glass tumbled off the bar. The sixth, the seventh. Eighth. Ninth. Beer pumps turned on by themselves, the beer flowing onto the ground and causing rapidly spreading puddles. That blasted door did not relent in its animation. Things flew by, too blurred by the mediocre camera quality for Derrick to work out what they were. Shadows. Large, ominous things that allowed for no quality or clarity. Something stood in the centre of all the chaos, the smashing glasses and swinging doors, it stood and it stared at Derrick. It stared malevolently. It wasn't actually there, but Derrick could feel it, staring and grinning. Grinning like it wanted to do evil things, grinning like it wanted Derrick to be there when it did them. Its invisible stare was more horrible and more intense than could be achieved by any worldly eyes.
Derrick gasped for breath and stumbled back, almost tripping over the chair as he did. He did not feel safe in the lonely office. He headed for the door.
It was open. Derrick thought he'd closed it, but he wasn't exactly at the height of concentration at this moment in time. He wanted to run away back down the corridor that he and his boss (where had he gotten to?) had came from, but the corridor was no longer there. How could that be? There was a wall in its place, a grey brick wall that looked like it had been there for decades, yet Derrick stepped freely through the space that wall now occupied just minutes before. On the opposing wall there was a door. The only door now, save for the one into the office, that Derrick could escape through. He took it without hesitation.
Breathing heavily and shaking like a dog in the snow, Derrick found himself in the pub. It should have been upstairs. The office was in the basement and Derrick had climbed no stairs. He had taken the door out of the office and somehow he was upstairs. The windows revealing the street outside attested to that. He was horrified and for a moment he shut his eyes tight, unwilling to see in front of him what the CCTV screen had shown.
He opened his eyes.
No activity was to be beheld. The bar remained empty, like it shouldn't have been, but there was no swinging door, no chaotic glasswear and no puddles of beer flowing out from behind the bar.
It wasn't a relief.
As Derrick slowly gazed around the cold, empty pub, taking in the dusty, abandoned wooden tables and old weathered chairs that should have been the carriers of cheer and liveliness but instead acted as a terrible display of isolation and darkness, Derrick still didn't feel alone. He felt as though that thing that he sensed in the middle of the room from the CCTV was still there. He sensed it pacing gleefully around its domain, he felt it staring accusingly at Derrick's intrusion. He didn't know what it wanted but he knew it was close. Facing him. Approaching him. Next to him. Those eyes! They weren't there, but, those eyes!
Derrick breathed deeply and started to move. The pub was so dark, so empty. He realised how big it seemed when uninhabited and the front door felt like it was a world away. He trod with caution slowly toward it. He would not look behind him, for Derrick had convinced himself that the invisible thing had taken form and trod in his shadow, claws outstretched, waiting for him to turn around and see the most horrific face he would ever see again.
Derrick reached the front door. He placed his hands on the cold wood and pushed. The door swung open and he rushed outside into the cold. He was out. It was as dark and lonely outside as it was in the pub but it felt safe and good. Derrick let the double doors swing behind him as he breathed a sigh of relief.
Then a voice from behind him said