Murder on the Marylebone Express

Insomnia and early rising don’t mix. In fact, insomnia doesn’t mix with much, except perhaps a slow slide towards psychosis and the occasional rage-induced homicide. But having scored some work experience at the London offices of a major publisher (saying it that way obscures the fact that I’m still on work experience at 25), I’ve got to get up in the morning. The fact that I don’t live in London doesn’t help. It’s especially jarring as my last commute to work involved walking to the end of my road and then climbing over the wall into the pub car-park.

Even after a (at this point probably mythical) good night’s sleep I’m not a morning person. So a broken 5 hours leaves me crusty-eyed and pale and, more importantly, venomously spiteful. I was seriously worried that, even if I didn’t straight-up murder somebody on the tube, I might still catch myself being horribly rude to some undeserving passenger or barista or shop-assistant. It has since dawned on me that even if I were to be so unpleasant, nobody would notice. It seems like the rest of the world can’t stand mornings either.

I first realised it while trying to take a seat on the train. The scenario was one most people would recognise: only one seat – a window seat – was available, and a suited and briefcased gentleman was sprawled in the aisle seat next to it. His coffee was on the shared table, his newspaper supplements spread over the free chair. I lingered nearby, waiting for him to notice me and let me by. I continued to wait. It became obvious that he had noticed me. It is doubtful he misinterpreted my reason for standing there (“Man, this new cologne is really excellent!”), and so he was clearly waiting me out, hoping I would give up and leave the free seat in his churlish employ.

Bastard, I thought (not, I hope you’ll agree, unreasonably). I grunted aloud, preparing to give him my patented ‘I’ll kill you and all your relations’ death-glare. But the look in his eyes startled me right out of it. It was a version of my own murderous stare, with a trace of desperation and shame in it too. He needed that seat. Really needed it. And he obviously begrudged me my selfish, unnecessary attempt to wrest it from him. His eyes spelt out a self-righteous, self-justified, class-A fuck you.

The venom in his glance had me momentarily taken aback. But my legs were tired and my bag was heavy and most importantly screw you mister so I awkwardly clambered over his legs and then stood hovering above him: a strange tableau that threatened to become sexually charged if he took no action. Suitably abashed, he removed his magazines and I sat down next to him. We spent the next hour avoiding each other’s gaze, frowning fixedly, and hoping against hope that our latent telekinetic powers might finally manifest so that we could slam our antagonist like a ragdoll against the ceiling of carriage. Hate condensed in the air around us. The train lights flickered and sparked with pent-up aggression. People in the seats around began to develop radiation-induced tumours.

Since then I have noticed a palpable undercurrent of malice in my morning interactions. It filigrees through our communications like a fracture in glass, a tiny but visible flaw in our otherwise transparent connections.

“Can I take your order? …please ask for ritual suicide.”

“Just a cup of coffee please…and you have ten seconds before I throttle you.”

“I’m terribly sorry, but could you move down inside the carriage slightly… or a swift death will be your greatest blessing.”


People aren’t rude to each other, heavens no. They are either frostily, mockingly polite or stony-silent. Occasionally a tourist might commit the cardinal sin of British bad manners (pointing out someone else’s bad manners), and then develop a gushing nosebleed as they suddenly find themselves the subject of a collective psychic assault. The rest of the time we all just sit and stew…

… and then when we get to work we swallow it all down, compose ourselves into smiles and ‘How was your evenings,’ and get on with our lives. The train home is better, but only because most people appear too dog-tired to conjure the energy for physical violence.

There’s an easy happy-clappy message here: do as you would be done by, if-that’s-how-you-feel-how-do-you-think-they-feel etc. Well, for your own safety I suggest you drop all that joy to the world crap and think practically about it.

Look at it this way. You are a paragon of self-restraint and justice. You are a strap-hanging saint, a paladin of the platform, the ethical emblem of the escalator. And when that guy accidentally jarred you with his suitcase it was all you could do not to light him on fire and dance around the flames.

So do you really want to risk pushing that bald man with gimlet eyes and his bag on the seat, or try reading over the shoulder of that clearly psychotic woman with the iPad? They don’t look quite so well-balanced.

Morning people? How morning are we talking? We are biologically programmed to wake at sunrise. There are no morning people when, like most commuters, you have to leave in the dark for much of the year. Think about your personal safety. Let’s just assume that, before 9am, everyone we speak to is a short-fused passive-aggressive timebomb. Why risk turning your trip on the Northern Line into a scene from The Hurt Locker? Follow my example. In maudlin, eyes-to-the-floor silence.

See you at work, everybody.

Worryman

It’s been following me for years. Sometimes I feel like I’m outrunning it, sometimes it’s breathing down my neck, sapping my strength. Sometimes I almost forget about it, so small and manageable does it seem. But it never seems to go away.

There are three components to my insomnia. The first is largely self-inflicted, and involves a continued disruption of my natural sleep patterns. It occurs when I drink to excess, and exchange sleep for a few hours of stupefied unconsciousness. It occurs when I take drugs, and find I can’t sleep at all for what feels like a fortnight. It occurs when I make the conscious decision to stay up all night playing Mass Effect 2 (worth it!) and find the dawnlight creeping spitefully around the blinds on Monday morning.

The second is a biological and possibly hereditary component. Sometimes it just takes ages for me to drop off. I’m not exactly exhausted, but I am pretty tired, but I just lie there dozing for hours on end. Sometimes I wake early for no reason I can find, and doze for hours until my alarm goes off (at which point I hit snooze and fall deeply asleep). I require good sleep hygiene. My father suffers from a similar complaint, as do some of my brothers. It can be managed by regular, timetabled exercise and what could be broadly termed cognitive behaviour therapy (I refer to it as “not fucking around anymore and sorting stuff out”). It could be a LOT worse. I am always grateful that my insomnia is not linked to a more concrete and less manageable cause like clinical depression or pain-related conditions.

The third and most irritating cause is my anxiety, an admission that upsets me on several levels. To begin with, it’s a massive bugger. I mean, seriously Brain, can we not come to a better working arrangement here? I’ve got a job interview tomorrow. I need sleep in order to perform well at said interview. Acquiring said job will give me better access to funds with which to procure goods and services we can both enjoy. Help me to help you. What do you mean we’ve discussed this before?

I also don’t like the fact that my anxiety keeps me awake because it’s a wussy condition I try to not to give credence to. I do not, let’s make this absolutely clear, have any major problems in my life. I have a good standard of living. I have a loving family that consistently support me and a group of amiable friends, a small cadre of which I would happily die for. I do not appear to have any major medical conditions. I am of average attractiveness. I have Mass Effect 2 on my Xbox. Life, in short, is sweet.

And yet… it’s been following me for years. A nebulous cloud of half-formed worries and associations, sometimes gaining a toehold in my mind, sometimes relegated to the fringes. Again, none of them are particularly grievous. Bills left unpaid. Important forms lost. Friends and acquaintances upset. Love lost and unlikely to be recovered. The vague feeling that, at some point in the near future, I’m going to get in trouble about something.

It’s bollocks, innit? It really is all in my head. And yet there seems to be some gap between my hearty rationalisations and the feeling in my gut. Even though I know this stuff isn’t important, it still keeps me awake at night. It makes me hide from my responsibilities, and shy from acquiring new ones. It makes me moan constantly to anyone who will listen. It fills up my blog with self-indulgences when I should be writing funny lists about parties and stuff.

There is, however, a bright side. Sometimes it goes away.

Occasionally I emerge from this ridiculous cloud, always unscathed. It happens at key turning points in my life, those moments when you get the feeling that this could be it, this could be the fresh start the marks the beginning of everything else. From now on, you will be a new man. You will pay those bills on time, you will file every letter. You will be virtuous in thought and deed and not watch nearly as much porn on the internet. You will visit your gran regularly and find a nice girl and cease telling pointless lies to everyone you meet.

It doesn’t last. I fall back into old habits. I let things slide away from me until they begin to swarm and amalgamate, returning to me bigger and more menacing than they even seemed in retrospect. I let it happen because I’m lazy, and because, perhaps, I’m not the person I think I ought to be yet.

The potential, however, is there. The potential to make it all stick this time, to make the next big change mark the start of my adult life. When problems will be assessed, analysed and finally crushed under the mighty engine of my self-belief and maturity. When I wake up early every morning having slept the sleep of the just and look life right in the face even as I kick it in the nadgers.

Inspiring stuff, eh? Unlikely too, but it’s nice to have a goal. And the main thing, as we’ve already explored, is that it’s no big deal anyway. It keeps me up at night sometimes, but I have a good standard of living. I have a loving family that consistently support me and a group of amiable friends, a small cadre of which I would happily die for. I do not appear to have any major medical conditions. I am of average attractiveness. I have Mass Effect 2 on my Xbox. And I have you, dear reader, and next week I shall be funny again. I promise.*

*Author's note: may not actually be funny.