The Most Stressful Thing

This is the most stressful thing I have ever done.

I wake up in the middle of the night, hung-over (and probably still drunk, but who can tell when you’re mind is a mess?). I put some jogging trousers and trainers on and slip out of the house clutching a half-bottle of whiskey and a tennis racket. A few cars whiz past on Uxbridge Road and for some reason I am walking with them, sticking my fingers up at them when they beep me before remembering that I am in the wrong. I jog up to Ealing tennis club and easily scale their fence onto the grass courts. There are four balls in my racket bag and I attempt to serve them up the court, howling like a dog. No one comes to help. I miss every ball.

Then I walk for an hour and repeatedly run through the pathetic animal enclosure in Walpole Park. The foxes, already bemused about being caged up when their brethren run free around them in broad daylight, eye me with barely concealed boredom. Only when I grab the fence and snarl at them do they come to life and growl back. Eventually my voice is too croaky to continue and I leave them, running through the park screaming for attention.

In a residential street I try to break into cars but it isn’t as easy as on Grand Theft Auto. The cars are all locked and when I pick up a stone and smash a driver’s window, the keys aren’t in the ignition and I don’t know how to hot wire it. I sit in it for awhile, pretending to drive, but the steering wheel locks and I punch the dashboard a few times until my fist hurts.

Suddenly I come to the conclusion that an arrest would be good for my career. I walk up to houses pissing on their doorsteps, letting out a dribble on each one, but no one is awake. I jump on a bus and don’t pay. I stand right next to the driver and stare at him, issuing threats and ultimatums but he calmly drives on, ignoring me. He stops outside my house and I stand in front of the bus. I get tired first and instead I run to the police station in Acton and bang on the windows, shouting in mock-Arabic. It is closed.

“My novel is shit,” I shout at the only pedestrian I have seen.

“I know,” he replies and then there is nothing else to say.

It is like I always thought; I am having a nervous breakdown but no one has noticed.

I slip back into bed, finally tired. Cheryl stirs. “I can’t do this,” I tell her. “I’m a fraud.”

“Go to sleep,” she says. And I do, and in the morning, there are DVDs to watch and life carries on.