Neurotica

Everyone has their little routines. I have the same coffee every morning, I shower in exactly the same way every day (hair, then face to feet, if you're interested), my Sat-Nav goes to the left of the steering wheel for no other reason than "just 'cos it does", but none of these things could be called compulsions. I do them because there's no need for me to do them any other way. They're idiosyncrasies, nothing else.

It occurred to me recently, however, that I've managed to pick up a worrying amount of ridiculous preoccupations. There isn't a discernible pattern to this madness; the things I feel the need to do are arbitrary, disjointed and nonsensical. I use the same locker at the gym every time I go. It physically aggravates me if I have to use another. I will get annoyed if someone uses my treadmill. I don't like the treadmill. I think running is obnoxiously boring, but I will get angry if someone else is using it. Actual, almost tangible rage builds up if someone dares to run on it when I want to. I recently decided that my elbows were too dry and so have been regularly moisturising them. Nothing else; just the elbows. I will refuse to throw away anything with any personal details on. It must be shredded. Trouble is I only own a receipt shredder. The hole to put the paper in is two and a half inches wide. I have to tear anything I want shredding into strips before I can destroy it and I want pretty much everything shredding. It's not electric. It takes forever. I can't not do it. I used to own socks which had the days of the week written on them. I remember being 17 and going to college in odd shoes because they were all I could find that day. I just didn't care. Six years later and whole days are being wrecked by these damn socks. I flat-out refused to wear them if they didn't match the day it was. I would reuse dirty socks (and I did) before I would wear my Tuesday socks on a Wednesday. I had to throw them away; the novelty wasn't worth all the aggro. I got a new fridge in my little apartment above the pub. It has an egg tray large enough for twelve eggs. I had to go to two shops to buy eggs because the first one only had cartons of fifteen left. There must not be surplus eggs. I could go on with this list for a while and barf up more crazy than you'd want to endure, but I think you get the picture. What I've written above aren't even the weirdest ones. Those ain't for sharing.

The hypothesis that I'm currently clinging to is that this is all a result of spending too much time alone in this shithole town. With nothing new, and nothing challenging, I've fallen into these odd patterns because there's no one around to point out how weird it is (obliquely, what I'm saying is that this is everyone else's fault). Salisbury isn't the hub of social activity that you think it might be. This small town has a habit of breeding feckless, six-fingered twats and I'm happily falling into line. But admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. Now that I've noticed I'm doing all this weird stuff I can take steps to reverse them. I shall no longer get annoyed if locker 195 has been used by someone else. I will stop moisturising my elbows. I will buy a cross-shredder. The socks are already gone. That treadmill is ideally located for the TVs and mirrors so I think I might continue to get annoyed about that. But the rest is headed out the window.

Oh, and in other news, there's a beehive in the roof above my room and every three hours or so one of the little bastards will fall down the chimney into my room. I'm allergic to Bee and Wasp stings. There's a fair chance that I won't wake up tomorrow because I'm sharing a building with hundreds of tiny assassins.

I have also decided to wed Taylor Swift. Bitch belongs with ME!