August 2nd, 2020 – 676

~ Sam Shuttleworth

So I’ll start by explaining what happened yesterday.

I have a small bubble, one I’ve kept to my mum’s side of the family – though I am still seeing dad when I can at a distance – and two other friends who are otherwise in close to total isolation. Every other week I meet one of those friends – haven’t met up with the other yet – and help her food shop, then go back to hers to watch YouTube and pretend for a little while the world is ok.

On her setting off to drive me home after this yesterday, our car made what I can only describe as a noise of imminent death. She tried to drive through it but after barely 200m we both agreed that the 15 miles ~ to get me home was not happening. She was super sweet about it which given its her car that was the issue and might have a nasty bill coming up reminded me just how much this world doesn’t deserve her. She dropped me at the station and it seemed the drama was over.

I haven’t been on a train in close to half a year. As such, I’m, a bit out of practice. But I got my ticket, donned mask #2 of the day and walked to the platform. At the barrier I accidentally tried to use my receipt not my ticket. I laughed it off to the attendant thinking hey, where’s life without a few rough edges. And besides, the train arrived 3 minutes early and less than 30 seconds after I got to the platform! Neat. 21:47, 16 minute journey and a 25 minute walk.

I made it home two hours later.

The train not stopping at Hampden Park was annoying but hey, workable. I got my first taste of others train behaviour and may I just say WEAR YOUR GOD DAMN MASKS YOU IMBECILES. OVER YOUR WHOLE FACE TOO. Ahem. I got to Eastbourne, waited for a train stopping at Hampden Park, got on, silently judged the people not wearing masks/properly and…

…and watched as the train skipped Hampden Park.

13 minutes or so later we arrived back where I started. Thankfully, the rest of the journey went by without incident, but it’s around then as I was coming into the station I wrote yesterday’s post. So hopefully you can see why I wanted to wait and convey it properly. I also didn’t want to tempt fate by saying “but hey at least it’s over now” before the train derailed itself out of spite or something.

So tonight, I’m knackered and need sleep. But I still need to write. WAN is getting towards the third act which is where it starts to get really unpleasant, so my mood is somewhere between the gutter and bedrock. Closer to the latter. Imma churn out 1,000 words of passable prose and take a few shots of bourbon; the joys of no work tomorrow. Here’s hoping nothing blows up and means I have to enter work mode from the blue.

Published by Sam Shuttleworth

I’m Sam, and I live to write. I spent most of the first 8 years of my adulthood trying to balance writing with a large amount of crap in my personal life, until towards the end of 2018 I threw everything out and started afresh with just my writing. I built the new me around one goal: I have to write at least 1,000 words a day. I called this goal 1K, and it changed my life. So long as I write a thousand words a day, the day is a success, and atop that I've managed over time to build the life I wanted all those years. My greatest flaws as a writer is I still use too many adjectives, adverbs, connectives as openers, accidental passive voice and I don't force my work down people's throats enough on pain of extreme and unusual torture. My greatest strength is I know my greatest flaws and I'm working on them.