Working From Home

Too much being at home on my own is sending me slightly bonkers.

It's fun at first. You can dance. You can sing. You can do silly voices. In short, you can do all the things that you can't do with a teenage daughter in the house.

But after a while you start to go a bit strange. You're still singing, dancing and doing silly voices. But you've kind of forgotten that this is not normal behaviour.

Your frenzied thoughts bat you around the walls of your house like a rubber ball at the mercy of an enthusiastic infant. That's when you engage with the slow process of thinking yourself to death.

Before you know it you begin to wonder if other people really exist at all. Or whether it's all a joke at your expense. Kind of like the Truman show but without an audience.

It's not like I'm not used to spending time on my own. I've been on solitary retreats before. Totally alone. No telly. No radio. No iPod. They tend to go like this:

Day 1 You sit there on the first day, buoyed up by good spiritual intentions. You get all your little bits and pieces out: incense (check); little Buddha figure (check); herbal tea bags (check). Then you rearrange them a bit. Then you sit down to meditate and spend two hours on a cushion thinking about all the jobs you should have finished off before you left home.

Day 2 You calm down. Meditation is good. You feel alive and connected to the fabric of the universe.

Day 3 You giggle. A lot. I don't know why. You start to wonder if you need psychiatric help. But you don't care. You just look at the four walls around you and laugh out loud.

Day 4+ One of two things can happen. Either you regain equilibrium and find an inner peace that has previously been lacking in your life. Or you are taken away in an ambulance.

But I'm not on a solitary retreat. I'm working. Having insane thoughts. And reading emails from other insane people who are also working from home.

That's right. I'm working from home.

And, when you're working from home, no-one can hear you scream...

Pyjamas

ON MY BIRTHDAY, last weekend, I discovered that I am now at an age where I am genuinely delighted to be given new pyjamas. This is slightly alarming. Remember the disappointment you felt as a kid, when you opened a present hoping that it was an Atari games console and discovering it was a set of Rupert Bear PJs? Even though the package was clearly soft and pyjama-shaped you hoped against hope.

But these days I'm pretty chuffed to get them. OK maybe not Rupert Bear (I think he's dead, isn't he?). But those nice ones from M&S which are always modelled by good-looking adonis-types lounging on a chair, barefoot.

Perhaps the reason I like getting PJs as presents is that I tend to end up wearing them all day. A friend of mine told me the other day that in any given telephone conference, 8% of the participants are not dressed. That'll be me then. In my day job I often work from home. I'm still in my pyjamas when I see my daughter off to school. And usually I'm still in them by the time she gets on the bus to come home. I always makes sure I get dressed before my daughter comes home though, partly so as not to set "a bad example" and partly so as to avoid her giving me one of those self-righteous lectures that teenagers are so good at.

There is something fantastically decadent about doing a teleconference in your pyjamas though. Preferably whilst lounging on the sofa sipping coffee from your favourite enormous mug. It makes everything feel a bit less like work and that can only be a good thing. I feel cool and casual like the guy in the M&S adverts. Although I probably look more like something you might encounter on a prostate ward.

So. Why am I telling you all this?

I have absolutely no idea.

But anyway it's what I did yesterday. Until just before Brady Jr got home. Then I had to get dressed and pretend to be a grown-up.

YESTERDAY EVENING was one of those evenings when time seems to disappear and suddenly it's 9pm and nobody's had any tea. (Or dinner if you're a Southerner).

I went with my daughter to the stables to help her do some groundwork with Murphy The Horse. Her confidence is suffering at the moment and we thought it might help her form a better bond with him. It's difficult to do anything like this in the Winter, but now the weather is picking up we can do more of it. With the help of a lovely woman called Katrina who happened to be passing by, I taught Brady Jr how to use Monty Roberts' join-up method. Monty Roberts is the real-life horse whisperer who the film was based on. I'd like to say I learned his technique whilst staying with him on his ranch in California. But I didn't. I learned it from You Tube.

Anyway, Brady Jr did the business. After a little while, me and Katrina looked on as Murphy voluntarily walked up behind Brady Jr and put his head over her shoulder, accepting her as his herd leader. It was a magical moment. Brady Jr's face was a picture.

WARNING: The next bit's about football. If you hate football, don't write to me moaning about it. I don't want to know. Just move on. Go on. Off you go. Go and read a book of poetry or whatever it is you people do.

OK. Have they gone? Right. The icing on the cake yesterday was listening to Wigan Athletic beat Liverpool 1-0 on the radio. I wished I could have gone and even felt a bit guilty for not being there to support them. But life's a bit busy.

It's tough being a fan though, isn't it? The last ten minutes seemed to go on forever. I was convinced Liverpool would snatch at least one late goal. And Wigan were only one point from the relegation zone.

Sitting anxiously by the radio, as if at the outbreak of World War II, I probably didn't look like I was having much fun. And I wasn't. Being a sports fan isn't about having fun, is it? It seems to be about suffering unnecessarily over something that, objectively speaking, doesn't actually matter and over which you have absolutely no control. My mum thinks it's bonkers. But then again, she watches Eastenders.

But maybe that's the point of being a fan of sport (or Eastenders). While we're suffering over the threat of a last-minute goal (or some cockney being beaten up by a gang of "slags" and dumped in a canal), we don't have time to think about the mortgage or Haiti or the bleak emptiness of our own futile existence.

On that bombshell, I'll bid you good day.