Weirdest day

Ok, magic eight ball lost in miles of government issue guttering. Go!
Together Vikkie and I stumble through the darkness, negotiating a clump of young elders and tall grasses and finally reaching the end of the gutter. By this time we are royally pissed off, wet and tired. I locate the drain but not the magic eight ball.
“Great” sighs Vikkie, “Look, it’s stuck”
I follow her pointing finger and glimpse shining black through a split in the pipe. We agree (after a short argument) that since Vikkie was the one who to get the ball in, logically it should be my job to recover it. So I kneel down in the mess of moss and guano and mud. I shove the spatula into the gutter and start ramming it up and down like a demented chimney sweep. I’m about to give up when, in a shower of yet more moss, the ball descends.
Picking it up I wipe the sludge from its surface to reveal the glowing blue window. The cube within bobs sedately displaying the words - “Ask again later”
Sometimes I am sure that God is mad at me for something.

Well there’s no rest for the wicked. The next morning I awake exhausted and aching. The late night of ball hunting (tee-hee) has done nothing to improve my mood and now I have to get up and get to work.
I catch the five o’clock bus into the nearly silent city centre and get breakfast (Hot chocolate and sugared waffle - having had a great idea to replace sleep with fat and sugar) at an all night coffee place on the corner of the street where I work. I am a cleaner; I clean an entire three floors of an office block four times a week.
In case you have never had the chance to go to university and have a “student job”, let me enlighten you as to how rewarding it is to do something you hate for almost no money, to support an education you’re not sure you even want anymore, and a lifestyle only one up from life in a cardboard box.
I polish off my breakfast secreted away in the cleaning cupboard sitting on a crate of sponges. Then I gather a bucket full of cloths, dangerous solvents and toilet rolls. I work my way through the offices, wiping phones and vacuuming. These three floors share a single toilet block, and it is here, almost three hours later, that I end my shift.
With fifteen paid minutes left to kill I look around the spotless bathroom. Well, I say spotless, what I mean is that everything that I am contracted to clean is clean. It would take an entire team of cleaners working eighteen hour shifts to make a dent in the creeping grime that hides behind everything.
I’m starting to suspect the walls in here used to be white.
Experimentally I wipe at the dingy wall, leaving a clear streak of perfect white about a foot long.
I probably should have done that somewhere that wasn’t the middle of the wall. With the semi gleeful thought of paid overtime circulating my brain I begin re-whitening the walls.
I used to be a cleaner back home, on a limited basis because of school and actually trying to have a life. I also read, and indeed still read, tarot cards over the internet for complete strangers. Being pagan apparently has the bonus of giving you certain talents to prostitute for hard cash, which is good considering the fact that you need a massive array of candles and an Indian restaurant worth of spices to exact the tiniest amount of revenge on your evil co-workers.
Not that I ever have.
Moving on from advanced bathroom blotting I begin to tackle the floor of the hallway. This is the best job so I usually save it till last, using the floor buffer and soapy scented polish to make the floor miraculously gleaming again. The soft whirr of the round buffer plate on the floor is monotonous and calming, it gives me time to think about things that aren’t work related.
I’m just sinking into a hypnotic trance like state when the buffer lurches off an uneven floor tile (reported four times but still not replaced), it jolts over its own wire and before I know it the wire tangles around my foot and the buffers polishing cushion. It yanks me to the floor where I land on my arse none too gracefully, and finally realise that I should let go of the buffer safety ignition. I release the handle and instantly the buffer stops whirring.
With shaking fingers I unwind the snare of taught wire on my ankle, then slowly ease it out of its strangle hold on the buffer. I get to my feet and notice the long me-shaped imprint on the newly polished floor.
And that’s it. That’s the moment that I snap.
Throughout school I always had this thing, something bad would happen, I’d get picked on or laughed at, and I wouldn’t cry. Then a few days or even weeks later, something small would go wrong, a pencil that wouldn’t sharpen or a dented book, and suddenly I would go hysterical.
I put the buffer away, lock up, and walk out into the street and into the park down the road. Once there I sob so hard I scare the pigeons. Tears drip down my face, my eyes swell up and my mouth convulsively turns downwards. I’m not crying about my bruised tailbone, I’m crying because I feel trapped and scared in a life I don’t want, I hate everything about it but at the same time I want it to accept me. I want all the things I reject to welcome me, to convince me that I belong.
For a long time I just sit on the bench and suffer, then I realise that if I don’t move I will just stay on that bench forever and never do anything. Getting up I begin to walk down the street, ignoring the stares of the people I walk past. What I need is a “Me day”; I had them throughout school, mostly when I was “ill”. What I need is hot chocolate, magazines and fluffy socks.
I find the entrance to the cheap-o shop on the high street and go in. There’s a food aisle consisting mainly of tins and pickled things, but eventually I find instant hot chocolate and a box of chocolates as a bonus. Adding these things to a basket I peruse the DVD shelves and throw in a film that I saw ages ago and that now costs less than the chocolate. I browse a little longer and find a book that looks pretty funny, chick-lit naturally, the kind of thing that would make my English professor sneer with contempt, but he isn’t here.
By this time I have cheered up considerably, don’t get me wrong, everything still sucks but I always feel that paradoxically, alone time allows me to deal with the world better.
I’m about to pay for my stuff, which I’ve mentally totted up to around £7.40, when I see it.
Now, there are some things that, when you buy them, you think they are going to change your life. Typically these things are wrinkle cream, weight loss pills or self help books. Nothing really changes when you buy them except your bank balance. But occasionally you buy something without even thinking about it, and it alters you forever.
“And this please”
I toss a magazine onto the pile, rounding it neatly to £9.00, and scoop the lot into my handbag.
And here it is the beginning of the present. Keep your heads propped up, it’s about to get interesting.