Capability.

For the next week, and no more than that, the office where I work is located in the middle of a large warehouse.

It was moved there at the behest of a director towards the end of last year, and I was never happy with the idea. For one, there's no natural light (I always half-joke that it's a fucking prison) and secondly the noise from the forklift trucks is loud enough to hear even from two flights of steps above.

The worst thing, though, is that the warehouse is so vast that I can easily get lost in there for a good half-hour or so, making me embarrassingly late for the start of my shift, or delayed coming back from lunch. Earlier, I couldn't find my way out when I was trying to leave for the night, with the net result that I arrived home even more frustrated with myself than normal.

I've tried to do two things: I told my manager I have an appalling sense of direction, and am thus certain to get swallowed up from time to time, so please don't be too hard on me when I roll in miles past my allotted start time, humiliated. It occurred to me that if I had some obvious impediment, the company would have no choice but to exercise some patience with me - but I do not and thus my manager has seen fit to ignore me.

Secondly, I've tried to find 'markers' in the warehouse to give me a rough idea of where I am going. One vast bank of plasma-screen televisions here looks the same as these adjacent ones, though, and so I have given up the ghost on that. I am no further forward.

My manager can't believe I would struggle to get from one place to another inside the warehouse because I am otherwise capable of doing everything asked of me (and more) but it is true. In other words, people don't accept that I find it hard to do things which other people take for granted, but this instance is one of many that I can recall throughout my life:

• at the age of five, I could read books written for 11-year-olds, but could neither tie my shoelaces nor dress myself.


• at 13, I could speak fluent French but was unable to put on my school tie even when standing in front of a mirror.


• at 14, I was sent to the remedial class because I was incapable of drawing a circle with a compass.


• at 30, I didn't know what to do with a piece of luggage on a flight, despite the fact that I was standing in front of an overhead luggage rack, watching other people load their belongings onto it. I stood there, frozen, for what seemed like forever, and can still remember Bluefish's anger and disappointment that I couldn't carry out such a straightforward job.

I am capable but useless; clever but interminably stupid; talented but beyond help. The warehouse is none other than the continuation of a thread which refuses to be broken. This is more uncharted territory, in the ossuary of my own behaviour.

Truth.

The blog as confessional: unchartered territory and yet I do it all the time.

That means, then, there are two categories of confession - there are the things which lie just underneath my most conscious experience (I do it all the time) and those of which I am painfully aware but never speak of (unchartered territory).

Examples in the first category which I have mentioned on here in the past are: I am attracted to a work colleague; I called a child a cunt in the hope of corrupting him; I didn't dare to look at my grandmother's body because I knew it would haunt me forever. These are small, individual statements which give an insight into the character of the person blogging, but which are too broad and insufficiently regular to permit general conclusions to be drawn.

Unchartered territory, then, implies something more serious, and more difficult - something which suggests a trait, and exists at least semi-permanently. It silently expresses the hope that a change can be made, once the unvarnished truth is upon us, even though the last time I ever imparted something particularly weighty, life continued much as normal. (This was the fear that I might have Asperger's Syndrome, and I never progressed further than an e-mail to some society or other, which bounced. The desire to be diagnosed, then, was weaker than the inertia which does not want to change. More than two years later, I remain as I was.)

Enough prevaricating. Your author is hopelessly addicted to the internet, and has been for years. The most amusing thing is the use of the internet to confirm my own need for it - what more evidence could anyone require?

I could happily never touch another drop of alcohol, I have never had a cigarette in my mouth, and have never taken a drug other than those prescribed by a doctor or bought in a chemist's. They do nothing for me, and those who depend on them are weak-willed. Yet the internet? I should be lost without the glut of information upon which I gorge, the forums, the anonymity, the instant messengers, the blogs.

I don't even know if I want it to change, let alone whether I could. The truth is writ large, though, now, and I can hardly be a worse person for it.

Politics.

What possible benefit is there in acknowledging the existence of the British National Party by turning out to protest against them this coming weekend?

As much as the media love to scaremonger by warning of a very right-wing tide coming to sweep away politics, we are still talking about a party which will do well, at its zenith, to scrape a million votes nationwide in a general election. The whole democratic process seems skewed so much in favour of red or blue (with yellow ballast in the lean years) that any would-be gatecrasher discovers the first-past-the-post system is their undoing.

It isn't for me to arrogantly point out the error of other people's ways: those whom I tutor would be able to fully reciprocate. You might not have an irrational fear of Muslims (for that is what it is) but you lack x, y and z, hence you are no less human than us. Where I wrote about the preservation of the cat in the cat, now I argue that I seek to extinguish the man in the man.

All the above has occurred to me since the weekend; yet so too do I realise that I might be generating excuse after excuse to avoid doing morally what I feel to be correct. This is hardly new, of course: I elected to attend a dreary goalless draw at home to Derby instead of travelling to London to abuse the Pope in September of last year. Instinct told me that giving some to Benedict was the only choice, but familiarity and cowardice held me to the stultifying beat of routine.

Speaking truth to power does not, of course, begin and end with a public display of excoriation or support. I eat neither KFC nor McDonalds, and yet have never felt the urge to join in anti-animal cruelty or anti-capitalist demonstrations; nor have I protested about the ease with which one can begin a libel case in the English courts. As with religion, some beliefs are better practiced in private, and yet I feel unconvinced that being uncomfortable with racists is one of them.

Morally, I ought to be there at the weekend, in the names of the Australian and Zimbabwean muses of the past; in the names of my friends from Ghana and Iran; in the name of the woman whose parting gift was to ask me to write for her. All would theoretically attract the interest of the British National Party should they ever gain significant power, and I must express my disquiet on their behalf.

Yet England is no Egypt, where an ancient and fossilised leader can be unseated in 18 days of protest, the contagious revolution spreading across North Africa and Asia to terrify the old despots. Here, millions poured into the streets to protest against an illegal war, with the outcome that it went ahead anyway.

I am, then, voiceless, castrated as far as politics goes. Any sound I make goes unheard, like the tree falling in the forest when nobody is around to hear its death. Yet still there is purpose, even pleasure, in the act of vocalising, and it is to this notion that I must reconcile myself to before Saturday, else I shall never get out of bed.

Politics.

Barnsley on the second Saturday in February, and your author's head thick with the toxins of the night before.

Four, maybe five, drinks had been consumed in the evening, with a glass of neat fire-water truncating each end; and I had paid the price.

There was a long, yawning gap between mid-morning and the game kicking off, and I didn't know what to do with myself. Any diversion to escape the terrible drum-beat in my skull would be gratefully-received, overhung disgrace that I am.

I walked up the main street and noticed that the British National Party were out in force again: here was the distraction I had been waiting for. Not that I am brave enough to even yell abuse, let alone ambush them, but I could pace up and down glaring at them menacingly. Hail the political animal who won't countenance getting a good kicking for his beliefs.

Barnsley is a political hotbed at present: the town centre MP was jailed last week for falsely claiming expenses, and that event triggered a by-election. Labour have always been strong here, and yet, as ever, the far-right are hopeful of the breakthrough which will legitimise them - a first, monumental, seat in the House of Commons.

It won't happen, not here, and not yet, but a relatively poor northern town like it is the most probable site of the BNP's big moment. I have wondered before how we can head them off, and I was soon to find the answer.

Outlawing the party is not the answer. It would kill off once and for all the ambition to enter mainstream political debate, but it would not curtail the wishes of their supporters - in fact, the sense of injustice would strengthen allegiance. Instead, holding their policies up to scrutiny and dismantling them should be the method. Responding to hatred with repression does not rid us of hate.

Accept that they are here to stay, and then formulate an answer. At the far end of the same street was the response - a softly-spoken pagan lady representing Unite Against Fascism, who had turned up with a handful of others to swim against the tide. In the 15 minutes I spent with her, people approached her to vocalise their fears. One had never met a nice Muslim; another said he would vote BNP because he had been told sharia law was the norm in Leicester these days; another said the Muslims are trying to ban Christmas and he wanted to uphold traditional values.

Without condemning, the pagan lady tried to debunk each argument in her unthreatening way, and those she spoke with went away with their beliefs shaken - but not fatally undermined. It will take many more of her ilk to weaken the base of a minority party which receives more attention than it should, and it is not enough to torpedo the BNP in the by-election and then return to normal.

Yet political involvement is a tough ask. Only half the population go out to vote in a General Election, so motivating people to give their time is often a wasted request. Extreme parties can occupy this vacuum, and there is little will to stop them. I now must decide whether to join the anti-fascists in a march on Saturday, or remain inert myself.

It ought not to be even a question, but it is. Your cowardly author needs to make a positive decision for once. Why it is open to debate still, I shall speak of later.

Want.

Three months after the death of Danny, are there any new insights that can be made now that the pressure of mourning has been removed and the psychological adjustment which acknowledges his departure has been made?

I remember writing about the wind agitating the bushes in the adjacent garden and, as Danny used to hide in there at times, I expected to see him causing the movement of the bush as he tried to bring down a butterfly, or because he'd just seen a bird. That is to say, there was a genuine belief that, if I looked hard enough or long enough, I should see Danny present in his usual position.

However, this genuine belief was drowned out by an opposing, stronger realisation that of course he'd not be there. He's dead, you fool, as of November 10.

I mentioned, too how I half-thought (perhaps that's the arrangement of words I'm looking for) that tapping the glass front of the photograph which remains of him would bring him back to life. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. After a shorter or greater period of time, the realisation dawns that no amount of wishing or catechism can return the past to us.

We are now in the realms of splitting thoughts into sub-thoughts: 1) I accept that no amount of wishing can recover the past and yet I am little better off than I was before because 2) I still wish that wishing could do so. The distinction between 1) and 2) is not an unimportant one, and it takes me to the shore where the waves of my own thoughts in recent days have lapped, without ever escaping the realm of thought itself and rumbling into consciousness.

At some point, there must come - bear with me as I become more convoluted - the desire to do away with desire. In other words, I accept 1) that no amount of wishing can recover the past and 2) even if it were possible, I have no inclination or longing to disturb the present.

The manner of my upbringing, the peer groups I (even now) am around, and the expectations placed on me by what I loosely call society mean that I am a creature of massive desire, and the ultimate goal is to accumulate. If I change the world, it is only in order that I may manipulate it so that even greater accumulations are shaken my way.

I must invert this, and breathe slowly, and not let my culture leach into the nature of the thoughts I should be having. Danny has gone, and this is not only something I accept, but it is good, for his time on earth was done. Nature brings meter to all things, and it is for my sick and tortured mind to learn to respect this, instead of rebelling against it.

Six.

What a strange sex act this is! In bed with
The plot straight from the pages of a book - mine.
In the throes am I with the old, dead Turks;
And my life now caught up in theirs for good.
The black Serb I know, the star of daydreams
Don't go back to Belgrade, else you'll soon die.

My life caught up with poor Black George - long gone
Engine of Serbia's first Uprising
Whose calculations scarred the Ottomans
Whose maths now disrupts my hope of sleep.
The British opened up the scar tissue
The penniless Empire bled to its death.

How did it happen, I ask myself, confused?
They must have lacerated you all ways.
Fate decided in a great Balkan mess
Like so many others before yourself.
Yet you clung on for years: ten, they say, more.
But time had long since caught you up. It's done.

Except in the minds of those who think you.
Bed-time cleaved by Karadjordje and England.
I wonder about the butterfly effect.
The law of unintended consequence.
I dare to smile at a stranger else I
Utter an unwise oath at the wrong time.

And the squeezed world in which I live is stretched
Asunder. Who wants to re-align it?
Not me - but these borders are mine to skew.
I don't detonate hell with just one kiss.
Such is for the empire-stealing classes.
I to the universe does not commute.