Day in the life

Day in the life

Multiple alarms go off. I'm lying in dirty sheets with an Oblivion hangover and I should be getting up for work. Instead of which I've piled all the duvets and my too-many pillows and cushions up (incidentally crushing my plush Gonzo) and thrust my face in, feeling for the crisp coolness of unused linen. Eventually I get up, have a cold shower, and wonder if there's any fodder in the house I feel like eating. I pull on sandals, as it'll save on washing socks later and go down, through my flats.

Longfield house is a bipolar place, with the landlord promising all these improvements, none of which are thought through properly. So to stop tramps sleeping on the roof outside my window, he blocked off the fire escape. To improve the look of the concrete entrance ramp, he covered it in sheet metal that is lethal in ice or rain. The postboxes have been replaced three times, because they can't get the numbers right – and the flaps are so big, anyone wandering in from the street can nick the post. Anyone can wander in from the street because the security system has been deactivated. It's been deactivated because the intercom doesn't work and not enough keyfobs have been handed out to the other residents of the building. The building has a caretaker but he doesn't clean the building itself, merely sweeping up the leaves outside. Inside there's piled rubbish, holes in the wall and bird crap coating the stair-wells, presumably from when a pigeon got in when they were jerry-building the new flats in which we live. No-one I've met, apart from us, likes living there.

I walk through Longfield house quickly.

I walk ten minutes to Ealing Broadway, spend twelve minutes on the overland to Paddington, hop on the underground to Marylebone, walk to the office, and wait for the lift.

Then it's a long day of typing. Yesterday I made about fifteen phone-calls, sent thirty emails, wrote a two-page preview of a game, played squash with Jamie Sefton at lunchtime (having gashed my index finger with a big knife at the weekend, I can't hit straight or hard, and lost badly 5-0), interviewed the head of LucasArts game development over a crackly transatlantic line, stopped a copyright-infringing image going on our cover and took some time to browse the internet and catch up on news stories.

Somedays I even talk to people.

I then reversed my lengthy homeward journey, bought a cookie, stopped in and picked up some cheap canvasses for the painting I never get around to doing, bought some absolute cheap crap from Morrissons, went to a bar with my flatmate Jamie and ate some nachos, drank some white wine, went home, played Oblivion for four hours, had some dinner at midnight (ribs and rice), went into my room, cleared the crap off my bed, started my computer up, listened to radio 4, twiddled, brushed my teeth, installed a duplicate-file finder (because I seem to have at least two copies of most of my MP3s) and went to sleep.

Woke up. Repeat.