Bryant In the Morning

Bryant had woken to a new morning once again and his first thought was that his day was now spoiled and the same old puzzle now confronted him: how on earth should he spend the ensuing hours which now spread before him like some endless desert? Hour after hour of creaking, aching boredom, a tedium he had defeated by the simple act of nightly sleep was once more his task to endure. He felt bored already and he hadn’t even got out of bed. He imagined a ‘boredom Olympics’ where contestants tried to out-do each other in ennui. Bryant felt he would be carrying the gold medals back in a suitcase. He braced himself against the coming inertia and the crucifying cold of the out-of-bed environment and rushed to his ice-box of a bathroom to empty his squeezing bladder.

No employer had deemed it necessary to offer Tam Bryant a job for going on five years now and, at his present age of forty-five his prospects were not improving with the passage of time. Ex-welfare advice worker, ex-polytechnic lecturer, ex-bookies clerk, ex-busker; Bryant had more exes than Elizabeth Taylor (who he couldn’t help thinking of without images of a large bosom tormenting his thoughts because he was many times the ex-lover too though not, unfortunately, of Ms Taylor).

What he wished he was more than anything other than ex-poor was an ex-depressive. It seemed to him that he could be brought low by the very merest vicissitudes of life: his intercom buzzer wrongly pressed in the small hours would have his amygdala in overdrive with panic and speculation, his ‘threat system’ – he was now fully aware of the pyscho-terminology – screeching in his gut like a hungry crow: sleep no longer a possible sanctuary. Was it a malevolent neighbour or maybe even the police? The notion that it was merely some drunken student attempting to gain access was now lost to his anxious brain and he’d fret and worry until the dawn light eased its way through his curtains.

Bryant’s credo was ‘expect the worst, because that’s what will probably transpire’.

Of course, anxiety wasn’t a wholly irrational response to the world. There was a lot to be anxious about. Western economies on the verge of collapse, life on the very planet itself was under threat and successive Tory governments seemed intent on culling the poor, yet Bryant was just as worried that he’d once upset a friend twenty years ago or that the slight twinge in his groin may turn out to be pancreatitis or the onset of some form of syphilis that one contracted without recourse to any form of recent sexual congress (did he really gaze at that dogs arse admiringly the other day? This too, worried him.)

He also worried he was going bald and had somewhat foolishly  ordered a hair-piece affair from a mail-order company and, due to its expense, he felt compelled to wear it and, if one is seeking to establish the reality of such an item among one’s circle of friends and acquaintances and among the populace at large, it is wise to wear it consistently. So far he had detected no half-hidden sniggers or expressions of shock on the faces of those he’d  encountered and this encouraged him to proceed with his hirsute adventure. Standing at six foot two and thin as a rake, he believed the near-russet hued toupee lent him a distinguished, elegant mien which could only appear captivating to the opposite sex, although no sign of this had as yet been evident.

He was smitten by the female who worked behind the counter in McColl’s on the high street though it worried him that she reminded him facially of his old boozing buddy Jack and worried also how this would pan out should he ever actually come face-to-face with her in an intimate setting. Surely he wouldn’t mutter his friend's name in his ecstasy?

Everyone needed something to live for: some dream or ambition or maybe just a hope. Bryant’s gamut of fantasy had lessened year-upon-year for some time now. Dreams of pop superstardom had now diminished to perhaps a single ‘like’ on his Facebook page for some dirge he’d written twenty years ago about a love lost and the possibility of suicide (the theme of all of his songs for a period of some years after the most pathetically tragic of all his love affairs when she’d left him to pursue the life of a nun).

Bryant’s breakfasts were always bizarre mostly because they depended on which ‘reduced for sale’ products he’d been able to collect. This also meant that virtually all the food he ate was a little past its sell-by-date. Of an evening at certain times (and there was no exact science to this) he’d make a tour of all the supermarkets locally (except ASDA as he loathed how they treated their essentially non-unionised work-force) and procure whichever cheap goodies were available at the designated little areas they all had for the selling of such products which was often surrounded by a group of the like-minded many of whom Bryant recognised as regular rivals.

There could be maliciousness at these places and Bryant feared that there would one day be an incident sufficiently violent to make at least the local papers. ‘Reduced Sticker Wars in Morrison’s – Man Strikes Rival over Quiche!’ It really was only a matter of time.

This morning he was having blue cheese with vegetarian haggis, coleslaw and tiramisu. He was going to add a slice of stolen to this but decided to have that for his lunch with a tin of beans and pork sausages.

We all need something to look forward to, he thought, while boiling a kettle for his third mug of tea (teabag left in!).

With the thrill of breakfast a thing of bygone times, Bryant decides to go for a walk to pass the time before the library opens. He either shuffles or schleps along the prom before deciding that schlepping is the best word to describe his self-perambulatory style, the very opposite of ‘striding’ which is a far more robust form of walking. He was by no means striding. He gazed upon the sea with something far less than wonder (he’d seen it before, it was no novelty). The day was blustery and a rain mist had completely obliterated Fife and East Lothian. 

Dogs and their owners occupied the beach, they would stop and talk to one another and Bryant had noticed this. If I get a dog, he thought, then random people may talk to me and this may form a route to houghmagandie type frolics. Their respective dogs (meaning his future partner’s and his own) could just look on or snooze on the floor (was this an inversion of the ‘dogging’ activity, somehow? Possibly not, as this activity did not have as its central feature a group of humans standing outside a car looking at dogs screwing on the seats within.).

No-one else was thinking these thoughts in the whole of this town on this bleak November morning.

Bryant appreciated his uniqueness.