16.03.2026 (originally written around November 2025)

“The problem of leisure, what to do for pleasure?”

Jon King, 1979

[As far as I can recall, the following was written sometime in November 2025. My intention here had been to describe my day-to-day routine in as excruciatingly fine detail as possible, to really drive home the dull mundanity I had surrounded myself with. However, I eventually got a bit bored and stopped writing, never to return to the piece. I seriously considered not publishing this as an edition, but, with the sage advice of my co-editor, I resolved that as an unfinished piece it stands as testament to an idleness even I am in awe of, for I could not even be bothered to finish writing the article chronicling my own boredom.]

Week 16. To supplement this series, I have written a short poetry collection called Poetic Despatches from The Dole Office. It’s not quite ‘Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt’ (1984), but it’ll do.

For this edition, I thought I’d walk you through a day-in-my-life, so strap yourselves in folks.

I wake up at about 08:00 or 09:00. I don’t set an alarm, but thankfully the room I’m staying in has a lot of natural light, so that just sort of penetrates my eyelids and pulls me into each new day. Reaching for my phone, I’ll lay in bed for about half an hour or an hour. On a good day I might write myself a list of things to do. There’s not really anything that I need to do, it’s more a matter of finding things to fill my time with.

So somewhen between 09:00 and 10:00, I’ll get up, wander downstairs, say hello to the cat and give her breakfast. Then I’ll put some bread in the toaster, and pop the kettle on. I usually have butter and Marmite on my toast in the mornings, and I prefer thinly slicing the butter rather than scraping it. This is for two reasons – A. as I keep my butter in the fridge it can be difficult to spread, and B. this method keeps the block clean, thus I can see clearly how much I have used and I am able to wrap the remains up in a neat fashion. Recently I think I’ve been over-Marmiting my toast. I love Marmite, but a little goes a long way, and this is something I ought to remember, as my morning ritual often borders on the overzealous. To drink, I like chai tea, and as far as I can tell the teabags don’t cost more than normal tea. I like my tea strong and milky. I think some people believe these two characteristics are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. All you have to do is brew the teabag for long enough to reach the desired strength, while leaving ample room in the mug for a decent amount of milk. I either have one sugar or none, depending on my own estimation of my mental strength on any given morning.

I’ll eat and drink my toast and tea sat at the kitchen table, I always eat my meals at the kitchen table. Afterwards, I’ll wash up my mug, plate, teaspoon, and knives (one for the butter, one for the Marmite, and never the twain shall meet), and whatever I couldn’t be bothered to wash up from the previous night. Keeping a kitchen clean is very important to me, more so than a living room or a bedroom. I’m not really sure why this is, but it is nevertheless. Then I’ll go and sit on the sofa, where, to my right, is a lifesize model skeleton, dressed and sitting upright. Sometimes I have to rearrange his head, if he has nodded off during the night.

By this point it’ll be fast approaching 10:30. Between then and about 18:00 it’s anarchy, and anything can happen. Here’s my attempt at a comprehensive list of the activities I might get up to during these hours:

Play the guitar

Play the drums

Read wikipedia

Tidy up around the house

Talk to the cat

Go for a walk

[The original article transcript ends here, presumably I left to do one of the very many things pressing up against my life with great urgency.]

“Well a person can work up a mean, mean thirst, after a hard day of nothing much at all.”

Paul Westerberg, 1985