Relax

On distraction

I’ve been trying to relax.

Settled at my laptop, my wife asked me if I’d like a cup of tea. Whilst she busied herself with the kettle, I uploaded our marriage certificate to file our divorce. The cup of tea did the trick.

Later, driving another box of my belongings away from the home we’d built, I decided to threaten my dad. I like driving. I like the manual physicality of it and I’m a good driver so I can bear the risk of a few threats to a dead man. His box of ashes, larger than you’d expect, built of polished mahogany and inscribed “In Loving Memory of Peter Hatton – 1957-2025” is sheathed by ripped cardboard and takes pride of place in my boot next to the de-icer and engine oil. It’s what he would have wanted. He’s now surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of a past decade, ferried to and from the dump with the hanging threat that he too might end up there along with a bookshelf and some tragic untethered cables.

I told him I was getting distracted all the time. Then I said if he didn’t reply to me I’d chuck him in the tip. He doesn’t talk back. He never does. This is for the best. His advice was always shit, usually involving a longwinded and clearly fabricated story about what a hard bastard he was. He also knew very little about me. Not in that pleasing and decidedly masculine way that many men know very little about each other. I play regular Wednesday football with a couple of lads who I have now known for years. I know their favoured foot, that one of them, when mardy has a real anger to his run. I can smell the breath of another whilst “Man on” rings in my ear and I can tell he’s an alcoholic. But we exchange no information beyond a high five at the end of the game and what we understand about the other’s character is only from the manner that we commit our bodies to AstroTurf. We don’t care to know either. They’re companionable, competitive relationships with no emotional strings that every man should have.

A friend has suggested that I spend the next few months “sports guy-maxxing”. I should, he thinks, briefly but entertainingly reinvent myself into a man who lives for gym, women and pints. I’m not opposed to it. I enjoy a pint, have a decent bench press for a skinny lad and a lot of stamina which will be fruitful for both gains and women. My friend is the sort of man who, on a night out will say things like, “Any bird I lips tonight - that’s a public service”. One of my favourite morning activities is watching his crestfallen expression when I tell him exactly what he said the night before. We’re pretty different people aesthetically. I don’t like funky house music, but then I do like Chief Keef and Basshunter: you can hardly pump iron to the Mountain Goats. He would think that writing a substack is for wet nerds. I entirely agree. Reading is for nerds. Writing is for nerds. The written word was a mistake. Some stand-up comedians believe (due to its over-indexing as a male activity), that stand-up is inherently masculine. False: you’re a grown adult gossip with a feelings diary. Have some dignity and get into woodwork or look after your kids.

To be clear, I’m doing fine and I’m sick of people asking how I’m doing, because my preferred answer is “Competently and well, the same way I do everything”. I’ll manage an estate, smash my Q2 and still find the time to write with a nice brew too. But I am distracted. Somebody told me recently that I had a real sadness to me which irritated me no end, but mostly because I don’t want to consider whether it might be true.

What I will own up to is that I have for some time now struggled to properly relax. Since at least last summer every day has been a series of lists: complete the work, check in on your solicitor, ensure the funeral director has what they need, call the insurance company for hours and hours and hours, drive to Kent to pick up Dad’s latest debt threats, make sure I attend therapy, that itself now just another thing to add to the the endless list. My friends are trying to get me out there romantically again. I mostly missed online dating the first time round and it all seems like another job to add to The Big List. And it goes and goes.

Some of this is self-inflicted. I bloody love a project. I’m doing a show this summer again at Fringe (Hoots at 2125, see you then), it will be competent and well crafted. (Though I do hope, somewhat better than that too but I can guarantee competence. I am always competent.)

But I am not relaxed. I’ve noticed that my focus slides when I’m being talked to. I’ll remember some item from the never-ending list that has yet to be completed, my eyes will slip from them to the sideboard or window and I’ll scrabble to piece what I’ve been told back together. I’m forgetting things too, keys, names, dignity and then, instead of existing at the moment when things are exciting and alive, I withdraw to a series of tasks one stacked on another. But then later, at the appropriate tasking time, I’ll hunt for distraction: a drink, a glance at the phone, anything but what’s in hand and somewhere, bubbling like a new boiled kettle, a slow dread that somebody will notice the loose ties to the mask there.

If you ask almost any comic to describe the feeling of their best performance, they’ll tell you that they reach a kind of flow-state, totally in sync with the crowd but directing them at the same time, like a surfing Poseidon both in charge of and capable of riding the swells. Ask them how they reach that state and it’s that in the barrage of the stage, under the lights and crowd chatter they commit their whole self to the moment, and in that moment, they finally fully relax.

It’s important to try and find a way there. I’m trying to relax into something, whether that’s a summer topping 100kg again on the bench (play Love Island soundtrack), or excusing myself after another horrendous astro-turf tackle, or writing this, I’m all in.

In the meantime, I’ll have a brew and practice the art of competence. Pete, you’ve had a stay of execution, but I can’t honestly promise you won’t end up in the dump by the weekend.

What I’m watching
The Drama - this was a lot of fun. A bit lighter than Sick of Myself, but a nasty little film.

What I’m listening to
Chief Keef – Finally Rich
Where Myth Becomes Memory – Rolo Tomassi

What I’m reading
Dead Man’s Walk – Larry McMurty.
Lonesome Dove will always be McMurty’s totem and whilst Dead Man’s Walk doesn’t do much to expand on what was already present, he has a tremendous sense of place.

What made me laugh
Boy Boss - Daniel McKeon. A criminally underrated and original stand-up.

Where you can see me next
Brighton Fringe. 16th, 17th, 23rd and 24th May.