I’m bored. Incessantly, face-achingly, ball-scratchingly bored. Indeed, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’m so bored you could sit me next to the resurrected corpse of Jesus Christ himself and I would muster nary more than an apathetic harrumph. And it seems nothing short of a Jack Bauer-esque day will shake me from the ennui.
I began writing a novel a few years ago, long since abandoned, in which an insomniac is so wracked with boredom that he decides to break into someone’s house and steal all their forks. He leaves an enigmatic red rose in their place, and on his way out steps in the blood of an unseen murdered man. To be honest, that’s about as much of the plot as I thought through, which is probably why the story remains unorgasmically spent on a USB stick somewhere.
But I can see the appeal of the adrenaline rush of burglarising someone, only to steal some cutlery, and it’s not the thought of being caught that’s stopping me, nor really is it the thought of inadvertently implicating myself in a murder; it’s simply because I can’t be bothered.
Another thing I can’t summon up the bother for is snipping the cable from someone’s satellite dish into their house one night, or writing the word BUM in giant letters on the M4. Nor can I be arsed to clear out an upstairs room and wait for someone to come home, and upon their arrival start bouncing on the floor testing it for strength and asking questions like “how much do you think an elephant weighs?”
It would be fun, but far too much like effort, to hide a camera in a bag and go into Holland & Barratt and see if they will sell me a homeopathic remedy for death. Likewise, I simply cannot be nadgered to try and convince George Lucas to let me weigh his bulbous chins.
I mean I could phone up ITV complaints at 3am and demand compensation because Ant & Dec are making my telly leak, but the momentary buzz of getting that recorded on the call log would soon dissipate into a miasma of tediousness.
And instead of scratching my irritable elbow, why shouldn’t I make an appointment with my local MP and spend my entire time with him asking if he can smell something fishy going on? I’ll tell you why, because this muggy haze of monotony cannot be shifted through sheer pranks alone.
There’s only one thing for it. Where did I put the bourbon biscuits?
