Alternatives to work.

Each morning, my housemate and I talk. 'I don't want to go to work today. Let's:

Go to Brighton'

Steal some sperm from our boyfriends, have three or four fat babies and live on benefits'

Ring each other in sick'

Watch all the DVDs we own'

Lie on the sofa with the curtains drawn'

Pretend it's snowing and we can't get down the path'

Have a drill for what we'd do if the door swelled shut'

Just quit'

Sit in a coffee shop'

Drop out'

Forget it'

Have a duvet day'

Hold each other hostage'

Bake banana bread and muffins and sell them to hungry office workers'

Wait in for the boiler man'

Go fishing'

Buy a stack of women's magazines and make bitchy comments about celebrities'

Make another pot of tea'

Go back to bed'

Pretend we've broken up with our boyfriends and need to have a day off'

Drink a hot chocolate in every coffee shop in town'

Eat a second breakfast'

Miss the bus and fail to catch the train'

Lose our keys'

Have really bad women's problems'

Claim a cat that we really like has died'

Watch daytime TV'

Go back to sleep'

Pretend we are too posh to work'

Acquire some sugar daddies'

Sit in the window and sew'

Clean the kitchen until it shines with an Arctic whiteness'

Work from home'

Knit yards and yards of scarf'

Embroider our lives on a table cloth'

Look after our parents'

Go to the cinema when the sun is shining'

Watch a film and cry'

Suffer from non-specific malaise'

Light an aromatherapy candle'

Call up our burlesque teacher and ask for a class'

Doze'

Go and see our beauty lady'

Wait in for parcels of clothes'

Have absolutely nothing to wear'

But we never do.

Sounds during Sunday lunch at a quiet restaurant

Plates clattering
Traffic outside
Faint music
Gentle conversation
-- Everything all right?
-- Today we've also got...
-- I'll just get the card machine
A glass put down
Cutlery on plates
Eating noises
Things being crossed off and things being written on a blackboard
A cork removed from a bottle
Wine pouring
A hunt for change
The card machine printing off a receipt

What I am reading.

Joe has asked me to record the sixth, seventh and eighth sentence on page 123 of a book I happen to be reading:

...spun gold, added a good foot and a half to his height.
Lord Tywin had given him that crown to replace the one that was lost when the mob killed the previous High...

List of sounds heard during the interval at the theatre

Everything is deadened
Music that has nothing to do with the play
'I must say...'
'To me it seemed...'
Tip-up seats creaking
Things being unwrapped
Newspaper cutting rustling
Plastic sandwich bag whispering
Bag of sweets pulled open
Cellophane unwrapped
Very quiet conversations punctuated by laughter and sneezes
Deep or high voices stand out
A sudden laugh
'Excuse me... excuse me...'
Stiff paper flapping -- programmes used as fans

Sounds heard in a secondhand bookshop

Traffic passing outside
A polite enquiry
A strip light buzzing
A cardboard box slid across a gritty floor
Foot steps across a wooden floor above
A box being untaped
Till bleeping and cash draw opening
A mobile phone ringing

How to be mopey

Feelings

1. Put-upon -- this can be achieved by having someone ask you to perform small tasks; and also by doing many tasks that they do not ask you to do.

2. Anxious -- ensure you are always waiting for a phone call, and believe that life cannot continue until this phone call comes.

3. Blocked -- something is preventing you from doing what you want to do; it could be lack of money; or it could be the phone call; or it could be your to-do list of small tasks.

4. Hungover -- or dehydrated. This is achieved by drinking too much, or too little.

5. Frustrated -- an erratic internet connection.

Routine

1. Go to bed later than you meant. Stay up doing something that you don't really want or need to do -- channel surfing, or playing Mine Sweeper.

2. Sleep in for at least an hour -- but feel guilty about it. Have local radio playing during your lie-in.

3. Instead of getting dressed, waste some time, either channel surfing again, or reading a book you don't enjoy but think you ought to read.

4. Eat something for breakfast that you don't like because either you are too lazy to go out and find something you do like; or because whatever it is needs finishing.

5. Turn the computer on and launch Mine Sweeper. Close Mine Sweeper. Launch Minesweeper.

6. Phone your mother.

7. Get dressed in clothes you dislike.

8. Start a project. Become bored with it.

Fifty things neighbours do that annoy each other

1. Move boundaries
2. Put up fences and hedges that cast shade
3. Rev engines
4. Park in the wrong place
5. Allow their garden to run to weeds
6. Having noisy children
7. Play loud music in their garden
8. Play musical intruments outside
9. Work with a car stereo playing
10. Let their dog bark all night
11. Sit on their porch and just... watch
12. Allow their children to run free
13. Leave footballs and bikes out on the drive
14. Form cliques
15. Argue loudly
16. Have thin walls
17. Do building work without discussing with neighbours
18. Let their car alarms go off
19. Build an aviary next to the fence
20. Steal fruit from your garden -- not just the stuff that drops on their side of the fence
21. Not look after parcels
22. Pilfer mail and newspapers
23. Drive over planters
24. Cause a flood by leaving the hose on or by water gardening badly
25. Light lots of stinky bonfires
26. Have noisy sex
27. Have parties and not invite you
28. When you complain, turn the TV right up
29. Talk about you behind your back, rather than coming out and saying what you're doing to upset them
30. Complain about you
31. Have a noxious compost heap
32. Smash milk bottles
33. Instead of asking you not to park in a particular place, put a barrier up or vandalise your car
34. Borrow things and not return them
35. Angle their outside light so it shines through your windows
36. Send anonymous notes to complain about things
37. Ignore planning permission rules
38. Allow their children to scream all the time, and yell at them
39. Refuse to bell their cat so it frightens off your wild birds
40. Spy on you
41. Zap your TV with a universal zapper
42. Shoot your porch light with an air rifle
43. Dump junk mail through your letter box
44. Kick your bins over so the bin men won't collect them
45. Refuse to pay for shared maintenance -- cess pits, shared paths and so on
46. Pile old recycling up on the kerb and then do nothing about it
47. Drive across the corner of your front lawn
48. Sweep up leaves that blow out of your garden and dump them in your porch
49. Refuse to look after dangerous trees in their garden that overhang your property
50. Run a brothal or a crackhouse

List of everything I can hear at my desk

The hard disc whirring and croaking
My keyboard tapping
Bird song
Wind.
An aeroplane circling
A car going past.
My neck joints crunching.
My chair creaking
The creak of the desk
My metal buttons hitting the desk.
The return key, which makes clunk, rather than a clatter-tap.
My own breathing.