All of a sudden I miss everyone

I returned to my parents outside London because the last few weeks or months squatting in London I'd felt like a tramp. I'd been living with the VHS Video Basement crew in a nice old building by the British Museum. The owner soon discovered them and applied for an Interim Possession Order, which meant they were out in a few weeks. But rather than going with them or with Dan to another place, I came back here.

If I hadn't come home when I did, the very next morning I would have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and theft of electricity. This was the fate of the people I'd have moved with in the place I didn't go to. They were released later that evening, and with admirable chutzpah returned to the building and resquatted it. The police, thankfully, are now leaving them alone.

The VHS crew all had jobs or previously-saved money, so their food was bought rather than skipped. Jobless and broke, I felt like a parasite as I bummed endless roll-ups. They bickered about the rota for who had to stay home, and whether they felted hemmed-in by the group's name. They didn't put on any events apart from one film night. I felt this made their squatting harder to justify than if they'd been putting on art exhibitions or workshops - they were taking advantage of a building which wasn't even properly abandoned, just to save money and live in central London for free, and weren't even pretending it was for the good of anyone but themselves. But I suppose to the owner, "art" squatting is no better or worse than residential squatting - the lawyer's fees are the same irrespective of the trespassers' ambitions.

Back at my parents I can shower excessively but have little to write about. I've found it very difficult to function without exercise, wine, or cigarettes. I'm in a not especially picturesque village fifty miles outside London. I don't know anybody around here, and I don't drive. There's nothing for me to do apart from walk my parent's golden retriever; and she's getting old, with arthiritis in her back leg, so that doesn't take up much time, as after a while she'll sit down and be reluctant to walk any further. So I've spent two weeks in my bedroom, surfing the Internet to no apparent purpose, my brain too unfocused to even allow me to read or write. The only thing I've read is The Overcoat, imagining my bikeless self to be rather like its protagonist.

All of a sudden I miss everyone. One of the best things about squatting was it meant I wasn't on my own any more. I used to hate spending all day in an office amongst people I had nothing in common with, then returning to a little flat and sitting in my room, doing nothing on the Internet to pass the time until the next day. The last year it's been very rare that I've been in a room on my own, particularly when I was with the first Mayfair/Camberwell crowd. (They are still down there, a dozen of them in a shell of a flat with no bathroom or kitchen sink; I'd join them if it were possible, but it isn't).

So, what's the plan? My parents are keen to help me, whether it would involve my taking another course, getting into another field of work, or even therapy. I'm very lucky, I think. I have friends in their late teens, early twenties whose parents have renounced all responsibility for them, and who wouldn't even pay if they broke their glasses. So long as I show some gratitude and am not rude to them, my parents will do what they can to sort me out. I think sometimes if I'm rude to them it comes from resenting this: I don't want to be dependent on them.

I've had enough of being broke. I miss being able to eat out when I want to, or go to the cinema. I need a job. I dug out my CV and wondered what I could do with it. So many empty months. What could I possibly say? "January-October 2009: Travelling (central London area)." And what work could I do? The only job which ever made me happy was being a courier. A few times in the last few months I've bumped into riders I used to know who are still on the road; stopped and talked to them; wanted to go back to it. I miss the fitness and adrenaline of it. But could I really go back to it? Should I?

The other job I used to do was legal secretarial temping. It was a pointless existence, earning £400-£450 a week just to have money to gamble away every Thursday night. I was still broke most of the time. "Poker provides the thrill at the end of another dreary week" I think I once wrote. What would be the point of returning to that?

But in the short term it seems the best way to earn money. So later today I'm going to see someone I know at an agency, and try to fake it. After that I'll go to see my friends in Camberwell, and then stay over a while with Dan in his thrillingly-located new place. But I can't stay over for ever without angering my parents, on whom I'm sadly now dependent, and in whom stands my best chance of getting the money for a new bike.

I still want to be involved in the Oubliette, but I don't want to feel like such a bum. I need some money and stability. And I need to be thinking about what I want to be doing in six months. Rather than trying to recreate one of my previous ways of life, how about something new? I feel I'm quite similar in disposition to the blogger Would-Be, who found temporary salvation couch-surfing around Eastern Europe. Back in England, confronted with the monotony of working life, he sank back into heavy drinking and compulsive gambling. (But at least, unlike me, he had dramatic passionate disasters with women). So maybe I should go teach TEFL somewhere and get out of London.

Over the two years I've had this blog, I've tried various ways of being happy: earning money (tiresomely acquired and soon wasted on vice), being fit through cycling all day (this worked physically, if not financially), or spending my days surrounded by friends (this worked for a while, but eventually they got on with their lives while I spiralled downwards). And the whole time I've been as far away from ever as being in a relationship, or even a quick fling, or even thinking that it could be possible. Isn't that what I'm running from?

I miss being in love, even forlornly. I miss the mad intense thrill of being with a girl I was falling for. A few weeks ago I saw a couple of young hippies at the VHS place who were constantly pawing at each other, sitting wrapped round each other, sharing glances and smiles. I felt they were rudely flaunting their infatuation in company. I wanted to knock his block off and throw a bucket of water over her. But I missed what they were feeling, if I ever had it. I haven't had a meal with a girl in a restaurant since 2006, and that didn't end well.

I can't act as if I have an especially hard life. I haven't paid rent or bills in a year, and I found I didn't have to work if I didn't want any of the things work can get you. If the end result was destitution, then that was my choice. But I want more than a life that's free from any obligations; or any rewards.