Alright, sofa - Jenny 2

What Peter thinks:

Yeah, yep, I know alright? I know.

I stay on the sofa too long, look at my phone too long, only ever speak with you you out the top of my head and seem to like Instagram more than I like you. But then, is there really anything else I should be doing right now?

This was going to be an exciting term, to be honest, one of the best. It’s a great term anyway – you kind of fight your way through winter, long night, short days, getting up when it’s still cold and dark, wondering if the bus will come while the rain tips down and your bike gets too crusted with mud and shoots water up your back if you try to use it for school. Not something you want to take with you into school any day.

And so we get through all that with its crumby PE sessions on sodden pitches with mist floating like some kind of freezer jacket as Mr Sharp barks out nonsense about how I’m not committing to some sodding rugby tackle or other. Like it matters. Just get through it, just get through.

The teachers serving sessions up by rote, just wanting to get through the days too. Occasional flashes of interest like sudden colour in an art class when you knock over your beaker of water and it completely Turner-izes your watercolour, and not in a good way. (‘Very impressionistic’ said Miss Dreyfuss as she walked away leaving me to wonder if dabbing at the sodden thing with a paper towel was gonna be enough to save it. It was going to be part of my exam folder for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t.)

So you push through winter and head for spring and the nights get longer and you start wandering back from school with your mates. Jason, Will and me and sometimes Judith, just lounging in the park, or taking it in turns to go into the corner shop – two at a time only – to grab a grab bag of crisps or whatever and chat to Mr Landau who says he’s owned this shop for too long and used to know my dad and he never bought anything healthy either. Landau doesn’t exactly stock healthy stuff though, unless you count those muesli bars that taste of porridge and contain too much sugar. So you can’t count them.

We’d almost got to the point where we stopped in the park and Will produces his mini-football and we just kick it around for half an hour. I field the odd text from my mums asking me where I’m at, shoot the odd message out to anyone else I’ve seen that day and we wander back to our respective sofas, satisfied that we’ve got through another day in quite a productive way, had a few laughs along the way, might have learned something but to be honest does it matter?

And now, does it matter that it didn’t? The sofa is about the only thing that hasn’t moved, that stays the same. And even the looks I get from my mums as they pass by, ask me if I want something, sigh, roll their eyes, swear under their breath at the world and everything else – they do it more often but it’s not like it’s different. It’s never been an entire barrel of laughs, a song and dance from beginning to end or whatever. 

We live in strange times. Everyone says. Damn right. They were already strange. Global warming, Brexit, immigration, AI, smart phones, online everything. If I want I get tomorrow. Competitive buying, what brand have you got, is it on style, are you a leader, follower, trying something different and should you anyway?

I look at the app for homework and wonder if I should really bother? Are my teachers actually on the other end of this and will they really care if I send something or not? Even when I do work there’s no real contact. It’s not like trying to mop up something physical. Here’s a jpeg of my work. Here’s a document, highlight the text, mark online and leave notes at the bottom in red Arial font. 

The sofa is real. The connections I have appear to be real so I’m sticking with those. When I send a message I get a message back. It looks real, it feels real when Jason texts to say his little brother is winding him up and I can say yeah, my sister too.

Why did we get here? Why do we stay here? All these questions and more will finally be answered when we get through this, just get through.