The discreet charm of incompetence

It8217;s great being a shambles. Just peachy. Rather than gliding through a staid, predictable life full of contentment and friendship, you lurch from one crisis point to the next, constantly challenged by your own ineptitude. One day I8217;m going to write a 24-style thriller in which the main character is under constant threat, not from terrorism, but himself. A typical episode would open with him being woken from oversleeping by having his house repossessed because he8217;s forgotten to fill out some forms8230;

I practise incompetence at an Olympian level. It recently took me 21 days to get round to replacing the lightbulbs in my kitchen, which for several weeks had been blowing one-by-one until finally the room was plunged into darkness. For 21 days I had to feel my way into the room like a blind man, then prop open the fridge door in order to have enough light to be able to see. Your eyes get used to it after a while. So does your brain. It became a routine. Soon opening the fridge felt as natural as flipping the light switch. Standing there, chopping onions in the artificial gloaming, all felt well with the world. It took an incident with a broken glass on the floor and a shoeless foot to nudge me in the direction of the nearest lightbulb stockist, and even then I instinctively used the fridge as an impromptu lamp for another two days before re-acclimatising myself to the concept of ceiling-based light sources.

Adding to the confusion, I8217;m tired. Strike that 8212; exhausted. Working on a TV show might look like a parade of easy-going giggles from the outside, but on the inside it8217;s an endless treadmill that eats time like a sperm whale eats plankton: in immense, cavernous gulps. Yesterday I rose at 9am after three hours8217; sleep, then stayed in the edit until 6am this morning. At 7am I arrived home and tried to sleep, in the knowledge that I was supposed to be up in about two hours8217; time.

From a column by Charlie Brooker in 8216;The Guardian8217;