Prozac and Whimsy

Noun
/wimzi/
Something that is intended to be strange and humorous but in fact has little real meaning or value.

I dropped out of college on Thursday the 17th of April 1997, this isn’t some momentous day in my life history that means I will remember the date for evermore it’s just that I saw The Offspring (supported by Toast and Lunachicks) the day after and gigs are something I never forget unless I am too drunk to function and that rarely happens.

Anyway, I left college much to the dismay of one of my parents and the amusement of the other. The one who chuckled had built up this whole speech about how I either needed to buck my ideas up or leave and get a job and suddenly found himself with just the one option to give me. Find a fucking job.

I started my job hunt on the following Monday and work on the Tuesday. I was temporary cover in a canteen in a place that used to make trousers but at that point was buying them in from the eastern bloc and then selling them on. Brief tangent here but the trews from Next, BHS, C&A, George, Littlewoods and a few others all came from the exact same place, arrived in the exact same lorries and then unpacked and repacked by a bunch of strawheads who couldn’t afford any of them but knew the truth. Three of those places have gone bump and thus so did the trouser emporium.

By the time it went tits up I had been moved from the canteen to picking and packing. A job I didn’t care about, wasn’t very good at and didn’t want but liked money so kept doing it anyway. I was let go in the first round of redundancies and was given not quite a thousand pounds which felt like a lot of money at the time. I had a headful of dreams I wanted to chase, all above my station. I wanted to go to film school (I saw an advert in the back of Empire and Clerks was big) I wanted to buy a press and make t-shirts to sell (despite being terrible at art and not knowing how to operate one) Reality and mother had other ideas.

My parents had split up at this point and I had a small child so I had to get a job as I was the man of two houses. I left the world of textiles on a Friday, took a week off that saw me and my very soon to be ex-wife go to Alton Towers and generally spend cash like there was no tomorrow, I bought a bLind baseball cap FFS! The following week I started working shifts in a factory handling chemicals that I have to try not to think about as they were nasty AF a lot of people worked there are now dead. Reality ground away at me but I always thought about the press and the stuff I would and could put out in to the world under my label “Brain Dead inc.” (BЯ@in DEAᗡ)

I’ve always been creative but was never encouraged to do anything about it. Things like that weren’t done by the types of people that get spat out of the town I grew up in. The internet changed all that. I fucking *LOVE* the internet. It’s beautiful and brilliant and full of everything you could ever want. Sadly most of it is spite and bile these days but I try my hardest to ignore all that and indulge the idiocy in my brain. I met my second and best wife – the lovely Sals – and some of my bestest best friends online. I learnt to write (not literally) on forums and blogs and have bounced across social media for the past 25 years. The internet lets me be the whimsical idiot that I yearn to be!

But there was still always the t-shirt press, burning away in the back of my mind. Even when I wanted to be a famous author I got t-shirts and merch for the books (I’ve written a bunch of books but more on that another day) But it was always done by other folks I found online. Until today! (literally today, 11/10/2025)

Months ago I went to some leaving drinks for someone Sals worked with. Sals is a prolific crocheter and had made the leaver a blanket and arts and crafts came up. Someone said they had a sublimation printer and a heat press but didn’t get enough use from it. Sals said how I had always wanted one and wheels were set in motion and before I knew what was going on they were mine! ALL MINE! It has taken a while to find a home for it and then get it all set up and working but today I printed off my first attempts. I have a lot to learn but I am over the moon and beyond excited.